Author: BOX+ (hedgehog owner/future hedgehog cuddler (6/30))

this whole outing thing has been super annoying for me over the past few days, and i'm sure it has ruined the bort for some of you in a deeper way. my goal in posting this is to apologize and to assuage your fears (not so much to try to regain favor--those of you who think i did something shitty are overwhelmingly those of you who already hated me). again, i'm tired of these threads, and i apologize for adding another one to the shitheap, but there are a few things i want to say to a wide audience. this is especially directed toward those of you who view me as a threat to your safety (those of you who really believe that and aren't just saying that because you hate me).

let me start by saying that i have always had the greatest respect for the anonymity that poasters here enjoy. in mid-2010, i lectured doobs privately about respecting others' privacy. recently, as bmc and occasionally as box, i have poasted lengthy screeds against his actions, trying in vain to convey to him why his pattern of disregard for others' privacy is harmful. (for the record, my stance on doobs is that he's not malicious but that he lacks discretion and therefore can't be trusted. this may be the stance some of you have on me; hopefully i can dispel that sentiment here.)

the natural reaction to that, for those of you who pay attention to boxthreads, is: "ok, you say that, but who knows how you'll actually act, you fucking psycho bitch?" this is a fair point in ways. we all know that i often lack judgment in general--i do some really fucking stupid things. but there are some lines i simply will not cross. i greatly respect board ideals about privacy and about staying out of people's real lives except when invited (e.g. fb friending, meetups, etc.) and i have only once let my poor judgment get in the way of that: the lh fiasco. the lh thing was a horrible mistake, definitely one of the shittiest things i've done to anyone, and i learned from it. that act reflected a basic lack of human decency and respect, and while it didn't have much to do with public outing, it certainly helped me realize how NOT OK it is to interfere with someone's life like that at all.

you would be hard-pressed to find a single poast in which i repeated publicly anything anyone ever told me in confidence. such poasts do not exist, with the exception of the times i posted some embarrassing shit doobs told me (not outing shit at all: his sat score, some aspie girl stories, his college essay) in an attempt to drive him off the board. i've met a lot of poasters in real life and i've talked privately to many more, and i've always been extremely careful not to repeat anything on here that i've learned off-board. and it's not like i've never been mad at anyone since the lonely hunter thing: i was extremely mad at twist at one time, and at ohnoes a different one. but i've never, since lh, let emotion get in the way of my understanding of the line between the internet and real life.

...until saturday.

what happened saturday got hugely blown out of proportion. i'm not going to write a billion paragraphs about what happened like i did last time; i'm just going to summarize what i did wrong and what i didn't do wrong. again, including the latter category isn't an attempt to defend myself or regain favor, but to reassure those of you who feel that i went off the rails that i still have the utmost respect for xoers' privacy. at the bottom i'll include some important links that you can look into if you want to examine what went down yourself.

THING I DID WRONG: threatened to out someone.

no matter what the circumstances, i now realize, it is not ok to bring out that kind of threat; even in a teddy huang-type situation, only rach has that right. i am just another poaster, not the boss of this website, and there's nothing i hate more than a /b/tard vigilante faggot--which is totally what i was being, without even realizing it.

THING I DIDN'T DO WRONG: even *consider* outing someone without good reason.

let me make clear that it was never my intention to out creepypumo unless (1) i found out that he was a legitimate irl threat (think, had a pattern of stalking and physically abusing women) and (2) other poasters agreed with me that this information should be publicized for the good of everyone. fortunately, i found out soon after making the threat that (1) wasn't the case, and i immediately assured creepypumo that his identity was safe with me.

THING I DID WRONG: drama-mongered in a way that brought negative, malicious attention to a particular person.

the magnitude of publicity i command here as a huge attention whore is something that i didn't realize until saturday that i have and should use only for good, not for evil. i need to be even more careful than the average person about what i say, because frankly, a lot of people pay attention to what i say. my threatening to out creepypumo wasn't only not-ok because threatening to out someone is never ok unless you're rach, but because people paid attention when i started talking to him, and that resulted in his identity being discovered.

THING I DIDN'T DO WRONG: out a poaster.

to out a poaster is to poast specific information about a poaster that (1) you have reason to believe could possibly lead to his identity being discovered or (2) you *should* realize could lead to his identity being discovered but don't, due to lack of discretion. (category (2) is where almost all of doobs' behavior falls.) when i posted that creepypumo was "universally reviled as a misogynist creep at at least one school he has attended", i had no reason to believe that it was possible for anyone to figure out who he was based on this information alone. it turned out that he had self-outed in a big thread in october, and that poast made something click in some people's heads: "oh, creepypumo was the guy who harassed that finance chick!" what i poasted was not inappropriately specific and its role in outing him was unforeseeable.

...

i might be missing some other stuff. feel free to let me know what else you think i did wrong, but i think those are the main things. further, because of this experience, i don't see myself ever again bringing information even as vague as the above (like "everyone irl hates you") to the bort, because who fucking knows what will turn out to get the wheels turning in some pumo's head. and besides, while it's not strictly outing, it's disrespectful.

creepypumo, i hope to god you're not reading this because i hope to god you've left this place forever, but if you are reading this, i want you to know that i'm sorry for disrespecting you in a way that ended up hurting you. i don't think anyone deserves to be google-bombed or professionally sabotaged (hopefully no one actually emailed your employers, but tbf, even if they did, i doubt anyone would care). i still think you're a huge asshole and all, but you didn't deserve what happened, and i'm sorry for leading to it by stirring up drama.

to the rest of you, i'm sorry if you think that my actions posed a threat to board ideals. i assure you that as unpredictable and crazy as my behavior can be sometimes, i am a huge proponent of respect for others' anonymity here.

LINKS:

where i inappropriately threaten to out creepypumo: http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=1977586&mc=75&forum_id=2

where i poast the information ("universally reviled as a misogynist creep at at least one school he has attended") that leads to someone figuring out who he is: http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=1977636&mc=60&forum_id=5

other tl;dr thread in which i explain sequence of events: http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=1978412&mc=164&forum_id=2#20948546

the october 2006 thread in which cp self-outed by linking to a blog that contained comments: http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1777695&mc=424&forum_id=2 (btw, that old moniker was already attached to creepypumo; see http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=1954534&mc=19&forum_id=2 in which he uses both)

bonus picture: http://i.imgur.com/2WTJC.png

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1979283&forum_id=2#20956469)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1979813&forum_id=2#20961411)

Do you actually *want* to address your "problems," or are you content simply to use them as a justification for self-harming behavior?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1979813&forum_id=2#20961656)

Who's the one who has posted here for YEARS? Who's the one who has fucked people she met off this site? Who's the one who has posted her actual mental diagnoses on this site? Who's the one who got kicked out of school for threatening roommates? Who's the one who outs posters? Who's the one who finds it utterly impossible to stay away from this board?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1979813&forum_id=2#20961536)