Quote:
Originally Posted by jimhelm
personally, I don't think shes a drama queen. I think shes standing up to a crowd. Not an enviable position to be in.
I'm really sorry this has gotten so out of hand, brill.
|
I agree with this.
It must be quite disconcerting to join a group and have them keep suggesting you're someone from the past pretending to be someone new.
Each of the people who've made such comments probably feels that it was no biggie. Just a single comment, just a single question. But with quite a few people doing it intermittently, from the perspective of Brill, who sees all of those comments as a whole, it must seem like a wall of suspicion.
I also thought she was someone else. I thought she was Bri. because Bri had posted about changing her name, and then BD arrived with her 'Brilliant Disguise'...etc.
Some of the responses to Brill have been less than stellar. At one point a poster actually asked if the lass had been shown the way to the tip jar. Sorry, but I'd feel shit if someone said something like that about me on a new forum.
Much of what's been said has been intended as humour. Unfortunately humour doesn't always click online, and if the person at the centre of it is new then they may not get some of the running gags, or continuing stories.
Though actually a fair few people have been friendly, warm and welcoming, it doesn't take many off-kilter comments to make that friendly stuff fade into the background. Just so much more potent that way.
@ BrilliantDisguise: in answer to your earlier post. Yes, we have had several people coming back in disguise. Usually, these are people who have initially joined specifically for the purposes of trolling/gaming the community. Pensive Pam and Emma both come under that category. Every so often one of them returns in a new guise. Spends a few days getting settled in then starts causing shit with everyone. Y'know, starting fights, using private messages to stir up trouble, attempting to play established members off against each other, that kind of thing.
Very occasionally someone will join, settle in, get to know us and post for awhile and then get 'driven off' by some argument, disagreement or personality clash with an individual dwellar or a particular contingent of dwellars. Often this begins as discussions on politics that go too far. Jill falls into that category. So did Lamplighter but (thankfully) he returned.
Mostly though, the newcomers who arrive here and then claim they've been harshly treated turn out to be the aforementioned trolls. It's happened enough times now that even I am suspicious with newcomers, and I am really not suspicious by nature. I make a conscious effort not to let that slight cynicism affect how I interact with newcomers.
You have wandered into the cellar not so very long after a bout of troublemakers fucking about with the community. Why they do this, i don't know. I know it is a 'thing' though, because we're usually not the only site they've done it with. There have been several occasions where the tone of the trolling has suggested that we may be dealing with something more worrying. On those occasions a little research has turned up the same posters on multiple forums, often leaving a trail of bans and suspensions, and in at least two cases the posters have had genuine mental illness or distress. (PP and SE)
We have been here for a very long time. You cannot exist as long as we have without occasionally becoming a target for something. You cannot be a target as often as we have been (for both individual and group shennanigans) without taking on a degree of skepticism.
Some of what you've said and done during your short time here has rung bells with a few people. That's all.
If you actually look at the way people have responded to you, you'll find it's a mixed bag. Well, we're a mixed bunch. There are people here with whom I can barely keep a civil tongue (finger?). There are others to whom I'll happily pour out my inner thoughts.
I'd really like it if you stayed. I think you fit in really well. Which is to say you draw just as much positive attention and just as much animosity as the next poster. That's to be expected with a group as mixed as we are.