WordPress Classic Editor vs. the “new, improved” Editor

Posted on November 14, 2014 by luckyotter

Yeah. I made this. It sucks. That thing that looks like a dandelion drawn by a 5 year old is supposed to be a ninja star weapon. Oh, well.

For some reason, WordPress keeps switching me over to the new editor (the beep beep boop one) and I have to manually switch it back to classic, which I like much better.

First of all, I think the classic editor is more readable. Second, my photos automatically resize themselves to the size I specified in my settings. The new editor doesn’t do that (maybe there’s a glitch), and I wind up having to upload my photos to Photobucket, and then resize them there, and that is time consuming. But the worst thing I noticed is the new editor doesn’t always save my changes. If I go in to edit a post again (I usually edit a post anywhere between 5 and 10 times, sometimes even more for longer posts), all my previous changes are lost. I finally figured out if I use the classic editor, my photos default to the correct size and I don’t have to worry about my changes being lost. Easy peasy!

I just wish I knew how to keep the classic editor from switching to the new one. I really don’t know what’s better about it. I really don’t need juvenile prompts like “Your post is lookin’ great!” and “Beep Beep Boop.” I’m not in kindergarten. And I will be the judge of whether my post looks great or not.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Remember New Coke? It was an epic fail. Everyone still wanted “Classic Coke.”

What do other bloggers prefer? The new editor or the classic mode?

Counting down!

Posted on November 9, 2014 by luckyotter

This is my 98th post. Only two more and I’ll have 100. Back on September 10th when I started this blog, I promised myself I’d write one post a day. I wasn’t sure I could do it. But I’ve outdone myself, since September 10th is only 60 days ago and this is my 98th post. That motivates me. I think I might be able to reach my goal by tonight.

OM (Harsh Reality) always likes to help us new bloggers and provides regular showcases for us to link to our blogs on his site. Today he asked what our Top Ten posts are. I had never looked to see what they were before, and wasn’t too surprised to see my first Furry article at the top of the list, since that is the only article I’ve written that STILL always appears in my Top Posts list on my homepage. It also got a huge boost from Twitter. I think it’s one of my best written articles and the title is awesome. The #2 spot article, which was a rant back when I was a newbie and wasn’t getting many views or followers, got a big boost from a reblog by OM, which gave my entire blog the push into the cyber-universe it needed. Never again would I log into my account in the morning to find only crickets and tumbleweeds.

Here is my entire Top 10.

2014-08-11 to Today

Title		Views

My son is “furry”–got a problem with that?		515
I’m frustrated.		282
Part Two: finding myself: a hopeless task if you depend on narcissists to do the job for you (late adolescence/early adulthood)		192
Raised by a narcissist: my story of psychopathic abuse (childhood and adolescence)		137
Sleeping with the devil: my marriage to a psychopath		87
I made a little deal with God today		76

Gratitude		57
Furries revisited.		56
Narcissists who use 12-step programs to further their agenda		55
A new insight on being the only child of a narcissistic mother	53

So today (or the latest, tomorrow) I will reach 100 posts. I’m also nearing another milestone: 200 followers. I never thought my blog would be this active in two short months. I want to take this opportunity to say “thanks” to all you awesome people who are following and reading my blog.

Two kinds of stealth trolls

Posted on November 4, 2014 by luckyotter

In two earlier posts I wrote about online bullies and trolls (not exactly the same thing, but close enough). I won’t explain here how they differ and are the same (you can read the articles which I’ve posted links at the end of this article), but I neglected to mention stealth trolls. Stealth trolls seem benign, but can wreak havoc on web forums and social media. I will describe two types of stealth trolls. There are probably others.

The Concern Troll

The Urban Dictionary defines a concern troll as:

A person who posts on a blog thread, in the guise of “concern,” to disrupt dialogue or undermine morale by pointing out that posters and/or the site may be getting themselves in trouble, usually with an authority or power. They point out problems that don’t really exist. The intent is to derail, stifle, control, the dialogue. It is viewed as insincere and condescending.

A concern troll on a progressive blog might write, “I don’t think it’s wise to say things like that because you might get in trouble with the government.” Or, “This controversy is making your side look disorganized.

The concern troll’s M.O. is stealth. They appear harmless. In the guise of “concern,” the troll infiltrates the website, seeming helpful, but their true intention is not to help, but to disrupt the community, dialogue or morale on the site. They probably know little if anything about the subject matter and their complaints are of a general nature. Their “concern” makes them feel superior. Concern trolls are probably narcissistic or even psychopathic, and their self-righteous “concern” makes them feel superior. Any attempt to pin them down and explain their “concerns” in greater detail or a request to explain the topic being discussed will usually cause them to disappear, but they’re likely to reappear under a “sockpuppet” account (another handle). The sockpuppet may be more aggressive in their trolling behavior and may even bully individual members or make openly hostile remarks about the site or its subject matter. A troll’s goal is to destroy the online community in the usual manner: by making its members leave the site.

The Triangulator.

This is a dangerous troll who who pits people against each other by sending private messages containing lies about another user. It’s an online form of the triangulating that psychopaths and narcissists do. They are almost always found on social media and forums. I’ll give a hypothetical example of what a Triangulator does. Let’s say Lisa and Brian are online friends. The Triangulator (let’s call him John) befriends both Lisa and Brian. One day John sends Lisa a PM saying Brian told him that Brian thinks she’s dumb (he never said this). Lisa gets mad and sends Brian a PM saying her feelings are hurt that he went behind her back and told John she was dumb. Brian says he never told John he thought she was dumb, and he doesn’t think she’s dumb anyway. Lisa isn’t sure who to believe, so the trust between her and Brian is compromised. John then sends Brian a PM telling him Lisa thinks Brian acts like a know it all (she never said this). When Brian talks to Lisa and she tells him she never said this, he isn’t sure who to believe and the trust between them is compromised. The Triangulator can destroy a friendship this way, and that’s exactly what he wants to accomplish. By using this tactic, Triangulators can totally break down communication on a site and cause regular users to defect.

Don’t feed the trolls.

Trolls are simply narcissists who derive pleasure upsetting and destroying a healthy online community. If you can’t ban them yourself, the best way to deal with a troll is to report them to the admin or if that isn’t possible, ignore them.

Earlier articles about online bullies and trolls:
Internet Psychopaths: the difference between Trolls and Bullies
Internet Trolls are Psychopaths

Ever have one of those days…

Posted on October 27, 2014 by luckyotter

…where you just don’t feel like writing anything? I’m having one of them today. I’ve found they happen just after I write a “big” post about a major issue in my life. It’s as if I need a few days to decompress and get my creative mojo back. I feel guilty if I don’t write, so I’m posting this so at least I can say I wrote something.

I decided to add a poll to flesh this out a little more, plus I’m genuinely curious about other bloggers’ writing habits.

Fluff piece

Posted on October 21, 2014 by luckyotter

I try to balance my blog without losing its focus on narcissism and related personality disorders, because that’s the whole reason I started this blog–to help myself and others enmeshed in psychopathic relationships and/or recovering from the wounds they inflicted on us. So if I notice too many posts in a row unrelated to narcissism, I’ll deliberately post a few about narcissism. But even people interested in a topic can grow bored, so if I think I’ve blogged too much about narcissism, or if I notice they’re not getting as many hits or likes, I figure people need a break and I’ll post about something else.

I also try to include a fluff piece here and there to keep things light–something humorous or silly, or a nice photo with just a few words. Today was going to be my day to do that, since I haven’t posted one in a while. My post “Saying goodbye to a friend” qualifies I suppose, but its subject matter is so sad I have to post a real fluff piece today. So here it is.

Fluff balls!

The narcissism of blogging

Posted on October 15, 2014 by luckyotter

I saw this and just had to reblog it. It’s hilarious because it’s so true!

Internet trolls are psychopaths

Posted on October 13, 2014 by luckyotter

There’s a very interesting website I found called SociopathWorld. Little if no distinction is made there between sociopaths (more likely to have APD and be impulsive) and psychopaths (NPD and more likely to plan out their actions). Most of the activity on the board is by and for the character-disordered, and includes blog posts by psychopaths and sociopaths, both prose and poetry. It’s interesting because it allows the rest of us to have a peek inside their heads. The experience of “getting inside their heads” seems very surreal to those of us who don’t think the way they do. It’s like a visit to another planet.

But even more interesting is the comments. One of the posts was by a non-psychopath talking about her psychopathic child. She was out of her mind with worry and grief over his actions.

Bad place to make a post like that. Almost all the responses either ignored her and kept on bantering about inconsequential things that were already being discussed, or if they addressed the issue she raised, were snarky “inside jokes” about the post or unsympathetic one-line replies.

That got me thinking about Internet trolls and bullies. Forums in particular are swarming with them (I’m not sure why trolls seem so attracted to forums over blogs), and that’s why moderators are needed, to weed out the worst posts and ban them from the forum.

I used to be very active on a political forum, but after several years the moderator quit and was never replaced, and when I went back recently, the forum was overrun by trolls and bullies. Most of the regular posters had left, and the few that stuck around were attacked left and right by the trolls. It’s sad what happened to that site, because at one time it was filled with intelligent and thoughtful people. Obviously most of them were run off a long time ago.

Some websites have a lot more bullies and trolls than others, and a lot of it has to do with the way the forum or site is moderated, and sometimes the subject matter has a lot to do with it too.

There are a few ways you can identify a troll or Internet bully, and I think almost all of these people are psychopaths:

— They rarely post anything original; mostly they just reply to or about someone else’s.
— Their posts are almost always very short.
— Their posts are snarky and filled with “jokes” meant to put a certain poster or their ideas down, or sometimes inside jokes when there is a swarm of bullies present who are on the same page against the non-troll.
— Trying to reason with them never works.
— If they are banned, they may come back under a different handle.
— Never PM or email them your concerns–they can use this against you and suddenly you may find your private message to them posted publicly elsewhere or being made fun of. This has happened to me.
— If you report them, be sure the moderator or admin is not on the side of the bullies; if they allow the presence of the trolls and bullies, that’s a red flag.
— Just like in real life, they will often gang up on a poster who appears to be vulnerable or have a differing opinion.
— They will take offense easily if you criticize them and usually fire back an insult at you.
— They are huge fans of humorous or snarky memes, gifs and photos, and will use these as a distraction away from the topic supposedly being discussed.
— They often go off topic and discuss irrelevant (and usually trivial) things among themselves.
— They gossip openly about past posters.
— They may respond to your comments with a “reaction gif” or meme instead of a real response.
— Some trolls come out of nowhere and make incendiary comments designed to upset the community or individual posters. These trolls are often banned or leave of their own accord.

All these tactics are meant to put the honest posters down, drive them away, or belittle them. Beware of any website where you see these tactics being used. Most of these people are psychopathic or narcissistic.

“Don’t feed the trolls” is excellent advice, if you must deal with them. Don’t respond to anything they say, or better yet, block them if you have that option.

This is what I was born to do.

Posted on October 8, 2014 by luckyotter

Writing has always been what I’ve excelled at more than anything else, but because of the emotional and mental damage done to me by my psychopaths throughout my life, I never pursued it seriously and always felt I didn’t know what I should be or do. At an early age I started to believe I wasn’t much good at anything anyway.

These are the lies and half lies that were told about and to me by the various psychopaths who got to control me (some are based on half truths):
1. Suzanne is smart, but will never excel at anything because she doesn’t apply herself (true, but I didn’t apply myself because I was told I couldn’t do anything).
2. She is too sensitive to make it in this world (you can be sensitive and be successful).
3. She doesn’t make friends easily because she has a terrible personality (I am shy and not very social but I do not have a terrible personality).
4. She’s negative and lives on the pity pot so she will never achieve anything (this has been true at times).
5. She’s lazy and unmotivated and always gives up (see # 1).
6. She doesn’t stick with anything long enough to get really good at anything (see #1).
7. No one wants to be around Suzanne because she’s such a Debbie downer (depression and PTSD caused by being abused by psychopaths).
8. She isn’t any good at office politics (This is true).
9. She should have become a nurse or a teacher because then she’d always have a good job. (I am totally unsuited for nursing and teaching).
10. If Suzanne was thinner she would be more successful and get better jobs (I have never been seriously overweight so this is a lie).
11. If Suzanne smiled more people would like her better (probably true, but smiling doesn’t come second nature to me–I am working on that).
12. She’s stupid and has no common sense (I am not stupid but it’s true I can be a bit of the “absentminded professor”)
13. She’s insane (insanity implies someone who isn’t aware of their own actions or motives or is deluded–I suffer and have suffered from major depression, C-PTSD, autism and avoidant personality disorder. These are not “insane” diagnoses).

You get the idea.

The closest I ever came to having a writing career were my two jobs as an editor–I was a technical writer and editor back in the late 1980s, then became a copy editor and later associate editor for a medical journal from 1989-1991. My job included writing a one page regular column, and I also used to write freelance reviews for self help and pop psychology books. These were all good jobs but none paid well. But honestly, I didn’t really like what I was doing (except for writing the book reviews). It was a very corporate environment and there was a lot of office politics so I was never 100% comfortable there.

After moving to North Carolina in 1993 after my second child was born, I never again had a job even remotely related to publishing or writing, and I thought I never would again.

I wrote a novel in 2003 but it was rejected by several publishers (and my narcissist mother said she hated it and I wasn’t ready to write a novel) so I put it in a box in the back of my closet and never looked at it again. It embarrassed me. So from then on I limited my writing to posts on forums or comments on other people’s blogs. I believed I had forgotten how to write, and even worse, I thought I lost my creativity. I never seemed to be able to come up with ideas anymore. What was really happening was I was so terrified of failure (and so brainwashed by my abusers that I always would fail) that it was just safer to never try anything new or take any risks. If I never tried anything, then I couldn’t really fail, could I? Why have ideas if you’re never going to act on them?

That’s faulty logic though, because if you never try anything new, accept a challenge, or take a risk, you may not fail at any activity but you will fail at life, and that’s a lot worse.

One of the benefits of freeing myself from the psychopaths in my life is occasional unexpected bursts of inspiration, and that’s how this blog came to be. Now that I write something every day, my creative muscle is strengthening and I feel like new ideas pop into my head several times a day now. I thought I’d have trouble even coming up with one post a day, but most days I have ideas for two or three. Blogging is something I should have started years ago; it might have led to something bigger and maybe even become a career.

But you know what? There’s no reason why it still can’t. I feel like I finally found my purpose after so many years of feeling like a lost ship without a rudder. I have a good feeling about it.

Blogging drunk

Posted on October 7, 2014 by luckyotter

I’ve had almost three glasses of Merlot and I feel like the buzz just got vacuum-suctioned from my brain. See, I had almost finished a writing this post but in my half drunken state I hit some key I shouldn’t have and the whole thing was deleted, and the nice buzz I’d been working on was gone. I wanted to ram my laptop through the wall. I couldn’t get my post back so now I have to start over. I want to kick a puppy right now. And now I can barely type because although my mind is suddenly clear, my body is apparently still drunk.

I’m pouring a little more wine into my glass now and taking a sip. Aaaahhhhh! I must rewrite that post, but it won’t be as good as the first one, which was awesome. Arrrrghhhh!

So today I decided to get drunk. Now, I’m not a big drinker at all, and in fact don’t even like alcohol too much. It makes me feel sick and doesn’t give me the same pleasant buzz it did when I was in my 20s. Today, in my 50s, I can have just one or two drinks and stop. I drink very rarely and when I do I don’t care for it much. Back in my prime I spent a lot of time drunk and didn’t know when to stop. I even joined AA (and met Michael, my psychopathic sperm donor there) but evidently I was just a problem drinker and hadn’t crossed the line to alcoholism because according to their beliefs, a true alcoholic can never ever drink again because if they do, they will fall off the side of the sobriety ship, get abducted by Jack Daniels, whose goons will waterboard you with booze for all eternity. Well, anyway, that didn’t happened to me. The last time I got this drunk was on New Years Eve almost two years ago.

But today I decided I wanted to not only drink, but get drunk. I didn’t wake up wanting to do that though. There were important things to take care of.

I guess I need to provide a little background as to what motivated me to want to get sloshed. My 21 year old daughter Molly has had her share of issues. She was a rebellious teenager and her rebellion and rash, impulsive behavior hasn’t let up much since she was 15. I blame a lot of this on her dad and his ex-girlfriend, who took my then 12-year old daughter to drug parties where my girl developed a taste for the illicit and mind-bending.

I just finished my third glass of Merlot (the one I was refilling a few minutes ago) and just took a couple of hits of weed too, another thing I don’t indulge in much. I like to be clearheaded most of the time but today? Honestly, IDGAF.

Molly’s had a few run ins with the law–petty charges like shoplifing and a DWI. Back in April, when she turned 21, she received an inheritance from my father for $20K. My son received the same, but has spent his wisely on his education and camera and computer equipment so he can keep making films which he hopes get him into that industry (I never got any inheritance from my father but that’s irrelevant right now and I’ve talked about that before anyway). Within two months, the money was gone. Neither she nor I have any idea what happened to it, but she did help me pay a few bills and bought herself a used dark blue Honda Acura. The car is fine but needs a little work. Because Molly had a DWI the car was put in my name, and I would have to put it on my insurance and not allow her to drive it until she finished her probation requirements and her license was reinstated.

I’m not typing very well and spellcheck is sure getting a workout too because my fat drunk fingers are flapping around the keyboard like dead baby flounders. Please, dear God, don’t let me hit the delete key or whatever it was by accident again. >< (Does that smilie exist? It's supposed to be that face you make when you're frustrated beyond all reason and you squint your eyes real tight.) Yep, I'm feeling it.

So anyway back in July, about a week before her probation was up, Molly decided to break up with her boyfriend. It was her idea but she went batshit for about a month, laying in bed and not eating for a week (she is bipolar and has BPD), and then suddenly leaving–in the car she isn't supposed to be driving–and not returning for almost a week. Her psychopathic sperm donor texted me and told me she was hanging with a group of junkies and pushers and was shooting heroin herself and I had better do something ~~abou tit.~~ about it.

He was lying through his teeth. It was just him trying to start drama again in his psychopathic, sadistic way, but the situation with Molly was still concerning at the very least. That night she brought home a group of the kind of boys we call "skells" around these parts–according to the Urban Dictionary, a skell is basically a lowlife or redneck type of guy who sells drugs because they're really not otherwise employable. (I just had to go back and correct "employable" three times and twice on this quoted one). My daughter is very intelligent, far too intelligent for the type of company she keeps. So it turned out the guys were really only into weed and Molly had no tracks or marks on her arms and she looked okay. She said they were taking good care of her. I wanted to believe her, but of course I'm not stupid and I know they were very bad for her. But she's 21 and can do whatever she wants. I have no control over what she does. She seems to have no interests in a career or a future, but maybe she's not ready yet. I have to remember I was much the same way at her age (which has a lot to do with why I'm a 50ish unpaid blogger and former medical editor recovering from a bad marriage and currently obliged to clean houses for a living). God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

But then she disappeared again, with the car. And I didn’t see her for three more days.

I’m pouring a 4th glass. Would you like some? Am I still coherent? Soon I won’t be able to type at all.

Instead of going into my usual panic of biblical proportions and imagining she had been abducted and taken into an abandoned field to be gang raped and strangled and left lying in a bed of tall weeds, I felt…angry. ~~dducted bductedd~~ (That was me trying to type ~~abdduted~~ abducted. (spellcheck said that was right). I decided to leave it there.

The car Molly was driving was in my name, under my insurance, and she was driving it illegally and not very responsibly. She was transporting God knows what sort of lowlifes in it. If anything happened I would be responsible and the car impounded, not to mention that I’d never be able to live with myself if something happened to her in it and I hadn’t at least made an effort to put a stop to it. So I went to the magistrate and filed a charge against her for a stolen vehicle. I hated doing this but I felt like if I didn’t something terrible might happen.

Now Molly’s basically a good kid, but she was ~~veyr~~ very angry with me, understandably. I finally agreed to drop the charges on her not because of her anger, but because she was almost done with her probation requirements (and she had been very good about paying her fines and doing whatever else they told her to) and I didn’t want her record to be further sullied. I made an arrangement to have someone else I trusted hold onto the car temporarily and agreed to drop the charges. In order to do that, I had to be back in court with her this morning.

Sometime last month the friend who was holding the car moved so had to return it, which means Molly has acces to it. I’ve given up trying to hide the keys. She’s returning it every night in pristine condition and seems more responsible but I keep warning her she is driving it illegally. Apparently she’s willing to take that risk. I didn’t change my mind about dropping the charges.

To make a long story short, she was supposed to be home this morning so we could go to court together without her having to drive–but guess what. When I woke up this morning she wasn’t here. I couldn’t call her either because she lost her phone (again). We were due in court at 9, and by 8:45 she still hadn’t shown up and it takes forever just to find parking at the courthouse. So I went there myself, stood in line, and told the person at the desk who I was and that I wanted to drop charges on my daughter. The officious lady at the desk said that would be fine as long as my daughter showed up but she was nowhere to be seen. And I had taken a day off work to help her out in court, and that’s not exactly something I can afford to do in the financial straits I’m in.

I drove home in a self righteous fury and that’s when I decided I wanted to drink today. I ~~thought~~ ~~rationalized~~ mused to myself, “we’re all entitled to indulge in some excess on occasion, and after all, I spend so much time and energy trying to always be good and having so little to show for it. Fuck that shit.”

I pulled into an Ingles supermarket and bought a jug of Merlot. Livingston Merlot, to be exact. It’s cheap and doesn’t taste too bad. It does the job, which is to get me pleasantly tipsy. Expensive wines drive me insane because of those goddamn corks which I always wind up mangling in my pitiful efforts to pry them out with a corkscrew or a damn fork if a corkscrew isn’t at hand. And then in my enraged defeat, I wind up pushing the entire mutilated cork down into the wine itself and then have to drink good wine peppered with stuff that tastes like sawdust (though I bet cork does add healthy fiber to your diet).

I picked up some of their delicious homemade chicken salad to go with the wine, because I knew if I didn’t eat anything I’d get sick, and I just wanted to get drunk, not sick.

Today may be the last day I have Internet service (though I will have it set up again soon and in the meantime I can always use the WiFi at the hipster coffee place, the library, or even freaking McDonalds or Bojangles) so I was cheered up a little when I got home from my useless morning in court and found the Interwebs still working.

I decided to blog about how furious I was at my daughter and get drunk while doing it. I could retreat into my own private little alcohol infused world in the comfort of my postage stamp living room and pretend to be fucking Dorothy Parker.

I’m almost finished with the Merlot jug and that’s it for me. I can’t type anymore (this sentence took ~~& 9 8 tries to get right) and my thinking is getting fuzzy.~~

Molly just got home and she said she was late to court because she overslept and had to go strauight there instread of coming home (spelling mistakes left intact) and then opn the way she ran out of gas (again! she is such a blonde!) but made it to court just after I left and the charges for unathorized use are now dropped.

She just noticed the wine and is now rolling on the floor in hysterics because of the face I just made at her that was supposed to look angry but just looked drunk and goofy.

Can you still understand what I’m writing?

Thank God she didn’t have her camera phone with her. If it was my son Ethan, he’d be filming my reaction and putting ~~init~~ it up on Youtube. And with my luck, it would go viral. “My crazy drunk mom trying to look angry”–43,864,301 views. I’m in that weird part of ~~Youtube~~ my brain again.

I’m so relieved my post is still here and my daughter is still okay. I’m so relieved I’m going to take a hot bath and then a nap and then wake up sober and eat a good meal.
Today wasn’t a disaster. I’m just an overstressed nutcase. I don’t have to drive anywhere today. It’s all good.

Dilemma

Posted on October 6, 2014 by luckyotter

I need your opinions. Since this is supposed to be a blog about narcissism and other mental health issues, I wonder if I should start a second blog and move all my off topic articles onto that blog.

Would it be better to have off topic articles on a general topic blog separate from this one, or does the presence of off topic articles on this blog a welcome respite and should they stay here?

The only problem is that even most of my off topic articles reference narcissism or psychopathy in some way and I would have to change a lot of the terminology since people reading the general topic blog may not know what some of the psychological slang terms are referring to. Maybe I can just leave those articles here and put future off topic articles on a second blog. What does everyone think?