Saturday, October 4, 2008

A Strange Encounter

It seems there is a mysterious underground plot being played out amongst the players in the anti-KK community. An anonymous poster has attacked, without provocation, seemingly one of their own.

My mind works in steps, so let me step through this.

First consider NancyElle – the victim. She is an unlikely victim by all appearances. She is not controversial. An anti-KK personality, for sure, but not an ardent anti-KK blogger. Not a prolific poster. I have to confess that I don’t read her blog routinely. I really don’t read any blogs routinely. And I haven’t been to hers for some time until this commotion. Her blog centers around good food and her love of music – particularly that of Jackson Browne. Nothing there to raise an eyebrow. So why was she attacked? Supposedly because she used an affiliate link to an internet rebate program website. Honestly, I’ve never seen her comment one way or another on making a few pennies from an affiliate link, so would not even begin to know enough to call her a hypocrite for doing so. But come on. Does this make any sense to anyone?

No, I didn’t think so. But, I will come back to the question of motive later on. For now, let’s move on to the suspect.

Our dear friend Anonymous has struck again. Brings to mind that character known to every parent. You know – I Don’t Know. Or maybe you are more familiar with his cousin, Not Me. Let’s not confuse Anonymous with screennames. After all, most of us DO post anonymously as in we don’t use our real names on the internet. We do that for a wide variety of reasons. No, Anonymous is more sinister than that. This person wants to make comments that can be affixed to any number of people. Generally it is because they don’t want to accept the responsibility for their words. Or they want to cast a shadow over others.

In this instance, for reasons known only to NancyElle and a handful of others (not the larger anti-KK community, though) the focus seems to be fixed on one person. Hints are being dropped. Is it MissMerize, aka AvenueGirl? She is the one associated with cigarettes and martinis, after all. She insists it isn’t her. And the more her denials are met with silence, the more impassioned her denials become. Interestingly enough, NancyElle has not cleared MissM. She HAS cleared Heidi, though. This is after all of the support popped up for MissM and Heidi was fingered as a likely suspect. So why, Nancy, if you DO know who is behind this have you NOT cleared MissM? I’m not aware of any conflicts that MissM has had with ANY of the anti-KK community, let alone Nancy. Of course, she could have and it could have sailed right passed me.

Now, if NancyElle hasn’t had any mix-ups with anyone, why would she be targeted? Thinking out loud here … how about to cast dispersions onto another party? Someone who, if they were to pick on someone as likable and innocent as Nancy would raise the ire of just about everyone. Someone that others might have a grudge against. Someone that others could claim makes a habit of this sort of thing. Hmm. A real target, if you will. If we accept that premise, what clues do we have to that person's identity?

The first obvious target is MissM. Who would be upset with her? Well, Heidi Diaz is the obvious one. The past few days MissM has turned her attention full focus on the lying liar who lies. She for sure would have a real reason for wanting to discredit her as well as embroil her into an unrelated controversy. But NancyElle has very deliberately cleared Heidi Diaz. Scratch MissM off the list.

Other clues have been dropped for us. Let’s look at the comments that followed Nancy’s announcement that she was done. The first few were confused condolences. One poster questioned just how Nancy knew who the poster was, as implied on her blog, when the post was made anonymously. That is a fair question certainly. Anyone who is going to attack that way and use the moniker Anonymous would certainly know how to use a proxy to hide their IP thus making their identity truly unknown. All of the bloggers understand stat counters and trackers. I’ve yet to see an answer to that very important question, even though it has been presented twice now.

Then we have an unsolicited denial with a note that it is understandable why someone would be upset with the whole affiliate link thing.

MissM enters in and declares her innocence. She actually connects the dots to herself, realizing that she is being painted as the villain. Lots of folks come to her defense, but not NancyElle.

One poster opines that NancyElle is a likely choice if Anonymous is Heidi. That argument could also explain why NancyElle was used if it is NOT Heidi, but I’ll get around to that in a bit.

Now things start to get interesting. A LCF regular, Mayberryfan, posts making it very clear that she believes she knows who the real suspect is. And then – who is this? Morgan? Hi, Morgan. Apparently you, too, believe you know who did this. And Vox. And Jo – who is the only one of those “in the know” to state clearly to MissM that they KNOW it isn’t her. Mayberryfan drops a hint that the real anonymous is intentionally setting MissM up.

What do all of these people have in common? Well, besides being involved, side by side with the rest of us in the anti-KK fight. They all have had a run in with another blogger – YustYucky. And in some cases, at least two other bloggers.

Do we have motive? I’m not saying one way or another. Just following the clues. But I will say this, and I want to say it just as clearly as I can.

Folks need to be very careful about charges being flung around. The KK Scam has educated a whole lot of people to the ways of the Internet. If you are wrong, you will rue the day. The fact that you have already cast aspersions on the character of MissMerize, aka AvenueGirl will be cause for a lot of distress for you. Be very careful which pile you step in next.