I’ve been an SDMB member since 1999, and I have over 8000 posts and thought I’d seen just about everything on the SDMB, but I was wrong.
I’m not going to link to it, but I was really disturbed but the recent Pit post of an SDMB member that gets involved in some little post card exchange between members, takes exception to some light snarky humor in the card he receives from a participating member,and instead of emailing or snail mailing her for clarification, uses their name and address on the card to track down their home phone number and confronts her on the phone, in her home about the card.
The post goes through the step by step detective work he went through to get her home number, and after confronting her and demanding an explanation is incensed by the fact that she gets creeped out by his phone call and hangs up, and then throws up a post pitting her!!
Note to creepy poster. What the fuck were you thinking! Are you put of your mind? You think your detailing of what you did vindicates you as anything other than a paranoid, confrontational creep scaring this poor woman half to death?
Seriously, what person thinks that anything like that is a good idea.
While lots of people form, and continue, good friendships on this board it is still just an internet message board. When all is said and done you are looking at anonymous posts almost entirely devoid of context. You can size people up to an extent and get a sense of who they are, but really if you get that annoyed over a post do random signs and fliers also set you off?
Hmm, being an insecure, psychopathic, paranoid asshole, I need something to fill the void in my worthless life. A postcard exchange! That sounds perfect, nothing could possibly go wrong with me releasing informaton about my paranoid self!
Wait, this postcard makes me confused. I’ll just hunt down the horrible person that did this and give them what-for. That silly person gave me WAY too much information, I can stalk them easily. Hah, I found their phone number, but I’ll make sure to scare the shit out of them at a decent time (waking them up would be wrong). Hmm, she seemed a bit frightened by my abnormal behavior. I have no choice but to Pit this woman whom I’ve already terrified, so that the whole world can see how I defeated her and her snarky postcard.
Really classy dipshit! If you can’t play nice, don’t play at all.
What is particularly astonishing is that the “offending” comment referred to his own unwillingness to divulge personal information such as a home address.
I get not wanting to give your home address to strangers on the internet.
I don’t get collecting cards from other strangers and then calling them at their homes to complain when they tease you a bit about being so parsimonious with your info.
I think maybe she ought to have gone with her gut and not sent the damned thing.
This is the reason I’ve always been very reluctant to participate in any of these real life Doper things. People can seem normal when your only interface with them in the text on your screen, but…
No - that’s the problem - there is no such thing as “just an internet message board”. Any communication forum (that isn’t an AOLiza experiment) contains real people, with real lives.
It is easy easy EASY to track most people down In Real Life by the endless details they carelessly give away about their personal life an circumstances. You may feel that you are anonymous: you are not. You may feel you are among “trusted friends” - you are not. “Friends” online and offline can let you down or turn against you. People aren’t magic and kind and special just because you met them on the internet.
I am not saying stalking someone is right - it is most definitely not. But people need to start having a clue and considering their personal privacy and safety ONLINE just as they do offline, “irl”.
Well, the behavior you describe does sound pretty fucked up, but why not link to it so we can see what you’re talking about?
It’s apparently part of these message boards, ferchissakes, and it’s just silly to pit something on the boards and then, at the same time, suggest that the rest of us have no right to see it. Sure, we could do a search, but if you start the post then the least you could do is have the courtesy to direct us to the object of your wrath.
I’m confused. Why would someone sign up for an activity that consists of mailing items between participants if he/she doesn’t want to give out an address? How did he/she expect to receive the postcards? I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t send physical items by email or IM to people using my computer…
What bothers me now is that I had that poster on my list of people to send postcards to. And I sent it one. Geez, what a waste of effort. I’ve read that poster’s work, and have oft thought it snarky myself, but I didn’t want to leave anyone off the list I had been sent.
But that won’t stop me from participating in these exchanges of sorts. I’ve got a lot of cool cards, although, interestingly enough, not from Mr. Snarky.
So he’s afraid of people getting his address, yet he has no qualms about tracking someone down so he can call them on the phone about a stupid remark on a postcard?
