fictive people

Ravenscroft

Ravenscroft

Banned
I've not been active here for long, & only sporadically lurked before that, so now I get curious.

About eight years ago, on another forum site, a new guy joined up. He was new to the lifestyle (BDSM Lite, basically), asked a whole bunch of intelligent questions, & came across as very intelligent & well-spoken.

Within a few weeks, he admitted to being quite anxious, because while he was enjoying getting to know us & discovering things that interested him, he admitted to having been dragged (all but literally) into leather by his wife. While his acquiesence mollified her at first, she had begiun ramping up demands, & he felt exhausted by the pressure.

It soon turned into an amazing tale of grief & woe, with one thing after another going wrong for the poor guy. Sometimes he'd get snappish at our recommendations, though always apologizing profusely, but even when he welcomed our input point-by-point, he never seemed to make any actual progress, & often backslid & undermined what little he said he'd accomplished.

This went on for a few months... then an established member, who normally didn't post much, said the poster was an utter fabrication, launched by a self-styled budding novelist, who was ridiculing us in her blog.

Now, I am by nature a somewhat cynical & pessimistic person, but I figured that if ONE troubled lurker read our advice & found some valuable tiny nuggets, then maybe the fraud had paid its own way. Other than the derision -- which, really, seems inevitable on the internet in the best of situations -- there wasn't much for harm.

For what it's worth, the poster immediately ceased visiting.

But sometimes the stories begin to look kinda familiar...

:confused:
 
I can only hope that we'll end up in someone's novel - if you're inferring that a member here is fabricating his/her situation and gathering fodder for a book. What a great read that would be.
 
If I am to be in a novel, I want to be the fabulously snarky but truly vicious villain!

And yes, I would not be surprised that some posters are totally made up characters or some carefully presented aspects of a person. I believe the kids today call this 'trolling'.
 
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Very few people are "natural" writers. It really is something that has to be learned by doing -- & hopefully with some degree of oversight, or at least feedback. And pretty much anyone who can string beads can also string together a collection of tropes & crumbs from Campbell/Jung.

I've met a few hopefuls who think they're going to spring right from their first precious idea (or, worse, their memoirs) to not just a famous novel, but an entire multi-volume cycle, without previously completing even a story. Over my desk, I used to have a Stevenson quote, in one-inch black letters --
Anybody can write a short story -- a bad one, I mean -- who has industry and paper and time enough; but not everyone may hope to write even a bad novel. It is the length that kills.
Click to expand...
I'm sure that some have had the thought to speed that path by (basically) having others -- more experienced in some marketable deviance like polyamory, greatly reducing need for actual research -- spin out not just potential plot-points, but fodder for dialogue & narrative.

...which means, should someone actually succeed at such a scam, any of us who finds our jottings here have been lifted word-for-word might eventually be in for a nice chunk of change.

And just imagine if Showtime or TBS picked it up.

:cool:
 
I am certain there is a fictivious person on every forum, or at least someone who stretches the truth to create some online drama about their lives (they are troubled, just with a different kind of trouble you might say).

I have read stuff here that I am convinced is utter bullshit and if I remember correctly this has also been discussed before, because of loose ends and things sounding more like sex fantasies than life stories.

A person making fun of the fact that others believed in his online persona sound confused - to the contrary he should be celebrating his skills in crafting a person that to others seem "real".
 
Bottom line there is no way to be 100% sure what is and isn't a sock puppet account. If it's obvious enough though, the mods will quickly ban that "person."
 
It was a dark and stormy night. Hannah Parkinson and Willy Smote were walking in the woods, pondering the stars....
 
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River: do we make a continuing story? :D

... when he suddenly stopped and looked deep into Hannah's eyes. "You know that I love you, right?" The girl hesitated in surprise, but than she answered "Of course I do. What question is that?" "I have a confession to make", said he...
 
I actually wouldn't care if someone I were talking to fell under this category. The thing known as "trolling" however...that's trying to get other posters upset, it usually involves some eventual jerkery that is pretty insufferable. Anyone who would attempt to convince someone to harm or kill themselves, or to tear them down and upset them, via internet, is a disgusting little creature that barely qualifies to be considered human, hence..."troll."

Most of these attempts that I've ever seen have been so easy to see through that a reasonable legit poster can just roll eyes, report post, and move on with life. Going into a cat lovers' subforum to talk about how you have abused your animal, or how you think that declawing is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, or how cats are just assholes anyways...that is pretty blantant and obvious trolling.

But creating a sock puppet in order to get actual perspectives, not to upset other posters but to initiate a dialog of some sort...well, if you've got that kind of time on your hands and that kind of curiosity, I suppose, and your real life is so boring you've got nothing better to do...well, have at it. I don't care.

The things that happen to me are those "you can't MAKE this shit up" level of weird more often than not. And I actually have seriously considered writing a book one day, even if I have no ambitions of major publishing or profitability but rather to leave my story behind for my descendants. I have an interest in genealogy and love stories, so the idea appeals to me on that level. It would be based on my memoirs, passed down with heirlooms ideally, and I wouldn't much care if the rest of the world ever found it interesting to read, or not!
 
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