People for the Ethical Treatment of Jensen Ackles
People for the Ethical Treatment of Jensen Ackles was a fandom project that started as a members only Livejournal Community called spn_petja in 2008. It born from Capslock SPN - a site which in the tradition of CAPSLOCK communities was - as the name suggests all in CAPSLOCK and focussed mercilessly mocking the show, cast and fandom, long-running often absurdist jokes, deliberately bad manips and pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. The community's professed aim was to promote Jensen and protect him from mean treatment, while actually creating many memes about his supposed deficits.
It was on one level satire on fandom and our idolizing of celebrities. In late 2006 there was what became known as RESPECT Wank, in which fans who mocked Jared or Jensen were attacked and defriended for being disrespectful. Of course sometimes the mocking was indistinguishable from fans just being mean. It's relevant to note that this was before social media - any celebrity mocking took place in fans own journals or communities with no chance that the celebrities concerned would ever read them.
A lot of the jokes about Jensen on PETJA centered on the idea that he was "functionally illiterate". This stemmed from him using the word "unpossible" in an interview, and people not understanding that this was a Simpson's reference -- or getting the reference and making fun of it anyway.
It was all pretty much a fandom in-joke until the community mods created a website to support a real world action they called the "Jensenvention". This was to take place in the fall of 2008 at conventions,
at the end of July, 2007, I heard directly from one of the site owners this morning, and she's given me permission to pass this along -
1) They received a cease and desist letter;
2) They believe they have complied with the request and are waiting to hear back from Jensen Ackles's attorneys;
3) There was some confusion caused in fandom because the site owners occasionally said that "proceedings" were ongoing, which led legal-types to think that they meant there was actually a lawsuit. In fact, the site owners didn't understand that "proceedings" has a specialized meaning, and meant only to communicate that discussions are continuing. SPN on Fandom Wank: "I am disappointed in Jensen Ackles" - the fandom reacts to the PETJA C&D action and expectantly splits in two over the issue - does Jensen have no sense of humor at all or is PETJA simply not as hilarious as they thought they were?
