Post by manicgeek on Mar 25, 2012 12:17:58 GMT -5
I meant to post this here, but got confused somehow and posted it in the wrong place
I thought I'd line a situation up for you, and see what you think you'd do if this were you.
Imagine if you will that your closest friend actually turns out not to be a friend at all, but just someone who is using you? You discover this one day when one of their lies falls apart right in front of your face, their subsequent reaction to that, makes you wonder about all the other things they've said, and on reflection you can see the patterns which show that it was all just lies. That this 'friend' wasn't a friend at all, but was just using you to make themselves feel good.
Obviously the friendship has to end, right? Obviously you walk away realising you've been duped and used, and thinking you need to move on and erase that person from your life, right?
Unfortunately the 'friend' doesn't like that you are free to take away from that 'friendship' a mistrust of other people, they don't like that you are free to tell other people about why you are so mistrustful now, or about the specific reasons behind what made you like that.
So they feed a nasty little lie to someone else on the internet, they set that person up to bully you, to stalk you, to stalk your children. To invade your real life. He recruits his friends to the cause of protecting the initiator of the nasty little lie he was fed. Before you know it you have a whole load of individual people pouring scorn over you and your entire life. You have one of them revealing details of your personal life online, information you know he never got from you. Details of your children for example.
It gets a bit frightening around about there, because this bloke could be a paedophile for all you know, he certainly seems to have an exceptionally unhealthy interest in your children, seeming to deliberately target collecting information about them in his stalking of you.
Still being a sturdy kind of person you think "I can alter things, I can protect my children". So you make a decision and arrange to move your family to a new home. Changing your address so that anything he has found out is invalid. Still this man (the recipient of the original lie) and his friends keep pouring the scorn they have poured over you and your real life out towards you, as does the friend (who was never a friend).
Around about now the recipient of the original lie reveals the existence of the original lie, and you finally get proof that all of the real life impact this all has had upon you (feeling forced to move house to protect your children, from weirdos with an unhealthy interest, etc. etc) comes from the friend (who was never a friend). That having personally wounded you in real life wasn't enough for this individual, that they then deliberately went on to have a load of pawns pour salt into the wounds, invoking real life threats to your children, etc.
At this point one of the pawns, who has the power. Steps in and bans you from the internet site where all this shit has been taking place. He orders you to move on in real life, and he does it all because he's being instructed to by the friend (who was never a friend) via PM. He threatens you, demands that you be silent, because his friend (the friend who was never your friend) is now uncomfortable. They don't want to face the shit you can now legitimately pour in their direction.
We all have to pay the cost of the indelible marks we leave upon others, don't we?
Who would you hold accountable? The pawns? The friend (who was never a friend)? What would you do?
I thought I'd line a situation up for you, and see what you think you'd do if this were you.
Imagine if you will that your closest friend actually turns out not to be a friend at all, but just someone who is using you? You discover this one day when one of their lies falls apart right in front of your face, their subsequent reaction to that, makes you wonder about all the other things they've said, and on reflection you can see the patterns which show that it was all just lies. That this 'friend' wasn't a friend at all, but was just using you to make themselves feel good.
Obviously the friendship has to end, right? Obviously you walk away realising you've been duped and used, and thinking you need to move on and erase that person from your life, right?
Unfortunately the 'friend' doesn't like that you are free to take away from that 'friendship' a mistrust of other people, they don't like that you are free to tell other people about why you are so mistrustful now, or about the specific reasons behind what made you like that.
So they feed a nasty little lie to someone else on the internet, they set that person up to bully you, to stalk you, to stalk your children. To invade your real life. He recruits his friends to the cause of protecting the initiator of the nasty little lie he was fed. Before you know it you have a whole load of individual people pouring scorn over you and your entire life. You have one of them revealing details of your personal life online, information you know he never got from you. Details of your children for example.
It gets a bit frightening around about there, because this bloke could be a paedophile for all you know, he certainly seems to have an exceptionally unhealthy interest in your children, seeming to deliberately target collecting information about them in his stalking of you.
Still being a sturdy kind of person you think "I can alter things, I can protect my children". So you make a decision and arrange to move your family to a new home. Changing your address so that anything he has found out is invalid. Still this man (the recipient of the original lie) and his friends keep pouring the scorn they have poured over you and your real life out towards you, as does the friend (who was never a friend).
Around about now the recipient of the original lie reveals the existence of the original lie, and you finally get proof that all of the real life impact this all has had upon you (feeling forced to move house to protect your children, from weirdos with an unhealthy interest, etc. etc) comes from the friend (who was never a friend). That having personally wounded you in real life wasn't enough for this individual, that they then deliberately went on to have a load of pawns pour salt into the wounds, invoking real life threats to your children, etc.
At this point one of the pawns, who has the power. Steps in and bans you from the internet site where all this shit has been taking place. He orders you to move on in real life, and he does it all because he's being instructed to by the friend (who was never a friend) via PM. He threatens you, demands that you be silent, because his friend (the friend who was never your friend) is now uncomfortable. They don't want to face the shit you can now legitimately pour in their direction.
We all have to pay the cost of the indelible marks we leave upon others, don't we?
Who would you hold accountable? The pawns? The friend (who was never a friend)? What would you do?