Okay, something has always been slightly fishy with this poster.
Checking his homepage, he says he was part of the 68th Intelligence Squadron in the Air Force, whose function is listed thus, “The 68th Intelligence Squadron (68 IS) provides command and control services that seek to deny, negate, and turn to friendly advantage an adversary’s effort
to destroy, disrupt and deny information to US allied or coalition command and control systems.” (Anyone smell a “formeragent”?)
Now, would someone formerly in that line of business put all of this personal information on the web? Not likely. Would he/she/it be surprised when all of this info was turned around and manipulated? Not a bit. Is it likely that this person used their own bits and pieces of information to concoct a fake sympathy plot? Looks like it.
It’s very sad that a promising and interesting poster had to get himself/herself caught up in this situation. Compulsive lying and creating one’s own drama is hard to forgive.
Sorry, Bratman, you lost me on this one. I was prepared to forgive you for the tacky girlfriend until you started to stink of complete falsehood.
OK, I’m going to do something now that I have NEVER done before. And it’s not likely that I’ll ever do it again. Bratman sent me two e-mails today. The first was very personal and went into the details of his girlfriends life. Believe me folks, you have to leave this girl alone. There are very valid reasons why she reacted so fiercely this morning. Bratman agreed that she needs to stay away from the boards. Trust me on that part - Bratman’s girlfriend had problems, and serious ones. Let that part of the matter rest.
Then, he sent me a second mail. It explained a possible reason why the IP’s of Bratman and this Odz Bonski or whatever seem to match. I’ll quote it here for you.
You know, Bratman has all the evidence against him here, and I can’t blame Tuba for banning him. It was the logical thing to do.
But I believe Bratman here. There is just no logical explanation to him switching from a 100% nice guy and a productive poster to a sock puppet using idiot overnight.
All matters concerning his girlfriend aside, I believe Bratman when he is saying he did not create a sock puppet to start a thread about the accident. I know I have absolutely no proof of this, and I can only say that it’s a gut feeling. This guy is not a troll.
As I said, you are just gonna love me for this. Again, I’m not the type of guy to engage in “Posting by Proxie”. But I figured I could make an exception in this case. All the evidence is there, yet I believe Bratman. You must think I’m mad, but hey, sometimes you’ve got to follow your intuition.
Frankly, I think you people are too quick to go troll hunting and therefore find the flimsiest of so-called “evidence” to back up your theories.
I have posted in the past that my username change from Cat ^…^ to Shayna derived from the fact that I was being harrassed and stalked on another message board. And of the things the asshole that was tormenting me was doing were impersonating me as well as making up complete falsehoods that would have been impossible for me to prove were lies , even if I had wanted to waste my breath trying. And guess what, because we both use AOL we had the same freaking IP numbers. Eventually I just had to leave and change my name so they’d quit finding me and following me around.
I empathize with Ron completely here. I think this was a witch hunt of outrageous proportions. Frankly, I think y’all ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
My gut says he didn’t do it as well. But, perhaps my gut is just lying to me. Or then again perhaps, I had too much pizza last night. He just didn’t seem like the sort of guy who would out and out lie like that.
Whatever the truth is, I wish him well. If he did do it. He needs help, and it is kind of sad. If he didn’t do it, he won’t be able to come back to the board - which I am sure was a place he loved - because of a stupid cow orker.
I just can’t put the Bratman who has being posting here for the last few months together with what he’s being accused of so add me to the list of people who feel that someone has screwed him really badly.
Has there ever been anything like this before on the board ? It seems that every week a more extreme form of nut finds this place . I really wish they’d just leave us alone to our own devices .
For one, I believe that what the moderators did in this situation was completely justified. As long as Bratman explains himself satisfactorily, he’ll be allowed back on the boards with no problem. Hell, I will be the FIRST in line to apologize to him and move this whole thing on. Whereas, if those of you who are sticking up for him vociferously are wrong…well, let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be you for a couple of days after that. I’d rather have to apologize to a friend who was right in the face of all evidence pointing against them, then stand up for them and feel both betrayed and naive.
That having been said, I think the answers to a few of these questions, if offered, would help Bratman be reinstated quickly and painlessly. I can’t speak for the mods, but these are the things I see as needing explanations from Bratman.
[ul]
[li]What could a co-worker or friend possibly have to gain from this? Is there anyone that you may have wronged somehow who would want revenge? Why would someone IRL go through the trouble of doing all this research about what you’ve said on the boards and what you haven’t said, when they could just go let the air out of your tires instead?[/li][li]Why is it, if you do most of your posting from work, that the IP address that you and Odz Bodkin shared NOT the one that you primarily use to post? That fact seems to blow a hole in your theory that it happened at work, unless there’s some obvious explanation I’m missing.[/li][li]What is the connection between your GF and Randy Rochelle? The homepages are the same, with the same information, only one mentions you and one does not. And according to the mods, Tigress and Randy Rochelle shared an IP, so they pretty much HAD to be the same person. Only it seemed like Randy Rochelle was…well, single. And that lends credence to the jealousy argument that someone else forwarded.[/li][li]Why, in your e-mail to Coldfire as well as your thread about the trolls winning, do you appear to be giving up so easily? I know that if I were wronged like this, I’d be asking damn near everyone I know what the hell happened. I’d also trust that people would believe my previous posting record over something schizophrenic that happened in a day or so. I know I’ll do the same for you if it turns out that you’re right and I’m wrong. So why do you seem to be caving in?[/li][/ul]
That’s pretty much all I can think of that leaps out at me right now. I’m sure upon further reading I can come up with more things that just don’t make sense. I’m absolutely prepared to hear the answers, because I don’t want to believe that this is some sort of elaborate prank. But barring evidence to the contrary, I’m just going to have to go on what I see.
I hadn’t heard this. My understanding was that the matching IP address was the primarily used one. This only proves that the two posted from the same location. I share an office with 3 other people & I know that there are 70 people at my company who could post here from my computer & I wouldn’t know unless I happened to catch them at my desk.
As for the questions regarding his GF, if you read any of her 3 homepages you would realize this girl has some serious family problems which don’t usually create the most stable people. She’s obviously young, angry & very immature.
I, personally, don’t want to point any fingers unless I know for a fact exactly what happened. The only thing I can say about Ron right now is his GF should probably see a counselor.
Bratman… if the mods and admins clear you, I think you will find that 95% of the people around here will not hold this against you. Most all of us trust them on these things.
I was stalked for nearly a year by the psycho bitch I tossed from a message board I used to run, to the point where she claimed to have reported me to the Department of Justice for “facilitating” hate speech on the internet. The loon has a list of IP addresses that she posts every now and then, her “list of hatemongers”, she calls it. She saves every single post on every single message board she reads. So there are obsessive psychotics out there, it’s not totally unheard of that someone would do this sort of thing.
That said, whichever sick fuck did this out to be pistolwhipped to within an inch of their life.
Something just doesn’t ring true about Bratman suddenly pulling a weird trolling stunt. I know the evidence looks bad, but it just… bothers me. I know, maybe I’m an idiot, but I’ve got the same gut feeling.
I don’t know what the hell that’s supposed to mean, but that’s just outrageous. Was that some kind of threat or something? What - I’ll be attacked for defending someone I know and trust? I’ll have to hide out in shame? What point were you trying to make, exactly?
Drain, I just can’t believe you. First of all, BratMan doesn’t owe you or any other poster on this board any explanations about anything. Least of all does he owe you any explanation about any enemies he might have who’d want to hurt him this way. And for the life of me I can’t imagine why that’s an important part of whether you believe him capable of a stunt like the one that was pulled this weekend.
As I’ve said before, I have been the victim of a similar type of thing. I was impersonated by someone who shared my same IP address (which, if you were half as smart as you think you are, you’d realize the explanation you demand for how someone posting as OdzWhatever would have the same IP as BratMan did from only one post of his - that Odz person uses the same ISP as the computer he logged on from [perhaps his parents have AOL?] for that one stupid post. ONE freaking IP address out of hundreds of posts is a match and that’s damning enough “evidence” for you??? Sheesh, I hope you’re never called to jury service!
As for the moderators, Tuba knows I like and respect her. However, NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING should have been posted to this board during a time when all there was was speculation. None of us here have any right to know anything the mods are uncovering until all the facts are available and a FINAL decision has been made - not an interim one during an investigation. All that serves to do is plant seeds of doubt without any hard facts being attained yet. People will undoubtedly read the accusation, never come back and read a retraction, and forever more assume the worst. Just ask Waterj2 what that feels like!
I can’t answer for Bratman, but I can answer how I would react if I was in the position he alleges he is in (and I believe it to be true also, Coldfire et al.)
I haven’t contributed to the boards nearly as much as Bratman, but I do spend a fair amount of time reading them, and I’ve been a Cecil fan for ages. If I was in a situation where I had been posting as Bratman has, telling some good stories and expressing my opinions openly, and had some person or persons unknown pull a stunt like Odz Bodkins did, and had a sizable percentage of the people on the board jump all over me, my reaction would be to say “the hell with it, I’ve been wasting too much time on there anyway” and find another source of amusement.
Why would someone do this to Bratman? To answer a question with a question, why are there trolls?
And personally I’d rather stand up for a friend based on my personal belief in their character and take the risk of being betrayed and feeling naive rather than figure I could apologize later, because that’s the way I am and there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be able to apologize later because the person would no longer want to be my friend.
If Bratman is doing this as some kind of stunt, he makes the previous trolls I’ve seen (the many versions of Serlin, Ogrefade, the idiot who copied usernames, etc.) look like pikers, and I can’t see that coming from the guy who fell into a litterbox.
And if it wasn’t Bratman, someone is out there laughing at how we are turning on one of our own.
I really don’t know what to say about this. I was just crushed by the news, especially after the Wally thing. I think that I’ve become to attached to this board.
…but dammit!!! I don’t want to leave!
I just hope this thing can be straitened out.
I;ve always liked bratman and I hope he explains what has REALLY happened inthe end.
as for “BooBoo” if thats her real name… I think its definitly time to find a new message board…
I am reasonably new here to SDMB. In fact, I am probably way out of my league in this thread, but I would like to relate some experiences and insights into this discussion.
1. Matching IP Addresses
My two housemates and I are all using the same IP and also we all contribute to SDMB. dpr, Rift and myself.
Does this mean we are trolls? No, of course not. But IP matches are circumstantial. 2. What would someone have to gain by doing this?
I have an Arch-nemesis. His name is John Murch and he is my … well, arch-nemesis is the best term I can find.
he constantly and regularly interferes in my life by phoning girlfriends, employers, friends, landlords …
Just because of a jealousy trip from 3 years ago.
the human mind is a fragile thing and it doesn’t take much for people to do silly things. Anyone at Ron’s work could have a motive for taking away from him something that gives him pleasure.
My two cents worth ??
He is being framed and I look forward to being one of those that welcome him back when his posting rights are reinstated.
One of the 7860 people personally
NOT welcomed by Cecil Adams
I believe the point I was trying to make was adequately expressed by the sentence following the one you quoted, in which I talked about how I’d rather have to apologize to someone than feel betrayed by someone I found to be a friend. But thanks for the overreaction. It’s nice to see that you’re just as willing to jump to a bad conclusion about someone you hardly know as you accuse the rest of us of being, and with substantially less evidence.
You see, Shayna, when I GET the other side of the story, I might actually feel it necessary to change my mind. Hell, I WANT to feel it necessary to change my mind, as I mentioned in my previous post. I don’t want to believe that all of us could be so snowed by someone. I don’t want you or any other of Bratman’s friends to feel betrayed and naive. That’s why I threw those questions out there–to HELP Bratman think about why this might have happened. If I see convincing evidence that goes against the evidence I’ve been given, I’ll welcome Bratman back with open arms and a smooch, not to mention an apology. But forgive me if I won’t trust any “It’s not me” stories until I see evidence more convincing than that which was provided by the other side. I go by logic, not loyalty. I HAVE no loyalties here.
I wasn’t aware it was only one post. All I heard was that the IP number that matched was not from the IP that Bratman primarily posts from. My completely uneducated guess was that Bratman posted from someone else’s house, but until one of us hears it from him, it’s an unknown. Hence why I asked the question.
Nope, I’m going to be the lawyer. I bet that just terrifies you! Youth of America beware, the not-as-smart-as-she-thinks-she-is Drain Bead is going to be defending you!
Funny how I can remain calm and examine the evidence, while you misinterpret things, overreact, and fling insults. Guess whose judgment I’d be trusting more right now if I were an unrelated observer?
I can’t speak for anyone here, but I believe I’ve said several bizillion times that the moment I hear a story from Bratman that is believable and makes sense, I’ll welcome him back with open arms and apologize. I’ve seen at least a few people say that as well, and I’m sure many more are in the same boat.
As for water2j, I was here for the whole thing. I watched it. And when I saw he was exonerated, I put the whole sordid affair behind me. As did everyone but the trolls. What makes you think people will do any differently if and when Bratman is exonerated?
So do I. That’s why instead of insulting people and blindly sticking up for my buddy, I am trying to figure out what the hell happened. And that’s what those questions are for. If Bratman really cares about the board and the friends he’s made here, he’d do his best to figure out the answers to them, so this whole thing can be worked out.
And if you were really his friend, you’d be telling him the same thing, instead of wasting your time on people who WANT this whole thing to be resolved.
