I can’t give you numbers because I don’t remember what they were back in the day and I can’t bring up the community info on archive.org to check.

From what I do remember and what I can see now, I wouldn’t describe the community or Andy’s following as having been “massive” at any stage. But “massive” isn’t necessarily what Andy wants anyway.

Thousands of people have read DAYD–over 2600 have it favorited on FF.net alone. They may not call themselves DAYDians and they may not even know who Andy is, but they have heard of him and they’ve read at least some of his work. Their number is right there in black and white any time that Andy wants his ego stroked.

Over 200 people belong to the DAYD group on Facebook, which is still active. 171 are still in the LJ comm and 180 “watching”. Even if a lot of those journals or Facebook accounts are inactive at this point, that’s at least 200 people who were interested enough in Andy’s fic/art to use social media to stay caught up with it. That’s better than a casual fave on a fanfiction site, and it means that he had at least that big an audience for anything at all that he felt like putting out there, including his “Hey, come talk with my characters!” post.

If you look at the numbers from DAYDverse polls, the people commenting, the people sharing fic/art and participating in contests and other activities, it appears that anywhere from 25-50ish DAYDians were actively involved in the community at various times. The number fluctuated quite a bit. But that’s 25-50 people engaged and interacting with Andy’s work, with each other, and with Andy himself–the man who made it all possible. At that point, you’ve created a little bit of a power differential.

From what I can gather, most of those 25-50 participated to some extent in the ongoing LJ and Skype chats. They talked about DAYD, yes, and Andy “channeled” and told all kinds of lies about his great and glorious past–but they also talked about their personal lives, problems, goals, interests, their hopes and dreams. They got to know each other, and more importantly, Andy got to know them and cast himself as their friend, mentor, and leader.

A smaller number became really close to Andy and each other, and formed sort of an Inner Circle around him, which he discussed openly at least once. Andy passive-aggressively encouraged people who perceived themselves as being outside the Circle to compete for his attention with people who were in it. About 15 people attended DAYDcon in DC and an unknown number met up with Andy and friends as they traveled across the US afterward. People who couldn’t go to DAYDcon were jealous of those who could. As usual, Andy was at the center of all of this and thrived on it. Openly. Once or twice, people even told him on the comm that he was pretty narcissistic but they didn’t care because they felt like he was cool enough to carry off that kind of ego. The constant drama, the high energy, the creative output, the sheer intensity when someone had Andy’s direct attention–and yes, the “channeling”–all of those things kept people around and focused on Andrew Blake, usually to their detriment. It’s impossible to tell exactly how many got conned out of money/gifts/intangibles or had Andy interfere in their lives in some other way because that’s how he gets his kicks.

So no, Andy’s DAYDverse cult was not massive. But that’s not really the point. The point is that he had a cult in the first place, that he knowingly and deliberately built and maintained it (as I outlined in a previous post), and that he hurt and took advantage of people with it. For some of them, it continues to affect their lives today.

It’s never really been about numbers.