You know, I'm angry.  I'm not angry with any one person.  I'm angry with
a few: the people who use the rumor mill to hurt others.
 
For obvious reasons I am not going to divulge things that I learned about
that recent set of nasty false rumors about an NJ shelter.  Let's just
say that I learned enough to notice that the couple who has that shelter
appears perhaps most likely to have had others who themselves have been
rumor mill victims start those awful rumors about them.
 
Grow up, people!  (No, not you, the majority who do NOT use the rumor
mill -- but the few who do and like making a big noise there to get their
own way, to spread their own fears, to manipulate, to be noticed.) Using
rumors is just plain juvenile!  Don't you realize that most folks here
have out-grown such tactics and see through them by the second round of
rumors -- that people realize how unbelievable you have made yourselves
except within that small set or among those who haven't heard you two or
three times, yet?
 
Don't you realize that the people who don't understand to their cores
that the rumor mill is a source of trash are NOT the sort of people you'd
want beside you if push came to shove?  Or that if they get annoyed with
you that you will be their next victims?
 
Steve and I have lived in NJ for over 20 years, I've been in California
maybe 2 weeks total in my life and I am not in F&G in any state (though I
studied some of the same things they do and I know some folks at NJ F&G),
but someone once many years ago passed around that I was CA F&G.  I
mean, come on... Honestly, once checked or thought about most rumors are
EXACTLY like that -- revisions which turn facts on their heads, or out
and out falsehoods.  Now, some rumor mongers seem to work themselves into
such a state, sometimes alone or sometimes in groupings that they take
their conclusions as if they were facts and then pass them around instead
of verifying anything, but believing the falsehoods does not make them
any less false, any less potentially injurious, or any less a truly below
the belt tactic.
 
Some of these are people who start rumors -- I can think of may be
about six off-hand -- themselves have been injured by the rumor mill.
Hey, didn't that painful experience teach anything about avoiding that
slime-pit?
 
I can tell you that the victims of this rumor I recently was asked to
check have told me that they have just been ignoring the rumors.  That is
a very logical and mature way to handle it.  From everything I heard at
verification the reality got turned completely on it's head.  That is
what the rumor mill does; it takes people who do good and then it drags
them though the mud.  No one is safe from the individuals who keep it
running -- no one -- so it is best to figure out who they are and avoid
them if you are anyone else, while we all hope that the rumor mongers
themselves grow up eventually, no matter what their current ages.
 
Anyway, I'll get off my soap box now, but it really annoyed me deeply to
learn of yet another case of someone's reputation being attacked,
apparently piggy backing on the wave of concern over the very real MD
rescue.  It doesn't matter who it is being victimized, or who likes them
or who doesn't, or if I like them or don't; the rumor mill is bad in and
of itself -- truly down and out low.
 
One last thing, though, and this is directly to the rumor mill people:
You act outwardly like you are doing the awful things you do to protect
ferrets, but since you pass around false rumors the reality is that
you jeopardize shelters, lists, projects to help ferrets, and ferret
advocates.  That means that what you really do is that you HURT ferrets.
WHY IS THAT?  WHAT DO YOU GAIN TO BE WORTH THE HARM YOU CAUSE?
[Posted in FML issue 4235]