The Tiny Toons Stalker: A Video Essay On The Dark Side Of Internet Fandom
Youtube sleuth Bernievidz did some digging into the infamous urban legend surrounding alleged early internet stalkers who were rumored to have influenced Warner Bros. cancellation of Tiny Toon Adventures.
Bernievidz begins by placing his investigation into the larger context of an examination of the cultural phenomenon of “internet fandom.” The primary source for his investigation was a 20-year-old online article titled “Terror From The Year 1994” posted on the website Crush! Yiff! Destroy!, a forum for furries. Bernievidz quickly debunks the article as largely false and loaded with unsubstantiated rumors, although there is some truth to the piece which he follows up on and clarifies.
That article’s primary claim was that fan-fic writer Dennis “Quozl” Falk was an internet stalker whose obsession with voice actor Tress MacNeille (Babs Bunny) got so out of line that Warner Bros. was eventually forced to cancel Tiny Toons. After digging through years of archived internet message boards, it quickly becomes clear that Tiny Toons’ cancellation had nothing to do with any internet stalker, and it gets even murkier about whether or not a stalker even existed. What’s more, in the video Bernievidz gets Falk on the phone for a call that seems to cast even more doubt on the “Terror From The Year 1994” article, which Falk describes as a “hit piece.”
In a later segment, Bernievidz finds a series of archived posts on message boards from a contributor named Robert who claimed to have inside info that MacNeille had received graphic fan fiction about her characters, some even sent to her home address. Many of Robert’s other claims in his posts later came to pass, giving Bernievidz the impression that he must have had an inside source to access that info.
In his posts, Robert also identified MacNeille’s stalker by name, pointing the finger at a furry who used the moniker Captain Chipmunk. After a bit more digging, Bernievidz got this potential suspect, real name Allen Fishbeck, on the phone as well. A regular furry convention attendee and Tiny Toons superfan, he did admit to sending something to MacNeille, “a toy or maybe a letter,” but denies being the Tiny Toons Stalker.
In the end, Bernievidz is unable to come up with a definitive set of facts that come anywhere close to identifying the Tiny Toons Stalker, or even proving that such a person ever existed. More importantly, he argues, is the broader picture his video paints in regard to internet fandom and its propensity to engage in harmful witch hunts, even against members of the same online communities. Both Falk and Fishbeck were accused by like-minded members of the same fandom, and both their reputations suffered from the accusations.
After watching the video, share your thoughts in the comments.
