click to read at Salon.com
Not a new story, but I came across it again … disgusting.
As noted here previously, about the time I was tackling some internet marketing ‘gurus’ (and, I guess, hurting their feelings) several fake blogs were set up using my name and linking to derogatory statements about me.
That was water off a duck’s back, but read this article about someone’s experience of a nasty fake Facebook profile … all Facebook has done is get bigger and bigger, making it a slow giant when it comes to cleaning up stuff like this — and less and less ‘private’.
This author, Susan Arnout Smith, faced a more serious problem. And, bewilderingly for her, for no reason she could identify.
Read on at Salon.com
– P
It is quite frightening, the damage that someone can do to one’s reputation and/or online persona from behind a screen and keyboard.
In some cases, I’m sure, people don’t realise the impact that their words can have. Most likely the perpetrators in this story actually fit this category – and genuinely had no thought for the hurt it would’ve caused. It doesn’t make it any better for the victim, though.
I had an ex who created multiple false Facebook profiles; often these accounts would feature scantily clad females who would “friend” him within a few minutes of their creation and then publicly flirt” with him. It was all rather pathetic really, but aside from laughing at his completely transparent attempts to make me jealous, I couldn’t help but wonder who the women were whose images he had stolen, and whether they were aware that they were being misrepresented in that way. It certainly wouldn’t make me happy. And yet, crazily enough, he probably never even considered that those women might object… much like the boys in this article, who probably never gave the actual woman a second thought.
Quite right. There’s malice, and then there’s just people with no thought for the consequences of their impersonation.
The first is worse than the second in my view — but not actually by much.
– P