One thing the internet provides is anonymity. There are so many forums where opinions can be expressed without the hassle of providing your real name. Virtual fists get to flying when people can't be expected to be held responsible for any of the words that spew from their hateful little mouths. Did you know there is a website that exists for the sole purpose of letting people within your town talk about any issues they have with the town (or the people in it) without ever having to reveal who they are (or even sign up for an account)? It's called www.topix.com. Look it up... look up your town and enjoy.
And then we have social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. I haven't checked my Myspace in ages (literally), but I am all over Facebook. The convenience of having all of my friends at my fingertips is indescribable. However, sometimes Facebook is used with more malice intent.
I currently have a handful of people blocked from my page. Several of these people are people I'm actually friends with outside of the internet. We spend a lot of waking hours together, we go out and have drinks, we watch movies, we sit in my back yard and chill. But I cannot allow them access to my Facebook because I can't stand the drama.
There is a certain individual who I've gone round and round with. We all have people like this in our lives, and I'm lucky enough not to have to live in the same state with mine. Because we don't live in the same state, I, honestly, rarely give her any thought. I barely mention her because I barely think about her. She is barely a spec on my radar at any given time.
In fact, the only times I do think about her, or speak of her is when she tries pulling some off the wall crap with me and my friends (and as it turns out, a few of these friends are helping her do this, thus the blockage).
Her latest war with me (or attempted war, because this blog is my first, last and only response to her attempts at garnering my attention) has me penned as the internet bully. She's convinced I'm a gossip monger who is spreading disease about her over the internet and around her home town. She's painted herself as a helpless victim.
She has messaged people in an attempt to get them to confront me on her behalf. She's posted a note about me and tagged several people in it to get them to let me know. She even messaged my mother to vent her issues with me. The only thing she hasn't done is contact me personally. She has my phone number, my email, and (until two minutes before composing this) she wasn't blocked from my Facebook.
She won't contact me, though, because she knows that I haven't said or done anything to her in months. The things she's accusing me of are blatant lies, and I'm not even phased by it anymore. She fails to excite me, rile me up, or get me going. She claims she is going to start ignoring me... well I wish she would already. I've been ignoring her for a long ass time now.
Here's the thing... I'm not an internet bully. I don't harass her, talk about her or post things about her on an anonymous forum. In the past I have had words with her in person about differences between she and I... but when it comes to Facebook I only vent a little and I never name names. When she went to my mother and begged her to "make it stop." I had to laugh. Because, on my end, it's been stopped for a long long time. Me thinks she doesn't want it to stop. She likes the attention and she's confessed to using my words to make herself money... which, as a writer, royally pisses me off. I'm not a fan of plagiarism. And I'm not a fan of internet bullies. Please... you know who you are... leave me alone. This shit is getting old.
