Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2020: Week 35

A sockpuppet or sock is a type of secondary online account, often with an attached persona. This term is widely used across the internet to refer to an alternate account created (usually in a forum or other discussion context) to give its user the illusion of additional support from multiple sources and/or to attack a victim using multiple different aliases.

Within fandom, sockpuppets have been used for a range of purposes, most of them negative (see Examples of Negative Uses) that range from praising their own fanworks to carrying out attacks on other fans or engaging in other malicious behaviour without consequences. Fandom history is studded with instances of fans using sockpuppets to carry out outrageous, often highly elaborate, deceptions. (See: Notorious Cases).

Some sockpuppeteers have created multiple socks. For example, Smallville sockpuppeteer SVmaria eventually created over thirty sockpuppets.

While this negative association is still the most prominent, fans also use the term "sockpuppet" or "sock" more casually to refer to an alternate identity created for a specific purpose, e.g. to post NSFW fanworks, to run an exchange, or to post memes to a meme community. Ultimately, whether a secondary account is considered a "sockpuppet" or simply an additional pseud comes down to the individual fan and their usage.