Shana

From WikiFAQs

Shana Christine Strode (September 18, 1983 - March 23, 2003), better known as Shana to GameFAQs users, was a teenager who committed suicide and whose Live Journal was subsequently vandalized by Life, the Universe, and Everything. Like GameQueen, she was the center of a single event that forever changed the board in question. GameQueen changed Random Insanity; Shana changed LUE. The event was nicknamed SteriLUEzation and led to LUE being made inaccessible to the public.

1 Biography
2 GameFAQs
3 Legacy
4 External Links

Biography

Shana Christine Strode was born on September 18, 1983. Her siblings included a sister and a brother. Some time during her life, her father divorced and remarried a woman named Janette Strode; Shana acquired two new stepbrothers in the process. She graduated from Cy-Fair High School in 2002 and began community college at Reed College.

She started her now-infamous LiveJournal on March 11, 2003, giving many people a look into her personal life. Her entries indicated that her mental health was deterioating. Shana stayed at a mental hospital several times; her boyfriend, Evan, actually recommended that she stay there for awhile. She also cut her hand and contemplated drinking heavily to suppress her depression. Her last entry was a day before she committed suicide on March 23, 2003 and simply said, "Enough is enough. I'm tired. I love you all."

There is conflicting evidence how she died. The Suicide Memorial cites overdose, while on GameFAQs the story is that she jumped off a building. No official memorials will verify how she died.

GameFAQs

On November 15, 2003, user y2k discovered Shana's LiveJournal and decided to post it at LUE. LUEsers responded with their usual banter, posting fad-embedded comments and the like. However, the situation soon became ugly, with some LUEsers posting offensive pictures, including the Pains and the Unholy Trinity, and even more offensive comments. The LiveJournal was flooded with over 20 pages of comments.

LiveJournal cracked down, closing the journal to any more comments. Rumor has it that Shana's family contacted GameFAQs. CJayC was saved by the disclaimer that GameFAQs is not directly liable for what users do; he quickly took action, banning the offenders. As for LUE, he posted a topic, proclaiming that any user beyond the creaton of his topic would not be allowed to enter LUE (at the time, user 888113). He grimly marked, "LUE has been sterilized," giving rise to the LUE-infused name, SteriLUEzation. LUE conducted a massive manhunt for user #888113, who was revealed to be Lunarhawk99. The closure led to a number of Joke Accounts, such as WillNeverEnterLUE and the like.

y2k escaped with a notification and later thanked the moderators for it.

Legacy

While SteriLUEzation seriously hurt LUE's growth, It was probably ExcLUEsivity that forever hurt LUE. Out of the potential hundred thousands of accounts that could access LUE, just 22,000 signed up during the signups. It was still a notable number but nowhere near its potential. Whether SteriLUEzation had anything to do with CJayC's ExcLUEsivity decision is still open to debate. Some could argue that this was CJayC's final action in containing LUE, and part of CJayC's plan, while it could be argued that the shocking scope of the LiveJournal invasion triggered CJayC to come down harder, or put his "plan" (if there was one) in action at an accelerated pace.

The incident also lead to a massive crackdown on the posting of LiveJournals, websites, guestbooks and other sites where public posting is possible on all of GameFAQs. Whenever anyone would post one the entire board would collectively freak as they feared another Shana incident or mass moddings. Many users who posted them innocently (often not intending for invasion or were unaware of a guestbook for comment posting) got severely modded. This would get ugly if it was a popular board vet that posted it and got modded harshly. If anything, this incident along with all the other invasion/flooding related problems in 2003 led to the Board Invasion rule being enforced and regarded more than ever.

LiveJournal eventually reopened up Shana's journal to comments, which has led to an influx of users. There are the scornful users, who don't believe Shana committed suicide or believe that she was weak and selfish, and the astonded users, who heard of the SteriLUEzation incident and now saw in their own eyes what exactly had transpired. LJ has not edited any of the existing comments (either an outright delete or not touched at all), so the greusome pictures remain intact, the horror for any person today to see.

Some people consider SteriLUEzation to be an even more grotesque violation than other ordinary invasions. While GameQueen could defend herself, Shana had already passed away, and was subjected to ridicule on both her LiveJournal and her suicide.

It should be noted that LUE is still going very strong, with hundreds and thousands of topics and posts. Even though it is no longer the largest board on GameFAQs (Random Insanity took the honor in 2005 though LUE isn't far behind).