Sick Behaviour On Internet

[Flying Grype]

I would rather help someone and find out they were a fake than ignore someone who turned out to really need help -- but then I've never been really scammed before. I post resources and links and advice that people can use to help themselves and I don't get emotionally tangled up in the problems of people I don't know.

[Dreamstalker]

I've been screwed with a few times, the ex did it when he wasn't the ex. Then when I stopped believing his BS blindly tried to claim I had trust issues and made it a mini-mission to screw with my head even more (possibly he thought that the habit could be broken by taking it to the extreme).

The near-anonymity online does make it fairly difficult to suss out the truth at times.

[TelephoneAngel]

we can still see the fallout today

Some people who always post on a daily basis just aren't logging in, and those who are, are talking differently, where before they would have said something about their personal life, their wife or son, etc, they are talking about tv programes and the weather (there is no weather to speak of it's a normal day).

I hope we get back to our normal warm community very soon.

[TelephoneAngel]

Actually can someone give me some advice as to what you would have done?

What I have done is approach the other group, who are completely seperate from our community and probably did not even know of our existence, with the evidence that she has no children and they should beware of anything she says.

Did I do right? I know they will feel as bad as we do, but I feel sick at the thought of her dishing out what amounts to medical advice to these women telling them how she felt when she was prgnant and breastfeeding etc.

[KellyHabersham]

Actually can someone give me some advice as to what you would have done?

What I have done is approach the other group, who are completely seperate from our community and probably did not even know of our existence, with the evidence that she has no children and they should beware of anything she says.

Did I do right? I know they will feel as bad as we do, but I feel sick at the thought of her dishing out what amounts to medical advice to these women telling them how she felt when she was prgnant and breastfeeding etc.

I'd say you did the right thing with that.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Agreed. On one forum I frequent, this girl had a photo in her sig that she said was her baby; she claimed to be a teen mum.

One day, this woman registered at the forum and messaged me to say, along with a link to her photobucket, that this kid was in fact HER baby and that this girl was wellknown for doing this. O.o

Thanks to the woman who told me, I was able to deal with the photo thief. So yes, you did do the right thing. People need to know about the likes of her.

[Hobbs]

Recently, as Mod on a roleplaying forum, I had an incident with a particularly nasty character [let's call him Y]. I myself rped with him in the past, say...2005 or so, but then I took a bit of haitus from the site. Then I was elected Delegate and didn't really have time for a good rp. In this time, he moved on, or so I thought.

I'd given him my yahoo, but we only spoke once or twice, usually about the rp. Recently, I got a friend request on FB and realized it was him. I didn't friend him, though...something (Providence?) told me to wait. That is when it all blew up.

Our forum has an irc channel (Still don't know what that is) and one of our 'officers' [S]is the moderator for it. I recieve a pm from Y saying that he's been banned from the channel and cannot access the member's sections of the forum. I take it up to our forum admin [M]since I'm not too forum-savvy. I also contacted S.

It seems Y was doing some very uncouth things. It became a discussion for us mods, and over the course of it, I learned that Y had a rep for getting people's personal contact info. I was especially perturbed to hear it was usually that of our younger, female players. Once evidence of a "Do not contact" order was produced, we all agreed to ban him. The strange thing is that me and another admin, PH, had never seen this side of him. It's still kind of a sore spot on the forum, but I think most of us have moved past it.

[cinema guy]

Someone on this forum once said, 'The internet - where men are men, women are men and children are FBI plants.'

[Red_Dazes]

I had a friend for 2+years online, we were very close. When I got close to graduating HS we decided to meet up since he lived only a few hours away from me. We ended up dating for almost a year before all of his stories started unraveling around him and I realized that next to nothing he had told me had been true. The breaking point ended up being me calling him out on some of his lies, and him trying to lie his way out of it.
It really threw me for a loop, I mean I'd been deceived via online before by 'friends', but never to that extent.

Sometimes you just have to learn to read between the lines and pick things apart that don't make enough sense.

*hugs* I hope your community recovers and becomes stronger because of this. It sounds like a wonderful place.

[rageaholic]

This is why I try not to post anything too personal on the internet. Don't get me wrong, forums can be great for life advice or just a place to vent, but there are some things I still don't feel comfortable posting about, even after so many years as an internet junkie.

[Pedersen]

I try very hard not to have a persona. In other words, if you meet me offline, I'll be fairly close to what you see online. At least, I think I am that way. I'm not aware of me actually hiding much about myself, mainly because there's not much point in doing so.

I have, however, been bitten by the "wounded person pleading for help" more than once. Each time it does, it takes me some time to recover my willingness to trust and help someone else. How much time varies with too many factors to even try to list here.

Hell, I've even seen stories on this forum (and on Fratching) that I'm absolutely certain are pure fabrication. Usually, they do no actual harm, since they're written to be more entertaining than anything else.

TelephoneAngel, your community got hurt. From the sounds of it, pretty badly. Healing will take some time. Unfortunately, time is pretty much the only thing that will heal that wound. Don't give up on it. The best thing you, personally, can do for your community is to go on being you, as much as possible. That will help others to come back sooner.

Good luck with it. For now, this is going to be a painful time for you. With some work, it might manage to only be a short time, at least.

[Lace Neil Singer]

My stories are always truthful; hmm, maybe I just need to add a few fabrications to make them more entertaining and thereful popular. Like next time an SC yells at me, I'll add in Superman descending from the sky and whacking the SC over the head.

[XCashier]

It's sad that there are so many Baron Münchhausens on the Internet. I've been taken in by a few, too. The thing is, the more you lie, the more elaborate the lies have to be to make sense, the more you dig yourself in, the bigger the shitstorm when the truth comes to light. And the truth will come to light eventually; it always does.

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." -- Mark Twain

[TelephoneAngel]

Well, so much for trying to do the right thing, I'm apparently now the evil one in the whole saga.

While a couple of the other group contacted me and thanked me for making the position clear, I have had several other contacts from members of that group, saying

"what does it matter, you must be sad to be following this poor girl around and looking into her personal life, why don't you get a life of your own and leave her alone!"

[protege]

I try very hard not to have a persona. In other words, if you meet me offline, I'll be fairly close to what you see online.

No persona here either. Trust me, I am this goofy off-line

Sooner or later, the liars will have their 'stories' unravel. I don't know about the rest of you, but it is entertaining to watch...especially if I know the real story. They'll actually invent 'new' details in an effort to keep things going, and then can't understand why people get upset when the house of cards comes caving in I have a life, I have no reason to "invent" things about myself or my surroundings, and as such, I have very little respect for those who do.