Cyber-Perils of Pauline

An update from Another Life Lesson (this will open in a separate window if you want to reread it). There are three main characters in this play: the girl who posted to our forum (“PerilousPauline”), the guy she jilted (“DearJohn”), and a female friend of the guy’s (“NoseyNancy”, who is the “stranger” refered to in my previous entry). I hope that assigning names to these characters makes the rest easier to follow, because it does get confusing.

After NoseyNancy made her tattle-tale post a week ago, she continued to periodically appear on our forum. She has been friendly, polite and observant. She’s begun to pick up on the different personalities that hang out there, and a few regulars have started to strike up friendly dialogues with her. I’ve kept my distance, and have had little interaction with her since her initial “tell all” post that accused PerilousPauline of being a liar who strung guys along on the web and then dumped them. I’m still not sure I trust her honesty in the situation, and (if the full truth were to be known) I rather resent the fact that she appeared from nowhere and disrupted part of my cyber-life.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, DearJohn left a message on our forum perhaps a week previous to NoseyNancy’s post, which could easily have been read as a veiled threat to PerilousPenelope. We banned his IP# from our board because of this, so he’s been unable to make any further posts. I suspect this is why our message board was spared yesterday. DearJohn made posts to at least three other message boards, giving PerilousPauline’s real name, pictures proported to be of her, and a complete history of his side of the story. He did this as a “warning to others”. Reactions have varied within different cybercommunities to this post. One board has championed him and commiserated with him. At the other end of the spectrum is another community that deleted his post and discussed what actions (legal or otherwise) might be possible to take against him.

As I said, he’s been banned and so couldn’t post his diatribe on our board. NoseyNancy saw to it that we were made aware of his posts though. I think it rather took the wind out of sails when she discovered that we already knew about them (we have many members who are active on other boards as well). The reactions of my own net community have been mixed, but mostly side with PerilousPauline. Since we haven’t heard from Pauline since the day NoseyNancy tattled, some of us expressed concern and wondered if she were OK.

I confessed that I’d snooped on Pauline, and discovered that she was not a student at the Ivy League university she claimed to be studying at (at least, not under the name provided as her real name). I revealed that her IP sources didn’t match where she claimed to be posting from. I did NOT mention that I’d searched girls’ high school rosters on the island she claimed to have gone to an exclusive girls’ school at and failed to find her name as valedictorian at any of them, or even in the graduating class of any of them. I also avoided mentioning the fact that she didn’t seem familiar with any of her university’s more celebrated campus events, or (as another person pointed out to me and I verified) she claimed to have started university three weeks before her semester should have begun. I was challenged to provide more information by one of our regulars who has been a strong champion of Pauline, but I figure this information I owe only to her. All the information I’ve snooped out is circumstantial, and Pauline ought to have a chance to look at it before anyone else does. That is, if I ever even hear from her again, which I don’t expect to.

Watching people’s reactions has been interesting. Pauline’s strongest champions have been one of our female regulars who had been stalked for five years herself and one of the guys that Pauline spent the most time flirting with. What has surprised me is that so many people feel the need to take sides. Many of our regulars have rallied to support Pauline, saying that what DearJohn did to her yesterday was far worse than anything she ever did to him. Some persist in calling DearJohn a stalker. Pauline’s deceptions have been called “understandable”, and it was pointed out to me that many people mislead on the web to ensure their anonymity is preserved and their safety is not threatened.

I see no side I would care to take. There is the scorned and scornful ex-cyberlover, who by his own admission has never met Pauline in person and who has revealed what he claims is her name, pictures of her, and his version of how he and others have been wronged by her. There is his faithful sidekick, keeping tabs on our forum since DearJohn can no longer get into it himself, and making sure that things stay stirred up. And there’s Pauline, who had me patting her on the back for her valedictory speech, congratulating her on the birth of her dog’s puppies, weeping with her over her mother’s brain tumor, giving her advice on dealing with her stalker and fearing for her safety and who has now vanished from sight.

I feel sorry for the lot of them. As pathetic as my life is, I’ve never needed approval and popularity so much that I’d be willing to masquarade for them. I’ve been wronged, but I’ve never needed to advertise how wronged I’ve been as revenge, veiling it as a “cautionary tale”. I’ve never had a friendship go so sour that I’ve elected to go up to complete strangers and tattle on a former friend in an attempt to ruin her current friendships. I do not know what these people hope to achieve in their posturings. More to the point, I don’t believe that they themselves know what they are trying to achieve. If that doesn’t deserve my pity, then I don’t know what would.

But pity them or not, I do wish they’d get out of my face put it on “Private”. This, along with some current events on Dear Diary, have me spiralling into yet another funk. I want nothing to do with any of this at the moment.

I need a life beyond this goddamned computer.