Surprise

So a long time ago, probably 8 or 9 years ago, there was a blog that I read every day.  I didn't really believe everything the woman wrote and I thought that she was more than a little bit of a drama queen and also that she was exceptionally willing to ask for and accept things from her readers, but I thought that this was a choice her readers made and whatever. 

And then she hurt me  As I recall she made a very inappropriate joke about disabilities.  I sent her an email that just said "hey, that's really not funny and from the perspective of someone with a disability here is my little story of why".  She answered and seemed nice enough; I responded to that with a "thanks for being understanding".  Her reply was "well, I won't post THIS one on my blog, hahahaha".  So I went to the blog and she had taken my email, edited it and taken things out of context and even out of the order I had written them, made me look like I was being aggressive and immature, and posted them under a title about what trolls say or something like that.  It definitely contained the word troll.  An when modified and twisted it didn't sound nice.  What I sent WAS nice but it turns out you can edit the most non-confrontational thing into something awful if you want to try.  So I quit reading and then months later became aware that something had happened in her marriage that was bad.  End of story.

Except that the other day I was reminded of her somehow.  I had actually looked for her once before when another blog had an ad for a blog by a totally different name than I knew her by and a commenter had posted something about did you know this was a scam blog, it was written by someone who had pulled off a scam and was known by __________ at that time.  So I was shocked to hear that name but there wasn't anything that I could find so I just forget again.  Until this week and this time I found her.  I also found a place where she was accused of the same kind of things, asking for money for rather strange reasons, exaggerating, etc. 

For whatever reason I decided to read what this person who was so mean to me years ago was writing.  And I've been surprised that she more or less seems normal now.  Still has personality traits that I might not want in my best friend and I have noticed her writing style very often mimics other bloggers (she uses phrases or stylistic patterns that I know are from these other writers because they consistently use them and she just does sometimes, but at least she isn't stealing content, just a favorite word or a phrase here or there.). 

So I've been really surprised that she isn't who I remembered at all.  I still don't trust her, I still wouldn't ever comment, I still question some of what she does but for the most part I think she just writes about her life.  And I somehow had forgotten that people change because I was so afraid of her meanness after she came after me all those years ago. 

Just another reminder that the internet is a weird place.