MLP Fanfic Author throws self under oncoming train following negative fanfic comments (UPDATES)


On May 24th of 2014, Adam Smith, 19 of Atherton in the UK, committed suicide by throwing himself under the wheels of an oncoming passenger train. Only now, nearly 7 months later are details of the incident coming to light, and authorities are attributing negative comments on his My Little Pony Fanfiction as a factor. 

Adam was known by his tumblr handle "Galaxy Star" http://galaxy-stars-universe.tumblr.com/ as well as his accompanying Youtube channel, where he left the above message.


According to authorities Adam was deeply bothered by comments on his videos regarding accusations of fanfic plagiarism, as well as comments regarding his elocution. 





Horse News has located 2 FimFiction accounts associated with his name, though both are now devoid of content.

Some of Adam's stories can still be found on his Youtube account.


Official sources indicate that Adam had a learning disability, and that he was worried about getting a "bad reputation" online over his alleged fanfic plagiarism.

Sergeant Les Peters of British Transport Police said that police investigated and found no evidence of the supposed comments on Adam's laptop, though admittedly comments could be deleted by their authors.

 "People who put comments on sites can take them off and they disappear from the system. We looked at comments on the system and certainly they would not justify criminal prosecution." 

For more information, visit the news sites below.




UPDATE: Knighty discovered a fanfiction account associated with Adam's works


Comments (38)

  1. >deleting their comments

    REAL TROLLS DON'T COVER UP; THEY TROLL HARDER.

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    1. Come on. I know Anon has low standards, but this tier of low is abysmal.

      Don't make the same mistake Adam did. Don't kill yourself. Stay alive. That way, Adam won't have to deal with you in whatever afterlife there is. At least for a while.

      Delete
  2. It is things like this I point out too when people ask me why I avoid the internet as much as possible.

    It has devolved into a morass of hate and vitriol, where anything anyone posts is seemingly instantly attacked by people slinging out abuse randomly, like monkeys throwing feces.

    I have known too many great artists and musicians in the fandom who have quit producing, not because they wanted to, but because they could no longer cope with all the shit and abuse constantly being dumped on them by anons. One thing that never fails to amaze me about the internet is that when one is given anonymity, so many instantly feel that they should have free rein to let loose their darker and nastier aspects of their personalities.

    It is depressing that there are so many people out there now on the internet that are so unhappy with their empty, pointless little lives that they only way they can feel the least bit of fleeting joy is in their attempting to pull everyone down to their level of misery. God forbid they actually try to improve themselves instead.

    This is very sad news, but equally as sad is that it is not that uncommon or unexpected.

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    1. The Internet was always like that. People just used to have a thick skin, or scram. Now that everyone is "forced" to be on the internet, those who aren't thick skinned can't endure the criticism.
      These artists wouldn't have an audience outside the Internet, because to get an audience in real life you need to face criticism.
      On the Internet you don't need to face criticism to GET the audience, the audience is here already, so it looks easier. It's not, and artists need to get that through their skulls. The Internet is as much a free market as the rest, not more, not less. It looks easier, it's not. It's just the same. It's not an "easy way in". And it should stop being treated as such.

      Delete
    2. The internet hasn't devolved, you just noticed it more.
      It's always been this way.

      Delete
    3. I got my first ever internet death threat for something I wrote in a fanfic back in 1997 (he didn't like the way I portrayed his favorite character). The internet's always had over-reactionary assholes on it.

      Delete
  3. He has a fimfic account but I think everything he did was on fanfiction.net. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9517009/1/Guardians-of-Equestria Kind of relieved there, didn't really want my first mention in mainstream press to be about a suicide... sad story though. Kind of hard to draw that line between what is an insensitive comment and what isn't when you don't know anything about the person behind the screen.

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    1. Correction: Account/story linked is actually someone's story he read, not his own account. I can't find any mention of his existence on fanfic.net.

      Delete
  4. Whenever something like this happens, whenever someone literally kills themselves over getting mean comments on the internet, I always hear the same rhetoric about cyberbullying in the media, and how terrible online trolls are. But being a part of this "culture" that 4chan spawned, I'm in agreement with the above anon that a thick skin should be needed to go on the internet in the first place, or at least to go into public forums where you can expect to interact with strangers.

    So whenever something like this happens, I don't ask "How could cyberbullies be so terrible?" I ask, "Who the fuck lets a mentally disabled kid, sensitive enough to kill themselves over getting negative comments on their fanfic, onto the internet?" Fuck. I know the previous generation aren't as internet-savvy as ours is, but Jesus Christ, just the basic amount of common sense could've saved a life here.

    When I have a kid, I swear, I am going to monitor their internet activity like crazy until they've PROVEN to me that they know that the internet is not srs bsns and that they can brush off personal insults, just so I know they'll never do something like this.

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    1. One certainly does need a thick skin, and the ability to separate out the random spewings of internet anons and not take their comments personally. But, I certainly would not let the trolls off on this one though.

      Just because one is an anon on the internet should not be instantly considered a free pass to consistently spew whatever vitriolic shit-stream of thoughts they happen to have at everyone else they happen to meet. Yes, I can shake it off, and you can shake it off; probably everyone here can. But obviously there are people out there who cannot, and asking people for a modicum of self-control should not really seem that unreasonable of a request.

      If he plagiarized a story, then calling him out on it and giving him a strike of course would hurt his feelings but it is incontestably fair. Repeated personal attacks on him for how he talked, or mocking his grammar usage is absolutely uncalled for. Some people just cannot cope with this, and these types of stories are becoming more and more frequent in the news. Death via cyber-bullying.

      I am also thinking that you probably do not have pre/tween siblings, nieces or nephews. I have several family members that are quite young and I am amazed at the level of involvement with electronic technology the school system nowdays uses.

      They do their schoolwork on computers, they send in their assignments/homework via e-mail. They are taught in very early grades to use computers and the internet for almost everything they do. I have one niece for whom the school REQUIRED her to have a tablet as part of her school supplies at age 10 (private school, but still..).

      It is to myself teaching them an almost scary level of dependency on electronics and connectivity to the internet. When they spend all day at school on computers and the internet; then come home and do the same all evening, there is no realistic way for a parent to monitor everything going on with their child. And, like you had said a lot of these parents are less internet-savvy then their own children, which only adds to the difficulty.

      I think that for the younger generation(s) these days, there is no real separation between their physical identity and their internet identity, as they are taught that computers and the internet is such an integral part of their lives. To them I think there is no real difference to them in say being harassed online every day, and say having your parents/siblings verbally abuse you at home every day. Both I think are as equally devastating to them.

      As always for tragedies like this, there is more then enough blame to go around that no-one should feel slighted of their share.

      Delete
    2. I never said that the trolls were blameless. I'm intentionally not going to comment on what the trolls did, because I don't actually know what they did. This isn't an issue I've done further reading on, and I never like to make arguments from ignorance. My only issue here is that letting an emotionally vulnerable person like the victim have internet access is a terrible idea, because it can lead to scenarios exactly like this.

      And I do in fact have younger relatives, and I know well how much computers are integrated into schooling. That doesn't matter, though. I'm not concerned about what my hypothetical child could potentially get up to on school computers. I'm attending UNIVERSITY right now, and there are STILL content filters in place on student accounts which prevent me from even playing online arcade games on the university's network. And I'm taking a motherfucking game design course. I'd trust the regular tier school system to be strict with what content a child could access.

      And as for home, yeah, I couldn't monitor them constantly if they're always on the computer. But I can quite easily limit the time they spend on a computer. My sister lets my nephew have an hour or two on his Playstation every day if he's good, and the rest of the time, he plays with toys or goes to clubs or goes outside to have fun, just like our distant ancestors did. Same principle applies here. I know it's inevitable that they'll eventually have their lives taken over by computers and gain unrestricted internet access whether I want them to or not, but delaying that time until I'm convinced that the internet won't eat them alive is easily done.

      And frankly, that's the approach that I think a lot more parents today should take. Most of the lolcows I ever read ED articles on and laughed at were just stupid teenagers who didn't lrn2internet before they signed up to whatever site they liked the look of and committed some faux pas that got them a lot of unwanted attention. Because those people didn't have anyone to tell them the rules before they started this internet business.

      And there but for the grace of God went I, because my parents also knew shit-all about the internet. I could've easily been swept up by a hugbox community like FanFic.net or some cancerous furry forum instead of the smaller *chan that did eventually get me, and I could've ended up a sensitive snowflake that would eventually get sent off crying or worse. Never taking that risk with my kids, I swear. No child of mine is going to shitpost in YouTube comments or make Sonic recolours on DeviantArt.

      Delete
    3. @tavilicious
      It shouldn't seem like too much a request, but these assholes are the price of free speech.
      >inb4 "hate speech is not free speech"
      No, the internet should be a bastion of free speech.
      Individual websites are allowed to police the speech of their users, so if one cannot handle the comments, they can just go to one of those sites. Asking people for self control in this case is asking too much.

      It's tragic that this happened, but it is not the first time something like this has happened. That is the price of free speech.

      Delete
  5. RIP Adam, a very sad tale.

    Hope the online bullies are proud of themselves. I'm not sure how they look at themselves in the mirror.

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  6. Poor kid.

    Take notes folks: don't fandom too fucking hard.

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  7. The comments here seem a lot more intellectual than Equestria Daily's, and I like that.

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  8. Good job horse news more mature comments than EQD gg

    but all in all poor kid... wish someone had reached out to him earlier

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    1. Some of his fans did, not that you can find it now. All of his work has been erased off the internet. What's sad is that, despite all the hate he received for his stories, he still had a fan base that supported those stories. The truth of this story is that people allow the hatred of others to cut deeper than it should, rather than see the light given by those that support them.

      Delete
  9. I don't find the reverence of this article befitting of your institution.
    That fact I am grateful of.
    Happy Holidays guys.

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  10. I like how everyone is calling the people who made these comments trolls, when in reality he was probably just a shitty writer who got criticism and took it way too hard. Speaking from experience, this is the usual reaction from shit-tier or novice writers, minus the suicide part.

    Killing yourself over words on the internet is fucking retarded.

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    1. Hey, guy, cyberbullying is a super duper cereal problem. Getting your feelings hurt really, really bad by strangers is enough to drive someone to suicide!

      ...Why, yes, I AM a white middle class kid from the suburbs. Why do you ask?

      Delete
  11. So what's the tumblr reaction here? Are they celebrating the fact that there is one less evil evil misogynistic fedora wearing brony in the world, or are they turning this into a slacktivist crusade to help other poor innocent developmentally disabled children without actually doing anything to help anyone? It could go either way, but probably the former.

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    1. Without even looking, I know it's the former. They don't give a shit about your special little group if you aren't a good house nigger and step out of line. If you don't play into their fantasies, they turn into hatemongers and rape apologists.

      Delete
    2. > By the way, Horse News- made up of horsefuckers from /mlp/- is apparently a "brony" blog now.

      Here's a little protip for you, snowflake.

      Nobody inside or outside our little band of pony loving faggots gives even a minute fraction of a fuck (be it flying, ground bound, seafaring or any other variety) which meaningless label you identify yourself with or which shitty imageboard you swear fealty to.

      Delete
  12. I've been wanting to add in my two cents since this news first came out. I believe this young man had a lot of issues right before all of this happened. Did the accusations of plagiarism triggered these suicidal thoughts? I believe so. After analyzing his writing and videos, I can tell that he is not right in the head. I can understand the feelings of isolation and the dependence on social media for communication, but it made me wonder, was he ready for the internet? Absolutely not. Acceptance is all fine and dandy, but sooner or later the person should accept that the people who are jerks towards us have access to the internet, too.

    If you are expecting the internet to shower you with praise and acceptance, then take a sit back and be realistic. Anyone with opposable thumbs can access the internet. Our parents have been preaching about this for years, the internet has a dark side. Some choose not to listen and it leads to stories just like this one. I had met people who were just like Adam and they had to learn lesson the hard way. That not everyone online is going to be kind, patient, understanding or even civil. I had met people who were cliquish, self righteous, judgmental, egotistical and just as much of a sociopath as the bullies in real life. One mistake is enough to damage a person's reputation for the rest of their life. The internet doesn't forget easily. That mistake will be with that person for the rest of their lives. Unless you grow a thick skin and learn to live with the slings and arrows from online personnel, then don't use social media for communication, period.

    Had anyone even considered that the people who accused him of plagiarism were fellow Bronies? If they were, then he should've maturely sit down and rationalize the situation before throwing a huge tantrum. Yes, he did had a disability, but it doesn't excuse of the possibility he could've ripped this other writer off. If he had then he should've straightened out that misunderstanding between the two. Sometimes, though, the accusations of plagiarism can go too far. I should know, I've been at the receiving end of such accusations, yet the person failed to provide proof. It didn't stop her from kicking me out of deivantart. Its not just me, though, one of my favorite artists was accused of ripping off Christopher Hart.

    The moment that you post your crap online, anyone would see it. They are not always going to praise your fan fiction, music, videos, etc. Yes, it sucks. I wish there were more people who would send in positive feedback, but unless you learn to have thick skin and learn to deal with the trolls, then don't post your work online, period.

    I'm sorry, but I cannot sympathize with Adam Smith's situation. I feel more pity towards the families who were involved in this situation. Adam's decision was selfish and childish. He should've thought about his family and accepted that there are people in this world who do care about him. He choose to wallow in self pity and whined about how the world doesn't like him. Boo fucking hoo.

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    1. I wouldn't commit suicide if someone accused me of copying Christopher Hart. I'd commit justified homicide.
      Christ, that's a disgusting thing to accuse someone of.

      Delete
  13. You know... for all those people who called who insulted this guy, or any person on the internet who normally acts rude and all that stuff on the internet, this for you...

    sure he did bad things on here, but that’s just his computer life, & everyone knows that real life means much more than computer life, & he had a good real life, his family loved him, his friends loved him, he was a good person, sure he may have made some bad things on the internet, but just because he was a bad person on the internet (I know, I did those things too), doesn’t automatically mean he’s a bad person in real life, but you know who the real culprits are you guys, you guys have been acting like assholes to everything, not just to him, but to all people who share their opinions and/or just try to be good-hearted and do what’s right, you don’t care about others’ feelings, opinions, or ways of liking things, or if it involves the right thing or trying to compromise, you just be rude, crude, and act like complete asshole by ranting, insulting, and telling others to Fuck-Off & things like that, just because you don’t like it, and you only do that because you think you can badmouth anything and anyone you can, just because you hate it, and you wouldn’t get hurt and punished because your in the safety and comfort of your home and they can’t hurt you because your separated thousands of miles away and they don’t know who you are or what’s your address, when in actuality, you are hurting someone feelings and insulting someone feelings that it can even drive to beating him/herself up to death, and I understand you’d be mad at him, but you can’t tell him to kill himself just because of some pieces on the internet, it’s okay to be angry, you just have to be angry in the right way, cause if you don’t, you can give the people the same fate as this British 19 year old, so if you think that this kid “deserves to kill himself” just because of some things that where done on the internet, then you’re just a heartless, asinine, bastard, and you should burn in hell, and these my last 2 words to you…
    (ahem...)
    .
    .
    .
    ...FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    (no offense & have a Merry Christmas)

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  14. Same shit happened to my best friend this year, only differance is he was abused.

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  15. Also, why have I not seen any mention of the bullies usernames yet.

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  16. Weakness is a state of mind. People kill themselves over fucking nothing and that is the reality. Humans lives in a world where they are all alone, disconnected, and if the family cared before they would have done all their possible to at least discuss and do something else.

    Internet is not the real world, if someone kills themselves over a line of text on a computer screen this is only their fault.

    Hell what would have I done dealing with an old IBM eServer AS/400, configuring it for entire nights, finding out what's not working, getting every two second an error message saying me i'm shit. my script being shit and despite years of studying and testing it, I will remain shit. I should have killed myself. In fact there was a line of errors saying, translated like "ERROR #0943F02 x0000000 SERVICE NOT STARTED. KILL ADMINISTRATOR." "BECOME A HERO AND DIE ALREADY" all that to make sure the system does something useful and finally run the almighty SAP.
    I could have killed myself over degenerates not knowing or not wanting to learn from their mistakes, not listening, asking them not to fuck my work or willingly installing crap like Steam on $100K machines runing WindowsServer, and blaming it on me because the company's services are down. Or having a mongoloid of a boss who wonders why he can't use his macbook air to fix the server. That's life. It's hard. If you are weak of course you kill yourself but you are the only one to blame.

    You get the philosophy. This world is fictional and should normally not lead to RL consequences.

    Actually, Galaxystar accused everyone of bullying, in the first place he just copy and pasted other's works on fimfic. changing some names then accusing everyone else of being intolerant. he flipped his shit and did accuse those who got him rekt on his made up drama on youtube of being trolls, but they were all bronies like you and me. I don't care what he's done, he based his life over bullshit.

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  17. Will you please send me the video dude his channel alerdy down

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  18. Why is most of that stuff deleted? He couldn't have done it. Is it some websites' policy to delete the accounts of dead people?

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  19. I'm really sorry that this happened to him and agree it should never have happened. I have a question. If you write a my little pony fanfiction on fanfiction.net, why can Hasbro or other people get after you on plagiarism, but on the website called fimfiction.net where you can also write mlp stories: why doesn't Hasbro accuse anyone of plagiarism there? I mean, I don't really think they should and it is a fansite, but if they do it for one website, why don't they do it for that website?

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  20. Life lesson of the day:

    DON'T BE A BRONY. IT WILL DESTROY YOUR LIFE. LOOK WHAT HAVE HAPPENED TO MORONES, SMITH AND TEMPEST.

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  21. Killing yourself because of stupid reasons is fucking retarded.
    Wanna know what's more retarded? Murder-suicide; *cough* Klebold & Harris *cough* Cho Seung Hui *cough* Anthony Powell *cough* Chris Benoit *cough*

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  22. The sickest thing about this might be that the bullies keep on living, and are probably completely happy with themselves. Also, plagarism. copyright. makes the bullies play the victim. you're pathetic copyright PAILS in comparison to the life you just took. As a creator of fan games, I've seen for myself plenty the idea of online bullies who think their "copyright" is a worse problem than the anxiety, pain, etc of their victims. And he is NOT a coward for deleting mean comments. I've been through that too. The fact he even felt the need to apologize to, I'm sorry but, his murderers, it just plain sickening. Also, word of advice. Never join the MMD community if you don't have to. The people in it make selfish playgroundy "rules" and will behave absolutely SAVAGE if you break them. And don't talk to the artists who made "Desktop Ponies" if you decide to use their sprites in a game. I still say use their stuff anyway though, it's way more innocent than they are. If they give you shut though, you just have to be strong and don't give in to their demands and block them, etc and don't stop using their stuff in an innocent harmless way. I know it's hard, but it's worth it to endure the pain. Giving in to them gives them more power. If you encounter mean people like this, and they make you feel like a bad guy, please know that their words, or the anger and pain THEY claim to have because of you, they are not legit, and they are just mean people capable of taking lives. It can even give you comfort if you're able to write them off as evil, almost criminals that way rather than believing what they say. And if you like something, and just wanna use it as part of your innocent, free fan creation, just do what you love. You shouldn't need anybody's permission for that. And if this guy's family is reading this, I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm sure he's with the ponies now. ♥

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  23. First I heard about this. This sucks.

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