2003-01-21 - 11:59 p.m.

A Sad Story

Gather 'round kids, I have a tale of woe to relate. Thankfully, the woe isn't mine.

There was an online site where a sensitive person talked about their life, their struggles, hopes and fears. This site was found by a board whose posters mainly were critics of popular culture, and they decided to hold this site up to ridicule. The site owner caught wind of this mockery, and was furious. Especially irksome was the fact that the people on the mean board posted lengthy quotes from the journal attached to the site.

The angry site owner threatened legal action, indicating that the mockers shouldn't have been looking at the site in the first place, and that the stuff they were quoting was protected by copyright.

Of course, these were empty threats. The sad fact of life is that when you put something up on the Internet you have little or no control over who is going to read it, and even less control over what they are going to say about it. Trying to squelch people talking about you on the web generally has the opposite of the intended effect. Ignore them and their interest fades, but poke them and their fascination multiplies.

These threats only incensed the board posters, and caused them to intensify their mockery. The site owner then responded by taking the site down, leaving a "fuck off" page in its place. The posters sidestepped these flimsy protections by simply resorting to cached pages, and posting those URLs instead.

Moreover, by doing a little research the board mockers were able to uncover the real-life homepage of the site owner, which had personal information including the owner's real name and hometown. This URL was also posted publicly, much to the dismay of the site owner.

Think you know what I'm talking about? Think again.

The whole story I'm describing is here. Warning - follow the links that accompany the board posts at your own risk! As you'll see, it's called "Cruel Site of the Day" for a reason.

"History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." - Karl Marx