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On May 7, 6:59 pm, "Avenger"
avengers.co.uk> wrote:>
yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
>
> news:436e52ca-d8b8-4241-83bb-57f873c8d82f@u12g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
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> On May 7, 6:01 pm, "Avenger" avengers.co.uk> wrote:
>>> Don't get mad, get E-venge!
>> By LAURA TOPHAM - More by this author » Last updated at 23:25pm on 6th May
>> 2008
>> Comments
>
>> Natalie Lue would be the first to agree that hell hath no fury like a
>> woman
>> scorned.
>
>> When she discovered that her fiancé Tom had been sleeping with other women
>> behind her back - one of her friends caught him on a date with someone
>> else - the rage she felt wouldn't go away.
>
>> "I felt a terrible anger, which began eating away at me, bubbling away in
>> my
>> mind," is how she describes it.
>
>> In the past, Natalie might have taken revenge by cutting up her faithless
>> fiancé's clothes, or perhaps even trashing his beloved car.
>
>> Scroll down for more...
>
>> Thanks to the internet, though, a far more lethal form of vengeance is now
>> at hand.
>
>> Natalie, like a growing number of other betrayed and deceived women,
>> decided
>> to take her revenge online.
>
>> "I woke up at 5am and felt an overwhelming urge to vent my anger," says
>> the
>> 30-year-old sales consultant from Surrey.
>
>> "So I logged onto my computer and set up a blog."
>
>> On it, she began to pour out the details of her troubled relationship.
>
>> "It only took ten minutes - but it felt incredibly empowering," she says.
>
>> When 25-year-old Poppy Harris discovered her boyfriend was looking for
>> other
>> women on an internet dating website, her tears didn't last for long.
>
>> A few clicks of the mouse here and a spot of typing there and the
>> advertising executive from Walton-on-Thames had transformed the man in
>> question from a good-looking, affluent sports coach searching for a pretty
>> young woman to date into an unemployed layabout seeking an older woman in
>> her 50s or 60s.
>
>> "It was the easiest thing in the world to hack into the website and change
>> all his details," she says, laughing at the memory.
>
>> "I would have loved to have seen his face when the e-mails started
>> arriving."
>
>> The devastating power of the internet as a tool of revenge was revealed in
>> January by actress Jane Slavin who took 'e-venge' on her lover,
>> world-famous
>> composer Michael Nyman, after he spurned her with no explanation.
>
>> Scroll down for more...
>
>> Internet revenge: Actress Jane Slavin took 'e-venge' on her lover,
>> world-famous composer Michael Nyman, after he spurned her with no
>> explanation
>
>> Posing as a beautiful woman called 'Lucia', she began a flirtatious online
>> relationship with Nyman, who began bombarding 'Lucia' with explicit
>> e-mails.
>
>> The crowning moment of her revenge came when 'Lucia' agreed to meet Nyman
>> in
>> a café in North London. At the appointed time, it was Jane, of course, who
>> walked in.
>
>> To compound the humiliation of the man who wrote the haunting film score
>> for
>> The Piano, Slavin wrote an online diary drawing attention to Nyman's
>> physical failings.
>
>> A quick surf around the web makes it clear that such acts of vengeance are
>> becoming increasingly common. Mugshots of hapless-looking men, stamped
>> with
>> captions such as 'Here's the beast!' or, more simply, 'Beware!', are
>> flagged
>> up online for all the world to see.
>
>> In the U.S., there are countless websites and blogs dedicated to wronged
>> women and the men who have hurt them - and the UK is fast following.
>> Boiling
>> bunnies is a thing of the past: revenge, it seems, is a dish best served
>> up
>> on a web page.
>
>> For the women, online vengeance serves as both catharsis and punishment.
>> It
>> is also possibly the most public way of dragging down an ex-lover - the
>> modern-day equivalent of putting him in the stocks and pelting him with
>> rotten tomatoes.
>
>> "It felt great to release the pent-up frustration," says Natalie Lue, who
>> was engaged to Tom for five years, but discovered his infidelity only
>> after
>> ending their relationship.
>
>> "It also felt great knowing so many people were being entertained by his
>> terrible behaviour."
>
>> "People started sending me e-mails saying they related to my frustrations.
>
>> "This spurred me on and I started detailing everything that had happened
>> with my ex. I felt I was settling scores, and it made me laugh that I was
>> exposing personal details about him to thousands of people.
>
>> "I told it exactly how it was. How he'd treated me like I was beneath him;
>> how he'd been seeing another woman before we broke up; how he wasn't even
>> nice the night he proposed.
>
>> "And because we'd met through colleagues and shared mutual friends, lots
>> of
>> people knew exactly who I was writing about."
>
>> But if the net has made it easier to give the nation's cheaters and liars
>> their come-uppance, it's impossible not to question whether it is taking
>> over all aspects of our love lives.
>
>> Once, it was thought it was only teenagers who spent hours online playing
>> out their stormy pubescent relationships.
>
>> Now it is clear that millions of grown women also use the internet to find
>> love via dating websites such as
match.com and social websites such as
>> Facebook and MySpace.
>
>> And when it all goes wrong, these same women are returning to their
>> computers to bury their lovers.
>
>> Take divorcée Laura Milnes, for example. The 44-year-old office worker
>> found
>> Chris - a former boyfriend from her 20s - through the website Friends
>> Reunited.
>
>> She discovered his infidelity by hacking into his e-mails - and took
>> revenge
>> by humiliating him online.
>
>> "Instant therapy", she calls it.
>
>> The irony is, of course, that it is the internet itself that has made
>> infidelity easier.
>
>> Laura, from Maltby in South Yorkshire, freely admits that she knew company
>> executive Chris was married when she contacted him via Friends Reunited
>> five
>> years ago. The couple had dated for a year when she was 20.
>
>> Twenty years later, divorced and with two teenage children, she turned to
>> the internet for company.
>
>> As Laura puts it: "I found myself curiously searching for Chris online.'
>> And
>> when she saw his profile, she e-mailed him.
>
>> "He replied instantly and my stomach lurched. Even though 20 years had
>> passed, I couldn't help but feel excited to hear what he was up to. Soon
>> we
>> were emailing each other all the time."
>
>> Despite the fact that he was married, Laura insists: "It seemed innocent.
>> When he phoned a few weeks later, we were like two old friends chatting
>> away.
>
>> "Not long after, he texted saying there was a surprise outside my house.
>
>> "I was really shocked when Chris himself drove up. We just sat in his car
>> talking. He looked exactly the same as I remembered, aside from a few
>> extra
>> lines on his face."
>
>> One thing led to another and the pair embarked on an affair.
>
>> "Even though I knew it was wrong, and really hurtful to his wife, I
>> couldn't
>> help it," she says. "I was bowled over."
>
>> At first it was just occasional weekends when they saw each other. Then
>> Chris would invite her to Austria, where he worked during the week, for
>> short holidays.
>
>> "We enjoyed eating out every night and listening to music," says Laura.
>> "This all went on for about ten months.
>
>> "All the while, Chris insisted that he and his wife no longer had sex and
>> were more like friends, staying together for the sake of their kids.
>
>> "Perhaps I was naive, but I chose to believe him.
>
>> "Despite his marriage, we were like a normal couple. He said he loved me
>> and
>> that he had never been unfaithful before."
>
>> But then Laura found she was pregnant.
>
>> "Chris said he was about to tell his wife about our affair when I
>> miscarried," she says.
>
>> Not long after, Chris's visits began to tail off.
>
>> "I called his wife, saying I wanted to speak to her about Chris," says
>> Laura.
>
>> "She didn't sound surprised. She asked me to go round to their house and
>> tell her everything."
>
>> After talking for several hours, the two women decided to look on his
>> computer.
>
>> "We found he was registered on internet dating sites and had been
>> messaging
>> women across the country," she says.
>
>> "I realised then that I'd been fed a pack of lies. His wife even revealed
>> they'd been having a normal sexual relationship. I felt sick and
>> betrayed."
>
>> Back home, she logged onto her lover's secret Hotmail account using the
>> home
>> computer password his wife had used. It worked.
>
>> "I discovered even more slushy emails to other women," she says.
>
>> "Each one I read made me more angry. There were lots between him and a
>> lady
>> in Scotland, and I learned he'd been on holiday with her. He'd told her he
>> loved her, too."
>
>> Laura copied the most intense, personal message he'd sent her and pasted
>> it
>> into an e-mail which she sent to everyone in his address book.
>
>> "I wanted everyone to know what he'd been up to. I got a huge rush of
>> adrenaline as I hit 'Send'."
>
>> Soon, replies were flying in from all over the world, saying things like:
>> "Good on you!"
>
>> Before she knew it, Chris himself was on the phone.
>
>> "He rang and said: 'What are you playing at? Are you trying to get me
>> sacked?'
>
>> "But the damage was already done. I'm so glad I sent that e-mail. It felt
>> absolutely brilliant.
>
>> "Women can't fight physically so need other means of attack. As long as it
>> does not cause long-term damage, I think it's harmless.
>
>> "Ultimately, Chris kept his wife and his job, while I released all my
>> frustration and anger. E-venge is like instant therapy."
>
>> But having humiliated a lover online, at what point should a woman call it
>> a
>> day? For how long must a badly-behaved lover be punished?
>
>> One problem is that blogs posted in anger are hard to get rid of once they
>> have whizzed off into cyberspace.
>
>> As yet, there have been no legal challenges to such websites in the UK,
>> but
>> in New York a man sued his ex-wife over podcasts at her website on the
>> grounds that they included statements that were "obnoxious, derogatory or
>> offensive" and violated terms of their divorce settlement.
>
>> The court found in favour of the woman's right to free speech.
>
>> British blogger Natalie Lue insists: "I did write incredibly intimate
>> details about my ex, but they're my experiences, so I'm entitled to.
>
>> "Sometimes it feels strange that our relationship was read about by
>> thousands of people, but there's never been any comeback."
>
>> But once Natalie had finished pouring scorn on her ex-fiancÈ Tom, she
>> found
>> herself reluctant to give up her blog.
>
>> "When I started having dates again, I'd write about any bad behaviour I
>> encountered. None of my boyfriends knew I was writing about them on the
>> internet, which I found very funny.
>
>> "I have a new partner now, but I'd never write about him because we have a
>> daughter together. He makes a point of not reading my blog - he'd prefer
>> to
>> find out things directly."
>
>> Natalie, Laura and Poppy also argue that their cyber words have brought
>> comfort to other women.
>
>> "My outpourings seemed to connect with other women," says Natalie.
>
>> "I realised it was helping them with their relationships, so I set up
>> another site. Together, my blogs get 130,000 users every month.
>
>> "It's empowering - both for me and for readers who learn through my
>> relationships."
>
>> But it's hard not to wonder where this cyber bitching will end.
>
>> It could be argued, too, that these women would do better simply to get
>> over
>> their broken hearts and move on rather than washing their dirty linen in
>> public.
>
>> Poppy insists that she has finally done that.
>
>> "I realised I had to let go and move on with my life," she says - though
>> not
>> before she had sent him an e-mail as 'Busty Belinda', suggesting a time
>> and
>> place to meet and insisting that he must be carrying a dozen red roses.
>
>> "I hope he felt a right chump standing under the clock at Euston Station
>> waiting for 'Busty Belinda'," she says, laughing.
>
>> "It may be sad - but boy was it satisfying."
>
>> Whoever said that romance is dead may well be right.
>
>> One thing is clear - any man who deceives a computer-literate woman is
>> treading on decidedly deadly ground.
>
> I'd hardly call them computer literate, they just stole a password lol Any
> smart man knows how to hide things on a pc AND to lock it.
>
>
>
>> . Some names have been changed for legal reasons.
>
> It's very sad when people resort to this. There is a website called
>
DontDateHimGirl.com and I believe that a lawyer in the US took the
> owners of the website to court because his former girlfriend or wife
> posted similar types of stuff about him. I never heard what the
> outcome was, but someone on this NG might know. This particular
> website has hundreds of detailed posts about men and what they have
> done in their previous relationships. Most posts have pictures of the
> men attached.
>
> The funny thing is, all the females do is hurt themselves. The men reading
> what they write just think they're crazy vengeful bitches and won't go near
> them. Females reading the stuff know that other females a crazy liars and
> make up a lot of nonsense so they don't believe it either. In fact, females
> reading this stuff might want to meet the man themselves lol
> Then, you may have some men who will just kill them. These girls better be
> careful.
It's actually funny! Some of the african-american girls who post there
are barely literate. Their posts are hilarious. I don't think men
would even bother to visit the site unless they heard that they were
listed. I particularly love the girls who date men who are married or
have kids with several other women and then wonder why they are left
pregnant and alone. Some of the men are genuine pigs, but many of the
women are dumb as rocks!
>
>> . Additional reporting Diana Appleyard.
>
>> commentIconSm.gif
>> 1KViewDownload
