Nicole has died...?

This whole thing is like a mystery that gets more and more disturbing.
- This is gonna be the first Fediverse creepypasta
  
  I was about to say that. We are slowly building up lore.

!nicole@feddit.org is now mod only. Things seem to get nasty.
- From sh.itjust.works I've been getting a "couldn't find community" on that one for at least several days.
  
  It gets caught in the net of their attempt to block the spam.
- IDK if things were "nasty" but it's a serious situation and the spammers are obviously watching that community (and these posts) and even in the best case it's just feeding the fire.

Oh well, this turned dark very quickly. Let's hope it is not the girl itself.
Btw does this mean the spammer is not going to spam any further or will they now start sending such images now. If yes, it might be a good idea to disable image embedding in the code for PMs for the time being.
- The accounts spamming the new image did not follow the typical pattern of previous spammers, at least in terms of origin instance. Instead of DMing from obscure small instances, this new spam came from 2-year old accounts from .world and .ml. This leads me to believe it is a second actor.
  It is also not certain that the person in the most recent image is the same as "Nicole". To me it looked like a different person, but there was some damage so it's not possible to say for sure, at least for me.
  
  So they most likely were set up beforehand, huh. I wonder what the motive behind this nicole spam even is.
  The spammer is watching the threads here and is changing stuff accordingly. If we assume there are two spammers, the first one is doing it for attention? And the second one is now trying to scare us? To make people leave the Fediverse, perhaps? Interesting stuff. Though as OP said, the second one is most likely a troll. It just doesn't feel that "serious".
  
  I kinda speculate that it's an unrelated troll as well. No reason why it wouldn't be tbh.
  
  So I will mention I got a few of the standard Nicole spams (picture of girl alive and well, the familiar text) originating from days old accounts on sh.itjust.works. At least two accounts, each sent the message more than once before I blocked them, each were a couple days old with no other activity. Easy to believe the original actor opened a couple accounts to spam from.
  Didn't see this move coming.

Oh boy. I saw I got a Direct Message from preprintingstem@lemmy.cif.su with an imgur link that was supposed to just display, but luckily instead I just saw ![](https://i.imgur.com/XeQAaBj.png) and no image. Didn't open because wasn't sure if it was NSFL spam, eventually opened and saw the usual Nicole copypasta. I was going to go to the Nicoled community and ask, as well as report spam from an account not called nicole for once, it's locked, so now I'm here. Absolutely not checking that image in case it's a dead body picture and not the usual Nicole.
- Oh interesting. Is this the first confirmed case of "regular" Nicole spam since after the dead body incident?
  
  I read that the body incident had normal stuff pasted under it, so this might actually be the incident still, since I did not check the contents of that imgur link.

Is there a way to block images from being sent to us in messages?
- Yeah I woke up to that and it was fucked
  
  Sorry to hear

Is someone making some kind of weird storytelling with a character? Weird "meme" to spread on lemmy
- This meme was already out there. All of a sudden, Nicole become fediwife to many. All of a sudden, everyone involved got bucket of ice on their head. It was SOOOOOOO satisfying to watch.
  
  Nah, I mean the person doing that is depicting "Nicole" as happy, then tired, then doing drugs, then dead. I feel like there’s some storytelling, and although that’s a bit a fucked up way to do it, it might be some artistic performance of some sort? You know, like ARGs, creepypastas and stuff..

Bizarre turn of events

Has anyone actually got any proof of the images being sent? People are claiming that the message just self deletes and they just suddenly forgot that screenshot is a thing. How are the police not involved at this point if that many people have received these supposed dead Nicole pictures. If this is a joke it’s in pretty bad taste
- The message does not self delete.
  What people are seeing is the action of admins to remove the content from your inboxes. A recent Lemmy update provides admins the ability to ban users and remove their content including DMs. The quicker instances are banning the spam accounts very rapidly, some even with automation. The best thing you can do if you receive spam is to report it so your admins can act.
  Editing to add- The most recent build 0.19.11 also removes images sent in DMs on the webui. Apps and cached files may still show the images to some users.
  
  That makes more sense. Thank you for clarifying!
- Update: further down in the thread there is a link to someone describing the image. It sounds like to me that there's no way these could be connected. The "killer" would have to be the one taking the creep shots on the web cam, then also somehow be the mortician too? I wouldn't be surprised if it was someone who was tired of the whole Nicole thing so they decided to "kill her" off. But for some fucked up reason they used actual gore.
  
  Yeah the dead woman was found on a gore website I think, taken from a Chinese morgue? It's definitely sent by a different actor. Both the gore spammer and the regular "Nicole" spam is still ongoing in parallel too, following their respective patterns.
  I wouldn't be surprised if it was someone who was tired of the whole Nicole thing so they decided to "kill her" off.
  Well, they definitely succeeded at that, given how the whole thing has been locked down.
- Yeah I need proof, send me the image
  
  Just a bunch of people with lots of free time trying to create drama in my opinion
  
  Good luck, it doesn’t exist. If it does it will be very obviously photoshopped. At least obvious enough for authorities to be not treating it as a possible murder
- It's not illegal to DM people pictures of dead bodies. What are the police going to do?
  
  Depends on jurisdiction

I saw the pic and feel like it really could be the same person. Their face was destroyed so I don't get why people are confidently saying it's fake
- I really hope it’s not. I just thought she was annoying, but I didn’t want it all to end up like this. I wanted her to stop spamming us and get her medical degree 😦
  
  If I were spamming people to hell and back I'd find some small Twitch streamer and use their face instead of my own, then use some friends' lives as loose inspiration to make an identity. No way in hell would I want consequences for spamming blowing back on me, identifiable via my own face (reverse image search perhaps, or an acquaintance on Lemmy) and information. I'm pretty sure whoever is behind the Nicole spam is not the person in the pictures.
  Although I appreciate your goodwill towards people who annoy you, too often I see ill will and I wonder if it is the usual hyperbolic frustration venting and they don't actually want to hurt this person, or if it's a "you actually want to hurt them? I thought you were joking…" situation.