Warning: The following blog has been posted by a nutty woman with barely a brain cell in her vacant mind. The content of this post therefore could very meaningless indeed.
My social life is currently being conducted in a very 21st century manner. That is to say virtually all social interactions i am having lately have been via the wonderful world of the world wide web. My fingers are officially doing the talking and my brain is feeling a little numb today. I am so uber modern and chic ;-)
I've always been a Net junkie, (confession: I am secretly a bit of a geek too, don't be fooled by the rocks that I got - cos this diva even knows a little HTML - shocker! lol) - I usually begin my day with a cuppa (two Weetabix smothered in way too much sugar - accompanies my this whilst I am pregnant and trying to combat Morning Sickness,) and Facebook is officially my homepage and therefore the first port of call as soon as I fire up my trusty laptop in the mornings.
Lately as well as FB (and of courseTwitter, which is still fairly new to me but highly addictive nevertheless) I am also a big fan and a regular virtual visitor of a pregnancy and parenting website Babycentre.
Ordinarily I love my trips to Babycentre - they tell me all about my bod and baby and the homepage is customised to match my specific stage of pregnancy, and furthermore there is an enormous community of ladies to chat to, all of whom are expecting their bubba's in the same month as me!
It used to be that BC was a haven of serenity whereby one can ask questions on all manner of subjects and will recieve lots of advice and words of wisdom from others. We discuss highly important subjects, such as what we've had for breakfast and what we're going to have for tea and in the middle of the night, when we're up with heartburn, braxton hicks contractions or mad cravings for cheese there is always someone else online ready to offer sympathy, advice, virtual hugs or just plenty of "rotflmao"'s.
But that was then. Now it seems BC has been transported right smack bang to the middle of the set of the Jeremy Kyle show.
It's so complicated, and so frustrating. And I'm sure I don't know exactly how it all kicked off, not every single fact or anything but I do know that lots and lots of us have become victims of bitches on power trips and I'm not happy about it.
We had a troll a few weeks back, not a lovely little cute troll with whippy hair and a wrinkly face (although this description could be quite apt, i'm not entirely sure) but a mean Cyber Troll. - 'She' (or 'he' or 'it' - again cannot be sure) began posting horrible messages that left many of us vulnerable and hormonal women feeling devestated, worried, anxious and powerless - posts about how she 'was suicidal,' and 'had taken lots of pills to kill herself and her baby,' etc - I read lots of them, i genuinely believed they were true, (I was quite innocent to the crimes of Cyber Trolls) and I got quite upset by all that i read, as most of the other ladies did.
When it became apparent that we were victims of a lying freak and we tried to complain to the BC authorities we were pretty much ignored. So some of us posters decided to warn other members by subtly pointing the troll out and suddenly all hell broke loose.
The moderators and admins in control of the boards on BC decided that 'Freedom of Speech,' should be a thing of the past and they began to closely monitor everything that we were discussing. If any of us dared to mention the troll our posts were automatically deleted, without any reasons or explanations at all. Later journal posts were deleted, this of course provoked a strong reaction from us hormonal (and therefore occasinally nutty - i'm speaking for myself here) mummies-to-be - as it became apparent that we're not allowed to share our opinions on being lied to by a troll, or indeed being governed by a power-happy admin. We were allowed to discuss nipples, nappies and water works, but mention being disgruntled by missing posts or journal entires and you run the risk of having all conversations erased.
People began to wonder what was going on, but nobody could tell them, not unless you typed in some kind of code and just hoped they'd be able to translate before the admin team, and when people starting to defend each others posts, (i.e question why a post had been deleted) the admins and moderators began to get even bigger for their cyber boots and progressed to deleting peoples entire profiles. You are an opinionated link. Goodbye.
We, rebellious (and by 'rebellious' i simply mean with minds of our own,) ladies have been discussing these actions in our secret FB group where a very nasty message from one of these admins, (in which she states how 'scared she is by the thought that we will all soon be responsible for new life . . . ') was published for all to see. I bought it to the attention of the other ladies on BC and for that I sneakily suspect my own profile will be amongst those on the banned list.
Why I am allowing myself to be so frustrated by something happening in a virtual world is beyond me, yet I have been following the antics today with such intensity I feel as though I have been in court on the jury of a murder case or something.
I'm so tense and pent up with stress that my shoulders have gone stiff and my finger hurt from such violent typing, (I type very loudly and incredibly fast when I'm pissed off) - I'm definitely in need of a massage, will need to work on powers of persuasion and bat my eye lashes later at the boy ;-)
You made it this far and for that i salute you! I shall also put you out of your misery by stating that I'm done ranting now. And breath. ;-)
I love you for listening!
Steph x
(Nutty and hormonal - yet fabulous neverthless!)
