Bodies Under Siege

Bodies Under Siege (known as "BUS") began on April 18, 1996, when Sine Nomine created a mailing list for self-injurers. In 1997, Sine Nomine created the web board. It has gone through several incarnations, and is now presently a phpBB board .

Sine Nomine originally named the board for herself: "Dried Obese Genius," abbreviated to "DOG." Not many people wished to join a board that existed solely to praise its creator, and Sine Nomine was at a loss as to how to create a membership that would agree with anything she said and offer her unconditional support. Realizing that "dried obese genius" anagrammed to "bodies under siege," Sine Nomine reframed the board's purpose as being a support forum for self-mutilators.

BUS is possibly the best known example of E-psychiatry on the internets.

DittoCops ringleader, Arkady, was a member of BUS.

Sine Nomine spreads the lulz

Attack of the 16-year old girls

BUS started off as a meeting place for whiny emo fags, but has since morphed into a haven for 16-year-old girls with an unhealthy obsession with Amy Lee of Evanescence fame. At BUS, these attention whores have a "safe place" in which they can discuss how noone understands them, how much they hate their parents, teachers, therapists, and landlords, and how they feel like cutting, committing suicide, or eating babies. With so many underage, needy, attention whores in one place, BUS is fertile ground for pedophiles seeking jailbait to exploit. One hundred percent of bussers (except the pedophiles) claim to have been raped or almost raped, so they are already damaged goods.

Busser famous for claiming to have been raped

Since BUS is considered by its members to be a "safe place," members expect that they will receive support (in the form of emoticon hugs and welcome cows) for whatever drivel they post. BUS also allows its members to maintain the fantasy that they are beautiful, popular, and smart. Posts of awful haircuts, ghastly body modifications, and just fugly people are replied to with "OMG you r so gorgous!!!11!" or some variation thereof.

Keeping BUS a safe place means that content warnings must be added to posts, so that members don't become "triggered" by seeing something that might upset them. Bussers have been triggered by fruit juice commercials, characters on British soap operas, and the word "rat."

Angsty poem

The trigger system requires that bussers make no mention of numbers in their posts. Posting about one's weight or caloric intake is considered likely to cause eating disorders and send readers running to the bathroom to cut themselves or make themselves vomit. Posting information about how many times one has cut is likely to fuel feelings of competition, and send bussers running to a safe place so that they can cut themselves even more.

One of the friendlier Bus Moderators -- Pink Spider. She's Wapanese

New Moderators are frequently sought to babysit the whining masses and provide them with soft, fluffy pillows, in which they can bury themselves, unaware of the foul rapists lurking therein.

With all that whine, you'll need some cheese.

Bussers frequently claim to have overdosed. On the rare occasions when numbers are not immediately edited out of posts, readers learn that a "BAD overdose" consists of taking a single tablet over the recommended dosage for a readily-available over-the-counter medication (and are then triggered into taking a MEGA BAD overdose by consuming two tablets over the recommended dosage, then coming to BUS and posting to ask whether they should tell their parents about this suicide attempt).

With all of those 16 year old girls in one place, BUS can't help but attract the most dramatic drama queens on the Internet.

BUS drama typically centers around a 16 year old girl's angsty post about how she feels like cutting herself. The usual pattern is for dozens of others to pad their post counts by posting meaningless drivel such as "don't do that, your life is so preshus and valuable," and then punctuating their reply with a few dozen of the several hundred huggy cuddly emoticons available for board users.

Occasionally, the poster of the original comment doesn't receive the number of replies to which she thinks she is entitled, and posts a huffy farewell post in which she moans about how noone cares about her and she might as well be dead, but that since the BUS rules expressly forbid posting suicide notes she's going to do the next best thing and leave BUS. And that will teach everyone a lesson!

Interestingly, bussers claim to have very low self-esteem, yet become upset when the don't receive the positive attention which they feel is their due, or when people don't tell them they're beautiful. Oddly, no one sees the contradiction.

Sine Nomine gets a little snippy!

Enter bus_snark

BUS is rife with snarkworthy posts, and perhaps one of the most amusing episodes in the history of BUSdom was the creation of a LiveJournal community called bus_snark. This community began as 4 or 5 people with a grudge, making fun of bussers, their lame posting styles, and their petty problems. Membership was initially limited to those who were referred by other members, but both interest and membership numbers swelled, as people applied to join. Many snarkers were not even members of the BUS board, but found

Belinda the troll

great hilarity in snarking about the open posts, particularly those on BUS's main forum.

Yet this was to all come to an end, as Sine Nomine discovered the group's existence, worried that they might be talking about her in an unflattering way (her worries were extremely well-founded), and threw a gargantuan hissy fit in her own LiveJournal.

Bus_snark members quickly regrouped and formed the LJ community big_balloon_cat, which, if anything, was a hundred times more snarky and more vicious than the original _snark community had been. This community was hacked by an ugly little troll named Belinda.

Yet the spirit of bus_snark lives on! The _snark community is now in a more top-secret place. Many of the original _snark members have moved on, but since BUS is always snarkworthy, there is a seemingly never-ending stream of people willing to snark. Members are invited by word of mouth, through Private Messages exchanged on the BUS board. At present, there are 319 members, 267 of whom post nearly daily, looking for examples of BUS idiocy, and befriending bussers who claim to be particularly needy. These private messages are then shared with the group as a whole, just to increase the lulz. Two-thirds of the gray-bussed BUS administrators are members of the _snark forum, which means they have access to the funniest Private Messages to share.

From the ranks of _snarkers come numerous bus trolls. Snarkers compete to see whose troll can post the most over-the-top threads, and how long it will be before even bussers recognize the troll as a troll.

Meet the Attention Whores

Neviah

Famous attention whores on BUS include:

Neviah: claims to be 17 years old on BUS, but 19 years old on Myspace. Posts stories of horrific abuse at the hands of her ex-boyfriend. No one questions why broken bones would go unrecognized by child protective agencies. Neviah is perhaps most famous for her distorted sense of time. She posts about quitting self injury. Three days later she announces that she has quit self-injury for a week. A few days after that, a month. And so on. Nobody seems to catch on to the fact that for Neviah, a month is 16 days long. Perhaps it is on her planet. Recently reported that she went 6 months without eating. Neviah has the worst life of ANYBODY. Really, she does. Just ask her. Or don't, because she'll tell you anyway.

Seradjernie: Claims to have become a 16-year-old bi cutter after a traumatic experience. Stalks her therapist. Cuts herself in her therapist's office so that her therapist will let her sleep in the next room. Has a fantasy of breastfeeding from the therapeutic teat. Is most amusing for claiming to have multiple personalities, which include Susie-Joan (a stroppy child) and The Seductress. By having multiple personalities, Seradjernie can refuse to take responsibility for acting like a spoiled prat or a slut. Because of her great mental stability, was chosen to moderate several BUS fora. Sometimes the "alters" post, which provides considerable lulz.

The lovely Snow White

Snow White: Also trolls communities dedicated to bad tattoos, repulsive body modifications, and ugly people while ganking pictures exemplifying the worst of the lot and claiming them as her own. She posts these poor souls' pictures on BUS, where they are inevitably greeted with replies of "OMG I love your tattoo!," "OMG ur so gorgeus," and "that piercing is so totally not migrating!" She states that she has agoraphobia and cannot leave her house. She says that she habitually goes a week or two without bathing. She claims to be bisexual, but then, don't they all? She tells people that she is from Scotland, but actually lives in Camden, New Jersey.

Twitter Mouse and her magical dog, Pi

Twitter Mouse: Famous for claiming to be disabled so that she can take her dog everyplace she goes. Claims that her dog performs feats that are

nothing short of miraculous, such as prescribing medication for her and filling out her time-sheets at work. Aspires to have the most hardcore body modifications EVAR, and frequently posts graphic descriptions of what she's had pierced, cut or mutilated. Then posts even more graphic descriptions of what is oozing and what is inflamed. Bussers have yet to catch on that this is an attempt to trigger them into wanting to cut.

Collide

Collide; Deserves a special place of honor in the annals of troll history. Collide was originally a member of the BUS e-mail list, where she posted under the name "Peaches." She has now moved on to posting on the BUS board itself. She sticks primarily to posting in her own "place" thread, as the over-the-top-ness of her posts would raise suspicions were she to post on the main BUS board. Collide's Place thread is full of pictures of knives and other weaponry. She claims to have been kicked out of nearly every psychiatric treatment program in her area. In one particularly lulz-worthy instance, she was told that she was being suspended from a day treatment program. She tore a juice can open, cut herself, and wrote "SUSPENDED 4 WHAT?" in blood outside the program's building. She has been refused admission to at least one psychiatric hospital, on the grounds that she is "untreatable." The best part is that she is working toward a Master's degree in School Psychology. Parents of schoolchildren will likely find it a great comfort that this model of mental stability will be in a position to counsel troubled youngsters--providing her school lets her graduate.

Coritiacus/Milvus

Coritiacus/Milvus: Is the most prolific poster on BUS. Is good friends with Pink Spider. Coritiacus is a girl who claims to be a guy. That way, she can enjoy sex with women without having to bear the stigma of being gay. Because being a lesbian is WAY worse than being a wannabe-transsexual. Recent evidence suggests she may be a furry as well. Changed her name to "Milvus" in the hopes that her family members wouldn't trace her to BUS. She doesn't want them to think she's weird or anything.

Sine Nomine strikes

Sine discovers herself on the Internets

It has later been confirmed that Sine Nomine did manage to find the ED articles related to Bodies under Siege and herself through her minions. She proceeded to delete the contents in a desperate attempt to hide her egomaniacal self from the prying eyes of the Internets, but was caught off guard by the snarkers as she stopped to catch her breath, thus adding considerable ammounts of lulz.

Bus Snark Lives On

Most of the snarkers still have troll accounts on Bus, where they lurk in the shadows while conveying the lulz to far-flung corners of the internets, such as the Deb_Snark Livejournal community. But we'll save that story for later.

After the original forumco .asp forum was discovered, it was concluded (via an extensive public enquiry) that .asp software is not the most secure on teh interweb, and as such Bus Snark International has relocated to a php forum under a new URL with new usernames and its very own resident troll called Nigel.

Follow the drama live, as butthurt attention whores regularly barge over to teach the evil doers a lesson, and the admin of BUS keep a constant eye out for trouble.

See Also

• Emo
• Goth
• Cutting
• Random Idiot
• Unwarranted self-importance

Links

• Home of the evil Snarkers
• The now infamous BUS forum - trolling encouraged
• The BUS information central. Triggers for tl;dr
• For those of you who can't get enough of emo/goth cutters
• ljbus
• bus_unites

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Bodies Under Siege is part of a series on Psychology

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Featured article April 22, 2007
Preceded by Adolf Hitler	Bodies Under Siege	Succeeded by Micha Armstrong