Contrariwise, I keep a daily watch on getupgrrl's infertility blog, because she is a heartbreaking combination of funny and wise and angry.
I never would have chosen to read this if it weren't mentioned here, but the blog is hilarious and touching, Betsy HP. Thanks for sharing it!
I wrote a long post on the Munchausen by Internet stuff, dealing with trust on the internet in general, and more specifically on buffistas. Then I stopped to work on some other stuff before coming back to look it over. And I clicked on a link which opened up in THIS window, and lost the whole thing. Maybe I'll get it together to repost.
t /rant
My (admittedly limited) experience with Munchausen by Internet is that there are tell-tales. To pick on Betsy (sorry Betsy):
- Betsy would become sick, and possibly become aggressively passive about it.
- If she were really elaborate, Betsy would chronicle a disease in the most detailed fashion possible, including the rarest and direst symptoms, all the while failing to chronicle any real-world effects this disease was having on her attention span, energy, motivation to wash dishes, and other mundane details of life.
- Betsy would announce in advance that she was going into the hospital.
- Betsy (or her "family member") would not respond to email queries about what hospital/phone #/times to visit.
I'm sure there are other tell-tales, but the Buffistas luckily are world-travelers and inveterate hospital-visitors. (The first example of which I recall is Gar going to visit David's ex, Gar never having met David or the ex, solely because she was in hospital in a new city and would probably be lonely and freaked. That's the kind of Buffista mitzvah action I love to read about!)
...with apologies to Betsy, her "family member", and sundry.
I'm safe on the "family member": the Bay Area Buffistas have met him. And them, for that matter.
That's true (so have I!). Still, I feel the need to apologize for referring to any real person with air quotes.
Oh, he's your "husband". Ri-i-i-ight.
Hey, Victor, meet "Cindy."
Hmmm...now I feel duty bound to visit any buffista within a reasonable distance, and their friends and family members, just so we can all be sure that we're real. Darn.
Hmmm...now I feel duty bound to visit any buffista within a reasonable distance, and their friends and family members, just so we can all be sure that we're real. Darn.
Heh. It's such an onerous burden.
I do think that the unusually tight-knit community and our predilection for face-to-face gatherings helps a lot in this regard. Even for posters such as myself that live out of driving distance of their fellows, there are generally enough people with real-world means of contact that if we were to suddenly disappear from the board, someone would be able to find out what happened.
And we make such a big deal of where we're going, who we're seeing, there'd be a paper trail miles long. It's not something that I even worry about when it comes to the members of this board.
I'm just as imaginary as you all are.
