Tabby Talks About Allison Mack’s Fan Feuds Over Erica Durance and Creeping NXIVM Coercive Control

If I recall correctly, Tabby was a moderator at Krytponsite back in the day. It was a Smallville fansite. She and the other mods were absolutely fanatical Allison/Chloe fans. They would delete or ban even mild criticism of Allison or her character. At the same time, they would engage in and encourage the vilest comments about the other females on the show. GBD (Girls By Design) was heavily promoted there as well. Not surprising, she got recruited into NXIVM. I wonder if the other fanatic mods did as well.

We didn’t. In fact, I was very against mods deleting or banning based on their agenda — which got me into conflicts with some of the volunteer mods who did take it a bit too far in threads like the “Chlois thread.”

Heck, one of my worst times running those forums was arguing with Tabby herself because I didn’t feel a “Chloe is Luke Skywalker” thread was offensive, and the opposite, I found it hilarious.

Also, Benji, I’m sorry if you had a bad time there. I’ve been to horribly run forums, and it was my hope that Krytponsite wouldn’t be that. I say this as someone who was banned from TWOP for daring to say something nice about Erica Durance.

Oh Craig I had no idea! I don’t even remember that, but I’m sorry it ranked up there as one of the worst. You didn’t deserve such silly arguments.

Thanks for sharing, Tabby. Your comments are always welcome as far as I’m concerned.

Curiously, when you say you made some ‘pretty harsh commentary about Durance,” was that because you were instructed to do so, with specific instructions by Allison or others, to attack certain people? What kind of harsh commentary do you mean (if you are ok to share), and why against Erika?

I’m trying to understand the role those with authority would have and how they would go about specifically instructing subordinates that are otherwise good folks to do bad things. For example, John Tighe says he was routinely harassed, bullied, and intimidated at home, church, etc., by NXIVM henchmen. It appears you were instructed to bully others via an online forum (perhaps indirectly?). I believe you’ve mentioned you have taken counseling (which is great) to help with recovery. I wonder how others deal with it. Or I could also be completely off on all of this, apologies.

No, this was before I ever met Allison when I was a die-hard “Chloe is Lois” fan. All the fans, in general, were vitriolic at times, but there was a push by the “Chlois” “faction,” I guess, to hate on Durance. It’s much easier to talk shit about people when you don’t know them personally. Once I started meeting everyone, I became humbled. I stopped posting online in general, except for a few spoilers here and there of episodes I’d seen filmed or edited.
As far as the other information you are asking for:

Let me put my graduate hat on and get a little academic here. There are a lot of scholarly articles and blogs posted by cult experts on the topic of how authority was distributed amongst NXIVM. They are fairly accurate in my own experience. The question of how to get otherwise good folks to do bad things has been formally experimented on and there is a lot of information regarding it on such experiments like the Standford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment.

In NXIVM, they used a number of different methods, depending on which ones their own subject responded to. They had a little cognitive restructuring right off the bat. Some people didn’t respond well to that, so they’d use social shaming in the class. If that still didn’t work, they’d use the person as an example. If that didn’t work, they’d force an EM for that person. If the EM didn’t work, they’d force classes on that person by telling them they couldn’t move forward until the inner deficiency was resolved, which resets the cycle. And since most people there dedicated their lives to NXIVM, thus losing “outside” friends and family, they’d have everything to lose if they chose not to comply.

They had a ton of other methods available until there was nothing left for the person to fight against.

This is how coercion works. One method of coercion is to set people up with impossible “choices,” and then if they had destructive effects from either of the choices, oh well… they made the choice, right? Wrong, though. When you tell someone, “You have two choices: red shirt or blue shirt. If you pick the blue shirt then you’ll be punished. It’s your choice.” That’s coercive control… and not a choice at all. Our primal instincts are to stay alive and safe. We are programmed to stay alive and safe, so we will usually pick the option that doesn’t threaten that safety. And when it’s artificially injected, it’s no longer a choice or option.

Hope this helped.

Excellent info, very thankful for your insight.

Hi Tabby. Thank you for that and very graciously put.

I remember that bitter fan feud between the pro-Chloe and pro-Lois set. Who is the “real” Lois? It’s all rather hilarious in retrospect. (Not that it wasn’t hilarious back then.)

Originally Lana was the ‘enemy.’ But that was before Durance… The presence of Durance made the Chloisers really out of control because it challenged the “Chloe is Lois” theory. It’s really weird, looking back. Really weird. And before then, I studied the made-up Tolkein Elvish language Sindarin… and that’s not even as weird to me as my Chlois days.

Thanks for your first-person observation, Tabby. Hope you’re well, girl.  You should write an Allison book. About working with her. The whole shebang. If ya do, I will read it. Think your whole story and perspective would be fascinating.

Actually… It should be a “Tabby book”. I want to hear about you. Heard enough about her.  It would make a good movie too!

Thanks for the suggestion. It’s crossed my mind a time or two. Maybe in a few years, when I can help more victims of coercive control and help people find their happy endings after cult survival through The Freedom Train Project Incorporated.

Freedom Train is my 501(c)(3) that I created to help victims of cults leave and thrive. Right now I’m operating with an all-volunteer staff, myself included, and MOST of my professional focus is on that or on my doctoral program in forensic psychology, public policy, and law. But maybe once I’ve got some funding and can help a larger number of people (my first major milestone is 2k per year), then my story will have a way to conclude. Right now, it’s still ongoing, chapters being written as we go.

I’m one more reader thanking you for your input. And good luck with your Project…maybe Frank can set up a GoFundMe site for you.

Tabby, thanks for the gracious reply. We are all human (me included). I am happy you were able to escape from the clutches of NXIVM. Be well

Anonymous

Can you state with absolute certainty that Erica Durance didn’t even take a single NXIVM course?

Why was Erica Durance following NXIVM cultist Mark Vicente on her twitter account?

Did Kristin Kreuk not try and recruit Erica Durance too seeing as she spent her Smallville years in NXIVM?

Why was Erica Durance talking about the NXIVM cult at a baby shower unless there were other NXIVM people present?

Kristin Kreuk was coaching in NXIVM until at least 2013 and was still a member with a coach up until at least 2016 and Kreuk and Durance are friends.

How could I know any of that? I don’t know motivations, or even if these are facts. Nor do I care who people are following on social media. Only up until a few months ago I was following Clyne, but that didn’t mean that we were friends. Also, twitter makes it incredibly hard to clean out your list, and I don’t even know if that’s why she was still following anyone you feel she shouldn’t be following. I’d still be following Vicente myself if he wasn’t the one to unfriend me first… because I don’t care to take the time to clean out social media. They make it too annoyingly hard to do that. And still, I have no idea about any of your questions.

Except the baby shower was just a normal baby shower, with someone who was in ethos, but worked on Smallville so of course all of her friends were invited. It was a mixed group as are MOST baby showers.