Was I the only person who didn't know...

[Marley]

Originally Posted by Eltu

First off, I have nothing against discussing this - rather the opposite, as discussing it with you makes me feel better about it - it's great to know that I do have friends out there.

Secondly, Josie, yes - among the old members you're probably the only one who didn't know.

And third, well, I guess I should sum up the whole story, to avoid any misunderstandings.

It began when I got a PM from a CNN journalist on AF - because of some posts I had written regarding PAD. At the time, I did not know it was CNN, only "some journalist".
So she asked me some questions, I answered them, and suddenly it was on CNN's front page, complete with my FULL NAME, my AGE, my LOCATION and my OCCUPATION. All this without ANY permission given by me, at all.

Then, one thing led to another, and eventually this was all over the internet. Other magazines, web forums, blogs - at one time, my email address got out on a 4chan thread, and I got hate mails for a while. (thank Eywa for gmail's mail filter!)

The news also spread to several Croatian news magazines, and they misinterpreted the whole article. They actually wrote "After watching Avatar, 17-year old swede Ivar Hill decided to commit suicide."

DECIDED TO COMMIT SUICIDE. Just... wow. Thorinair, who is Croatian, said that they even discussed this in Croatian schools. Talk about blowing things out of proportion...

Eventually, Sweden's largest web (and physical) newspaper Aftonbladet got hold of the story, and of course, they published what I said along with my real name, age, location and occupation. That's where every single person I knew IRL got hold of the story. Half the people I know literally thought I wanted to commit suicide.

So yeah... things were pretty hard for a while, and even now people I know mention it from time to time. But at least I have cleared things up with the people I know, and they don't really think I am going to commit suicide anymore... hopefully And thanks to all the support from AF and now ToS, I look back at that whole mess with a smile.

So yeah - that's the short version.

That's extremely bad you know, for a newspaper to publish all your personal information WITHOUT letting you know they were going to do it is just wrong...

And the Croation newspapers... *facepalm*