This is part of an im chat I had with a friend who has been very kind and understanding.

Never give out your password or credit card number in an instant message conversation.

MG says:
What did they do to you?
Indy says:
Well...Pull up a seat, you might be a while.
Indy says:
S, This girl I think I mentioned who kept getting flamed?
Indy says:
Well, L and I spent a lot of time trying to help her through her rough times with those stupid flamers.
Indy says:
And one of the flamers still has a list against S on yahoogroups.
MG says:
Try to give me the cliff notes version if you can, hon. I'm getting ready for bed, but I definitely want to know what happened to make you so miserable.
Indy says:
There was a girl who had also been
Indy says:
I'll send you the details in an email. It'll be easier that way.
MG says: So did she double cross you or something?
Indy says:
Yes. The summary is that I tried to get the flamer's list yanked, but it backfired in the most crazy way possible.
MG says:
How so?
Indy says:
And S has I guess thought for a while now that we weren't really her friends.
Indy says:
She mistook my timidity around her for dislike.
Indy says:
She's really easily rattled, and terribly paranoied about things, thinks the world's all out to get her.
Indy says:
And this isn't the first time she backstabbed me and L.
Indy says:
Well, it'll be the last time, because I can't go through this with her again.
MG says:
I had a friend I went thru a similar thing with...we were off and on friends.
Indy says:
I'll explain to you how I tried to get S's flamer's list yanked though. Basically, L and I have gone out of our way to help S, and she ends up accusing us of siding with her flamers - what the heck!?
MG says:
Go on.
Indy says:
She's obsessed with ip tracking, which isn't even always reliable for flushing out enemies. She sees enemies where they don't even exist.
Indy says:
And is well on the way to creating new ones.
Indy says:
I certainly won't side with her flamers against her, I detest them with a passion. But I can't be her friend, she has driven me away once too many times.
Indy says:
Oh, S also has a thing about *groans* copyright...Not bad in itself, but gads!
Indy says:
She plasters that blasted copyright notice on every single solitary link, and it is LONG, and she put links to long boring articles all about copyright! As if anybody's going to bother with reading that stuff! And apparently she even changes her passwords every week! Like, eeeek, that's a bit much!
Indy says:
I didn't even know this until L told me that S kept saying things to her like "Indy really likes *you*" implying I didn't like S!? L was just as flabbergasted! And I never would've thought S cared or thought that way!
Indy says:
S and I don't seem to have much in common, she seems to be into some things that really annoy, even embarrass, repulse, or just plain creep me out. But I never turned against her, much less be one of her flamers!!! I just kinda backed off on the things we didn't mesh on and stayed supportive wherever I could!
Indy says:
I had no idea S even thought I disliked her - I didn't dislike her. I disliked some of the things she was into or tended to do, or just didn't understand them.
Indy says:
But one time I said something she didn't like, and she got her husband to reem me out. I had no idea what I'd said could even warrant getting upset over.
MG says:
Take my advice, WALK AWAY.
Indy says:
Ever since then, I was careful, even timid around her, and she took that for dislike, I guess. Because I had been quiet around other people I really didn't like, and I guess she remembered that.
MG says:
It is not even worth crying over, hon. You deserve better friends than that!
MG says:
I call people like that and my friend "high maintenance relationships". They are more trouble than they're worth!
MG says:
WALK AWAY
MG says:
Take solace in your real friends.
Indy says:
I am actually more upset over what my well intentioned but obviously misguided action did ultimately to L.
Indy says:
I wanted to scare S's flamer into taking down her list, because yahoo groups wasn't doing a darn thing.
Indy says:
We had a picture of somebody we believe turned out to be one of S's flamers.
Indy says:
I uploaded it to the flamer's list, using a different account, hoping the nitwit would recognize it, get scared, and split, list and all.
Indy says:
S looked at the list, and got mad cause she thought her flamer would come after her because she'd think she'd been ultimately behind posting the flamer's pic online.
Indy says:
I just plugm forgot to tell either S or L I'd done that - it was an impulsive action on my part, I saw that list was still there when I signed into yahoogroups, got miffed, decided to try freaking out the flamer.and...
Indy says:
S thought L was the one who did it.
Indy says:
So she called up poor L and reemed her out for something I did and had forgotten about in the meantime.
Indy says:
I got a frantic email from L the next morning, saying S was freaking and accusing us of trying to get her in trouble and for siding with her flamers etc.
Indy says:
I called L to talk cause this was really urgent. I needed to find out what this was about, and maybe set up a three way phone call with her and S and we could all reach an understanding.
Indy says:
But when I called, L was in terrible shape, after being yelled at and backstabbed and accused by S and if you could've heard her sob - Oh, God...(as always, uttered as a cry/prayer for help)
Indy says:
I still didn't make the connection about what brought this on so once I finally got hold of S, she told me she was upset about the pic etc.
Indy says:
Well, first of all, I didn't think I needed S's permission for every move I wanted to make on the net. I didn't know I needed to ask her permission or put everything past her like it was law or something. Blast, it wasn't even a pic of S anyway...Her fear was getting so out of hand and taking over everything.
Indy says:
And then I realized she accused L of something she'd known nothing about, and just totally went off the deep end all because I was trying to yank a flamer's hate list toward her.
Indy says:
Damn, that's gratitude for ya. I didn't mean to cause such a mixup!!
Indy says:
I had no idea it was going to come to this! And right after a loss in L's family! Like she needed this grief on top of that as well!
Indy says:
But if S can just turn on us like that, it just goes to show she wasn't really a friend in the first place.
MG says:
Oh geez, I am sorry
Indy says:
L had to reassure me quite a bit that what happened really wasn't my fault, and that she would be okay.
MG says:
well that's good at least
Indy says:
It just tore me up inside.
MG says:
I can understand why.
MG says:
I have to go. It's late.
MG says:
If you feel better tomorrow, mebbe we'll see you on?
Indy says:
Yes. I'll be on later in the evening tomorrow, because I have to work over the supper hour.
Indy says:
Thanks for listening. I really appreciate it.
Indy says:
And goodnight.
MG says:
Sure...see you tomorrow night.
MG says:
Take care.
Indy says:
Thanks!

As for the ip stuff, anybody can create free telnet accounts on arbornet.org, and use the lynx unix browser on that remote host to post messages to the web...and end up with the same ip address for every account. Arbornet.org has one ip address for all its accounts. But S didn't even bother to test that out as I suggested, obviously, for she never said anything on her board about it, a board which she has shut down along with her site. And just because somebody flamed her using arbornet - well, did it never occur to her that her real enemies created accounts there for the purpose of trying to be anonymous? Or maybe even to cause her to suspect me since some of them probably remember I used to use arbornet.org for chat and email when I was still using my old computer?

Well, I may be guilty of making some rash decisions, some not so good choices, and I already told her straight out how I tried to get the stupid flamers' yahoogroup shut down. She can hate me for those things as much as she pleases. But I will not accept her misjudgments and false beliefs about me or any of my friends. L and I never have, and never will be on the side of those psycho, hormonal, asinine flamers of hers, even if they weren't always entirely wrong about her, and she has backstabbed us for the second time, and has more in common with her flamers as fangirls than she has with me or L.

That was written in January or Februrary of 2003. Not long after, yahoogroups did delete the flamers' hate list, and it took me a few months to come completely to terms with my own emotions about being misjudged. I didn't let her down, she let me down, more than I even realized. Like I said, I never approved of her obsessive drooling fan behavior over a cartoon terrorist, especially since she was already married. But when I learned from L later that S had written something really dirty between her character and two male characters where she basically acted as a hooker and one character pimped her out to another they both watched and took turns with her, that was what finally shook me out of this "Indy, somehow you must've let S down" funk. Gads, that girl was totally immoral and sleezy from the get go. If I had known the half of it from the beginning, I would have simply split and let her and her equally immature hormone driven flamers duke it out on their own. Neither side was innocent in that battle, I just ignored/overlooked the things I suspected might be going on with her, or knew of and didn't like, to get the sadistic little highschool girls off her case. It's one thing to write about a society where having more than one partner was the norm in a historical sense or in a fictional setting, but without going into all the graphic details of who did what to whom. And then, only as general occurances happening in the background to show how that society worked. But what S did was write some nauseating orgy between her idealized self and two cartoon terrorists to satisfy her apparently enormous sexual appetite - and she was married. Not only that, she has a history of cybering online and other things L and I found out later. So for all her love of things that are supposed to be classy, or the image she first impressed on me and L as being a classy woman, when it gets down to it, it's anything but. There's something terribly wrong with a person with such an all consuming humungous sex drive that she has to screw cartoons in her head and have mutiple things going with online pervs, and write stories about her idealized self as being the be-all and end-all of beauty and sexiness to every male that gets within sight of her. Oh, puhleeeze! What an ego! Keeping that in mind, it's really not so incomprehensible that she would toss friends away for a stupid cybersex thing, and then toss them away again, accusing them of being her flamers. But it was stupid of L and I to give her a second chance. I only did because I pitied her, she had done this stuff probably because the flamers had battered her so much that she wasn't in her right mind. But she's cheated and backstabbed not just once, but a number of times, and given her shallow lust for a cartoon creep and unfaithfulness to friends and husband, I did have misgivings even back then, it's true. The one thing great that has come out of this whole awful thing is that L and I have a great friendship. I have completely stopped worrying about letting S down.

-Indianna...