

The whole affair has made me reflect back on things I believed were true and turned out not to be. I think in my years online I've learned a lot about what to believe and what to investigate and what to just kind of take with a grain of salt.
I read Charlotte's account and feel quite sure I would have known
Her personal stories were no more credible to me than the sockpuppets. The humorous encounter with the crazy homophobic mother at the day care does not ring true at all. I think anyone who knows toddlers and day cares would see it as a story she made up, not a real incident, even aside from the objections
I think I read online fairly skeptically. I don't assume everybody's lying by any means. I think the vast majority of people represent themselves quite accurately online, although some have a somewhat different online personality from the way they interact in person. I don't see the latter as mendacity at all, just different styles in different situations.
There's no denying, though, that it's easy to be someone you aren't online and some take advantage of that ease. I'm not talking about pseudonyms, which are very common in fandom, or even about keeping one's actual identity secret, which some people do for perfectly legitimate reasons. I'm talking about deceiving one's online associates about one's real life. Sometimes that's done in a grand way, making up a whole new persona for online interactions. I have a t-shirt with a cartoon of a dog sitting at a computer screen thinking "No one knows you're a dog on the internet." I think that cross-species deception is fairly rare :-), but I've seen some very elaborate deceptions where people did pose as someone of a different sex, race, generation, etc.
More common, I think, is an exaggeration that doesn't feel to the person doing it as so deceptive. I encounter a lot more successful models, authors, artists of various kinds, and people who've had numerous careers online than I do in any other venue. I think some of those people really are who they say and really have had all those work experiences. I think some others are talking about what they wish their careers had been or where they hope their careers would be in a few years, and just fudging it a little, thinking "no harm no foul."
I've been online since 1995. I've only been in fandom since 2000.
I'm less credulous than I used to be when I was first online. A couple of incidents - one very public and one more personal - wised me up. The first was in 1997. Like millions of other netizens,
Now, let me make clear that I was not some credulous newbie who believed that "gullible" isn't in the dictionary. I had been an early reader of Brunvand. I had frequented afu in my usenet days. I knew about hoaxes and urban legends. Still, it took Kurt Vonnegut's address to the graduating class of MIT to make me look for hoaxes in my inbox. Now I check snopes and other sites all the time. I no longer jump through mental hoops to make something true that doesn't seem right. I recognize that Occam's Razor Scooter :-) points to the unlikely being untrue, but at the same time recognize that unlikely things do happen. I check them out and find out which is the case in a particular incident.
The more personal example was on attachment parenting lists. I won't go into details but I was part of a successful troll hunting team that discovered that one cross-dressing, breastfeeding-fetishizing man was on several of the lists, including some with pretty strict entrance requirements (e.g. you had to be nominated by someone already onlist). Because he used several different personae, it was very hard to eliminate them all. OTOH, because he used several different personae from one IP address and with one AOL account (albeit multiple screen names) we eventually did manage to find them. His main persona was someone I had judged incredibly stupid because she seemed unable to remember even basic details of her life. I now look at that particular kind of stupidity a little differently.
I've met more than 100 people in person whom I first knew online and they are usually pretty much as I expect. Similarly with those who I only know online - as I get to know them better, pieces fill in the puzzle. That's how it is with people who are telling the truth. You find out about their lives in a haphazard way, but the things you find out fit together with what you already know.
I don't get surprised much anymore. When something seems a little off, I question it. Not to the individual, generally, just to myself. Sometimes I just laugh a little, privately or with a friend ("Soandso is telling us some more about her career as a lion tamer on list"). Sometimes I investigate. I have found it's pretty easy to find people's real identities and see how they stack up against their assumed online histories. In most cases, I've found that kind of investigation kind of illuminating, and I've felt like I understand why people have stretched or broken the truth, even if I don't exactly condone it.
I haven't done what
- That some people were so credulous as to believe
- Can people really care so much about pairings in Harry Potter as to develop enmity over that? That seems to be at the root of the schism in the fandom, if the story is presented accurately. I understand strong feelings about pairings, even if I don't personally have strong feelings about pairings (although I write Scott/Logan I read Scott/Almostanybody and Logan/Almostanybody. I'm interested in their characters). I've seen people only want to read or write their OTP. I've seen people deem certain pairings implausible, disgusting. I've seen someone in X-Men fandom say "I would rather poke my eyes out with a spork than read Scott/Jean." I've seen on

- Can people - grown women - care so much about getting in with the "right crowd" in HP fandom to go to the lengths
- Can someone (or a group of people, since
I've been in bed for most of the past couple of days (had some minor surgery on Monday and have to recuperate) and spending much more time reading LJ than I usually do. These random ramblings are the result.
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