musings

i've always found it funny when people try to justify ridiculous things with ridiculous reasons. i had to steal from him, he stole from me! kind of thing. it's kind of funny really.

especially when the absurdity spills over to obsession territory. i mean, what lengths are you willing to go to in order to ensure that your probably delusional goal is met? stalking? murder? worse?

say your victim gets wind of your antics and takes the necessary steps to remove you from their life. do you give up and move on, like a normal human being, or do you go onto other profiles, obsessively mining for the tiniest nugget of information that becomes fuel for your crusade?

i've also noticed the words slander and libel are tossed around a lot by people in my lists. okay. so let's look at the definitions then.

slander

noun

1. defamation; calumny: rumors full of slander.
2. a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report: a slander against his good name.
3. Law. defamation by oral utterance rather than by writing, pictures, etc.

verb (used with object)

4. to utter slander against; defame.

verb (used without object)

5. to utter or circulate slander.

 

libel

noun

1. Law.
   1. defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.
   2. the act or crime of publishing it.
   3. a formal written declaration or statement, as one containing the allegations of a plaintiff or the grounds of a charge.
2. anything that is defamatory or that maliciously or damagingly misrepresents.

verb (used with object), li·beled, li·bel·ing or (especially British) li·belled, li·bel·ling.

3. to publish a libel against.
4. to misrepresent damagingly.
5. to institute suit against by a libel, as in an admiralty court.

 okay. so slander is basically talking shit about someone verbally to ruin their good name without any proof, and libel is basically doing that online with the intent of doing the same thing.

and of course, if you're gonna talk shit about somebody, you better have proof to back up your claims of things they have done. you know, like logged conversations of how they intend to lie to someone to get their way. or some record of them saying they're going to do one thing then do another. that makes it so you're not defaming their name for shits and giggles, you actually have a reason.

of course, every inboxed conversation i've ever had on second life has been recorded on my hard drive for the last three years. my memory is long, and when it falters i have the text to show me the truth. while in theory i could edit them on a document such as this blog entry, the truth still remains in the logs themselves. a screenshot would show beyond a shadow of a doubt, though yes you could argue those can be photoshopped, you'd have to prove that they were first.

so before you go around saying someone is spreading libel about you, probably don't act like a dick when they have the proof to undo your lies.