What makes somebody a tattletale?

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It seems like a simple enough question, but I'm getting a bit hung up on it. I don't know why Merle doesn't want to strangle me (lol.. or maybe she does.. I made her promise to tell me if she wants to smack me, not if she wants to strangle me...) because I'm finding myself whining to her an awful lot. Usually I do so after unsuccessfully attempting to respond to something myself. Like someone says something nasty, and I attempt to come up with an appropriate reply, try to figure out some words to explain why what they said was mean and unfair, and find myself unable to figure out a response that's not at least as nasty as what they said to me. I try a few times, write and rewrite what I'm thinking about why what they said was mean and uncalled for, but I can't say it without being mean myself.
I do let things, get to me, I know it.
And I use the script that hides jerks' posts, but I can still see that they've posted, and there's the little toggle to look at it, and I get curious, or I think that maybe they've decided to say something that's not nasty.. and then I see that they've said something cruel and mean and uncalled for, and there's no way to believe that they've not intended for it to be that way.. and so I go whine to poor Merle. And now I feel like a whiny brat.

Which brings me back to my question.. what's the difference between tattling, and telling on someone to prevent yourself from responding to something inappropriately and making it worse? Is there a difference? Or is tattletale-ness just in the mind of people who want to get away with being jerks anyway?

That's a good question. If you tattle on someone what will the moderators do? Do they confront the person, or is it more like filing a complaint?

Well if someone is putting themselves in danger or someone else, then it's okay to tell.


Tattling would be telling someone someone else is doing something they aren't supposed to be doing and it's harmless, even if it's against the rules they're breaking.
Like if you see someone's child getting into knives or scissors and they are too young to be touching them, it's okay to tell the parents their baby is touching that stuff because the kid can seriously hurt himself. Or if you see a young child messing with matches, it's okay to tell.
One time when I was five or six, I went outside and went to my aunt's ash tray and tried to smoke her butts and my cousin Amber saw me and told her mother I was getting into her cigarettes. She came outside and so did my mother and stopped me.
None of those were tattling because it's okay.



Here would be an example;


At my last job, we were all informed to not filled in our sign in sheet like when we clock in and then sign in, we cannot put our time down for breaks and lunch and clocking out till we do those things. But some workers were still doing that so it be tattling if I told my boss or supervisor or office clerk those people are still doing it. Or if I saw someone else at work sitting on their job, it be tattling if I told my boss that or office clerk or supervisor.


I see people break rules here all the time so it be tattling if I kept reporting them to the mods. But if someone did something serious that would hurt other members, that be different such as someone posts slander about someone here or someone posts personal information such as full name or address or phone number or if someone made a post saying they are going to kill people.
I know we are supposed to be reporting posts if rules get broken just to help the mods out but I never feel comfortable with tattling. Speaking from past experiance and what those people have came off as in books and on TV. I don't want to be like that. Also people lose trust in you and feel they can't trust you.
But I also don't understand why parents or teachers be bothered by tattling because don't they want their kids and students to follow their rules? Wouldn't they be grateful that they were informed their rules were being broken? Do they not want to do their job or deal with giving any punishments because they are too lazy?

I don't know why people are bothered by tattle tales to be honest. Even aspies get bothered by them too because we had two tattle tales here and they got crap for it by other aspies and then they stopped.


I will agree the tattling is complicated to understand.

My sister wanted to leave her husband for years, but my parents kept encouraging her to stay since she had a child and he was a good provider. Well it turns out he was a drug dealer - my sister told me in confidence but I was sick of my parents telling her to stay when they had no clue what was going on.... Soooo, I tattled..... She left him.

If you feel you are being personally attacked/flamed.. reporting the abuse is one option. Also addressing the issue in the open is often an option, as long as you don't attack the person.. just address the behavior.

If the person intended to flame you, he/she will look foolish if exposed. If a person uses elementary school level name calling, ask if the conversation is being lowered to that level? I personally know I am clueless at times and hurt others feelings, unless someone points it out to me.. I don't know better.

No one has a right to abuse you (verbally or physically). If you feel you are being abused SPEAK UP! The is no shame in saying STOP and asking for help. It is not tattling.

A lot of the time if a moderator just posts in a thread (on the topic of the thread) then people are less likely to make personal attacks.
I think sometimes they say something to the person, and other times they make note of if a particular person is repeatedly attacking other members, when they seem to be purposely upsetting the community in general or going after certain people or groups of people.


Okay.. now that's the really confusing thing. What makes it a trust issue? Like if you tell mods when somebody is making personal attacks, why would anybody except a troll feel like they couldn't trust you for it? (And do you want a troll's trust anyways?)
I guess it could have to do with the situation-- telling someone in a position of authority in a bureaucratic type environment where there are punishments over technicalities that aren't really wrong would be different than ranting about a situation where the person can take a look at the situation and decide what's going on.. I mean, if I feel like I'm being attacked and I mention it to a mod, they can always look at what was said and tell me that they don't think it was an attack at all. But misunderstandings are usually pretty easy to work out, especially on WP, because when it's actually a misunderstanding everybody is okay with figuring out where the breakdown in understanding was, and there aren't any actual insults being thrown around.. I don't just randomly get offended, do I?

My husband told me that. He said people feel they can't tell you anything or else you blurt it out to the other person. Same as they feel they have to watch what they do around you or else you might tell on them what they did. So the easy way out is pushing you away.

Speaking of that, I think that's what happened with me in 6th grade. Because I always copied other kids and when I get caught doing it, I always said how come this other person does it and I can't and bam that other person was also caught thanks to me. So those kids didn't want me around or else I'd "tattle" on them.

Last edited by Spokane_Girl on 03 Dec 2009, 10:17 am, edited 2 times in total.

That is true but you could just as easily ask the person who "may" have offended you what their true intentions were, either in the thread or thru a pm, which would a.) save the mods the inconvenience of investigating (which you mentioned in the original post), and b.) ensure that you were not being a "tattletale", if you're concerned about that.

When I was being bullied and told a teacher when I was younger, the teacher told me to stop tattling...I did STOP TATTLING...Even when the teacher asked about "who stole her markers or who did this".....I sometimes knew who did, but I said nothing...

I dont report anything now, UNLESS its a criminal code violation or a motor vehicle accident.

Maggie Doll:
being a tattle tail is someone who is a gossiper and someone who spreads rumors about you that aren't true. As a kid, I was always told that tattling was telling a parent that their kid was being naughty. I often got accused of it.

However, a tattler is someone who is two-faced who acts like your friend to your face and then spreads the word that you do something that they didn't like. I knew a guy who was like that in high school, who I thought was my friend and even had a crush on him for three years. However, he is a grown man and still gets away with that kind of behavior and isn't even sorry for what he does.

So, you aren't being a tattler, you're just whining from what it sounds like to me. You aren't officially spreading rumors about Merle or anyone else. You just get upset.

Or they will say that I'm being nasty for saying they're at an elementary school level, and make it look like I'm the one being nasty. (Okay, probably realistically nobody else would think that I'm the nasty one in that case.. but they'd say it, and it would upset me, and then I'd wonder... and start a thread in the Social Skills section about it..)


In general, I wouldn't want to PM somebody who I thought was trolling... if it was private, they'd be more likely to get even nastier, right?
I don't think I get offended like super-easily.. and I also think it's probably less trouble for a mod to poke their head into a thread before it gets out of hand than if it escalated. It's not like the moderators here are separate from the rest of the community.
There was one person who mentioned to me that they don't like to bother mods because they've noticed that when somebody becomes a mod, they seem to post less than they used to, so they don't want to add any more trouble for them by going to them about stuff. But it seems to me kinda like that would only apply if they weren't part of the community in general, as well as being a mod. (And that it's gotta be awfully difficult to get used to changing a role like that.)


I'm not sure that that applies the same way.. I'm having trouble putting into words exactly why, though.
It may be partly about what exactly you trust somebody to do, and what you want. Also, how you view authority, or a particular authority. If you see it as an "us vs them" thing, then what you said would apply, but if the people with some authority are just part of the "us," then that wouldn't make sense.


Apparently the main thing that I was worried about turned out to be moot..

It really depends on your intention. If you report something about someone because you feel that people's safety are at stake, people are being bullied, etc...etc.. then its not tattle-telling. If you do it just because you want to see the other person "get in trouble" and be punished for some minor violation of rules that you yourself always break anyways, then its tattle-telling. In the first case, you tell the rule enforcers because there is a problem you want to solve. Bullying is a problem you want to solve, for example. In the latter case, you are not trying to solve a problem. You want the person to get punished perhaps because you have a grudge against them and you want to take every opportunity to make them miserable.

Here is the way I see it. Ratting somebody out is ALWAYS wrong, UNLESS someone is about to be seriously hurt by the person's behavior. Of course if you see a child doing something dangerous, you stop them from doing it or tell somebody who can, if you can't. But when somebody is typing something that bothers you, then no, you don't run and tell somebody that your feelings are hurt. You handle it yourself with the person or you stop reading them. You also never rat somebody out for illegal activities or anything like that. If it bothers you what they are doing, then you stay away from them. Nobody likes a rat. Ever. The only exception is when someone is about to be hurt physically by the person's actions.

PaganMom

I could say a "tattletale" is someone who tells on someone else when they do something that potentially breaks the rules, but that's not really fair. There are times that it is right to tell on someone.

The classic "tattletale" is the annoying kid who either runs to mommy (or a teacher) to tell when ANYONE does ANYTHING that violates the "rules." They do it for attention or affirmation from those in authority, and if that nature isn't curbed they can be social pariahs because nobody wants to associate with someone who runs to those in authority to rat out every misdeed they believe to have witnessed.

apparently some people think that telling the truth is ratting someone out, like in grade 8, some teacher ask the whole class one by one about some incident (i forgot what it was) and i told the truth but then my classmates said that i shouldn't have told the truth. I think the truth could've gotten the kid in trouble so yeah, my classmates didn't like that

So does that mean that the entire concept of tattling only applies in situations where the people in authority are either nasty, stupid, or caught up in a bureaucracy where they can't use discretion? (Granted, those three are very common, and apply in almost any school or government scenario, and most work environments..)


That entire sentiment would only hold if the rules are stupid and arbitrary, though, right? And if nothing can be done about an issue without punishing someone. And if whoever is being told about the problem is a sadistic jerk who just likes to punish people. When those things aren't the case, how does what you said make sense?