Putting MN's recent troll troubles in perspective

[HelloBeastie]

Saw this story in the paper this morning.

Must admit, I'd never heard of her in the first place, but it sounds like she took an awful lot of people in. It's rather a sad story really, she seems pretty disturbed.

Oh jeezus. Why does this not surprise me? People are very gullible.

shocking isn't it - but sometimes these things can grow out of control beyond what the originator expected (I'm thinking of the whole THEDavidTennant on Twitter thing) - however, she should not have continued with it.

This sort of thing is not even that uncommon sadly.
I have lost count of the fake posters on AnotherParentingForum who have been exposed over the years...and the majority of the long term ones, who do end up drawing so many other potentially vulnerable people into their squalid lies, have similar tragic tales to tell. There is nearly always threatened m/c, which becomes premature baby, (quite often twins for some reason) life threatening illness and subsequent death of the child/ grieving process of the mother which draws all and sundry in.

The awful backlash to it all, is that when a genuine person going through the same sort of thing starts to post, you find you're all out of compassion as you're just wondering when this one is going to be outed.

I do actually feel very sorry for the fantasists/liars who do this. To feel empty enough to create a whole fake life for yourself, a fake crisis just to feel loved and paid attention to...that is serious for them as well as the people who are taken in (though I understand their anger).

I think it's all too common sadly. The internet is the perfect place to become whatever you want to be.

I actually think that what she did is very sad, and I also don't think that it's as bad as some of the trolls on here. Because she had a blog. She wasn't asking people to read it, such as in the case of people posting on a forum, she created a blog and people read it and were drawn to it and it escalated. Whereas someone posting on an internet forum does so knowing that they will get a response..

We've had some prolific trolls here.

Judge flounce who was mourning the death of a baby (amongst other things), the girl whose "baby" turned out to be a teddybear, numerous premature baby posters, women fleaing violent husbands, and the list goes on. And in almost all of the cases people gave them things/money. And all I can ever do is question why. Why would you give money to a total stranger on the internet? Surely those that are sucked in need to question that for themselves as much as those who are doing the manipulating?

I suppose our natural instinct is to believe what we're told, which is in many ways a good thing. It just sometimes comes back to bite us in the behind.

If you read some sad story in your local paper, it wouldn't be odd to offer help or donations. So maybe if you read the same sort of thing on the Internet, it's hard to take that step back and say, 'Yeah, but it could all be bullshit'.

this reminded me of the spokesperson from the september 11th survivors, who, it turned out, was never even there and had never had her boyfriend killed either

you can't always believe what you see or hear

Do you think, is it all attention-seeking? is it a form of psychosis? Or sometimes a bit of each?

this

Scared me far more, the mother was blogging about it as she did it.

I think it's a bit of both- when these fakers are outed, you do tend to end up hearing that they are people with some kind of psychological problem....One in particular I'm thinking of over on AnotherParentingForum who had numerous m/c and dead babies paraded about all over the place, and had even met up with some people turned out to be a 15 yr old schoolgirl, no friends, never went out, that sort of thing.

I suppose when we read these things in the papers, we presume (though why we should, sometimes....) that the stories have been checked out....

both those stories are sickening! what is wrong with these people? why can't they get recognition and attention for doing good things? Evil

horrific.

i am always torn between anger at the perpertrators and sympathy, as they must be unwell to carry out such actions

it is simply an extension of 'trolling' i think.. blogging to gain recognition, support, sympathy, money

so much easier for people to exploit/and be exploited now via the WWW

horrific.

i am always torn between anger at the perpertrators and sympathy, as they must be unwell to carry out such actions

it is simply an extension of 'trolling' i think.. blogging to gain recognition, support, sympathy, money

so much easier for people to exploit/and be exploited now via the WWW