Along with all the brilliance of internet forums (fora?), with their support and virtual friendship comes a rather disturbing phenomenon - trolls. People who write lies or deliberately provocative posts in order to get a reaction.
Over at Mumsnet at the moment, there is a huge amount of discussion regarding a poster called Dizzymare who shared a very traumatic story which turns out to have been made up. (Or so it appears, the details are still a little shady.) Some people doubted her story from the start, but others became involved with her on Mumsnet and in real life and are now deeply hurt to find out they've been duped.
I don't know why I'm posting this really; except I think I can sort of understand why lonely people might tell lies on the internet, in order to get sympathy and feel wanted. However, I struggle to understand how this particular poster could have used genuinely bereaved parents to support her own fantasy world. It's been playing on my mind, that's all.
Books on the loose
4 months ago
2 comments:
I think this happens quite a lot on parenting forums. On Babycentre I remember there was a troll who wrote nasty things about various people but particularly one poster, who got a lot of sympathy until it turned out she was the troll as well! (She was a bit lax about her separate identities and ended up posting as herself, vilifying herself. Duh.)
Some people have way too much time on their hands. Havign spent way too much time on various "fandom" sites before my current incarnation as responsibile and busy mother (ha) I am familiar with trolls, but the ones on fandom sites tend to be amusing if you are not involved (although not for the people involved. One girl whose blog I used to follow ended up with a visit from the FBI because someone who disagreed with her view on Buffy or something reported her to the Feds as a terrorist....or so she said.)
But on parenting sites it is icky.
Blogland and forums give us all a bit of anonymity. For some people this gives their fantasies a free reign and you'll never be able to understand why they feel the need to lie to such an awful extent, you just have to take a deep breath and plod on.
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