ThatDamnedPanda
Posts: 6060
Joined: 1/26/2009
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth
Am I the only skeptic who had a hard time reconciling Linda's post to Spinner's profile? In his profile and continually documented in his journal, were many references to seeking a full time slave partner. Directly from his still active profile; "a full D/s relationship isn't the sort of thing that can be boiled down into a quick profile".
The guy says he's from New York, Brooklyn to be precise; so I wouldn't be surprised if the entire thing was made up and his 'death' was his exit strategy to fulfill a desire to see what people say and to draw one last burst of attention. Who knows - maybe soon we'll see Linda's profile, and she'll be looking for someone to fill that empty void in her life as a result of recent tragedy. The frequency of death and disease documented on many profiles defies any insurance actuarial table.
Why then did I send my regrets? Well first it didn't cost anything, and if a thread like this one wasn't started I would have let it go. However, I guess I have to put myself into the same category of sucker who sends sympathy cards into a soap opera after one of their characters is killed off on the show. ..
For what it's worth, I didn't come to that conclusion, but it crossed my mind. It always does when i see a memorial thread about someone I didn't know. I didn't have any kind of personal investment in the veracity of it one way or the other, so I didn't spend any time considering whether it was true or not.
But I have seen it happen. Here in the Twin Cities a few years ago, some guy did something very much like that on a radio show. There's a guy named Dan Cole with a mid-afternoon talk show, on a sports station, called "The Common Man." He's a really down-to-earth guy, and forms a lot of real-life personal friendships with his regular callers. They go golfing together, go to games together, hang out at each other's homes. even attend family events like weddings and anniversary parties. It's not a PR schtick, the guy really does get to be close friends with a lot of these people.
Several years ago, Dan befriended a guy named (I believe) Terry, a regular caller. They got to be pretty tight; Terry was quickly assimilated into the group of friends, and was pretty well liked. One morning, Terry was supposed to meet Dan and a few other friends to play tennis. He never showed, and didn't answer the phone when people tried to reach him. People went over to his house, but nobody seemed to be home. A couple of days later, while he was getting ready to go to work, Dan got a call on his cell phone. A guy identified himself as Terry's brother; there'd been a terrible tragedy, and Terry was dead. Guy figured Dan would want to know. Funeral was going to be in another state, cards could be sent to such and such an address, etc.
Well, Dan was devastated. And everyone else in the group of friends, as well. They hadn't known him all that long, but they'd all liked him, and felt terrible that he was dead. Lot of calls came in to the show over the next few days, reminiscing about what a great guy Terry had been.
Then one day, Dan took a call from an unidentified caller. "Hi, this is Dan Cole, and you're on The Common Man."
"Hi. This is Terry."
The whole thing had been a a hoax, an elaborate prank, right from the first day he'd called the show, months earlier. The history he spent so many months building with these new friends had all been a setup. So, yeah. People do this shit. Why? Damned if I know. But they do. That's a big reason I don't invest a lot of emotional energy in building relationships with people I've never met and never will meet, and it's the big reason i don't invest much energy at all in whether some internet poster is alive or dead. For most purposes, nobody's real until they're sitting across a table from me. If Spinner's dead, rest in peace and my sincere condolences to his loved ones. If he's not, my life's no different than it was before I heard the news or read his first post, and it won't be any different tomorrow.
_____________________________
Panda, panda, burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Made you all black and white and roly-poly like that?
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