I get flamed. A lot.  In fact, as time goes on, I find I get flamed even in places I'm not.

For example, tonight I came across a link to an interview with Arlo Rose, the author of Konfabulator. While reading the comments, someone wrote a a response challenging why Konfabulator should get so much attention.  And the owners of the site claimed that the anonymous user was me. Apparently I am all knowing and all powerful and exist on every obscure website on the net.

Besides the usual annoyance of being falsely accused of doing something I consider pretty repugnant (those who know me know how I feel about anonymous detractors so being accused of doing that sort of thing is a double whammy). It really demonstrates that, at least in the customization community, that there are enough people that dislike me and what I do that they'll start believing I'm responsible for all the bad things out there.

In the OS/2 world, I still get brought up on occasion as a boogey man. Even this month on the Usenet group comp.os.os2.advocacy there were people blaming me (or Stardock) for destroying OS/2 (ah the power of google to find this stuff).  Apparently I am quite powerful.

In a single day I've seen myself blamed for buggy code in a Windows game, an OS/2 process killing utility, and a Widows desktop enhancement program while at the same time helping spread "FUD" about Linux and undermining the Mac market with our software that lets Windows users make Windows look like whatever they want. 

But the thing is, I'm just one guy. And while I try to keep track of a lot of things, I only know what's going on in a few selected places. Heck, I don't even know what's happening in the forums on JoeUser.com most of the time and that's supposedly my blog site.  That's why I get so incredulous when I get accused of having some influence or action in some obscure place like some website I rarely visit or some operating system I haven't used in 5 years or whatever.

Being falsely accused of something really bugs me. And and false accusations such as the one described here happen pretty regularly. It's almost like they want to pretend that they are worth more attention than they deserve.  But anyone who knows me at all knows that I don't shy away from criticizing things as myself. I take my lumps. Hence why I have so many detractors in the first place. <g>

Over the course of this year, I'll probably be decreasing my visibility markedly.  For one thing, I'm just tired of getting flamed. My thick skin is pretty ragged from constant flaming. We recently hired a net community liason who will slowly be interacting more with the whole desktop enhancement community. I'll probably eventually only frequent sites I have admin access of some kind which can put a quick end to those who want to impugn me.