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Couldn't find this mentioned anywhere else, it's a relatively new story.

For the past year the 40k podcast Deepstrike Radio has been co hosted by someone named Christina Campbell, from what I have read she has also featured on the Overlords podcast and some others. She was in fact a very good host and proved to know her stuff regarding 40k lore.

When she joined the show last Autumn she participated in the aired auditions and gave her own personal story of how she found 40k. In it she described a horific accident which left her with mental trauma. She maintained this story until two weeks ago when she died. This shocking event got a lot of attention on various wargaming sites, from other podcasts and even Forge World posted about it.

Then last night Deepstrike Radio released an announcement revealing that not only was Christina not dead, but never existed. What's more, a memorial episode released last week, with Carl from the Independent Characters podcast and Jason from The Overlords contributing, also featured somebody named Alexander who purported to be Christina's widow. It turns out Alexander was the so called 'Christina' using some sort of pitch shifting device, which in turn could mean 'Christina' was a male all along. In the two hour long episode each person gave accounts of fond memories of her, believing her to be dead, when in fact she was still alive and was talking with them.

Whoever this person is they have clearly gone to a tremendous amount of effort and in the process fooled a good number of 40k podcasts. Including creating several facebook profiles of herself and family, friends. Doctoring photos to show 'herself' with the supposed head injuries. Using vocal devices to portray herself as a male, or perhaps the other way around. From what I have read the other Deepstrike hosts believe they know who he/she is but are reluctant to reveal the information.

While I'm familiar with plenty of internet stories of fake identities etc. I've never heard of anything like this happening in podcasting before and think it's pretty crazy it has happened in the 40k community.

Check out more on these links...

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Deepstrike-Radio/224860527566902
http://www.deepstrikeradio.com/?p=1263

This is not an easy announcement for for Deepstrike Radio to make, but we believe it is necessary that we be completely honest with the listeners. Several discrepancies have arisen over the death and identity of one Christina Campbell. Upon having the matter brought to our attention, we proceeded to investigate the matter to the best of our ability. We would like to apologize to the community for allowing someone to use our show, and the 40k community as a vehicle for their own (as of yet unknown) agenda. The facts as we know them are thus:

1) There was never a person by the name of Christina Campbell participating on our show. Rather, it was an individual using a false identity. We have done extensive checks into Canadian Obituaries and any other references we could find, and have discovered no record of this identity.

2) This individual has taken advantage of our show, and the wider 40k community for their own gratification.

3) This person has also engaged in several false online relationships with various individuals in the community (Whose identities we will not disclose) for unknown reasons.

Once again, we would like to apologize for allowing this person to participate on this show under false pretenses. We believed this “Christina Campbell” as a member of the 40k online community for years (predating even this show) to be a creditable individual who would be a valuable addition to our cast.

There are two lessons to be learned from this, one in that while the online community can be a place for lasting and true friendships, it is extremely important to verify that the individuals you associate with are who they say they are. Two, that the 40k community is a caring and inviting one. The community had no reason to believe that this person was false, and did everything it could to be supportive and encouraging. Do not let this individual take this from any of you. Trust that, while these things happen, there is nothing wrong with being supportive of your fellow community members.

We will be back with our regularly scheduled programming next week.

The Facebook profiles for herself and friends, family appear to have have been removed and so have the memorial episodes on Deepstrike radio.

What is this hobby coming to? Guys pretending to be girls... People ripping others off... Sometimes makes me wish for the simpler times before the interwebz

Right...

Wait... they were taken for a ride like Manti T'eo? What the heck lol

They pretty much got T'eod yeh.

Welcome to the interwebz, where the men are men, girls are men and the kids are really FBI agents.

There are nutters everywhere, even more so online.

For lack of a better term, this is sick. I'm an avid 40k podcast listener though DSR is not one I frequented. I did tune in for this "tribute," and found it to be quite moving. While I expect the internet to be filled with crazy, this sort of stuff is reprehensible. I wish there was a criminal statute here that could be brought to bear.

Dsr Has Become One Of My Regulars In The Last Few Months, The Fact That Whoever This Was Managed To keep Such An Elaborate Lie Is.....Disgusting.

You Could Tell That The Hosts For DSR Were Fond Of The Christina PersonA

When you listen back to some of the episodes you can tell she is putting this story across quite forcibly which in retrospect is quite odd. Also the voice sounds digitalised which originally you just pass off as a bad mic but again in retrospect is porbably a voice morpher. If it is a guy all the sexual abuse stories he was telling makes it pretty screwed up, not that it isn't already.

I actually interviewed her in response to a "Sexism in Wargaming" segment we did on the HittingOn3s podcast.

While, I edited the interview down quite a bit, but I'm going to have to go back and listen to it for any shifting or digitization. I've always thought that her speech pattern and mic sounded off, but didn't give much thought as I wouldn't expect a facade of some kind.

It'd be interesting to "undo" any perceived pitch shifting to see if it sounds more natural.

Although I did carry on conversation with her, I'm actually not upset by or bothered that I was deceived. Sadly, the internet has numbed that effect. I am, in a weird way, fascinated with whole situation and the lengths that this individual went to in order to pull this off.

 kcwm wrote:


It'd be interesting to "undo" any perceived pitch shifting to see if it sounds more natural.

If you can PM me with an MP3 or WAV file, I can see what I can do.

You can get them on this page...

http://www.deepstrikeradio.com/?feed=podcast

She's not in the last few episodes because that is when she starts dieing

I really don't understand why anyone would go to these lengths? What on earth do they get out of it? I can always sunderstand that 99% of fraud is down to love or money, the worlds two big motivators, but why this? It cant have made any revenue.. so what for? Some warped satisfaction from misleading people? Attention?

I'm really glad I struggle to comprehend this gak with my simple black and white mentality, I mean, I might not be able to climb into the psyche of these people, but at least that means I'm not really fethed up in the heed!

Some people have an urge to do these things for attention and love, they craft an entirely false identity. Then they'll kill it off and feed on the attention and coverage 'they' get afterwards by following all the tribute material. It's a form of mental illness.

Was there any signifigant monitary fraud? Or was this just mostly an attention-grabbing catfish to make a fake minor internet celeb?

This sounds strikingly like Anandtech's forum hilarity from a decade ago...

Old tricks never change.

Further proof that females don't play warhammer lol.

Sounds like another normal day on the internetz.

$10 this was Reece Robbins doing...

O.o

giggity giggity goooo!

Still don't understand why people have to throw themselves into every "tragedy" and random BS that pops up online. Seriously, if you haven't ever met the person face to face, then there's no need to constantly feel the need to over-empathize and feel bad about gak. I think lots of people crave the idea of "doing the right thing" and "helping people out". That's why anytime anything remotely tragic happens we get a 24/7 news cycle crammed down our throats about this school shooting, this random bombing in some city, this tornado that shockingly didn't dodge a school full of kids (in a place where they get serious tornados every year).

Our obsessions with death, tragedy, and illness is down-right disturbing to me. Enough terrible gak happens in your own personal life to go around trying to seek it out in every nook and cranny of the entire damn world. There's enough tragedy to help people feel bad about gak for every second second of the rest of their miserable lives and for whatever reason folks flock to that crap like bugs to a porch-light.

Was this the interview the 11th company did were the person had some head injury and were very upset and offended by the use of term "rape" by 13-year-old boys in a 40k game?

Yeah, that was an interesting interview.

It was just a "catfish" type scenario. Not a significant amount of fraud took place from my understanding.

Only thing I am upset by is the waste of time I spent on the entire thing. This person had worked the communities around these shows over the course of a year or so and quite clearly isn't stable.

In a way I am glad it isn't real because the situation described was incredibly sad. Now it's just pathetic.

It's not really worth any more of my time at this point.

I don't get why everyone's so pissed. I really don't care and actually still appreciate what they did, since that person acted so nicely as a host and as a person. If they did it maliciously there would be a problem but if they made an overall positive impact with their efforts (ex. By being a good cohost on the podcast) then they still should be appreciated. Sure, the lying wasn't so cool but we don't know their reasons so we can't judge them. I seriously do not understand why people are writing them off wholesale as detestable when they overall were good. Jeez. Think of all the people who you know IRL that are good to you but have made a few screwups. Does their screwups or poor actions define them as a person? No! It is the sum of all that they do and say that makes them who they are. And a person, under any face (their own or one they make up) who overall makes a positive impact, is a good person.

The person that perpetrated this hoax needs to be outed. They have some serious mental health issues and the community really should be warned away from this person.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daniel_Holmes wrote:
I don't get why everyone's so pissed. I really don't care and actually still appreciate what they did, since that person acted so nicely as a host and as a person. If they did it maliciously there would be a problem but if they made an overall positive impact with their efforts (ex. By being a good cohost on the podcast) then they still should be appreciated. Sure, the lying wasn't so cool but we don't know their reasons so we can't judge them. I seriously do not understand why people are writing them off wholesale as detestable when they overall were good. Jeez. Think of all the people who you know IRL that are good to you but have made a few screwups. Does their screwups or poor actions define them as a person? No! It is the sum of all that they do and say that makes them who they are. And a person, under any face (their own or one they make up) who overall makes a positive impact, is a good person.

This was not just a screw up. The person committed an elaborate fraud over a long period of time. The whole scenario is malicous. Lying constantly to people that have befriended you and doing things like faking an illness and death is just a terrible thing to do.

You dont seem to understand that their "acting nice" was exactly an "act". The sum of what this person did for months actually defines them as someone with a significant mental illness or as a complete donkey-cave that should be shunned by the community.

Is she related to the fake girl that college football guy was (not) dating?

 cvtuttle wrote:
It was just a "catfish" type scenario. Not a significant amount of fraud took place from my understanding.

Only thing I am upset by is the waste of time I spent on the entire thing. This person had worked the communities around these shows over the course of a year or so and quite clearly isn't stable.

In a way I am glad it isn't real because the situation described was incredibly sad. Now it's just pathetic.

It's not really worth any more of my time at this point.

That's completely understandable and to be honest I didn't think the likes of yourself or Galan, who were immediately affected, needed to obliged to address the issue but thanks for doing that. I just think it's such a remarkable issue and some people would rather deal with it with some discussion.

Also like JWhex I do have a desire to know who this person was but I'm not sure that's really a healthy thought.

 Breotan wrote:
Is she related to the fake girl that college football guy was (not) dating?

Only in similarity I hope...actually I don't hope that. If they are the same person then at least statistically the number of nutcases on earth will drop.

Words escape me.....I mean how do you get a gig without actually meeting the person face to face? The frequency of "I Was ripped off on the web" type thread makes a whole lot more sense to me now I see how "business" is conducted.

Griever wrote:
Still don't understand why people have to throw themselves into every "tragedy" and random BS that pops up online. Seriously, if you haven't ever met the person face to face, then there's no need to constantly feel the need to over-empathize and feel bad about gak. I think lots of people crave the idea of "doing the right thing" and "helping people out". That's why anytime anything remotely tragic happens we get a 24/7 news cycle crammed down our throats about this school shooting, this random bombing in some city, this tornado that shockingly didn't dodge a school full of kids (in a place where they get serious tornados every year).

Our obsessions with death, tragedy, and illness is down-right disturbing to me. Enough terrible gak happens in your own personal life to go around trying to seek it out in every nook and cranny of the entire damn world. There's enough tragedy to help people feel bad about gak for every second second of the rest of their miserable lives and for whatever reason folks flock to that crap like bugs to a porch-light.

I don't know what to say to this.
Now I do! You're comparing human empathy to an insects primal attraction to a light. I think I could say the same thing to you about disturbing.