the story of tradj (a 'who to trust' story)

From Alexis's history of BoyChat In the midst of this time of change, on December 1st, tradj appeared on the scene with a heartrending story. tradj and his friend tagar were teen boys who were being held against their will in a cabin somewhere in Canada near the U.S. border. Communicating secretly via a computer in the cabin, his vivid story and his plan to escape immediately drew volleys of support from the board. What happened next is confusing, but the gist is that tradj and tagar did escape, with the help of at least one BoyChat regular, and that they made their way to safety, first in California, and then somewhere in Colorado. tradj posted more and more frequently, now from a WebTV console that he had acquired, perhaps from his new foster-family. tradj's style consisted of a certain amount of broken English and bad spelling, and the combination of these stereotypically "childish" traits and what was frankly an outlandish story drew sharp suspicion from some posters. Almost immediately a debate broke out on board: was tradj "real"? Was he a real boy, was his story real? My own doubts on the subject were at first quelled by a couple of posters who said that they had seen reports of the escape on television news programs, but later these stories turned out to be second-hand and unreliable. Another poster said that he had spoken to tradj on the phone, and yet another said that he had met tradj and tagar in person and even given them a ride at one point in their escape. tradj's own posts, incoherent as they were, did not shed any light on the situation, and neither did his habit of posting (apparently) under different nicks, such as "jdart" (tradj backwards). He subsequently claimed that many of posts were in fact troll posts by someone else, particularly some posts filled with obscenities and shouting. The details of the tradj affair will probably never be known, although Wu-k'ung did an admirable job of analyzing them months later; click here to see his careful examination of the events. The fallout, however, was considerable. Essentially, the tradj affair resurrected the "boy poster" controversy, which went all the way back to Jamie, and which would continue to re-erupt right up to the present day. Other examples include Anibal, Criss, Cyrix and Aptiva, and the occasional controversies about the websites of gay youths daniel_13 and his friends (who never posted to BoyChat). Several posters became very wrapped up in the morals of the situation. The four viewpoints can pretty much be summed up as follows: tradj was a real boy, and the continuing skepticism with which real boy posters are met on BoyChat shows that BoyChatters are not real boylovers (Dennis2) tradj and other boy posters may have been hoaxes, but they should always be treated publicly as if they were real, in case they are real boys, and also to maintain board morale (Jam_man, Jimf3, Alexis) tradj and other boy posters who spell badly and talk about sex are probably hoaxes, and hoaxes should be uncloaked because they degrade the sense of trust and security on the board (johnnieK, Wu-k'ung) tradj and all other boy posters are hoaxes, and it is in any case dangerous to link to them or treat them as real (Accord, Lost) The consensus has perhaps finally settled at #2. Certainly boy posters no longer get as many suspicious and unfriendly responses as they once did. Some boy posters, such as Criss, settled in for weeks of posting and became regular parts of the board. Even here occasional controversies would erupt. The issue promises to continue to be controversial.