anonymous text, un: ANON

[doreimi]

i have a question. there's no right or wrong answer, i'm just wondering what people think.

suppose somebody came here, and outwardly they seemed like an average person. kept to themselves, didn't make trouble, maybe were a little bit weird but not, like, offensively so. you've never seen them do anything wrong. they seem pretty harmless. they're just a normal, fine, generally boring person.

then imagine somebody else said that they knew that person, and that all the niceness was just an act, and really that person was dangerous. really dangerous. and that the person hurt people in really bad ways. but imagine there was no proof of it, really, just that upset person's word against the boring person's.

how would you decide who to believe? would you only go by what you saw yourself, or only by what happened here and not where they came from, or what? would you believe anyone at all?

like i said, there's no right or wrong answer, i guess. i just wonder how you would make a decision either way, in a situation like that.

Comments

[doreimi]

what did you do that had you meeting so many dangerous people? were you a police officer or something?

[spah]

Nah. I was in a war.

[That's not entirely truthful. He was a mercenary in a private land war. But it's the easiest explanation that doesn't give away too much.]

[doreimi]

that's kind of scary to think about. the thought that a soldier or something might act really normal but then underneath he's dangerous. because then he's a danger to his own unit along with the people he's fighting, right?

[spah]

Suppose so. Usually, the crazy was directed at the other side, but... you get the idea.

[doreimi]

but not always.

did you ever see something really bad?

[spah]

How you mean?

[doreimi]

i mean among the dangerous people you've met. did you ever see them do something, or did you only hear about it?

[spah]

All due respect, it's hard to answer that. You see a lot of people do a lot of bad things in war.

But I guess that's a bad example, if you're thinking of someone who's like this in regular life. War's just the reason why I knew so many dangerous folks.

[doreimi]

yeah, i think war is a completely separate circumstance from the kind of thing i was getting at with my questions. that doesn't mean people shouldn't still talk about it, but right now it'd be, ummm.

what's that saying? something about going down a whole other rabbit hole?

[spah]

Something like that.

Point still stands, though. I usually watch out for people like that, war or no.