What?

[poliphilo]

One of my friends- a person I thought extremely sympathique- has been caught stealing other people's photographs and posting them as their own. Within the past couple of hours their journal has been deleted.

Many of the filched pictures came from this site http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/France/photo100850.htm

I am shocked and disappointed.

Why would anyone do such a thing?

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I will miss her, and I wish she had offered a chance for conversation. I think she is devastated.

She is probably very young, and she seemed like a very kind, rather ingenuous person.

I thought she was a marvelous photographer! And she may be--she says she also uses her own photographs.

This makes me very sad. Her father's ill, and she's in trouble, and she's cut off any chance to talk.

Wow.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

That's more or less how I feel. Very sorry for her. She was evidently a bit sad and a bit lost. I can't summon up much of the righteous outrage. Livejournal is after all a compensatory activity; it doesn't surprise me to hear that some people go more in the direction of fantasy than others.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a masquerade. We are all wearing our best faces. And some of us are wearing faces that don't belong to us. It makes me wonder if any of my other friends are perpetrating a hoax.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

(I was able to send her an email through LJ.)

It's all too easy to build a person who's not true. I am much more conflicted and complex than the personality I present on LJ--here's one: I have terrible stage fright, which breaks my heart because I love to sing.

And that's just one.

I've been thinking about this: why do I want people to read my stuff? Because it feels like a friendship.

If I were to pretend to be somebody else, someone younger and more beautiful (with a charming, fake photo of myself) and maybe with a Ph.D, I'd have to sustain a pack of lies that would inevitably be found out, because underneath the festooning I'd still be me, worrying about driving in heavy traffic or frowning into the mirror, hating getting older.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well done- about the email I mean. I must look into sending one myself.

Yeah, it does feel like friendship. When something like this happens I realize how much emotional investment I've made.

I started off with a mask on, deliberately blurring my gender and giving nothing personal away- but I soon got bored with that. Now I find LJ is very much about sustaining relationships.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I started off with a mask on, deliberately blurring my gender and giving nothing personal away- but I soon got bored with that. Now I find LJ is very much about sustaining relationships.

I used to be quite active in a newsgroup (and, when spammers and trollers took it over, many of us came here to LJ--a good move), and I made good friendships there. It still amazes me how much this computer connection means to me.

We'd have all these tempests in teapots on our newsgroup--one hostile, sort of crazy woman kept taking us to task. We all dreaded her Eye upon us!

Then one of us would get sick, or have a family crisis and we'd all rally around. Inevitably, we'd get real addresses and send cards. I've even sent birthday presents and get well presents.

One of the women in the newsgroup, HomemakerJ, has corresponded with me since I first got my computer, in the early days of the Internet. I've watched (via monitor) her son grow up from junior high until now he's the father of two twin girls.

Often, when I'm reading or writing comments, I like to pretend I'm sitting in someone's kitchen, and we're just talking. My noisy family still does that--we gather in Mother's kitchen and talk about everything! Sometimes (as in the case of my Democrat sister and my Republican brother) we yell!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I have a friend in New York. The friendship started when I reviewed some books of hers for a poetry magazine and then emailed her to say I'd done it.

It grew from there.

We now email one another twice a day and exchange gifts etc- but we've never met- and probably never will.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

OK. I've emailed her. I hope it gets through.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I will miss her too. She was unfailingly kind. She would graciously acknowledge every post and comment.