International Law

How to plot your e-venge

The Observer discusses a trend that sees ex-lovers getting their revenge online:

Don't get mad; get email. That was Tessa Martin's way of getting over a string of broken love affairs. She didn't cut up her ex-boyfriends' trousers, write off their cars or seek inspiration from Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction. Instead she decided that revenge is a dish best served online.

Martin's blog is called 'Ex-Girlfriend's Revenge' and has the subtitle 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'. In her first entry, she gave notice: 'What I am ... is a chick that doesn't "let it go" and a chick that, once wronged, will not forget and will welcome an opportunity to be vindictive. This is the reason for my blog ... revenge on all the bullshit I was force fed by some yanking dumb fuck ... revenge for all my girlfriends that had to endure countless evenings waiting by a phone when the asshole that should be calling them is out meeting some chick that responded to his post on Match.com.'

Martin let rip in a series of posts that mercilessly mocked her exes with scabrous humour and toe-curling candour. She did not name the hapless men but published their photographs so they were easily identifiable. Under the heading, 'This is the beast,' she exposed a wannabe male model whose hobbies include 'poorly trying to juggle several girls at a time' and 'cheating, lying, conning, deceiving'. She wrote: 'A Gross Truth: He made me touch his butt on our first date to show me how in shape it was. I dry heaved.'

'Ex-Girlfriend's Revenge' put out an appeal to other women to come forward with their horror stories about relationships and was soon inundated. It is now one of countless blogs and websites dedicated to exorcising the ghost of lost loves. Some are a form of therapy as the broken-hearted, often anonymously, try to write the pain out of their system and comfort each other in online chatrooms. Others are more bellicose, listing their ex-lovers' faults, releasing embarrassingly explicit photos and serving up a character assassination to warn off other prospective partners.

The rise of the vengeance blog is changing the nature of privacy, turning the washing of dirty linen into a global spectacle and challenging psychologists and lawyers to speculate on the long-term consequences of Googling your spouse's romantic CV, warts and all.

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on April 26, 2008 (boomark / email).