I wonder sometimes if I am the victim of a malicious rumour

15 years ago, I was an 18-year-old boy in England. I was popular at school, but mainly used to hang out with one boy, my best friend, who I had known since we were nine. Unfortunately, this boy and I had a sensational falling out whilst on an out-of-season holiday in Portugal.

It's almost amusing looking back. We spent the whole two weeks screaming at each other on a deserted beach, really angrily, like an old married couple. I said things I regret. Not searingly shameful things, just a couple of things about his mum, who was always quite fussy about knowing where he was. He said equally hurtful things in return.

When we got back from holiday, his dad picked us up in his car, the journey was quiet, and then I was dropped off at my house. That was the end of our friendship. He never returned my calls, and we haven't spoken since. Shortly after the holiday, I noticed that all my other friends, too, went cold on me, although I didn't mind for long as I started to make new friends at University.

I recently joined Facebook, and searched, as you do, for old friends. Many of my old school friends are now Facebook friends. I haven't contacted anyone since school, and so I decided to write to three different friends from that time, not requesting that they be FB friends, just wanting to catch up initially. One wrote back a very detached reply, its tone letting me know that my fondness for our time at school was not reciprocated. He ended his missive with "good luck", which for some reason I found quite hurtful. Another wrote back answering all my questions but being careful not to ask me any about my own life, leaving no room for me to reply. He was apparently not at all interested in what I had been doing with my life. Another, a girl who I thought would remember me affectionately, just ignored my message.

I am genuinely at a loss. I was not the nicest dude at school, a bit cocksure to be honest, but so were lots of my friends. I can't see why I am being slighted by my past. I sometimes wonder if my old friend said some unfair or untrue things about me, because I know that he saw a lot of my old friends after I went to University. But how can I find this out? Or is there any point? It just makes me feel a bit low...Help with perspective would be welcome!

Get the hell out of here and never come back, Grant Singer.

http://www.lysator.liu.se/nanny/clubs/socks/sock.jpg

I wonder sometimes if I am the victim of a malignant tumor

brianblessedmanthefuckup.jpg

grant did u try to put it in his butt or what?

tell the truth now

http://www.catanna.com/deut_blessed.jpg

the hipper the puppy, the bigger the lols!

the cuter the puppy, the bigger the awwws!

― kshighway (ksh), Tuesday, February 16, 2010 1:33 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

WHILST

the first three paragraphs sound like a great first chapter to a novel actually

that's a cat not a puppy

whoopes sorry wrong thread rofl lmbo

loling @ iiiijjjj

Get the hell out of here and never come back, iiiijjjj.

I hope that was copy/pasted.

You're 33. Forget about them and continue to live your life.

>the first three paragraphs sound like a great first chapter to a novel actually

Chapter one: THE BOARDER

He came to our place one Sunday in November 189–.

I still say 'our place', even though the house no longer belongs to us. It will soon be fifteen years since we left the neighbourhood, and we shall certainly never go back.

We lived on the premises of Sainte-Agathe upper school. My father (like the other pupils, I called him 'Monsieur Seurel') was in charge of both the upper school, where they studied for the teaching certificate, and the middle school. My mother took the junior class.1

A long red house, with five glazed doors shrouded in Virginia creeper, at the far end of the little town; a huge courtyard with shelters and washing places which opened at the front towards the village through a large gateway; on the north side, the road beyond a little barred gate leading to the railway station, three kilometres away; to the south and at the back, fields, gardens and meadows, with the outskirts of town beyond them ... There you have a sketch plan of the dwelling in which the most poignant and anguished days of my life were spent, the dwelling where our adventures ebbed and flowed, breaking like waves on a solitary rock...

Thanks for that perspective, iiiijjjj. I suddenly feel well adjusted and blessed. Really, you have made me see that it could be a lot worse. I could be a dribbling imbecile like you, which thankfully I'm not. I will take Mordy's sage advice.

lock thread

grant's story inspired don henley's boys of summer

u should fake your own death and then attend the funeral in a disguise, eavesdropping on the mourners, and find out what ppl ~really think of you~

a separate peace of ass

Grant, good luck and get the fuck out.

I would like to remind a bunch of you that the "don't be a dick" posting guide is still in effect and I, for one, am not particularly shy about banning people who act like assholes.

Knock it off.

who shows up on a message board they've NEVER POSTED ON before with such a query?

Who fucking cares? What points are you scoring by being an asshole about it?

xp cutty - yeah, kinda creepy imo - but we can say that another poster is creepy without it constituting being a dick, right?

dan, i understand your concern, but anyone who is being a dick here is doing so with the belief that this is not a real person

http://grantsinger.com/

cutty otm

The OP is really weird and out of place, but I love how every single new poster is automatically assumed to be a sock.

but anyone who is being a dick here is doing so with the belief that this is not a real person

Why automatically make that assumption, tho?

The OP is really weird and out of place, but I love how every single new poster is automatically assumed to be a sock.

― you gone float up with it (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, February 16, 2010 12:28 PM (33 seconds ago)

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/oroboru.jpg

^^^

hahahaha

lock thread

― kshighway (ksh), Tuesday, February 16, 2010 3:19 PM (11 minutes ago)

sometimes I think there are only 5 actual people that post to ilx and every other poster is a sock.

oops. wrong account.

lock thread

― kshighway (ksh), Tuesday, February 16, 2010 3:19 PM (11 minutes ago)

― kshighway (ksh), Tuesday, February 16, 2010 3:31 PM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Whoa.

itt help w/perspective wld be welcome

whoever Grant Singer is he writes very well. the post is really quite evocative!

i quoted myself, tbf

dan, i understand your concern, but anyone who is being a dick here is doing so with the belief that this is not a real person

Yes, I get that; my point is that is not a particularly good reason to be a dick towards someone.

If you can't distinguish between posts like this and posts like "britney can i get your sister email why because she look intersting", it's time to take a posting break, in my opinion. Aggressive snark 94/7 is nagl.

'tis probably wise not to seek validation/redemption thru facebook - either build a time machine, or forget about it or eat some ice cream.

I would either forget about all this and leave it behind (the best option) or alternatively find out the truth by whatever means neccesary, track down your ex-schoolfriend and kick the shit out of him.

all i did was ask if there was any homoeroticism involved whilst away on holiday

fwiw, if you are real, grant singer, your art is wonderful! i hope you find happiness in life and on the internet.

maybe Grant Singer is Hi Dere's sockpuppet?

the work entitled precious etc got a lol

"i totally clowned ilx by asking a question about facebook"

or alternately, "I proved what massive assholes these guys are by asking an innocuous question and looking at their responses"

proved to whom? anyone who knows ilx... knows ilx

a) as a total ilx noob you'd ask for the views of a bunch of total strangers,

I don't really think that is all that unusual tbh. I've noticed people relating very personal stories/tmi to people they don't really know in all sorts of contexts on the internet. And before ilx was registration only there used to be people randomly finding this place and posting all sorts of weird questions and information.

Grant Singer, this thread might be more helpful and less prone to devolution if you posted more than once a day.

I've noticed people relating very personal stories/tmi to people they don't really know in all sorts of contexts on the internet.

yeah, i guess -- what a crazy world we live in

it will remain crazy unless we make sure to let people know that posting personal ish for the comments of total strangers is not best practice

that is harsh but really though

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/Running%20the%20Gauntlet%20in%201525.JPG

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1f/Sockpuppet-mugshot.jpg

yeah, i guess -- what a crazy world we live in

it will remain crazy unless we make sure to let people know that posting personal ish for the comments of total strangers is not best practice

that is harsh but really though

That might be, but we do have the individual choice to not idly follow the mob mentality and ROFLcopter the life out of every instance of guileless sincerity we encounter. Unless that's something you're really proud to contribute to and you want ILX to be like every other cesspool of a message board on the interwebs. There are plenty of lulz to be had 'round these parts which don't entail acting like a total douchenozzle.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081205165918AACCtVF

"mordy's sage advice" made me cry actual tears of lol, kudos to whoever's sock this is, shit is like that scene in being john malkovich imo

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3026537/

"Grant Singer" = "Grin Re: Angst"

This pile-on is pretty much the nail in the coffin of the good old ILX logged-out advice thread, which I've been missing since reg-only. Nosiness, schadenfreude and private ill-informed guessing at the real identity of the threadstarter, all good fun, and I got some real life advice out of them too.

(By which I don't just mean the ones I started - fairly sure there was at least one, but I can't even remember what it was about, whereas I've taken some advice on other people's to heart)

(Can relate to the OP's worries maybe a little too much - an imminent round birthday has had me dwelling on lost friendships, times I was an asshole, whether losing touch has been seen as me being standoffish, etc - but everyone OTM about possible other reasons for reluctance to catch up, plus just getting on with life, I guess)

There's a lot of parallels between primary school and penitentiaries -- you're not there by your own volition, you're thrust into alliances you wouldn't normally make, you can't wait to get out, and your old cellmate contacting you out of the blue sounds like precursor to Bad Things Happening.

Also, Mauritius Roomba.

The idea of creating a duplicate login for something as innocuous as that initial post seems bizarre and pointless enough to me that I have to assume that such an idea would only occur to those who've done as much themselves. J'accuse!!!

my primary school didn't feature rape and shivvings, so I don't think your analogy holds up very well

How about noogies and wedgies?

those did not feature in my prison

oh I've said too much

on the topic of the opening post, ppl who know you who believe bad shit abt u w/o ever bringing it up w/ u are bad ppl w/ broken souls

shivvings?

I wonder sometimes if I am the victim of a vermicious knid

funny think is the subject is in present tense... like he's still a victim

on the other hand, people who believe bad shit about you because their perspectives are skewed and they have no concept of how normal people interact are broken souls of their own sort

... i was mean to kshighway at first, but that's only because i can be ruthless with younger people who still like Wilco (sorry about that, btw). otherwise, it DOES seem like a lot of new posters are assumed to be socks, which certainly wasn't the case when i first started posting in march of 2006.

― begonia perineum (the table is the table), Wednesday, February 17, 2010 8:31 PM (Yesterday)

No problem, dude! (And, as an aside, I understand why people dislike Wilco. Personally, I still like 'em, primarily for the records they released between 1999 and 2005.)

i love how the title of the thread puts the emphasis on the paranoia rather than the specifics, like the thread was gonna evolve into discussion of everyone's paranoid delusions

I have never had sex.

Suggestions:

1. make a fake Facebook account (they don't check, so it's easy)
2. when creating a profile, use a name that is similar to that of one-two other people at your school from a yearbook that you knew but not very well (ie, if there was a Mike Andrews and a Jim Spencer, be Andrew Spence or something). This will make you sound 'familiar'.
3. When creating profile, input that you went to the school you went to as a child. Friend request others from the school that you don't really know first, then request one-two friends. At least one will probably friend you because they'll go "wtf is this person? ahh who cares accept".
4. If there is a group for your school on facebook, join it. or create one of your own.
5. Post there to gain everybody's initial trust, and stay on very neutral topics (ie, "HEY WASN'T OUR SCHOOL SONG RILLY GAY" or "REMEMBER THAT CHICK WHO FLASHED HER TITTIES IN THE YRBOOK").
6. After two weeks, post "whatever happened to Grant Singer? I tried to friend him a few weeks ago, but he didn't respond. Were the rumors I heard true?"
7. If they reply with a laundry list of rumors, send an email back saying "yea well u fucked half the school and don't hear me talkin bout it" and delete them as a friend.
8. If they say "what rumors", play it off as something innocent ('o i mean that he had herpes LOL').
9. Delete the account.
10. Live your life cuz petty bullshit is better to escape than revisit.

feel real bad about questioning grant singer now. he's proved himself an ilx mvp

This thread is like a symphony.

my favorite part is sarahel calling people out as sockpuppets for being precocious noobs

WHAT PART OF "SYMPHONY" DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND???

All I can say is that maybe ILX would be a lot better if it had a few more guys like BJ Swells, and a few less guys like that people that forced him to leave.

Sorry if I'm overstepping my mark there, but still.

― Dom Passantino

Oprah hates Disabled People: Another Malicious Rumor

Oprah is one of most popular celebrities on earth. She is familiar to people all around the world. She is not perfect but some people are eager to carry out malicious rumors with this search in Google, ‘oprah hates disabled people’. This search is now in the number one spot in Google Hot Trends USA. This kind of malicious rumor originated a few weeks ago against Oprah and it died down very soon. However, it has again make a come back. It is clear that some people are not happy with her for whatever reason and trying to attack her name and fame. There is perhaps no way to stop this kind of rumor. The only thing the fans can do is to do some Google search and know about the whole issue. In her own life and career, Oprah had her fair share of controversy just like any other celebrity. However, there has never been any real accusation against her about hating or discriminating disabled people. In her shows, she has always championed the lives of ordinary people. The problems of women were neglected in main stream media in the past. The massive popularity of The Oprah Winfrey Show has perhaps helped to change this and women’s issues are now discussed and presented much more in the media than past.

grant did u try to put it in his butt or what?

― sir ilx-a-lot (cutty)

I wonder sometimes

― am0n, Tuesday, February 16, 2010 2:45 PM (2 years ago)

someone make a gif of a sock eating itself for future use

― sir ilx-a-lot (cutty), Tuesday, February 16, 2010 1:07 PM (2 years ago)

i can't imagine that anyone has ever said anything about me that's worse than the truth

ilxchatz

poor Grant

In a nutshell, the story we are presented here is that Mr. Singer tried to contact some people he knew during his teens on FB after neglecting to stay in touch with any of his school chums for 15 years. Two of them respond, but not in a way that welcomes renewed friendship, while another ignores him.

This unanticipated response leads him to recall an unrelated incident involving exactly none of the three aforementioned people. He somehow draws the inference that this unrelated incident from 15 years earlier spawned "a malicious rumor" and this must be the reason why he is not being welcomed back into his chums' lives after a 15 year absence, like the prodigal son.

Cripes, Grant. Just go to your class reunion, get drunk and try to snog your old flame like everyone else.

i regularly get paranoid about this but usually i can push it aside with "thankfully i'm not that interesting."

6 years on, Grant is pushing 40 years old. It'd be interesting to know what perspective he has on it now. I also get paranoid about this sometimes.

Aimless's second paragraph seems uncharacteristically unbalanced to me as a summary and his third para provides uncharacteristically poor advice.

every so often someone abruptly disappears from my life and it's usually likely due to just the fact that we were only casual friends and your usual 'drifting' but my paranoia anxiety brain assumes that a juicy rumor about my criminal life has become known to people.

also lol at this thread

Hanging out with infamous Archfiend-worshipper King Diamond is no crime.

sarahell's sock.jpg got a lol out of me.

was a good'n

Since you're plainly working towards a Museum of ILX, what will its first temporary exhibition be?

Hen fap probably

after all these years i still dont "get" this

― homosexual II, Wednesday, September 15, 2010 5:03 AM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink