If a Jelly has been inconsistent with what they say on Fluther, do you think they should be called out on it?

Well, yes. We prefer people that we know are actually the people they present themselves to be. People pretending to be someone they aren’t is uncomfortable, once we catch on.
There is a certain amount of trust here.

I think there’s a difference between some Jellies whose lives actually have changed over the years or who are asking questions from a different place in their lives and those who are deliberately misleading or catfishing. There was someone on here for a few months a year or so ago whose age, situation and mental state was totally different from week to week. That is definitely worth questioning but mainly if it pertains to the question at hand. If a trusted longtime member of the collective has been deliberately misleading people, it also can lead to a breakdown in the community. (anyone remember Stranger?) But if an occasional person comes in with some discrepancies in their story that may or may not be relevant, I personally would tend to give them a pass in that question.

Really, be frustrated or annoyed, but I remember a lot of Jellies deciding it wasn’t so bad when it turned out that a jelly had spent eight (count ‘em, 8 tears fabricating a false persona and fooling everyone.
Don’t want to believe someone? Then don’t. But if it’s not actively harming anyone, it’s not really knicker-twist-worthy.

I think asking them about the inconsistencies is fine. I don’t think asking is the same as accusing or calling them a troll. Let them answer and explain themselves before assuming they are dishonest or trolls. I don’t like when a gang piles up on a jelly either.

This OP is very broad. I can think of numerous ways to answer it.

If a person is inconsistent in the views they express on a given topic, then I can imagine others will readily point that out from question to question. I have seen that done on this site.

If a person asked questions about the same topic repeatedly but from different ways, I believe others will point that out as well. I have seen that done when a person asked many times about the same topic coming at it from slightly different perspectives because the asker did not like the answers from the other ways the question was phrased.

If a person is giving personal information about their lives that is inconsistent over time, I can imagine that will be pointed out. This type of deception strikes at the heart of interpersonal communication. We all come to any type of communication expecting the other person to represent themselves truthfully. As we grow from childhood to more mature years, we learn to wait to fully accept what others say about themselves as truthful until we get to know them better. We are wary. Even while we are wary, we usually give a person the benefit of the doubt, until they prove to be untrustworthy.

@canidmajor I remember that incident very well. That jelly did active harm in the 8 years he deceived the collective. He injured me personally. It was not harmless fun. He was malicious at times.

@Hawaii_Jake, yes, I remember. My point mentioning him was that it seems to be a bit hypocritical to be saying this now, when people so supported that jelly in the past.
My “harmless” mention referred to the Jellies who dance around their info, only damaging their own credibility.

By all means! After all, “You shalt not commit hypocrisy” should be one of the Twenty Commandments, aside from being a major sin here.

I prefer to call out people who are incoherant rather than inconsistent. People’s opinions can change.

It’s up to each jelly, how they approach subject matter. You can treat each thread as a separate discussion. Or hold someone to their respective historical opinions.
As mentioned above, people do change as well….

I just called out a user who recently said they don’t watch Game of Thrones when I noticed a thread from a few months ago where they said how shockingly bad the show was. How would they know if they haven’t seen it? I don’t see any harm in pointing something like this out.

People do change over time, especially younger users. How many of us have had wild dreams in our 20s and didn’t know what we wanted to do with our lives? I’d say most of us. Calling someone out as a troll because they have been all over the place with thoughts and aspirations over years does a disservice to the community. Just my opinion.

@Stache I have seen shows that I don’t regularly watch. Maybe that is what they meant? Or, maybe since the Q with you they saw an episode.

I agree with you about people changing over time, especially younger users.

One inconsistency I can think of regarding myself is I remember a long time ago saying I almost never use fluther on my phone, and now the majority of the time I am on my phone. That’s part of the problem when I write on fluther the last few years, my phone causes me to have many more typos. I blame it on that anyway.

@Stache If he said he doesn’t watch it, then his comment from months earlier makes sense. He watched it, or part of it, once, hated it, and never watched it again. From that point he doesn’t watch it.

I think the OP is talking about situations where, for example, a new jelly talks about being a virgin, and how scared she is to have sex the first time, and we all give her advice.
Then a week later she’s talking about how many guys she’s been with and could she be pregnant.

There was another Jelly who posted constantly about guys who she thought liked her, and she’d go into detail about all the little things she saw him do, or thought she saw him do, that would show that. But every week it would be a different guy and a different scenario. One week would be an office. The next a college campus.

@canidmajor  “I remember a lot of Jellies deciding it wasn’t so bad when it turned out that a jelly had spent eight (count ‘em, 8 years fabricating a false persona and fooling everyone.”

That kind of got me too. I sort of figured those stores had quite a large B.S. component though. I did like the person even if it was mostly fabricated.

My opinions have probably changed somewhat significantly over the last decade. People have changed my mind on certain things too. The context and timeline is important.

As far as the 8 years of lies, if I’m correct about who it is, I wasn’t that upset, because I don’t feel like he ever asked bullshit questions just to rile us up, and I think he did offer opinions and facts that helped discussions and helped jellies. His tales were usually entertaining, and not harmful.

He was living about 9 miles from me at one point. When I moved there I had contacted him to maybe meet up, and he says I had it wrong about where he lived. He must have somewhere in the beginning said it, and it stuck in my mind. That’s all I can figure about why I thought it.

May have been 9 miles as the crow flies ; )

Exactly. :) Aw.

@ARE_you_kidding_me : His stories were actually quite authentic (if not his own). I am very familiar with the culture he described, and the people who live it. When he wasn’t familiar with things I mentioned I chalked it upto the fact that I had been twenty years out of date, so I didn’t question it. When he then got very nasty to me, it worked (clever him) and I pretty much stopped interacting with him. Made sense, in hindsight.
But I fail to see that giving him a pass because he lied so very much better than the users who dance all around their various truths, and thus don’t really make connections is in any way better.

@Stache Oh, if a person is clearly bullshitting then I’d call them out as you have if I caught it. I don’t mind people who are inconsistent or change their beliefs. I do not like liars, especially in this case, where the person is just being a troll.

I think it’s an issue of both motive and the degree of harm or malevolence involved. I know for a fact that I’m too quick to jump to assumptions when people appear inconsistent.

But our Crow Friend didn’t ask stupid questions. He just spun out a yarn for us to enjoy. He may have pretended to be someone he wasn’t, but he didn’t deviate from it, so as far as I’m concerned he was who he said he was. And it made him happy. And I swear, he was a professional writer. I kept googling sentences, thinking he’d pop up somewhere.
I miss him.

@Dutchess_III He did hurt some of us who bought his stories.

I know that. And I am sorry.

Lies hurt. He was not writing fiction to be published and enjoyed. He was lying. At times, he was also vicious.

He hadn’t “spun out yarns for us to enjoy”, he lied purposefully over years in order to mislead and deceive this entire online community. When someone either got too close, or knew enough to perhaps discover his deception, he hurt them and/or got nasty. Defending him now, especially on this thread is either embarrassingly naïve or very hypocritical.

I’m so embarrassed. ~

I guess I missed where he was hurting people. I mean that seriously, maybe I wasn’t on those Q’s. There were times he was harsh to me in a debate, but never anything that stung me so bad I remember the detail. I guess I missed some of it.

He pulled the same lashing back trick at me when I got close to uncovering the veil at least once. For the most part when he posted on different subjects other than his life they were thoughtful and contributed to the community here. That’s more than I can say for a few others so I can’t say I’m all too upset about the lying. I suspected he was dressing up the truth a bit but not outright fabricating it. He’s probably not the only one that has been doing that here either. If I knew him in real life I would not put up with it though, I don’t keep friends like that around.

I always thought maybe he was telling tales from a seagoing life from younger years, or maybe other stories he knew. I had no idea so many were so invested. He was really awesome.
I don’t remember him lashing out at me.
He tried my onion soup, gave it a thumbs up.

BUT, in keeping with the question asked, he was not inconsistent! You have to give him that!

They should definitely be called on it! We’ve taken all the BS we can and we’re not going to stand for it anymore! ;-(

Hell no! Leave them alone and stop being so vindictive! ;-(

I am the epitome of consistency and I defy anyone to find ANY discrepancies in my statements!

@Brian1946

Nobody is more consistently self-contradickting than you are!

@Incoherency_

Leave me alone <choke> and stop <sob> being so <boo hoo> vindictive!

@Brian1946

We’ve taken all the BS we can from you and we’re not going to stand for it anymore! ;-(

Sorry- I just realized that I exhausted the supply of exclamation points for this thread, so here are some more!:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow! I’m late to this thread. What happened?

For me, it depends upon different factors. If someone regularly asks questions, especially ones that seem odd, or “out there”, or don’t make sense, to me, and then I see the OP making a lot of inconsistent statements, changing the “facts” when questioned about those “facts”, or becoming angry or defensive when asked about those facts and details, with no explanation for why we are chasing a moving target, while trying to answer a question, yes, definitely I will call them out on it.

Especially if it is a user who asks a lot of questions about the exact same, or similar subjects, where there is a history of the collective going back and forth with the OP.

Especially if the OP seems to be asking a question about themselves, and their problems that they want solved. None of us can answer a question about a situation that seems not to be real, or when the OP changes their details in subsequent questions about the same subject, or changes the details in the exact same thread, when questioned, or shown their own previous statements. Otherwise, it’s like playing musical chairs.

In the case of our former, now deceased Jelly, I think it’s interesting, and a little odd, that he had an entire online persona that was not what we all thought, but I am one that falls into the camp of believing that no one on Fluther is exactly who they say they are, but some are more like they’re real selves than others. I am not a yellow squash.

If someone says they are Rex, when they are really Joe, and say they’re sailing the world, rather than working at a bank, that doesn’t bother me at all. But if someone says they have three kids, and then later says they’ve never had kids, and their husband is abusing them, then later says they’ve never been married, that throws up a red flag for me.

I get that young people change over time. Maybe someone had a boyfriend, and later they have a different boyfriend, or maybe a girlfriend, but those changes are easily explained. It’s when those things don’t get explained is when we end up scratching our heads, and asking questions.

In my experience, our former, deceased Jelly wasn’t usually asking questions about odd sexual predilections, abusive family members, or potentially illegal activities, which are what some of the other Jellies that have regularly gotten “called out” have discussed. I guess I never got hurt by that Jelly, he seemed fine to me, and it was an interesting, yet sad, revelation when I found out he was living a double life, and then that he had passed.

Not all questions hold equal weight. Not all deception holds equal weight. It’s not apples and oranges. If something doesn’t seem right to me, or seems fishy, I will question it, and call it out, even if other people don’t want to know the whole story.

” I am not a yellow squash.” LOLLL!! I had to stop reading and refill my coffee on that @Kardamom. You mean…you’‘ve been lying to us all of this time?!

That was a tremendous post @Kardamom. It really said all there was to say, IMO. The only time a ridiculous Jelly bothers me is when, as you said, they post questions designed to elicit all kinds of sympathy and asking what to do, we give them advice and they trash all of our advice. Our seafaring friend never did anything close to that. He was probably the most consistent of Jellies.

I am not a….wait. I have to go see what I am at this moment…..I am not an 8 year old boy or a German Shepherd or a popup camper.

That damned photo has ruined any other persona you might choose to invent.

I’m sorry!! LOLL!!

A year ago my political views were way different than they are now. I wouldn’t want it brought up now as I don’t think that way, but at the same time I’m not ashamed I thought those things, so it may not be a huge deal.
I think if somebody said they have been married for 5 years 2 days ago and now they only have a boyfriend I’d point that out.

@sergeantqueen So you no longer support Trump?

I don’t know. Haven’t been paying attention to him. Not as much I don’t think. I would say when it comes to policies and things, I mostly agree with conservatives but 99% of social issues I don’t.

I’m glad to hear that, @SergeantQueen. Not so much that you have changed some of your views, but that you have thought enough about things that your awareness is heightened. I know people who get so locked in that they never actually think about the stuff they support, no matter how much damage or unfair change it might impose on others.
Good for you!

@SergeantQueen I think you’ll find that a good many “conservatives” actually think more like the left on social issues but simply can’t stomach all the over the top political correctness or have different solutions. It’s basically the religious right making that side of the isle look bad. They’re just that loud and those who do lean left on social issues tend to be quiet about it. As mentioned finding your take on things is a mark of maturity rather than simply taking sides which is a big problem right now in this country.

@ARE_you_kidding_me That is more or less how I feel. I agree with the left on many social issues, but I can’t get on board with the extreme PC/SJW types and their positions. And those people, like the religious right on the other side, are the loudest and think they “own” the positions. And when you don’t take a side, you’re accused of being an amoral fence-sitter who’s too much of a pussy to take a side. In other words, I’m saying it’s all shitty.

@Demosthenes Agreed. Navigating the grey on your own makes you a pariah but it’s what we all should be doing.

The only defense sarge is to learn all you can. It matters a great deal “who’s” doing the teaching, but even schooling in “alternative facts” will be remedied when you have accumulated enough knowledge to judge accordingly.

It’s really too bad the republicans who are socially more left don’t have a bigger voice in their party. Or, maybe it’s good, I don’t know how to think about it since generally I align with the Democrats.

The republicans have deferred to their religious base for years, and maybe it’s time to stop when it comes to civil rights. The base was 50% or maybe even less. Catering to them is insane, especially if they are on the wrong side of what is ethical, just, and American.

The problem is that too many legs of their plurality are fringe groups. It amounts to an infernal alliance of Hillary’s “deplorables”. I mean birthers, racists, skin heads, holocaust deniers, climate change deniers, gun lobbyists, immigrant bashers, misogynists, gay bashers, miscreants of every stripe and the collective is gargantuan.

@stanleybmanly that’s what you’re supposed to think, that’s not how it is. Well, the guns are true and you can put me in that group but everything else you mention represents a minority. It’s that attitude especially toward people in the flyover states that had union members, blue collar workers and other traditional democrat voting segments throw their support to Trump. Watch Trump or someone like him win again if people on the left continue to cast the “deplorable” shadow on anyone who disagrees with the them on any tiny little thing. The left act like if one conservative out of 10,000 is a nazi skin head they all must be. It’s almost like there is some fundamental, innate need on the left to have a “gargantuan” evil force to go up against.

The guns is stupid. No one is trying to take them away.

@Dutchess_III there are quite a few who would and they make no bones about it.

But that’s the story they are encouraged to buy. @ARE you kidding me. THIS is how it is. The working class in this country is fully justified in its disillusion with the Democratic party. What to do about it ? Throw in with the list I gave above to further your interests? That list is fundamental to the right because THEY ARE REQUIRED IF THE PARTY OF THE PRIVILEGED IS TO HAVE ANY VIABILITY AT ALL. The problem is that neither YOU or its membership understand that the DEMOCRATIC party is NO LONGER the party of the left. It is merely the party left of the party NOW defined by racists, sexists, skinheads, etc. AND on the bread and butter issues, barely left of the Republicans at all. Forget about left and right and take a HARD look at the man in front of us.

I’ve never once heard anyone say they wanted to get rid of guns altogether. Not once. And I’m all for stricter gun laws and back ground checks.

Me neither. I’ve heard people say, and I feel also that the average citizen doesn’t need submachine guns and automatic weapons. Police and military, yes, Joe and Jane Public, no.

The gun issue rather clearly has nothing to do with need. It’s like my NEED for racing pigeons or model railroading.

You’ll notice that the vast majority of the people who “need” guns are men. It’s a bit stick that makes a loud bang.

@Dutchess_III Men tend to collect them true but the handgun permit application numbers show women in equal amounts and in some states they may actually lead.
It never ceases to amaze me just how much you want to belittle men. You need counseling for whatever it is that has happened to you that is making you like this.

@ARE_you_kidding_me While I agree that Dutch has a tendency to not paint men in the best light, in this particular case she’s not entirely wrong.

Pew has it closer to 62% male and 22% female. But gun ownership aside, gun violence has a strong gender bias.

So, this is a question about guns now?

It’s an interesting speculation. Guns as substitutes for men’s other “low caliber” weapons.

@Stache Errr…Dutch is consistent in her tendency to paint men in a poor light?

@ARE_you_kidding_me called her out for it.

And I pointed out that her statement wasn’t consistent with gun violence statistics?

How’s that for getting back on track? :P

Gotcha. =)

@stanleybmanly I used to have an internet friend who was quite hung up on the idea that guys have guns for the same reason they get monster trucks; to compensate for their perceived lack of manliness or to bolster their manliness or something, and my internet friend was a guy. You can’t deny that it’s guys who want things bigger and taller than any other guy’s things. Bigger big screens, taller buildings and on and on.

@ARE_you_kidding_me is quite hung up on the notion that I’m a man hater. I’m not. I just ignore him. No need to defend me, but thanks very much.

@Dutchess_III If I did not give two shits about you I would not call you out like that. You have been a regular jelly for more than a decade and I do care. So don’t take it with a grain of salt or ignore my comments. I think you do need counseling and I highly doubt I’m the only one here, just the most blunt and vocal.

Think what you want @ARE_you_kidding_me. I don’t care.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Dutchess not hate men. She just likes to call out bullshit, and if she’s given statistics to show that she is incorrect she will gladly change her opinion.