Online Harassment

 At some time in our lives we all have secrets.  Sometimes they are just little things.  Sometimes they are much bigger.  It isn't that we are necessarily embarrassed by them, it is just that we would rather not have whatever it is, plastered across social media, etc.  We are entitled to a private life.  What I can't understand is why some people just cannot respect that.  Some for whatever reason, cannot allow others to have a private life.  Information, or what is mostly misinformation, gets found out and then spreads like wildfire.  Why?  What is the purpose?  Seriously, why do others care what I or anyone else does with their time?  Is their own life so sad or so boring that they have to stir up shit for other people?  Is jealousy the motivation?  I mean, what is the purpose behind this stuff?
A few years back a group of people online decided that I was someone else.  This rumor spread so fast.  I never have presented myself online to be anything other than myself.  I do not hide behind a *handle*.  This group was positive that I was a person named Torrey and that I had been their friend in the past, online of course and had died, to them, I was now back and using a different name.  The harassment got so bad that I left every group that I was a part of.  I was tired of defending myself and after trying to prove myself a few times, I just gave up.  I have never gone back to any of those groups.  The headache was not worth it to me so in a way, I let them win.
Pretty much any day of the week you can hear of someone being harassed online.  What you don't hear usually is how the one who is the victim of this harassment is dealing with it.  The fact that gossip and bullying is still a problem in our society irritates the hell out of me.  Online people hide like cowards behind fake names and fake emails and do their best to stir trouble.  I am not talking about the people who have legitimate reasons to use something like a pen name or a professional one.  Many of these types of people have specific names and emails for business reasons and are real people who run a business with the names and emails they use.  They are not trying to fool anyone.  They certainly are not trying to harm or harass anyone.
I was writing a book when all this shit started for me.  I was gathering information from volunteers.  I was not doing anything wrong.  Every person that I interviewed knew exactly what I was doing and why and they wanted to be a part of it.  Everything was consensual.  The harassment over who I really was, spilled over into my work.  I was accused of so many things that just were not true.  I became so frustrated with all of it that I just quit.  I gave up on the project completely.  That book project was never finished.  In fact, I didn't write anything at all for almost 2 years!
Harassment and bullying can hurt the lives of good people.  When are we going to learn and make the needed changes?