If @carrmah & @rilliebear are friends, he looks like a disloyal dick. If he pretends he doesn’t know her, she looks crazy and overwrought.

What Would Carrmah Do?

If @carrmah’s job was at risk because of Twitter, and it was REALLY that serious, wouldn’t bringing back his Twitter account be dangerous and stupid?

What Would Carrmah Do?

If @carrmah felt genuinely hurt by my unfollow, why wouldn’t he just ask publicly why I unfollowed (in exactly the same was as others do), and then apologize for the misunderstanding, rather than trying to spin an unfollow as “cyberbullying”?

What Would Carrmah Do?

If Carrmah weren’t so caught up in the star game that they’ve become an overwhelming influence in his life, why would he believe stars could be used to manipulate or “punish” someone else?

What Would Carrmah Do?

If he was really a normal, real person who valued friendship over stars, and wasn’t worried about looking like the “good guy” to followers, why not just say sorry? Why block someone who opens the door to give you a chance?

What Would Carrmah Do?

Do the math. There is one reason and one reason only to act the way that he has: to make himself appear victimized in order to make other people look like bullies, rather than to reveal that he did something petty and got caught at it. He’s the only one who benefits from how things have gone down.

When @carrmah unfollowed @rilliebear, she was confused about why her friend would do that. He didn’t say a word, didn’t explain anything through DM, and instantly cut off her ability to send him a private message asking about it by unfollowing. But to give him the benefit of the doubt - hey, maybe it’s a glitch, maybe it’s something else -  she waited a while.

Almost a day later, she tweeted, mentioning him, that no one unfollowing her had ever hurt her like @carrmah’s unfollow. As described before, they were FRIENDS, or at least she thought so. They both came from Cape Breton. They’d talked about weddings and proposals and relationships, and what parts of the island they were from, and what they did. It was not impersonal. She knows where he proposed to his wife and a lot of other personal info that she hasn’t shared anywhere. She couldn’t understand it.

@carrmah’s response was so send her a belligerent DM, accusing her of “calling him out in public” and told her that he would follow her again if she was “done telling fart jokes”. Obviously, coming from anyone, this might be somewhat hurtful - and once again she was left wondering, “How the heck did I call him out in public?” Because he seemed so weirdly hurt by it, she removed the tweet mentioning him from her stream. After all, she still thought they were friends.

I know who @carrmah follows, and I’ve seen some of the tweets he has starred. Obviously, he was feeling pissy about something related to her (OMG a woman made fart jokes!), because he unfollowed her while he never unfollowed other people for food baby jokes & other crude humour. At the exact same time, I had made 3 fart jokes as well. He didn’t unfollow me. So, his “because of fart jokes” thing was either fictional to cover forgetfulness or incompetence, or it was outright hypocrisy. Or maybe it was because she wasn’t starring enough of his tweets?

My suggestion to her was that she should just unfollow him and be done with it. No big deal. He’s decided he’s not a friend, and that she’s an inconvenience. I left it at that for a few hours. She had to go out for a while, and when she came home she found a DM from @carrmah that couldn’t seem to be taken as anything but a “get over it” type of statement.

When she later showed me the DMs he’d sent her, I decided that I wasn’t going to follow such a person. I sent him a DM - it was not “nasty” (I didn’t save it because at the time I didn’t think I was going to need to PROVE anything later). What it said, approximately, was “I don’t like the way you treated my wife. I am giving you more courtesy than you gave her by telling you WHY I am unfollowing you.”

So, let’s summarize the sequence of events:

1. HE unfollowed her.
2. She expressed sadness.
3. He got ignorant with her, , acted like SHE was out of line to be upset about it.
4. I unfollowed him, except I told him why.

It’s just an unfollow, right? That’s what he said. His exact words on Tumblr:

“People follow me… unfollow me… and follow back all the time.  It makes no difference whatsoever.  I don’t get bent out of shape and send nasty messages.  …and then to have someone else gang in.  Especially when we don’t even interact with each other.” - @carrmah

He doesn’t get all bent out of shape about it? Really?

After I unfollowed him, he went to my Favstar page and removed every star on recent tweets he could find. He did the same on @rilliebear’s page. But you know, he wasn’t “bent out of shape” or anything, right?

After I posted that if people were going to be ignorant they could go ahead and remove their stars from all of my Tweets on Favstar, he went back to cover his tracks and put a star on EVERYTHING. Obviously, he didn’t want anyone to notice what he’d done, so if his stars were there he must not have done it.

I wish I had known at the time that I would want to have evidence to defend OUR character, but I didn’t. So, I didn’t go around taking screen shots of his petty behaviour. I only made an oblique tweet mentioning that petty people could remove stars on Favstar which makes for an interesting kind of abuse of the system (for MANY reasons). So sadly, I didn’t collect evidence of it at the time.

I know it isn’t much - but Favotter DID catch him in the act. These screen shots were taken at around 8pm on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009. Favotter found a star he had put on my Tweet, but Favstar shows no star. It USED to. It used to show @carrmah’s stars on most of those recent Tweets, as a matter of fact, but sadly the technical limitations of the other sites (they don’t deep crawl) means that they didn’t catch him playing games removing, adding, and then removing stars again.

You know what? Maybe it isn’t enough evidence to convince you of anything. You have to make up your own mind. But think about it - what kind of a person removes all their stars from someone’s tweets because they unfollowed them? What kind of person then decides to try and cover it up, putting them on  - and then TAKES THEM OFF AGAIN?

Maybe that doesn’t mean anything to you, but it says something to me about that person’s character and integrity.

But you, you can draw your own conclusions.

Cape Breton is actually several interconnected islands off the east coast of Canada. It is a part of Nova Scotia, south-west of Newfoundland, and is about 19% of the land area in the province - a little over 10000 square kilometres. It actually consists of multiple municipalities and counties and it has a population of around 140000 people.

The area is very economically depressed. It used to be a centre of coal mining & steel production in Canada. These industries have died out completely, leaving thousands of people without work. Because of this, the population is constantly shrinking as people young and old move away to find work. Many others leave for months or years to earn money in lucrative off-island jobs, and then come back. Statistics show that there are typically over TWENTY THOUSAND people who were born or raised in Cape Breton, or who call Cape Breton home, who have gone elsewhere to work. Elsewhere is pretty much anywhere: depending on their qualifications, they go to various parts of the U.S.A., Alberta, Ontario & B.C., Canada, I’ve even known of some who have gone to Africa or Europe because they could work there.

Much of the area shares common heritage. Not many new people move there, so frequently when one Caper meets up with another on the internet or in person, they become friendly. No, everyone doesn’t know everyone else, but they share roots in the food, the sights, the places they go & the history of the area. They understand each other’s references, just like people from San Francisco would “get” the references of other people from San Francisco. @carrmah & @rilliebear shared many a DM talking nostalgically about their old home. They were friends who shared common roots, just as she has become friends with some local people around here that are from Cape Breton, and people who lived in our old town from Cape Breton. It happens all the time.

I know that @carrmah was telling people he was going to have to delete his twitter account because his job was at risk. Why would that be, exactly? If his work found out he was tweeting about nothing to do with them, he could be fired? Even if he was constantly saying nasty things about his employer, the concept is ridiculous. There are thousands and thousands of people from Cape Breton who leave there to work elsewhere. Knowing where he was from would not identify him any more than knowing that a Toronto twitterer that was visiting New York would allow you to pick them out of a crowd in New York City - especially with no picture of their face!

@carrmah lied to get sympathy. He claimed that if where he was from was found out, he could lose his job. Considering what little he shares publicly on Twitter, this would be virtually impossible. He lied to you to exaggerate the situation, and to make others look worse because his own actions made him look bad.

You don’t have to sit and take my word for this. Go read about it here. You need to just think about it. 140K plus people live there - it’s no tiny little town, it is a substantial geographical area. Another 20K people have left to work other places. Does knowing @carrmah is from Cape Breton enable you to find him in any way?

Think about it logically. Of course it doesn’t.

So… why would he say what he said then?

For one reason only. To protect his TWITTER reputation. To make sure people keep on following him and giving him stars.

How’s that for “too real”, @joesmithreally?

It’s actually one my wife told me her father used when she was a kid. I’m not sure if it is a Cape Breton saying or something he made up… but I think it’s apt.

Just tell the truth. The truth always stands on both feet, and it has a solid foundation. A lie stands on one leg, and when it is pushed it is going to fall over.

Individual truth is sometimes a matter of perspective. It can be coloured by personal feelings. It can be changed by mental illness or paranoia. It can become twisted. Can we blame those who are in these situations for having a truth that differs from the facts? It isn’t easy to do so, but ultimately people are responsible for their own actions - and if they try to DISTORT facts to force others to be on “their side”, amd those distortions cause harm to others, it IS unforgivable.

Here, I’m going to provide things that are facts. Sure, my personal feelings are sometimes going to colour my interpretation of those facts, but I’m going to tell the truth as plainly as possible for you to make your OWN decisions.

It’s up to you to draw your own conclusions. It’s up to YOU to consider everything carefully, and weigh it against what you’ve been told - no matter who told it to you - and remember to consider what might motivate someone to lie.

What do they have to lose? What do they have to gain? How does that compare to what you know of them and their past behaviour?

I ask one thing of you: THINK.