Besides the obvious cat fights, flame wars and other mundane nonsense that comes up from time to time. All of which I think can come and go and be put out rather easy with good moderators and this sight seems to do a good job. What I am talking about, is something so nasty that when you look back at it years later. You still go, "That was just terrible!"
My example happened on another message board. A young woman came on and became a friend to the people, she had a boyfriend problem and needed advice and seemed very friendly and easy to get along with. She was also an active poster and someone people all seemed to click with. The message board was not visited by thousands, so the hundred or so people that posted. Kind of knew each other.
Well the woman posted for awhile and suddenly out of the blue, one day this person claimed to have cancer and was going to go in for treatment. It was a form of cancer that most people can fight and survive, and we all tried to be there for her and make her feel better and so on. Well suddenly the show moves on and it is her roommate writing the post, as she is too sick to write from the treatments and so on and we are all worried. Several private e-mails are exchanged with other posters and people are very concerned.
This goes on for awhile and we are being told the roommate is reading our post to the sick woman and we write poems, thoughts from articles and good caring thoughts. I am sure people who come to message boards for any length of time, would know what I am saying.
One day we come to the board and see this "Posters Name ... died!"
It was terrible, we all were so sad and felt like we should do something and knew we could not all travel to her location for a funeral. So we arranged to candle lighting vigil to light a candle world wide in tribute and support for her and there were several post of grief and so on. Very sad.
So why was this so terrible ....
Because it was fake, the person who did it was playing a game. The "Roommate" was the real person and had no idea it would get so out of hand. It was years later before people found out the truth and by that time, many of the posters had moved on and the ones left did not know. I am sick to this day, thinking about that event and it makes me very untrusting of people online that claim certain things. I was irritated to be among those fooled. I always ignore those threads, not because I am heartless. Rather because I feel this way, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!"
Anyone else see something like this? I have heard my example mentioned before, and it makes me think possible SCAM trend. The details very a little here and there, but the end result seems to be the same. The things in common are normally ...
- Poster never shows a picture.
- Poster goes from one extreme to another.
- Poster mentions third party writing.
- Poster seems to be following a script.
If this sound like something you read here or any other Witness related forum. Please know, my example is not coming from a message board that is Witness related in any way and I have not gone there in years and actually doubt it even exist anymore, as it was many many years ago.