Concerned about attempted silencing/derailing of issues (via hunting/mocking)

[Halfway]

I posted a thread in AIBU yesterday (perhaps foolishly), which thankfully did turn out to be very helpful, but also turned out to be extremely hurtful. And while overall, I gained a great deal of benefit/clarity/insight from it, I also spent a great deal of the day in tears and/or raging, and feeling generally crap about myself.

The post was about a friend, which led a lot of people to think I musn't be that emotionally invested, because it wasn't about me.

However, I was emotionally invested because I felt like I was watching my friend potentially walk into a very, very dangerous situation (which could end up in her hurt or even dead), and worse, I had the realisation that I could not stop her, but could only try to, and may very well fail.

In the context of that worry, these are the specific things I am complaining about:

a) sustained piss-taking/mocking (which not only humiliate/hurt me, but distracted and derailed the thread, with others jumping on board)

b) failure/refusal to stop the piss-taking/mocking when asked nicely to, and despite my making it clear that I was finding it painful

LET ME MAKE IT VERY CLEAR - I have nothing against genuine concerns, disagreements, and even disbelief of my thread, or specifics in my posts if these things are stated outright (not passive-aggressively buried in in-jokes), and if the posters simply make their position clear and report to MNHQ.

There is a valid need for this kind of watchdog activity, and I am in no way trying to stop that.

But the mocking, especially the sustained mocking by some posters, and 'ha ha' twisting of my dilemma into a funny joke conversation... well that hurt. That really hurt. And I've been seriously hurt in the past (raped, beaten to broken bones), so am no hand-wringing wallflower. It was triggering.

I think that behaviour is wrong, and I think it is going to hurt a lot more people other than me. Perhaps it is already hurting people who have severe issues of their own, and feel they cannot post because they will be laughed at.

Anyway, I'm concerned about it, deeply concerned, and still a bit disturbed myself (although much emotionally cooler).

I'm also not sure how this fits into "Relationships", so apologies if it seems weird here, but I seem to be inviting more suspicion by posting in AIBU, so here it is, and I'm grateful to anyone willing to listen.

But what about the baby? who was caring for her when OP was fighting the good fight on here or had OP forgotten about her.

It looks to me as though mnhq have taken the night off

aufaniae, they can't prove a negative. They only name people as trolls if they have clear and unambiguous evidence that the person is persistently trolling. In this day and age of mobile IP addresses that is almost impossible to prove.

So not deleting a thread doesn't mean anything at all.

And I haven't troll-hunted. I have been extraordinarily polite throughout.

welcome back, sgb

you have a lot of catching up to do [hgrin]

Good point amillion

Some people are "seriously harmed" already. Some people are very vulnerable. That's my point. Kicking already vulnerable people when they're down could do them a lot of damage. If you can't see that, you have an empathy bypass IMO.

:'(

But if none of us have clear and unambiguous evidence that someone is a troll, why shouldn't they get the benefit of the doubt?

Damaging trolls like the horsey one spend months (years?) drawing people in, it's truly disturbing.

But the OP, well it could be true. She's not AFAIK creating a web of lies, getting people sucked in and emotionally involved, she's not soliciting money or insulting us by using mumsnet to write shit fiction (that really did take the piss I thought!).

If she has made this up, so what? Who does a thread like that hurt, really? I think effectively driving anyone off the boards who has experiences out of the norm is more damaging than letting a few extreme threads through with not much more that a few raised eyebrows (and several reports!)

She has had the benefit of the doubt aufaniae, but has now blown it.

She also managed to upset people on her original thread.

Dear god OP. I had no problem with your posts yesterday and even defended you a little. But this entire woe-is-me thread is just fucking ridiculous.

Who is the horsey one?

The Horsey one:
"is possibly the best behaved pony in the world. She looks after Red but would quite like to eat other children for breakfast!"

Mitmoo.

Who wasn't a damaging troll at all. Just a rather opinionated eejit, with quite a well-developed sense of her own importance .

Though I do like your link Ruby. Very, very good. I will remember it for the next time I don't want to use the real name.

By using it here I'm hoping the Klaxon has gone off at mnhq, as they don't seem to be very on the ball tonight

I can't believe so many people here are convinced this person is a troll and yet are still hanging around being (in their eyes) comprehensively trolled. The sheer forensic effort that must have gone into some of the posts on this thread... Wouldn't the simplest solution be to not risk getting trolled, if that is what you're worried about?

I've just come back to this, and it's all looking a bit stirry to me now. Amillionyears- I'm a bit surprised at your recent posts, after the number of times you've started threads saying how people should post nicely or say nothing, etc etc.

If people are bored/fed up of the topic (and I am too now), it's probably better for us to drift off after a whole evening of this. Otherwise it's just going to end up getting used to grind axes between the stragglers, and it will all get red-buttoned. My twopence worth. I'm out now.

So, how's your friend doing, OP? Two hours ago you mentioned you thought it was quite likely she was currently heading to her death. I'm just wondering if she's, like, still alive? Surely you hadn't forgotten about her?

"This poster uses big words ... Is that half sentence written by someone who cant make up their minds about cannabilism?
Really?"

So all people who are educated have sound moral compasses? Do you think that, really?

I know a couple of pretty fucked up people who went to very expensive boarding schools, very well educated. Totally fucked up though, terrible moral compasses.

It's also this kind of picking apart of an OP which is really distasteful IMO. It gets so that nothing they can say or do is right, everything is more evidence of their apparent trolling. That also reminds me of the bullies at school.

But what if they're not a troll? Wouldn't it feel terrible to be on the receiving end of that? Why would you want to be the one dishing that out to someone if it turned out not to be a troll?

But if none of us have clear and unambiguous evidence that someone is a troll, why shouldn't they get the benefit of the doubt?

Why should they get the benefit of the doubt? As I've said before, there are dedicated sites for traumatised people. The benefit of the doubt is extended to every single person who goes onto most of those sites, including the most fucking disgusting trolls.

"A well developed sense of her own importance" eh...

I was wondering if it looked familiar...

And, like I said, it's not about whether this person is a troll IMO, it's the principle of the thing.

Even if you're the best troll-hunter in the world, you're bound to get it wrong eventually.

I've had enough of this anyway! I've said my piece. Off to do something more interesting instead!

Oi Hull

I have no idea who PenandInks is, although I saw them referred to before as somebody who wound everybody up.

OP says someone referred to PenandInks yesterday. Wasn't me, I missed that post.

wasn't PenandInk a self confessed invader from a creative writing site, sent here to get copy by winding MN'ers up ?

not the same vibe here