How Catfishing (Sock-Puppetry) Might Affect Autistics

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This.

No this doesn't seem at all confused. Actually this is the very subject I was going to go to next on that other thread, or at least intended to.. It is kind of hard....just got sidetracked here. My time to write is kind of used up for now unless i don't go someplace today....have been on for hours...will write on this subject when i go back to that thread, but in short, you can still have a name and use it in different contexts and have that name mean different things to different people, even oneself.This is maybe not even the best example. I really did not explain things that well at all on that thread, but by playing the card i meant emotionally playing it to oneself and taking refuge in it. That was not explained well at all, so there was some confusion in the beginning, and, as i have written, don't remember where, part of it could have been because of an immature theory of mind in that i just assumed people would understand me....

Well I'm pretty sure I recognize two people that are one person, it may not be so though, it may be that they just seem similar (the mods already checked it out). For the most part, I think you can't stop it, and i tend to think that they do things because they need help too. However, I think the son suicide thread was intended as pure malice to prey on vulnerable people and make them think they are worthless. Even if that was not the intent, there are too many people here who are vulnerable and depressed and troubled by their Autism. that thread was cruel. It was obvious to me and many of us from the get go, but many people took it to heart.

the two people that seem to me like person are just plain annoying. i try not to respond to either one of them (but sometimes i slip). People have a right to post messages that annoy me, it's my job not to respond (my feeling).

I thought the son suicide thread was done for a test, seeing how we would respond and how NTs would respond.

Thanks for posting this. That material is going to mean different things to different people. So how did you respond? What did the experience mean to you? That person was using classic Freudian symbolism...smashing the childhood tapes--ha ha--blowing oneself up in a shed---if you take shed as a pun, then that is very clever...seeing five psychiatrists to get a diagnosis---that could surely refer to the people here...I think the intent of that thread was to help people, though whether it did is up for grabs. Again, personally I am against character playing on the internet, but just because you are against it does not mean you cannot get something out of it when someone does it,...

and I found it very distressful that some people were duped and making all of these condolences...this same feeling in me happened on another thread here under similar circumstances, and I had to look at myself, at my own response, and that was very worthwhile. In short, on some subliminal level I thought and felt I was these other people, that they were me, and I had to ask myself if that is really true or just an immature theory of mind thing? I mean we all are each other in some way, sure, but we are not each others context. I never saw that before, the mistake I was making in not making certain distinctions. Previously I was only seeing the flaws I was making in making certain distinctions.

Being duped is an unpleasent feeling but for threads of that nature it seems best to err on the side of caution and assume the person is truthful until it's obvious they aren't. The damage done by believing a liar in such a thread is less than the damage done by disbelieving a person being truthful about such things. Believing the poster is low risk and disbelieving them is high risk (more so when the person is talking about their own potential suicide).

Another poster ferreted out the same story thread posted in a different (non- autism) forum and linked it. The only difference in the trajectory of the two threads is that those posters didn't identify with the hypothetical young man on account of they were not autistic. But they did opt to take the thread on face value and give similar advice. The other difference is that it got locked the instant somebody said "troll" so it never got as far as it it did here. But the moderator locked it with a comment that there were enough pages of useful advice that it could be locked. That was a way of locking in case of troll while simultaneously keeping open the possibility it was legit. The consensus both there and here is that it is better to fall for a lying suicide thread than to disbelieve a truthful one. It's just safer, although distressing.

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this

also posted on this subject on the "socialization is evil" thread

I appreciate your comment. The second paragraph I will reply to later today or tomorrow. Re what I have quoted above, I completely agree and think it is an important point worth making and even discussing further; however what I was saying was not about this person duping other people. It was about how it affected me and what I learned from my response about myself. Below is this comment (with added bolding) which puts it into context:

One of my guitar fourms is having an issue with this, they are voteing on who built the best guitar and the admin has cought meny registering meny accounts from the same IP and then creating fake converstions to prase their entry and of course use the extra accounts vote for themselves so they can win the prizes. Its really sad to see however thats the reality of the internet is, you can't beleave everything you read. I thought of entering that contest either this year or next, I might not now becouse thats alot of money to lose to someone cheating their way to the win.

I was on another fourm where I met people in real life who admitted to this, almost everyone had 2 accounts, one to be honest with and their real name was often their username and another account to bash others and help, back up or defend the primary account. I quit that fourm. The internet can be very dishonest, thats the reallity of getting to hide behind a username and email address.

On another website I have gone to, I would see accusations being thrown around about members being a sockpuppet or being someone else. There it's not uncommon to open a new account after getting slammed in your own thread so they close their current account and start over and there are so many people who post there, they may not remember your thread or remember who started it or even recognize you. Also posts get easily buried in threads because of so many responses. A thread can get twenty pages in one day so it's hard to even keep up.

Some people don't always try and get real life help so they go online first and ask for advice before doing anything about it so it doesn't even raise my suspicion something is fake when it's posted online. I often think why do people go online and ask for medical advice or ask if they are pregnant instead of going to their doctor about it. Apparently it's rude to tell them to go to a doctor or take the test and I don't get it. It's also "rude" to tell them to look it up or google it.

I'm glad I didn't have to "eat my words." But I am disappointed that the thread has been deleted. I'm not sure what good that does for anyone?

I'm really with you on this in most instances, i don't think it hurts much of anything other than being really annoyed by attention seekers which is why I try not to respond to them. however, in the case of the suicide thread specifically i honestly believe it malicious and while most of us will not be hurt in the long run, I've seen too many threads by young people especially with Autism who feel their life is worthless. i just think in those instances, a thread like that can actually do some damage. it was a cruel hoax. it makes me angry, but as for anybody else who may be sockpupeeting, i'm not sure what difference it make since we can't really know if they are one person, and they're annoying whether they are or not so whatever. ha i'm sure some people find me annoying! i get very excited.

i think if anybody is sockpuppeting they should come clean and we should all then just forget about it and get to know the real person.


sorry about caps, stupid sticky keys!

littlebee, i currently disagree with you but find your assertion that the thread was made to help interesting. Also, you are generally a calmer, more trusting person than me, which I apsire to be. why do you think it was made to help?

Yes, this makes sense. Personally one topic pf interest for me is that so many people fell for it, especially since especially at the end (but even from the beginning) it was obviously in-your-face intended to be seen through.. And also it is interesting that it seems to me like so many, as it really was just a few compare4d to the population here, I suppose. I am interested in what it all represented to myself and how easily this or that can represent something. It also is interesting how some or sometimes people are responding to this thread. They are not looking at this thread from the angle I am looking at it. They want to turn it into anything it may mean to them which is, in short, simply a this or that--not too much comprehensive thinking, so less chance if any for discovery.. A lot of it is facile. Some are missing the deeper implication of what is character playing and how it can affect people. I am starting to wonder if it is a wasted effort to try to communicate in a location where so many people are not able to see things from different angles. This is not meant to be about your response...am just fitting this comment in here.

Will comment more later, but if that thread had been kept open, at least for a while, as a learning tool it would give people a chance to become smarter and less enslaved, and also a much better chance for intelligent community to form. Again I am in no way condoning character playing. I am against and if I had the power would delete every character made by this person from every system she is on, but once the threads are there and people have communicated, deleting them as if they never existed and all the material on them is something else. Locking them would surely be appropriate, but this one thread I would have kept open for a little while. and if. anyone thinks deleting that thread deleted that person from this system, well I am not sure everyone evaluating the material thinks that. This person was in-your-face-obvious about that being a spoof. She knew it was going to be deleted; at least that was very clear to me, and it took some effort to put that material together. It meant something to her to make that thread. Or, because she called herself a he am I supposed to only refer to her as a he? ..

I think it would be interesting to enquire into the possible rational of deleting that thread. I am assuming part of it was that innocent people would see only the first page and reply to it without realizing it was a hoax. This actually happened in the last post there, and that would not be cool to have innocent people doing that, so I guess I understand. What is the link to the thread on that other forum? Now that we know it was a hoax I suppose it would be okay to look at that material here. Moderator (s), if there is any objection to this or anything I have written in this post, let me know publicly n this thread and I will delete whatever material you suggest, but I cannot see that there would be a problem.

Wozeree, have to go someplace and am under great time restraints. Will answer your post next.