Reply #111: I think a lot of us went through something similar

[hyphenate]

I remember when I was in high school, and back then, at least I wasn't as embarassed as some were--I went to an all-girls' high school which had a great reputation. And I was popular--to a degree. I was mostly popular because in many ways I was the class clown, or the innovator, or the inventor, or the "activities" director. Everything from my 6ie (sixie) year, inventing a high school and filling it with the best TV characters as our teachers, to having people reading my first novel as I was writing it, to creating the ambience in sophomore year for "Casino 32"--our gambling and card-playing morning sessions, to running the Fantasy and Science Fiction Club for three years. I didn't necessarily get along with everyone, and there were some who put down whatever dreams I had, making themselves out to be superior in some way, which I happily ignored for a long time. I found out later that some of those who pretended to be superior were anything BUT--at least three of them were tossed out of nursing school for doing drugs.

But we all have our weaknesses, and for some, their own insecurities are too great to let others alone. They want to boost their own morale by looking down on others, so that they don't perceive themselves at the bottom of the rung. It seems to me that's one of the many reasons that there are so many conflicts in multi-racial projects--the whites in that squalor are "certain" that they are better than the others there--the blacks, the Hispanics....the blacks are sure they're better than the Hispanics.....and the Hispanics are sure they're better off in the projects than their other family members still in Mexico, Puerto Rico, or whereever else they might be. This kind of one-upmanship is human nature.

How many times as a grown woman have I thought of someone with whom I've severed relationships because of bad feelings, and hoped that the next time I saw them they were 50 lbs heavier, or who had suffered some hardship along the way? When it happens, the realization is "did I somehow cause that to happen to them?" No, I didn't, but what your fantasies are about and what reality is about are two entirely different things.

It's like that online. Many of our "foes" online are really substitutes for those people in our own lives who have come and gone and with whom we have not reconciled. We create an image in our minds which doesn't even look like a nemesis, but who acts as one when we're writing. That person might not even resemble their real life self, but their persona pisses us off enough that we go into full attack mode, and literally try to crucify them because of what they represent to us. I found the best reaction, after a couple of online attacks myself (not at DU), was to go full blown attack in return. I wouldn't suggest that at DU, though, because in so many ways we're supposed to be all on the same side. I think the solution here at DU is to let it alone. Your "foe" doesn't know you. He/she CAN'T know you unless you give them the right tools and weapons to pound you. If you give yourself up to the possibility of attacks, you're giving them the ammunition to insult you, harass you and most of all, belittle you.

On another board, I did finally give up. There was one guy who was quite content to drag me down. Despite warnings from the board administrator, this asshole kept attacking. I left. As I've been in the middle of a great clinical depression (which is only going to get worse instead), I was taking his nastiness way too personally, and with my mental status as it was, it was too much to bear. I post there very rarely, and NEVER with personal information. There once had been a great group of people there, but as they obviously were silent partners in the attacks, by their silence mostly, I realised that online friends are largely an illusion.

We just all need to step back and look at what we're projecting online, would we do the same thing in real life, and whether our online personas are something we're proud of. If we can't do that, we have lost our true selves somewhere between the world we live in, and the world we want to live in.