Silver Fire: I know where you’re coming from. I share your bitterness at how this all played out. There were posts in the original thread (i.e. before he came back) that came close to calling bullshit, though, and I don’t think that’s all that helpful no matter how many false alarms there are.
moriah: With all due respect, why don’t you take your own advice? Yeah, it affected people. Ha-ha, they were concerned and he didn’t kill himself. They were wrong, you were right. You’re above it all, except that you posted after the fact to chide those who were affected. Go to sleep.
Oh, okay, moriah. Pardon us for caring. You’re right; as long as it’s online, it’s all a game, and we should never take anything seriously. Tell you what; why don’t you make a post here threatening the President, and explain that theory to the Secret Service agents who arrive at your door (having gotten your personal information, incidentally, “by means of a fucking message board”).
Personally, I’d rather be jerked around and worried a hundred times than find out later on that somebody was hurt when I could easily have done something about it. If you want to ignore this sort of thing, please be my guest. Some of us are not yet entirely devoid of human compassion, even in such an impersonal medium as an online messageboard. If you were to post here that you were going to kill yourself, I would be worried about you. So would many others here who know you (or at least your “online persona”) better than I.
Sorry if that bothers you. Maybe it isn’t we who need to get some sleep.
Unfortunately, this isn’t real life and we’re not neighbors; there’s just not a whole lot that can be done when someone threatens to kill themselves in an hour’s time or, like in one previous incident, someone claims there’s some unknown “thing” banging on their door RIGHT NOW!!!111 OMGWTF??!!! (That thread was a hoot, btw! :rolleyes: )
But these “emergencies”, these games people play, are making everyone look at everything with suspicion. So the next time someone posts about their sick friend or relative, or a parent experiences a miscarriage, or some foolish Doper gets hit by a car ( 
I kid, Bert), people are going to be hesitant to post so much as a kind word for fear of feeling stupid and taken advantage of when the big, “Gotchya ya!” comes out.
I know the hearts of these people, believe me. I’ve had my own “sympathy” threads here and, as pathetic as this might sound to moriah (whatever), the kind words of support meant a whole bunch to me; I printed out all four threads, even. I just think it would just be so unfortunate for that to go away.
Look, I know that people are upset in various directions. We’re trying to investigate and get clarification. Things happened late at night, and so those of you on the boards at night have had hours of shock, fear, stewing, anger, confusion, and various other strong emotions. PLEASE – we’re asking you to refrain from posting for a while while we investigate and get the whole picture.
Don’t jump to conclusions, one way or t’other. Give a “benefit of the doubt” until we learn what happened (or is happening.) We WILL let you know as soon as we are comfortable we have the whole story, and then you can vent or express yourselves all you want. But for now, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE we are asking for a “chill” period, relax, and just wait.
I’m going to close this thread for now and ask that y’all NOT open any others. When we have the story, to our satisfaction, we’ll reopen the thread.
(I’m presuming this is a matter of hours, not of days, so we’re just asking for a couple of hours of patience before you go running off to condemn, condone, speculate, or whatever.)
Resolution is found here: Concerning Inigo Montoya
We’re leaving all other threads closed, so that all comments will be in one spot.