Information is a powerful thing.

Information can build a friendship or dissolve it. It can make a reputation or it can break it. When information is one sided or flat out wrong, that can be a very dangerous and unfair thing.

And that's why I'm here to explain the truth of what happened to me in the summer of 2003. Some may argue that too much time has passed to be concerned about it, but something being wrong for a long time doesn't make it less needful of being made right. If anything, it makes it more so.

I should point out before I start though that even though I assert that every word herein is completely true, I recognize that Libby is her own person, with her own mind and her own decisions. She does not necessarily endorse every word here as "the complete truth". And I do not speak for her.

On December 21st, 2002, Libby and I began a relationship that developed beyond a friendship and we became e-boyfriend and e-girlfriend, but she wanted that kept secret because she had been burned on other online relationships before. While I'm not going to pretend I ever was or am now an equal to Emily for her, that relationship was something that had a real-ness to it. It wasn't always a smooth road. Libby and I had been coming off nearly a 6 month period of not talking to each other because of someone whom I had figured out was a complete unworthy asshole, but took longer to show that to her. As well, we were dealing with issues involving my assimilation into IOP. There were a lot of arguments because of this, and half the blame for those is mine. And they set up what came later.

On April 20th, 2003, I feel we were very close to getting these issues behind us, when a complication introduced itself. After a chat joke, Rob took it upon himself, without Libby's express permission, to post a chat snippet into IOP, and based on this joke, publicly declare himself to be Libby's new e-boyfriend. From what I understand, this relationship was never real. Libby was always trying to find a way out of it without hurting someone she considered a friend, and the only time she enjoyed that relationship was when she was angry at me. But at the time, Libby and I were thrust into a hell of a spot and just trying to find some way to get out of it without having to throw away the form of relationship we had and without hurting Rob's feelings. We cared about him at the time, under a mistaken belief that he cared about either of us.

This caused the problems between us to be multiplied exponentially. Most of the time, we were arguing, and most of those arguments were as to when she was going to break it off with Rob, something I recognize now only made things worse. As an outlet to these arguments, Libby would begin to tell others on AIM, then through her new blog that I was upsetting her, but of course, the detail as to WHY was missing, making it seem like I was pissing Libby off for no reason. The only way I could have defended myself is to have spilled the secrets about our relationship, so I held my tongue. But this was the beginning of the reputation damage caused, and I argued then that this was a violation of the confidentiality we had at her insistence.

Things began breaking down in July. I was knocked offline for a couple of weeks. When I left, Libby was insisting that I was her boyfriend still, and I left thinking that the break might be good for us. When I came back, Libby had posted several entries about how she was dreading my return, had started to allow Rob to post in her blog, and had deleted all content in a side forum that we had.

But all that aside, it doesn't justify what I did next, and I sometimes have problems forgiving myself for it. Without talking to Libby first, I presumed that she had not only ended the relationship but ended all agreements pertaining to it in just about the cruelest way possible. I took it upon myself to tell Rob the truth, given that at the time, I thought he was a friend. When Libby came on, I came unglued at her, happening to call her a very nasty word (the c-word) twice. I understand now that that word is something that is very offensive in the cultural circles of Libby and others. To me, it's a bad word, but there are far worse. My point in using it was only to try to convey the message "You call yourself a bitch sometimes and you take pride in that. This goes way beyond being a bitch. This was wrong." Still, I should not have used that word. I apologized soon after to her in private, and have repeatedly done so since. But it had been publicized by Libby, whereas the circumstances behind it, nor the apology had not been.

Another complication arose out of this. At the time, we all assumed Rob was an okay guy. But as most of us know now, he has a self fixation which borders on a need for institutionalization. In passing, I had happened to let slip that Emily was a confidante to our relationship, given that I had to keep it secret from everyone else. Rob actually presumed that he had to be so important that Emily would betray her real life girlfriend in favor of some guy on the Internet to tell some secret that wasn't even hers. My revelation was a cause of Emily getting hurt. It wouldn't have happened without that. But Rob was the person who actually hurt her by giving her all sorts of shit about not being more important than her real life girlfriend and revealing secrets that weren't hers to reveal. I received the punishment for this, he got rewarded for at least another eight months.

That night when I talked to Libby, she was upset, and quite justifiably so. But, the next night and later that week, there seemed to be little hints dropped here and there that this wasn't the way she wanted things to go, and that not only did she still want to be friends, but there was still a chance she wanted to be boyfriend and girlfriend again. It was enough that I not only stayed friends with her, but still wanted things to be like they were before. It was in pursuit of this that I decided to stay quiet after that first night, even in the face of some severely harsh things being said about me.

And about a week and a half after things broke down, Libby blocked me on AIM. That's known. What isn't is that it was about 4 days later that she unblocked me, and we have talked ever since. I told her my intention was to repair the friendship between us and to win her back as a girlfriend. I had hopes that within a month or two, Libby and Rob would have an amicable "breakup", her and I would get back together, I'd return to IOP, and everything would be happy. I believe the biggest flaw in that theory was that Rob's self fixation showed up again in that rather than caring about her enough to get her calmed down and thinking about who she really wanted to be with, just "took his win" and continued to stir the pot against me after turning on me himself.

In September 2003, Libby and I privately decided to call ourselves friends again. For her own reasons, Libby did not apologize publicly until around January or so and did not admit she talked to me until late March. And even then, the way she wrote this information implied that it was a recent development.

In a possibly related fact, a bit after this, Rob and Libby broke up over matters which seem to be related to the fact that Libby wouldn't allow Rob to do or say whatever he wanted to do, including abusing her blog to pursue his vendetta against me as he had and has been doing to Krissie since January (something Libby received direct proof of, and was afraid he would do or had been doing to her blog). Shortly after he took his ball and went home, Libby killed all his power, and deleted every self indulgent post he ever made in her blog (which turned out to be all of them). Luckily, it turned out that we had repaired things enough for her to select me as her new Tech Support.

Unfortunately, IOP was forced to close on April 30th, 2004 because of Delphi's money grubbing tactics. I never got to return there, primarily (I am told) because Libby was afraid of fights. And I believe that there would be fights. These fights had been started by Rob, James and Mike (all three of whom I will say more about later). Unfortunately, the way things went down, I was preemptively punished for their misdeeds. But by that time, because of their misdeeds, especially James', IOP had been reduced to a pale shadow of its former self.

So that leads us to now. Libby and I both know Rob for the small, sad person he is, and he's out of the picture. Libby and I are publicly known as friends, and this account helps set the record straight on what really happened. As to whether Libby and I will get back together, if we do AND we decide to make it public, you'll be the first to know. And for all you know, maybe we already are back together..

In thinking about the situation, yes, Libby and I made a lot of mistakes. And we hurt each other through those mistakes. And I am sincerely very sorry to her for ever hurting her. But I do not believe we ever acted out of malice. Unfortunately, the situation was made far worse by three people who DID act out of malice.

Rob: You played the victim for all it was worth and gathered sympathy for it. But the truth is you wouldn't have been in this situation at all had you not taken that chat joke and posted it and pushed it without consent. You put Libby and I into a hell of a situation, and caused a ton of problems between us. But still, all that time, we were both worried about your feelings. My girlfriend said that she'd deal with the situation, and I trusted her to. But you and her were not a real relationship. That night I told you the truth, that was your chance to take this relationship that wasn't real, and make it something that was real. But you failed utterly because you didn't care about anyone but yourself. You tried to just "take your win", and as it turned out, you only cared about Libby for as long as she did what you wanted her to do. Since, while crying crocodile tears about how sad you were that we broke up, you began using Krissie to try to hurt me. You whispered lies into Charlie's ears to break him and I apart (though that just proved he was never really my friend either), and most lately and most despicably, you tried to use Madonna when she was hurting badly as a tool for your little vendetta. You are a sickening, pathetic human being who never deserved to be my friend. And I would have been better off for never knowing you.

Every friend you've ever had online, you've used and lied to. You pretend to care, you say all the nice little things, but it's only a charade, and it will all change the second they stop doing what you want. Those who still call themselves your friends just haven't been able to realize this yet.

Now, you may go into your Trillian logs to try to find some old conversation with Libby to disprove something I've said here... but the truth is that Libby, and a lot of other people as well have had to be careful to only tell you what you wanted to hear so you didn't go berserk.

James: You hated me from day one when I was in IOP. As to why, I'm not sure. Maybe it was inability to let a past that you only knew through hearsay go, even though everyone actually involved could. Maybe it was because you sincerely wanted IOP to be just you and girls, and I threatened that through being a high volume posting male. But for whatever reason, you hated me. Sean, your real life best friend, swore on his own reputation though that that hatred would never translate into abuse of your hammer against me. When things went wrong, Libby did indeed tell you to get rid of me, but that she would talk to Sean first. After a few days, and not hearing anything you made the call to go ahead and ban me. Twice in early August 2003, Libby calls it your call in the blog. But given your hatred of me, making that call on your own was a huge conflict of interest. A mod who really cared about the board and people on it would have done everything he could to avoid that. In this case, it would have been a simple matter to wait an hour or two and ask Libby for confirmation before you did it. You didn't do it, and I know why. You knew there was a chance she'd say no. However, by going ahead and making the call yourself, you changed Libby's decision from "Do I make the final call for the ban?" to "Do I overturn the ban AND buck James to do it?" And as you gambled, in her anger, she decided not to.

By this action, you betrayed IOP. You also betrayed Libby by abusing her anger and the situation, and you betrayed Sean by going against his swear on his reputation. And that hurt IOP. There was the direct effect of the friendly atmosphere being gone. Nobody may have up and left in protest, but there were a lot of people in there who knew this was utter bullshit... and who always had to worry if you might start plotting against them next. As well, all forums need to continue to grow and evolve, or they die. I represented IOP's evolution. You in fact posted that you would fight to the dying breath to make sure IOP wouldn't change, and your selfish, treacherous action was the ultimate outgrowth of that. And you got your wish. IOP didn't grow or evolve.

It stagnated and died.

And the fault lies completely on your head.

Mike: Let's face it, Mike, you're an unworthy little piss ant. You don't like me because when you did dumb ass hurtful childish things, I held you to an apology for them. And you apologized... but like a little pussy, you resented me for it. And from thereon out, you used any opportunity you could to take little shots at me that got farther and farther away from reality, so this whole situation became a goldmine to you. And you posted your typical bullshit on it, not worrying about what lies you spread about your alleged friend Libby in the process. But, as typical, you didn't know word one of what you were talking about. The sad thing is though, you've done more reputation damage to yourself than me. I tend to be able to spot the mentally diseased assholes out there before other people can. I spotted Chaz first, no one else saw it and they all denied it, and I was right. I spotted Wade first, no one else saw it, and they all denied it, and I was right. And I've spotted you. And some people deny it. Some people see it just as much though. And you can't help yourself, it's only going to be a matter of time before everyone else does too.

In any event, for anyone who's read this up to this point, I thank you for your patience and willingness to hear out the long overdue second side to this matter. I hope that pretty much all of you (except for the three idiots just addressed here) now know there was a second side to what happened in the Summer of 2003. For those of you who have stuck by me even though you never knew any of this or only knew parts of it, I appreciate your loyalty. For those of you who thought less of me after hearing lies and one-sided truths, I hope you're big enough men and women to reconsider your judgments. In any event, I consider this a long overdue vindication.