I am baffled at times how people seem to make the internet serious business. Threats of calling the “authorities” and “reporting” people who offend you is not new. Nor is threatening people with lawsuits because they have said something that offends or does not agree with the person making the threats. Fabricating tales of threats are a typical ploy of these people and I am certain these attention getting ploys are not only used in real life as well. Many of these people seem somewhat socially inept and care only to make demands and pronouncements while accusing their detractors of oppression.
I don’t understand how they can accuse others of illegal behavior when they disagree with their pronouncements. I don’t understand how people that have a mind of their own and have their own opinions on a subject and are not afraid to speak up are seen as stalkers that are just out to oppress those they disagree with. I wonder who they are reporting people to when they threaten to take the matter to the authorities. I’ve heard the police and the FBI mentioned on many occasions. I do have my doubts as to the veracity of most of these claims.
From experience I know just how annoying these people can be. They seem to thrive on places like Twitter and Facebook. I was accused of threatening to rape a very disturbed woman somewhere in the bible belt. She said my husband threatened to kill her and she called the police. It’s funny how things like that happen. I wasn’t aware of this particular wing nut until the day of her accusations. I didn’t follow her on Twitter, nor did I care to. She felt it was her mission to “evangelize” to the lost souls of atheists or some such bullshit. Not interested one bit.
Most atheists are people who have left some kind of faith at some point in their life, deciding that there is much more to life than feeling guilty for being human. Or not wanting some angry vengeful sky daddy threatening you with eternal torture for staying out past curfew. I am not one of these people. I had no faith to lose. I was not raised in a religious household and have no wish to have your primitive belief system forced on me. I don’t care about your sky daddy and I’m not afraid to tell you to fuck off either.
Of course, I don’t actively go out of my way to find nutters like that either. If I have a tweet, quoting a bible verse, not directed at you regarding the bible’s stance about putting your daughter out to be raped, that doesn’t mean I am threatening to rape anyone. especially considering that was not the only bible related tweet that I had made that evening before you pissed off someone and got called a dirty name. Oh my! A bad word! Is this fucking grade school? Yeah, you may have been called a cunt by someone, but don’t you think continually harassing a person has no repercussions? When you feel the urge to judge people and carry on like a fool don’t get bent out of shape when you get called names. Take responsibility for your actions. Man up, or woman up in this case. Aren’t you supposed to be a strong x-tian woman? A little name calling is a death threat? No, it’s not. Cunt isn’t a word people like to be called and it is used to get a point across. In this case, “fuck off, you stupid cunt” might have been better.
That was last fall/winter. Recently she’s been up to the same antics again. Unfortunately for her, she made a bigger fool of herself. She was being quite rude to a person on Facebook, then throwing a complete freak out paranoid ranting hissy fit when another, quite amused atheist on Twitter commented about it on her page. Her page was public. She had very personal information set as public as well. She was informed of this and went even crazier, accusing the person who commented of stalking her and said she had informed the FBI. Of course, she then Googled the public information for that person and found, what she believed was that person’s current place of employment. She called to tell on the commenter. For asking a question that she didn’t like and pointing out that she was a fucking idiot for putting private information up in a public place. The commenter was being rather polite about the whole matter while she went into tin-foil hat land by closing her Twitter account and making a “list” of ‘dangerous atheists’. She made another account after this, that I blocked, just like the last one after she said I threatened to rape her. Of course, after creating a new account, she sent DMs to all the atheists that were probably really fed up with her shit with some “guess who” bullshit. Some people didn’t know about her prior and continuing behavior, atheist or not and chose to believe this person, joining in the vilification of the commenter. For that, I think they were very blind in trusting this sick person and feeding into her continuing illness and attention seeking behaviors.
That’s the difference. I am not a person who is going to give you the satisfaction of feeding your drama. There are plenty of others like you out there with what appears to be varying degrees of mental illness. I understand that it’s funny to have a reliable moron who will spout off nonsense at very frequent intervals. I don’t, however believe that baiting and trying to ‘debate’ with these people is worth the frustration, time or effort. Trying to argue with the mentally ill is pointless and in the end, they will eventually lash out, sometimes violently. I work with the mentally ill. Not all people with mental illnesses are like this. The ones that are thrive on the attention they get. It’s a part of their illness. I have been threatened, physically attacked on at least one occassion, accused of tampering with their brains telepathically and part of a grand conspiracy to kill them. It’s a futile effort. There is nothing you can do to convince them if they are set on an idea, a vision or delusion.
Feeling a little thoughtful about this because I was accused, again, of wanting to make a person commit suicide. This is an attention getting ploy by this person. This person has exhausted my supply of patience and empathy and I responded in a quite trolltastic, but honest and straightforward manner. I can’t stop you if that’s your plan. People who are going to commit suicide don’t say things like that. People who commit suicide and are set on doing it don’t warn others. You may notice signs later that pointed to their depression, but they are never straightforward about it. I know this from losing my older brother when he was 22. Before I left work yesterday, I was also verbally attacked by another crazy at work. Fortunately this person was enjoying their last day as a resident there and had she said one more thing to me, she would have been enjoying a fun evening with the boys in blue. Verbally assaulting the elderly is no way to go through life. It will land your ass in trouble. I don’t care honestly if they jump on me, I’m a big girl. It just reminds me again and again how futile it is to try and argue with people that are very, very damaged. It’s as pointless as banging your head against the wall.
