I had this friend who lied. She lied all the time, about everything big and little. It took a lot of us a long time to figure out that she was lying. We were always “just missing” her boyfriend, or somehow not able to see the fantastic expensive new thing she had. She’d just taken it home, usually. But the thing was, she was kind.

She’d buy you lunch or dinner if you were broke. She’d give you rides to places, invite you to go events with her. And eventually to many of us, it became apparent that her lies of love, riches and excitement were because she was unhappy and desperate to be accepted. She was never malicious; she was never mean spirited or unkind. She just couldn’t tell the truth – not even about the smallest things. It was easy to forgive, because of her unending kind heart, and the warmth of friendship she extended to everyone who knew her.

But the person I write to you about today only has one trait in common with that girl of long ago. She lies.

What is it about the DramaHoars that makes seemingly bright people stand beside them? Is it fear of the Cannon of Rage and Drama being turned on them? Why do people fear them? Why do people abandon their friends, people of good hearts and souls when they are under fire? Why? Because the DramaHoars have time and energy and no real lives….and they will spend all of their time making YOUR life hell.

Let me give you an example and tell you a tale that you already know, I’m just going to fill in some gaps.

You can call me Credulous because I take what people say at face value and never suspect they are building castles in the air. If you tell me you live in England, I believe you. When I find out you live in Arkansas, I’m a little surprised yet – I like to chalk up most things to misunderstandings. However, I am not a fool and when I discover that someone’s entire presentation of her Self is a lie, than I find it difficult to believe even the simplest statements from her. Why does this matter? Because one of the longest running serial dramas center on accusations repeatedly made by such a person, a woman I will call Inanity. I finally decided to write this after seeing her raise her ugly head once more with more inventions and lies. Lies can be protective, they can help create the persona you are trying to evoke from your avatar so there are probably a lot of instances where they make sense as long as others aren’t being harmed. But lies that are created solely to hurt others are vicious and have caused more heartache that is reasonable to expect one community to stand.

I first encountered Inanity after I had a short public spat about blogger/creator conflicts with a man with more talent than charm. Let’s call him Yeti. We argued back and forth some until one of us suggested an in-world peace negotiation that ended with a peace treaty. That remains the one and only conversation I have had face to face with Yeti. I don’t recall who it was, but one of us posted an announcement that peace had been declared with a tongue in cheek comment that we had “kissed and made up.” Shortly after I received an IM from Inanity – a woman I did not know and had never had a personal conversation with, requesting a short conversation. I had no idea why she wanted to talk to me, but figured it might have to do with one of the stores she worked for.  But no, she wanted to warn me off Yeti and explained why I should not pursue him.

This was some sort of more polite version of WHY ARE YOU CAMMING ON MY BOYFRIEND? But, despite being odd – it wasn’t rude. Obviously she just thought there was something going there.

She explained that she and her husband were close personal friends to Yeti and his wife, that they spent weekends together and did barbecues together. She even babysat the children.  She assured me he would never leave his wife and that his only real friend in SL was her, Inanity, and all the rest of his relationships were just entertainment to see how silly people could be. Best friends, barbecues and babysitting, oh my – that’s RL Stuff! I guess that is what I would have thought if I thought much about it at all. Mainly I was confused why she was telling me this as I had never expressed an interest in Yeti, did not know Yeti and my only interaction with Yeti had been an argument. I chalked the whole thing up to SL craziness, but I didn’t forget it because being warned off someone I didn’t know was so weird.

I continued to interact with Inanity in plurk, though about nothing terribly significant. Her life seemed always to swing between ecstasy and despair and full of angst and drama. She often felt attacked by people. Her life was full of more drama than ten ordinary lives. I sent my share of (cozy) hugs of encouragement though I began to think that much of the drama was self-induced since she had a spiteful streak when talking about people who upset her.

However, sometime about a year after that first conversation I learned from her plurk that she was going to visiting my town – so I spent some time finding the best places for her to go – after all, she would be traveling thousands of miles and I wanted her to enjoy it. However, during the course of this planning I discovered that Inanity did not live on the other side of the world, but just a few miles away from me. She was not Yeti’s neighbor, she didn’t even live on the same continent. Babysitting and Barbecues? I was a bit stunned by the complexity and fully developed multi-layered lies she had told me. I had believed them for more than a year because, well mainly because I didn’t think about Inanity that much at all.

Around the same time, Inanity declared herself a victim of a cruel machinations by someone I know very well. I guess I will call her Dilly. While I might believe Dilly capable of doing, saying or writing something stupid, I did not think the allegations fit her character. Dilly is sweet and has a good heart though she often talks before she thinks. Dilly is also prone to take her broken heart, chop it in to pieces and strew the heartbreak all over the sidewalk for everyone to step on.  That leads a lot of people to go “ewwww” and run away. However, she always realizes her mistakes and accepts responsibility for them. She is sometimes unwise, but she doesn’t lie. Inanity made some serious accusations against Dilly – accusations that made no sense in the light of my understanding of her character. The accusations included subtle and secretive manipulations that are the opposite of the blunt, heavy-handed and clumsy mistakes in judgment that Dilly freely acknowledge and owns up for with frank apology.

When I weighed the credibility of Inanity who had constructed a complex series of lies that I had never questioned with the credibility of Dilly who cannot sustain an alt’s secret identity for five minutes without announcing it, I knew who to believe. The lies about the stalker were complex, subtle lies requiring a master manipulator with a proven ability to sustain a lie for months on end. I believe there was never a stalker alt and the entire psychodrama is Inanity’s invention. She’s the most talented and extravagant inventor of tall tales I have met in SL. I am really impressed with the detail she brings to her inventions. She could write fiction. Perhaps she does?

She continued to talk about people trying to “ruin her marriage” while having open conversations with Yeti that would ruin most marriages if they were discovered. Writing tomes of love, declaring her raging lust and how her life has been fulfilled by Yeti – yet having declared previously that her husband is her soul mate.  And so I wonder is this public declaration of love for Yeti some strange game or invention? Is this even Yeti on plurk or is it an Alt created by Inanity? Is she having a relationship with anyone? Who can tell?

Dilly is well able to defend herself and I would not bother with this story if it were only this, but Inanity is not content with one casualty of her schemes. She plays vicious games on plurk and the second things don’t go her way, attacks people. Her fangirls have attacked fellow plurkers who have dared to disagree with her and en masse deleted people from their plurklines.

For a woman in love with her soul mate, she spends a lot of time skyping with her girlfriends, who pass around the chat logs, about how she’s going to have this man or that man, all about her rich and varied sex life. She just announced her next conquest and her friends are spreading the news. No man can resist her.

She professes herself a proponent of tough love and her preferred response to other people’s problems is “get over it, you whiner.”  No one would be so foolish as to respond to her bleats about her illness, her marital woes and her drama with such lack of sympathy. That would result in the Cannon of Rage and Drama being turned on them. People who suggest her “tough love” is just another form of sociopathy become the targets of negative blog posts written by her weak-minded and easily manipulated followers.

She attacks people in world and declares SHE was attacked. She deletes her plurk account after EVERY SINGLE incident of bad behavior on her part – thus eradicating her words from people’s timelines – but not our hearts. Then she comes back two days later and her fangirls pretend nothing has happened. And they expect the injured and wounded to do so as well – or WOE be to them! “PLAY with us,” they say. ”Or else.” She attacks people in world and then claims she was wronged, leaving comments around the blogosphere about the attacker and how she was treated so, so poorly.

So, it comes down to this. I think it’s important that you FRIENDS of hers know this. She makes you look stupid. She makes you look complicit in her lies and mistreatment of your peers. And people are beginning to wonder about YOU now. There are still a couple people I would like to consider friends, but they continue to believe every lie this woman says. I have not made any demands that they choose friendship with her over me. That’s not my style. However, she cannot even tell the truth about whether she is online or not and they know that – so I don’t think I should have to make such a demand.  I think I should just sever my ties with them completely because continuing to believe someone who lies as easily and naturally as most people tell the truth suggests they want to believe the lies – because I don’t think they can possibly be that stupid. What do you think? Can they be that dumb? Do they like the lies because they like the drama?

- Call Me Credulous