I’ve been banned!

So, I’ve been temporarily banned from one of the online forums I visit regularly. Why? What could I have possibly done to get me banned for two weeks? Apparently, my only real faults were A) not being able to read the atmosphere of the board and the minds of the moderators and B) not clearly thinking through my choice of words. Translation? I posted what I thought was an innocent question, asking other people what they thought of hard news posts being posted as frequently as they were. Discussion ensued. The moderators thought I was picking on the forum member who posts these news stories. They called my post a “thinly veiled threat” against him. Huh? A thinly veiled threat? I still don’t get how it was a threat to him, but you never know with moderators. (And don’t even think about questioning a moderator because chances are that will get you banned right on the spot.) So I was banned for three days.

But the rub to all this is I also post on another board and apparently there are spies over there who like to tattle on people. So a lighthearted comment that I made over there was tattled back to the moderator of the first board, who then used what I said (or, rather, what was tattled) to determine my fate on the original board. Pure BS, but it gets worse (if you can imagine): I told Tom how I had been banned and he wanted to see the post that caused it. Well, him logging in on the same IP [as the one I was banned under] immediately got him banned for two days. Grrrr. So at the end of our time, I checked his account by logging in and his account was fine. I logged out as him and logged in as me and….I had 13 days!! What? Oh, they said I was once again “trying to get around the ban” and using my husband’s account. Um, no I wasn’t. But they don’t care to hear the story (well, they listened, but disagreed with me).

So, I was unfairly sentenced to begin with which led to further sentencing that was also unfair. In the mix, Tom has been permanently banned for life and I am on strike two.

It’s all so juvenile (the tattling) and heavy-handed (everyone is automatically guilty) it’s amazing. And it really ticks me off and gets my blood boiling…because there’s nothing worse than being innocent and no one believes you (or refuses to believe you) no matter what you say.

(Of course, there’s more to the story, but that’s the gist of it all.)

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