netmouse | Poison Letters

Hi folks.

It seems someone who, um, really really dislikes me is writing poisonous anonymous comments on LJ. A couple months ago there was one posted to my LJ about how I was cheating on Bill (which I'm not). On September 30th, it was a more elaborate post on Bill's LJ about how this person hopes he falls in love with this girl he's hiking with because I am actually a professional whore who isn't good enough for him, etc. etc. That's not true either. Well, the whore part anyway. Whether or not I'm good enough for Bill is up to Bill and I can make no assertions on that point.

Anyway, this is obviously a person who hopes to break up my marraige and/or ruin my and my husband's reputations. I don't particularly like that.

Anonymous posts are now screened on both of our journals.

However, I can't do anything about your journals, and my friends list is of course public, and for all I know this person is also badmouthing me at cons - there was mention in the last post of having worked on cons I've worked on. I thought I would go ahead and say that if you read or hear something poisonous about me, I hope you will a) doubt it, b) feel free to talk to me about it, c) delete it if it is an anonymous post - and send me the IP address if you track them. (And if for some reason someone posts this sort of thing in a non-anonymous way, well, I'd like to hear about that too.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That's awful. I'm sorry.

But honestly, why would anyone believe an anonymous comment on someone's LJ?

B

Yah, what B. said. I generally take the "two sides to every story, truth has many facets" approach whenever possible, but anonymous insults forfeit that.

I don't figure most people would, but the first we heard about it was when Bill was on the phone with his mom - I don't generally read Bill's email and neither does he, on the trail, so we hadn't gotten notification of the post yet. His mom had seen the comment and spoke to him about it. She did, sensibly, say something like "I don't suppose you can believe things anonymous people say on the internet." She's a very smart woman, Bill's mom is. But still. There are lots of people who don't really "live" on the internet like most people here, who aren't familiar with trolls.

I think an anonymous troll comment says volumes about the moron that posted it, and nothing really useful about the intended victim.

Agreed.

But the more worrisome question, and the one that prompted this LJ post in the first place, is: what about the readers?

B

There really is nothing that one can do about that - one has to just let that go, because it is out of your control.

I trust that my friends are honorable and forthright, and make it clear that I am open to discuss any topic, including what an asshole I may or may not be. What else can be said, without at least knowing the remarks made about you?

Ruining the lives of others through rumor, conjecture, and implication are the hobbies of spiteful people who feel slighted (rightfully and otherwise). People have been doing it for as long as there have been people. Othello (and many other plays) is based on it.

All you can do is trust that you have chosen your friends wisely.

You mean as "oh my... it says this/that/whatever...what will people think?" I'd give my readers the benefit of believing that they're intelligent enough to to recognize what was going on. For instance, my troll included you are nothing, absolutely a worthless nonentity, an oxygen stealing, resource wasting, compassionless subhuman in one of their many spams to my LJ and when I read it to a pal he burst out laughing, which was my reaction too... in the context of the entire typo-ridden and ill-thought-out post with unfinished sentences, it fell into the category of unintentional comedy.

I didn't see the troll posts Anne refers to, but my first thoughts upon seeing her post today were along the lines of "geez, she's picked up a nutcase" not "oooh... gossip on Anne and Bill...there must be some truth in there". The majority of net-dwellers are going to recognize a troll. Those that only visit occasionally probably didn't see the post(s). If someone is going to take a mean-spirited anonymous comment seriously, I'm not going to worry about what they think.

YMMV... but the idea that I'd have to prove / justify / defend myself to some dimbulb that can't figure out it's a BS post doesn't register. I've learned to block out gossip. You pretty much have to otherwise you'll go crazy from all the lies / misinformation floating around, and there are a lot of petty, small-minded people with too much time on their hands who create drama by making stuff up. You can just see it easier now that we have the Internet ;-)

I don't think Anne even needed to refute the accusations in the troll comments, just alerting people to potential incoming spam in their own LJs was enough. If Anne wants to swing from chandeliers with the football team and Bill has run off with a gaggle of balloon animals, it's no one's business but their own (anyone reposting that last sentence as fact will be tracked down and pummeled, then cited for being sarcasm-impaired).

I want to *see* the chandelier-football team thing. Really. The physics of the thing alone would be simply fascinating...

It's close to what I was asking about in our LJ (Friends-locked for many reasons, and this is one of them), about whether people believe gossip. For most people who replied, it seems that they do, at least in some situations. And that of course is what gives trolls like this the power they have.

That said, I'm terribly sorry this has happened,

netmouse. You don't deserve to be attacked like this.

K.

Thanks, K.

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