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Well, there are alot of people garnering symapthy on this site. As far as I know they haven’t gotten anything free. (I’m not speaking of Nams plan.) 🙄 But, expect sympathy gatherers in any circle really.
We all need sympathy at some point (I will in a few weeks when my man deserts me 😥 )and who better to get it from than us? We all seem to be quite sympathetic. I just hope no one is lying to get sympathy. That seems silly to me. No need to create drama, right? And have us feeling sorry for a person for no reason? Whats to gain except to laugh about how gullible we are?
Sorry, I didn’t mean that garnering sympathy is wrong. I also don’t mean that going to the boards with your problems is wrong. I was talking about people who are lying about it. (I’m extra unclear today, aren’t I? 😆 ) Sometimes I feel I can only come here with some of my problems. I would never tell some of my problems to my family or friends or my co-workers.
I pm about my coworkers… dont want to flood the forum with profanity 😆 I think we are agreeing here.. in a roundabout way 😆
That’s so weird…
I guess I’m naïve, but I would have fallen for it too. I tend to take things as face value.
And from reading the articles, no, I don’t think anyone here is doing this.
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmI agree…that is a very serious allegation to just “pop in, dump and run”. No proof was offered and it just seems like something to start trouble. The info offered was very interesting in it’s own right and could have been posted in a “check this out” way…
In the late 90’s I used to play Ridic..it was a text based trivia game. One of the “top” players faked his own death by car accident. An email was sent out to everybody on his email list by his “neighbor” saying how he was killed. He had about 24 hours of sympathy and “fame” and then somebody figured out the whole thing was a hoax. I have no idea what he got out of it…maybe he needed to see which of his virtual friends cared and how much? *shrugs*
The sad thing is I work with someone like this. One of the staff’s mom died of metastatic breast cancer and shortly after this woman needed the day after Thanksgiving off because of a breast biopsy. Only thing was she came back with a tan and 2 people came in and asked how her trip to Disney was. In stead of letting it drop she kept insisting she had cancer. After a few months she seemed to forget about it. Then she had kidney failure and needed dialysis. But only once a week on her day off (didn’t want to inconvenience anyone) and, oddly enough, she never had needle marks on her arms. Then she had cervical cancer. And then, after our boss’s cancer returned, so did her breast cancer. She was supposed to be dead by Christmas. Again, oddly enough, she didn’t need to take time off for chemo, radiation, didn’t loose any hair…you get the picture. The problem now is that we don’t believe her about anything medical so if she really does get sick…
I chat on a couple of online communities, and I’ve dealt with similar situations more than once. I went through a really rough year last year, and I often wound up talking about it on one website where I have a lot of close friends. Then another user began giving me grief about it, how I just seemed to be there for the attention, and how I should feel ashamed of myself for “abusing” the people there by telling them some of the things that were making me so depressed. I believed him, and I felt awful. I avoided the site all summer and apologized to my friends before I left for my bad behavior. It was only after I got back to school and back to the site that I was told that the user who had told me off just wanted to be the center of attention himself, and that I had been getting too much of it for his liking. Apparently he told everyone he was a war vet with a sniper wound, that he was in his 60’s, and that he lived in New York by Ground Zero. Turns out he lives in LA, and the rest of his claims can’t hold water either.
I can totally understand how friends would make posts about their problems on a community forum. They need support, and just like in the “real world” with “real friends”, they need to talk about it. It’s when people start spinning tales to take advantage of this that I get so very angry, and especially when it involves fake life-threatening illnesses and deaths. There are real people facing these situations, and it’s disgusting to see other people pretending to be in the same boat purely for attention and sympathy.
Wow…that was a bit of a rant. Sorry, things like this get me worked up 😳
safyre_dream wrote:Though no one has missed me, nor have I missed spending hard earned money on this obsession.. I haven’t stopped thinking about a certain character on here. How awful this may seem, this accusation… I will leave it anonymous to my musing. I just feel that if any person on this online community was found abusing the trust and networking so fondly formed here, I think we would all be deeply, deeply hurt.
The article which raises the eyebrows:
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/11/21/virtual_suicide/print.htmlThe goodness of many hearts may have been taken advantage of. However, the cynicism wrought by the world we live in may have taken over mine. Just voicing an opinion.
Take care.
I admit I’m a bit confused to the intent of this post. Are you simply trying to say that it’s frustrating that there are people out there in the world that do this? (This is by far not the first nor the last case of this, I’ve dealt with several ‘fake personas that commit fake suicides’ personally on two occasions before). If so than I do understand and agree that it’s a terribly way to garner attention.
I am alarmed though- they way you have things worded it seems that you mean you are implying that you suspect someone here is guilty of something to this effect? I do hope I’m wrong. Passive aggressive posts do nothing but raise alarm, suspicion, and make everyone uneasy. If you genuinely have a problem with someone here, you should ask them about it via PM or, if you don’t want to do that, please contact me or another mod. We were here to help.
I’ll leave this topic for now (I do like to give the benefit of the doubt 🙂 ) but if it escalates please consider this a friendly warning!
Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.comlamortefille wrote:I agree…that is a very serious allegation to just “pop in, dump and run”. No proof was offered and it just seems like something to start trouble. The info offered was very interesting in it’s own right and could have been posted in a “check this out” way…
I agree with you.
The way I see it is that there is always going to be those few who will do almost anything to get attention and others who are really in need. Since the internet is faceless medium I can see how many abuses can occur. Having said that though, I really don’t see how you can always know for sure if someone is on the up-and-up. I much rather give sympathy and help and be taken advantage of, rather than withhold it for fear of being duped when it is a legitimate situation. In my opinion, life is too short not to help others, regardless.
Quote:I much rather give sympathy and help and be taken advantage of, rather than withhold it for fear of being duped when it is a legitimate situation. In my opinion, life is too short not to help others, regardless.
I agree completely.
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On the website I work for there was once this guy who was just creepy. He was very egotistical but also a smooth talker. Eventually his account was removed for other reasons, but he came back years later posing as a female. Many of us recognised the personality and pegged him for who he really was but not after he got into the heads of a lot of other people and betrayed their trust all the while with them thinking he was a she. And no, this person didn’t have gender issues, they were trying to “hide” from site admins, even though none of us cared. He hurt a lot of people emotionally 🙁
Humans. Criminy. You just gotta wonder sometimes . . . .
I’ve been a fool at times, and I’ve been made a fool of at times. It’s a terrible feeling, but I know it happens to everyone–often by accident, with no malice involved–and it’s generally not fatal. It’s just a darned shame that some people delight in inflicting this on other people. There’s no call for mean-spiritedness; life is challenging enough. And the world is such a beautiful place. Why focus on creating badness?
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