Yesterday, Lovefraud had an intruder. I saw this guy’s first couple of posts, which struck me as odd, but not necessarily offensive. I decided to keep an eye on him.
Before long, however, several longtime Lovefraud contributors began attacking this individual. I thought the attacks were unwarranted.
We have had occasions in the past when people started accusing newcomers of being sociopaths. I think this is a very dangerous thing to do based on a few posts that may sound different from what we generally see here.
Meaning is missing
Experts have found that 65 percent to 90 percent of the meaning in human communication comes from nonverbal cues—tone of voice, gestures, posture. That means when the primary form of communication is via words on a computer monitor, 65 percent to 90 percent of the meaning is missing.
So how can we be sure of a person’s intentions? Not everyone is an expressive writer—some people may be stiff and formal. And not everyone may speak (and write) English as a first language.
Furthermore, Lovefraud.com is not a closed, invitation-only forum. It is open to the public, so it is quite possible that we have readers who are not victims, or former victims, of sociopaths. People who have been lucky enough not to have experienced the assault of a sociopath have a very different perspective from those of us who have been there. They may wonder, in writing, what all the bellyaching is about. That doesn’t mean they are sociopaths.
We also may have people who jump into a conversation without much of an introduction. There is no prerequisite that people tell their stories before participating in the Lovefraud Blog. Someone may just want to make an observation or pose a question. The post may sound different from what we generally see. That doesn’t make him or her a sociopath.
Jumping to conclusions is not helpful. In one situation, a person was attacked in what I believe was simply a case of mistaken identity.
Negative intentions
Now, it does turn out that everyone who sensed negative intentions on the part of yesterday’s intruder was right. Checking the IP address, I found that it was the same guy who showed up a few days ago. He actually posted on another forum, where predators apparently compare notes, that he hacked into his girlfriend’s computer and found references to Lovefraud. He then invited all his cronies to launch an attack on this blog.
A few Lovefraud contributors did write to me to express concerns, which I appreciate. I was watching this individual. But I admit that he began to show his true colors after I was away from the computer, and I didn’t react quickly. Now, however, I have deleted all his posts.
Personal attacks are not tolerated
The policy at Lovefraud is that personal attacks against other bloggers are not tolerated. I ask everyone, even long-time contributors who suspect a predator, to observe this policy.
So when you believe that someone is here to cause trouble, please do not engage. Do not react. Do not take the bait. Because when we do, we just feed the beast, and the entire Lovefraud conversation degenerates.
It’s important for us to be listening to our intuition. But when we get messages that something is amiss, what should we do? In the real world, we advocate No Contact. I believe we should do the same on Lovefraud.
Remember, they’re looking for a reaction. If we don’t give it, most of them just go away.
Excuse me for chiming in-Question- if I may ask- I never saw any of the P blogger statements, missed the whole “solar eclipse” day as someone jokingly referred to it, and am very glad to have “dodged that bullet”. Seems everyone here pretty much immediately realized the chaos that was going on-
Is it OK here to say (when the evidence is so blatant as you guys have described) to say something to the affect to this trouble maker, that “this is a HEALING place- and you are not WELCOME here, given the Context of your posts…???? If several bloggers copy/paste that same sentiment- at the very least the newbies here can see that this guy is not”one of Us”
I dont care if theres strait up proof of he/she being a P, IF any dysfunctional is lashing out at others, like WITSEND said she endured- I want to PROTECT us first, with or without Donna having to come to the rescue- she does have to sleep sometimes LOL. Maybe “we” can handle it just by repeating like a broken record the same mantra over and over til they get “BORED”- so characteristic, AND ditch this site.THis happened somewhat recently on a thread I was on, Oxy probally remembers and a diagnosed P blogged. Shocked and not understanding our expected guidelines here- I suggested she find other sites to help her, but out of not knowing th ‘expectation” here for welcoming newbies I RELUCTANTLY “welcomed her to this “healing” site-but referred her to James who was on at the time and had great sites for her to go to instead of here. It was only a few posts, but we wasted much time discussing what we should/shouldnt have said. I “tip- toed” around the issue- egg shells if you will- but WISH I had not been such a pansy and said=- SOCIOPATHS GET OUT-THOSE CAUGHT LURKING WILL BE SHOT ON SITE! lol Shouldnt we just collectively call em like we see em, then go into “potted plants” mode??
IS IT POSSIBLE for those who never saw the blog to see it for educational sake or recognizing and even with excerpts on the proper way to disengage this folks OFF our site??? might be a good case study to read over… just a thought. xoxo
Witsend:
I am praying too that williever comes back. xo
Rosa”
I’m staying right out of the “plan making”! But I must admit, smashing eggshells was empowering for awhile! lol!
And I sure DON”T want to read over the last few days…PLEASE!!!
Onward and Upward!
I think we give every visitor to this site the benifit of the doubt and are ready to hear their ‘story’. Some of them we respond to if we think we can give advice or at least a welcome. If it is a situation that I can’t relate to, usually somebody else comes along too support that poster. But when they play us like the p’s they are we may already be caught up in their charade. So the bottom line is just ignore them. Turn off the puter and hope they are gone when we come back. I have spouted off with my big mouth before and as soon as I posted my comment I wished there was a delete button for my post. If my X wanted to talk I would have to ignore him because nothing but lie’s come out of his mouth, so whats the point. Yes I would love to reason with him, talk things out, give him a chance to explain his actions. But you finally realize that is futile, I would want to believe him but I know I can’t and to give him that opportunity would only do harm to me. Witsend – thank you – I guess i missed out on all of it – I just thot it was just Miss Tilly and I that got caught up in the charade…anyway this will all pass..we are sensitive caring people here and we have dealt with worse than this crude twerp…
You, me, we, us, Can’t Reason with a Sociopath! The best offence is to NC!
I know it is difficult , but it is possible to ignore them , To even skip and not read their posts.
I Garantee that if they get no reaction they will tire of the tactics and go to their own blogs to beat each other up!
And if you want a taste of their rants visit Sociopath world and read their posts of haterd there. Peace
My vote for a good plan is to simply do what has been done in the past and worked well…
If you feel uncomfortable with someones post…as suggested by Sabrina and Kathleen above… you simply speak your truth and tell the poster you feel uncomfortable with their post . AND THEN GO NC… nothing else…no remarks..no references. no reasoning.. nothing. I agree with Henry to totally just ignore too, with the exception that should we collectively agree we want to be able to speak up to somehow warn others..perhaps simply stating “I AM NOT COMFORTABLE WITH YOUR COMMENTS/POST… will suffice. And or also to contact Donna if you feel verbally attacked or mistreated here at LF.
I don’t think that going NC, one by one, as soon as any of us recognize a malignant intruder it is enough. There is an issue with our people interacting with these people, before they realize what’s going on. And those interactions can be painful, disorienting and chase people, especially new and vulnerable people, away.
ANewLily, I get your point that you feel like, sooner or later, everyone will get it. And you’re uncomfortable with the idea of other people taking it upon themselves to police the site on behalf of everyone else. And that perhaps it feels disrespectful.
But as this most recent episode indicated, even Donna didn’t get it as fast as some of us did. And it went on much longer than it would have, if she had. This is no criticism of Donna. I don’t know if some of us are faster on the uptake than others. And even if we are, it doesn’t guarantee that we aren’t going to make mistakes.
So I have an additional suggestion to make. It would create a little administrative overhead, but given the problems these things create, it might be worth it.
If we have a questionable new person, that is someone who sets off alarms, anyone of us can report that person. I’m not sure how Donna would want to handle it after that. Maybe have a “report” button on the posts or on one of the menus on the left column. That would automatically block the person, but also automatically send a standard letter to that person that there have been some concerns about his or her intent on the site. Apologize for the temporary block, request a letter of introduction to explain his or her interest in LoveFraud. And then review it and make a decision whether or not to unblock.
If Donna wants to set up a review committee, I would be willing to help with it. If we could get a couple more people, the work would be spread around. And we could do a 24-hour turnaround.
I don’t know if this is possible from Donna’s perspective, but I think the whole thing could be automated.
The benefit of something like this would be, above all, some sense of security for the people who come here to heal. I think the worst damage that is done is the sense of confusion this creates. Because there is virtually no way to do this cleanly any other way. Some of us may go NC, while others get sucked in. Trying to talk around the person isn’t going to deter the person from trying to poison the conversation or do attention-grabbing routines. We can’t easily defend people who may be vulnerable to getting hurt without upsetting other people. And the whole thing is a mess as long as it goes on in this very varied environment of different threads and people working on different healing issues.
If we can remove them quickly with a temporary block, give them the opportunity to introduce themselves, make the communications with them as kind as we would want them for sincere victims of N/S/Ps looking for support, and explain upfront it is for the comfort and security of our bloggers, I think it might work for us and not be a cruelty to people who really do belong here.
And Donna, if the programming to do this would cost you money, I would be glad to contribute, and I suspect others of us would do so as well, if you would set up a PayPal account for the purpose.
I’d like to see these things nipped in the bud. Less interaction with these people means less disruption and confusion for all of us. And I think if we have a review committee who can talk to each other about what we see in the posts, I believe we could do a good job of screening.
Kathy
And learnedthelesson, I agree about the world “uncomfortable,” which I originally suggested. It’s relatively neutral, and it enables us to request more information from a poster without being too negative about it. It also enables us to communicate among ourselves in preparation for going NC.
But in thinking more about it, it doesn’t take care of several problems. One is that we’re not all going to agree or get it at the same time.
Another is a situation that was illuminated by the arrival of MariaLisa. Some of found her “voice” pattern triggering concerns, while we were already stressed by the other poster. (If you research INTJ types on Google, you’ll see their intellectual and in-control personalities are sometimes taken for sociopaths.) So we can also be wrong. And having all the disruption going on around a genuinely malignant intruder makes that more likely.
So this isn’t just disruption of our process. It’s also serious upset for some people who come here for a safe place to find support.
As well as, obviously, process disruption.
For this reason, I’d rather err on the side of safety. And I think that the temporary block and screening process is a better solution. If we had that last week, undoubtedly MariaLisa would have been reported by one or two people, temporarily blocked and been asked to introduce herself offline. So, it would be valuable to have her opinion on this idea, and whether or not she would have been completely put off and never come back. Because I believe she is going to be a valuable member of the group, and I would hate to have added to her distress.
This is just a suggestion. Obviously the last word is Donna’s, but it would be valuable to hear what everyone thinks. It truly is a big deal to establish a gatekeeping function that can be triggered by any one of us. Looking back at our history, I don’t see a lot of times that we would have used it. And except for MariaLisa, I can’t remember any time it wouldn’t have been warranted. So, I don’t think it’s something that would be abused.
How does this sound to you all?
Kathy