To be confused as to why people make this stuff up?

[TheEagle]

So I've followed a few threads in the premature birth section and both have been zapped for the OPs being "not what they seem"/"less than genuine".

Why do people manufacture such elaborate lies?

Does it get easier to pick out trolls as you read more threads?

I don't know the prem thread you're all referring to but I'd imagine that the poster perhaps had something terrible & baby related happen to her that has left her with mental health issues surrounding pregnancy & she needs closure or validation in some way. I hope she is accessing support in RL.

To me that's easier to understand than someone coming onto aibu & starting a thread about council houses or SEN just to make people furious for their own amusement.

You'd think that'd be the case wouldn't you magrats but the troll I experienced had nothing like that at all. At a push, I'd say she was lonely, but no significant trigger.

Sometimes is it possible that they have mental issues that need dealing with. Not always, people are just nasty for no reason other than their pleasure, but sometimes I think that it might be the troll has some mental problems than need addressing.

Its just such a waste of everybodies time, including the bloody troll You

could I sound any more like my own mother!

can someone please pm me the name of the poster on the prem thread? I had suspicions about someone on there ages ago and emailed MNHQ about it - several details posted that just didnt fit in with my experience of working in NICU - cant find that thread now and wanted to know if I was right to be suspicious (MNHQ - feel free to delete this post if you don't think it's appropriate!)

annbag, I feel sad that this poster wasn't who she seemed because she did seem to give people a lot of support and help as regards prem babies/twins/breastfeeding.

I was talking about the 18 weeks pprom thread and another thread where a (I thought seasoned) poster had her second prem baby.

I know that given the nature of the subject some people may be struggling with MH issues surrounding the topic IRL. It's just that people are so invested in helping and it causes a lot of hurt for others.

It's not nice as it means other posters who are genuine don't get the support they need.

PMed you sallysparrow

Myself and other Mums on the bereaved Mums thread have been well and truly fooled a few times. Why anybody would want to be a bereaved Mum is way past me BUT now I am fairly good at spotting a troll. Sometimes it jumps off the screen at me and other times it takes quite a long time for me to realise.

We once had a poster who put a pic on MN of the twins she said had died....at the time my DS4 was about 9 years old. He clicked onto the picture did some searching about on the internet and showed me that it was a picture of twins taken by a professional photographer for a NHS leaflet!!!! and NOT anything to do with the MN poster???

I dont understand why people do it but I am glad to say my 'spot a troll' instincts are good now.

PM me please theeagle

Here is the thread about the original thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/a2267478-The-lady-whose-waters-broke-at-18-weeks

Thanks guys - it was who I thought it was. I reported that thread as bullshit from pretty much the first post where a treatment was mentioned that is contra-indicated in pre-term babies (and in fact would quite possibly increase mortality if used). MNHQ suggested I post on the thread raising my concerns which I didnt feel was particularly appropriate really. There were an awful lot of medically improbable incidents on there...

Thanks for the update sallysparrow!

And as for those of you asking what is so bad about it - in this particular thread it may well have given false hope or expectations for someone with a very sick preterm baby who read this thread and thought that x, y or z treatment was possible or beneficial. Cruel as well as attention-seeking.

no I can't bring myself to feel sympathy for these posters, and tbh I think the "they must have mh issues," line is an insult to people who really do have mh issues.

The vampiric trolls are just too calculated to be anything other than entirely in control of what they're doing. they know who to target, when to ramp up the drama, which types of posts generate the most sympathy and are least likely to be questioned, it takes a special kind of bitch to cast doubt over the death of a child, for instance. So trolls post about pregnancy loss or child bereavement or serious violence or terminal illness because those are the topics they are least likely to be challenged on. and if they're really careful there's every chance that even if they're reported mn hq won't be able to actually prove they're not genuine and people will continue to feed them.

sallysparrow157 absolutely!!

I have a friend who went in to labour at 18 weeks, she held on until 20 weeks but the baby died. I was really pleased to see that a baby could actually survive and there was hope, but whoever this person was dashed those hopes and made me a little more critical about everyone else I came across. I real shame.

Trolls are emotional vampires - they do feed off other people's stories and attention. I got caught by one very early on, along with a few other people - and someone in RL got badly emotionally hurt by offering her support, which was turned against her. She was a mentally unwell individual, this troll, I am sure of it - but the damage she managed amazed me, and made me very wary of investing too much of myself in anyone on here ever again.

I don't know why they feel the need to do it - some are just malicious, some are mentally unwell, some are insecure and need the attention - but I couldn't be arsed to keep something so futile going, even if I could be bothered to start it in the first place (which I can't).

I do sympathise with anyone who has invested time and emotions into this troll because when it happened to me in RL, it really did have an effect on me. I had been completely taken for a ride.
I'm even wondering if this troll could be the person who done it to me, did it involve twins? I never saw the thread...sad there could be more than one person who goes into so much detail to lie, fake documents and photos etc.

How on earth can mumsnet possibly rule 'troll' for definite?

The poster a while back whose husband cheated but didn't have actual sex (so he said), she couldn't face telling posters that he'd slunk back in to the house, then she was hounded for 'lying' as though she owed the internet complete disclosure. The fact that mumsnet branded her a liar by deleting her thread was so wrong.

What do mumsnet do when they suspect somebody's a troll? do they email them and say 'is all of this true?' and the poster says 'no, you got me'.

Shadow1986 - no, one baby.

lyspaere in the case mentioned above, certain medical professionals (as Sally stated) noticed inconsistencies in the story.

Also this particular person posted a picture of a baby purporting to be of a certain gestation which it clearly was not.

I guess Mumsnet have the inside info on IP addresses and also name changes so could possibly go by that?

But yes of course, always genuine people who are not being trolls but are accused of being one.

Sally I was shocked to read your post and have reported it to MN to ask them to explain their appalling response - or lack of response - when faced with advice from a professional.

This is the text of my comment:

Can you comment on this please?

Two posts below Sally explains why this sort of thing is extremely dangerous.

If Slly had followed your suggestion to post her concerns on the thread then surely you would have deleted her for troll-hunting?

I am posting this on the thread itself.

Annbag username is different, I think my lady was on her first baby ?

Could be wrong - anyone else remember?

Also she lived in the UK

lyspaere
Often the troll trips themself up. There was another troll who was offering medical advice on various threads and then posted something that didn't fit with this profile on a different thread.

Its hard to keep up a consistant pretence across a number of threads.

The troll was dangerous because they were offering medical advice to vulnerable people with no training.

I am a qualified professional in another area and I can quickly spot someone who is posting in my area based on Google / Teach Yourself XXXX in 30 days rather than actual knowledge no matter how authoratative they seem sound.

It just seems to be an attention thing to me most of the time. There is one long running thread that I am convinced is not genuine, I have reported and MN have replied to say they don't have concerns at the moment, which is fair enough. I have no issue with that, I don't run this site.
That op is giving some very wrong details though about certain things and I'm not sure it's helpful to others reading it.