Hoodoo T.

I was a contributing member of makeupalley.com since its inception and posted many reviews and participated in discussions. I had a lot of followers there. After nearly 20 years, I was bullied off the site by a pack of vicious political trolls just before the last presidential election. Let me be clear: I was not posting any partisan screeds or promoting any particular candidate. I was just curious as to how people were leaning, as others were posting about, but that was enough for the trolls to pack up and attack. I was mostly on the "Owl" board for members over 40 (we had all known each other for years by member name or sometimes personally), but the mob that appeared out of nowhere and descended on me included people none of us there had ever heard of. There were a couple dozen of them at least. The moderators did nothing.
So I left the site without any great feeling of loss, because I'd been noticing that most of the new reviews sounded like marketing shills, and that some members who posted multi-episodic stories about their lives on the Owl board sounded kind of alike: one woman had a mentally challenged daughter, another had an incontinent elderly mother, another flew to Scotland to marry an internet boyfriend in a kilt, and more, which I now realize were all transparently written by the same person with the goal of attracting more clicks. By now, I'm sure there are fresh narratives, and the "reviews" are nearly all bought and paid for. So, sadly (a word used ad nauseum in the Reviews section), Makeupalley.com is not what it once was. It's almost totally monetized now, for both commercial and political purposes.