TDWP and recent goings-on

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We thought it would be useful to explain our understanding of what occurred last week between Zombie, Footsteps/TDWP, Rhubarb etc to try to clear up any misunderstandings.

When the situation started to develop last week, we absolutely did not know that Footsteps was TDWP. We unearthed something to suggest that she was near midnight on the night that everything was kicking off. At that point, one MNer was waiting in a public place to meet up with her, and we had been told by Zombie and by Nom that the police were aware of the rendezvous details and were standing by to help if anything went wrong.

We could see from some PMs flying around that posters were saying that the crime reference number checked out, and that the refuge had confirmed they had a space for her, so at this point we thought the best course was to keep channels of communication open. So we didn't ban Footsteps again at that point, despite having realised who she was. We did re-ban her once things had settled down and we had been told she was in a safe place. Given past history, TDWP is not a poster we would consider allowing back to Mumsnet permanently.

At various points throughout the evening we were in phone or text contact with Zombie and with Rhubarb, mostly trying to establish (as far as we could) what was going on and whether people were behaving safely. FWIW, we thought at the time - and still do - that it was a hugely risky thing to do, and not something we would advise or encourage. We would never recommend that any MNer goes into a situation like this, particularly not on her own. As most of you will know, we remind posters regularly that not everyone on the internet is who and what they say they are. We're pulling together some content on internet safety for adults and hope to publish that soon.

We asked Rhubarb at the time (before we had conclusive evidence about Footsteps's identity) whether she thought the person Zombie was meeting was a previously banned poster, and she said that she had no reason to think it was.

Pretty much everything else took place off-board and via channels that we have no access to - so beyond this account we aren't able to say with certainty what has gone on.

yeah, quiches tend to have wild and varied social lives. It's a thing

Oh I remember the meet up fiasco. That was quite enthralling actually! not that it should be but it was.

I'd forgotten who it was about though. It is all coming flooding back.

I feel like I have missed such a lot - quiches, devils, devils with quiches.

On the bonus side I did follow the Footsteps et all posts on Friday. It was so exciting - just like a panto. At one stage I was shouting "he's behind you!".

I'll share a pizza with you Snakey

Just as a point of information - quiche is a MN mis-speak of clique. Iirc, a poster misspelled clique as quiche, and it caught on - so a quiche is a clique, in this instance.

I fancy a pizza. Mmmm, pizza. Quiche is best served with salad in the actual summer.

My dad pronounces it pitza. Maybe we could start a new trend?

And he has sprouts as an accompaniment.

SDT- yep, that's how I remember it too

Oh good lord.

Fucking delete the lot and ban references to the whole weekend's activities and have a klaxon go up every time TDWP is mentioned, a la mitmoo.

This won't end well and poor buggers like Rowan will have to decipher and decide when to delete a load of stuff. Don't give TDWP the oxygen of attention. She will be back again. Having threads and threads devoted to her is orecisely what she has wanted over the years.

And I remember the benign TDWP of the crap tips. And how awfully she turned. And the trouble she caused.

Abs she caused SO much trouble for that meet up group. And then because of her behaviour it was set in stone that the group on question were a bunch of bullies. When they weren't.

And I wasn't involved in the group so had no axe to grind, but just read all these staggering lies pour out.

The meetup thing was that TWDP was part of a quiche, then went off line for a bit then back. The quiche had started organising a meet up (that sounds super weird) while TWDP was around, she then disappeared and they continued to organise the meet up for a number of weeks. She then pitched up a few weeks later and went "alright, so what's happening then?" and (somewhat understandably) the quiche went "um, what now? we know you expressed interest originally but things have moved on and it's all been agreed" and then it kicked off.*

Yep - still sounds as completely fucking childish now as it did at the time.

Feenie to be fair she was offline for months not weeks, the threads are still in the archives

I think I got the impression that the group had gotten to know one another pretty well in the interim and then she wanted to kind of join in just before the meet up, when she hadn't actually really ever been a part of it. Then got really angry when they said 'but we don't really know who the fuck you are'.

It wasn't like they all knew her really well to begin with - they didn't. She had barely contributed to the discussion afaik.

Might be wrong, it is all a bit hazy now.

Rooners has it.

All the meet up stuff was being discussed quite amicably on a thread, then TDWP started a new one saying 'I have booked a hotel in order to attend a meetup and now these nasty bitches tell me I am not welcome' cue hundreds of posts of people agreeing with her.

In my freezer i have three types of quiche. Do I win MN?

Just catching up on this thread. Well done to all those posters on the original threads who said "this is like TDWP". I had no idea. [hopelessly naive emoticon]

Thanks for explaining MNHQ, what a mess.

So what? It made no sense to me at the time and still doesn't.

LtEveDallas said it very well early on the thread. This kind of thing has the potential to make genuine victims of DV or abuse doubt what the sensible course of action is. You can't just say 'there's no harm done, all turned out OK'. It has potentially been hugely harmful and unless the MN and its posters take that on board something worse could happen in the future when another of these dramas unfolds.

I was reading the threads on the night on question (m'lud) and while I do now remember the odd reference to TDWP, I didn't know the backstory so didn't think much of that. What I did notice was a lot of posts from people saying 'something about this is really off, it feels wrong, I get a bad feeling about it'. And THAT is what should have been listened to - in other situations we would be telling posters to exercise caution, trust their instincts and if they feel something if odd, take steps to protect themselves. That just didn't have an effect because folks insisted that all precautions had been taken, nothing to worry about.

TDWP has hurt a lot of people over the years - the Quiche Meetup thing was awful but it certainly wasn't the worst thing she did :( - or still does. She is unbalanced for sure, but even when she's posting reasonably normally she's nasty... the two are not mutually exclusive.

I think that everyone involved enjoyed the drama. Now, as a good time was clearly had by all, is there anything more to be said?