Hello everyone.
Because this is a large post, I've put the history part up front. If you don't feel like reading it you can head down to the bottom.
To protect the innocent I have changed some details.
I am sharing this story with you in the hope it will ring alarm bells for some people. Possibly save them from being exposed.
History:
--------------------------------------
A while ago, while engaging in an online discussion (a different forum than this one) I witnessed a user flaming newbies. It was right out of the blue and very uncalled for.
The discussion proceeded with most people ignoring him. At some point I found it necessary to contribute my thoughts on the topic and shared my experience with the other participants.
This was met with very harsh criticism from the said troll. Now when I say troll, this user had been a member of the community for some time. He had earned respect from a lot of the older users (read his earlier posts later, could see a pattern of insult then suck up) and had built up quite substantial knowledge about growing.
I tried to reason with the troll, but his brain is only capable of one direction of thought and has an inability to alter its path of thinking. The poor soul.
I could see the discussion was going no where so I left the tread to die a natural death.
Some time later, A newbie asked a question. This resulted in the sharing of experiences form about 4-5 other relatively new people. Said troll jumped right on in with insults. Calling everyone in the thread morons.
Ignoring his post, I dropped in with a similar experience I had had. Obviously this member remembered me from the earlier thread and started flaming like there was no tomorrow.
Unfortunately at this point I retaliated and a flame war began. The members who he had sucked up to over the years backed him up but anyone that read the thread from start to finish with no prior relationship I am sure would see my point of view.
Needless to say, the thread was promptly shut down as things were getting out of hand. I actually had not commented for a few days and was ready to abandon the whole community.
I received several personal messages from users telling me job well done. I messaged the OP that closed the thread and apologized for my part in the drama. He was very nice and restored my faith in that community. He informed me he was well aware of this users attitude and had several run ins with him, himself. He suspects the user was a past banned member.
------------------------------------------
So I wanted to see who this guy was... Why was he such... well such a prick?
So done a search on his nick and read lots of his posts and threads. Took the better part of a few hours as his post count is above 1000, but below 8000.
I got a feel for this troubled soul. I could sense what made him tick. However, inquisitiveness got the better of me. I started to profile him a little bit in my head. I knew what products he liked to use and I viewed many pictures online. One of his discussions talked about something funny he seen on facebook.
Oh yes. Facebook. How we all love that little data mine.
So I jumped onto facebook and started looking for the products he was raving about in some of his forum posts. Just my luck. One of the products he liked had a very small facebook presence. Reading through the product's facebook page I could see who liked, and who shared.
All up, there were about 25 people who liked/shared.
From here I then checked all the accounts. Of course, their all locked up and secure. Thats okay. I have several fake facebook profiles for such the thing.
I commented on a said product page. Shared some photo's from it etc. Then proceeded to add all 25 people over the course of some time.
Of course I only had to add 5 before I found him.
You see, in his wisdom. He signed up to the forum with a username like "rock76roll". What could be the significants of the 76? Perhaps his birth year?
So one of the facebook users had a birth year of 1976. Thats a pretty good lead. I browsed through his wall (because he accepted a friend request). I cross referenced the products he was raving about, with likes/shares/comments on his wall.
That was a pretty good lead too. The dates all seem to match up. Funny that, you find something you love and you talk about it everywhere like is the next sliced bread. Then a few months later you rarely mention it.
Finally, I found a picture on his facebook with something in it which you can see in one of the pics of his dried/cured buds on the forum.
I'm pretty confident I found my man. I have his full name,mobile number, the company he works for, his family members, what he is doing on a day in/out basis. His whole life.
Further more, I can see the 10+ plants he is growing are in their 7th week of flower and he runs a pretty perpetual grow. I could ruin this guys life.
But I wont.
I'm not like that. I just got curious because of the insults. I am pretty thick skinned so I guess he is lucky like that. I know that people say shit online yet if you were face to face they would probably be your best mate. Hey, you got something in common you both love weed!
I'm no snitch. Just a curious guy with too much time on his hands.
So be very careful your personal life does not cross over into your private life. Its getting harder to do now days because of things like facebook.
But the best way to avoid this kind of attention? Just be nice to everyone. There is no need to flame people. If you have nothing positive to contribute just move onto the next thread.
Stay safe everyone!!
Because this is a large post, I've put the history part up front. If you don't feel like reading it you can head down to the bottom.
To protect the innocent I have changed some details.
I am sharing this story with you in the hope it will ring alarm bells for some people. Possibly save them from being exposed.
History:
--------------------------------------
A while ago, while engaging in an online discussion (a different forum than this one) I witnessed a user flaming newbies. It was right out of the blue and very uncalled for.
The discussion proceeded with most people ignoring him. At some point I found it necessary to contribute my thoughts on the topic and shared my experience with the other participants.
This was met with very harsh criticism from the said troll. Now when I say troll, this user had been a member of the community for some time. He had earned respect from a lot of the older users (read his earlier posts later, could see a pattern of insult then suck up) and had built up quite substantial knowledge about growing.
I tried to reason with the troll, but his brain is only capable of one direction of thought and has an inability to alter its path of thinking. The poor soul.
I could see the discussion was going no where so I left the tread to die a natural death.
Some time later, A newbie asked a question. This resulted in the sharing of experiences form about 4-5 other relatively new people. Said troll jumped right on in with insults. Calling everyone in the thread morons.
Ignoring his post, I dropped in with a similar experience I had had. Obviously this member remembered me from the earlier thread and started flaming like there was no tomorrow.
Unfortunately at this point I retaliated and a flame war began. The members who he had sucked up to over the years backed him up but anyone that read the thread from start to finish with no prior relationship I am sure would see my point of view.
Needless to say, the thread was promptly shut down as things were getting out of hand. I actually had not commented for a few days and was ready to abandon the whole community.
I received several personal messages from users telling me job well done. I messaged the OP that closed the thread and apologized for my part in the drama. He was very nice and restored my faith in that community. He informed me he was well aware of this users attitude and had several run ins with him, himself. He suspects the user was a past banned member.
------------------------------------------
So I wanted to see who this guy was... Why was he such... well such a prick?
So done a search on his nick and read lots of his posts and threads. Took the better part of a few hours as his post count is above 1000, but below 8000.
I got a feel for this troubled soul. I could sense what made him tick. However, inquisitiveness got the better of me. I started to profile him a little bit in my head. I knew what products he liked to use and I viewed many pictures online. One of his discussions talked about something funny he seen on facebook.
Oh yes. Facebook. How we all love that little data mine.
So I jumped onto facebook and started looking for the products he was raving about in some of his forum posts. Just my luck. One of the products he liked had a very small facebook presence. Reading through the product's facebook page I could see who liked, and who shared.
All up, there were about 25 people who liked/shared.
From here I then checked all the accounts. Of course, their all locked up and secure. Thats okay. I have several fake facebook profiles for such the thing.
I commented on a said product page. Shared some photo's from it etc. Then proceeded to add all 25 people over the course of some time.
Of course I only had to add 5 before I found him.
You see, in his wisdom. He signed up to the forum with a username like "rock76roll". What could be the significants of the 76? Perhaps his birth year?
So one of the facebook users had a birth year of 1976. Thats a pretty good lead. I browsed through his wall (because he accepted a friend request). I cross referenced the products he was raving about, with likes/shares/comments on his wall.
That was a pretty good lead too. The dates all seem to match up. Funny that, you find something you love and you talk about it everywhere like is the next sliced bread. Then a few months later you rarely mention it.
Finally, I found a picture on his facebook with something in it which you can see in one of the pics of his dried/cured buds on the forum.
I'm pretty confident I found my man. I have his full name,mobile number, the company he works for, his family members, what he is doing on a day in/out basis. His whole life.
Further more, I can see the 10+ plants he is growing are in their 7th week of flower and he runs a pretty perpetual grow. I could ruin this guys life.
But I wont.
I'm not like that. I just got curious because of the insults. I am pretty thick skinned so I guess he is lucky like that. I know that people say shit online yet if you were face to face they would probably be your best mate. Hey, you got something in common you both love weed!
I'm no snitch. Just a curious guy with too much time on his hands.
So be very careful your personal life does not cross over into your private life. Its getting harder to do now days because of things like facebook.
But the best way to avoid this kind of attention? Just be nice to everyone. There is no need to flame people. If you have nothing positive to contribute just move onto the next thread.
Stay safe everyone!!
(I hope).
