Have Rumours Ever Ruined Your Life?

attitude99attitude99 Posts: 14,848
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Have rumours ever ruined your life or made your life unbearable?
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  • SupratadSupratad Posts: 10,402
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    Quite the contrary, I think it's their best album.
  • annette kurtenannette kurten Posts: 39,543
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    yes, it`s been ongoing for the last 35 years.
  • Paul_DNAPPaul_DNAP Posts: 25,801
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    When I was about 8 I got a new pen for my birthday and the first day I took it in an indian girl in my class saw me with it and decided to claim I'd stolen it from her. Sent to headmaster and I had to call my Mum in to tell the idiot that she'd bought it for me birthday. Turned out she had a similar pen in her desk but she didn't bother to check it was missing.

    That had had a lasting impact on general trust, empathy and friendship that is still with me nearly 40 years on. And for many years I'd plead with people not to buy me anything too nice for my birthday.

    On the other interpretation of the OP - no, Fleetwood Mac have had little impact on me although I do have their greatest hits.
  • PitmanPitman Posts: 28,495
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    Paul_DNAP wrote: »
    When I was about 8 I got a new pen for my birthday and the first day I took it in an indian girl in my class saw me with it and decided to claim I'd stolen it from her. Sent to headmaster and I had to call my Mum in to tell the idiot that she'd bought it for me birthday. Turned out she had a similar pen in her desk but she didn't bother to check it was missing.

    That had had a lasting impact on general trust, empathy and friendship that is still with me nearly 40 years on. And for many years I'd plead with people not to buy me anything too nice for my birthday.

    On the other interpretation of the OP - no, Fleetwood Mac have had little impact on me although I do have their greatest hits.


    someone PM'd me that you liked to half inch biros :o
  • ElyanElyan Posts: 8,781
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    I recal, when I was a kid, rumours went around about a man in our street having murdered his wife. Apparently he had been arrested for it but the Police couldn't find enough evidence and had released him. We would see him walking around, and we'd point and whisper.

    Turns out she had gone to visit her sick mother for a few months.

    How we gasped when she reappeared!
  • CryolemonCryolemon Posts: 8,670
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    No, but someone at school once claimed I'd committed suicide when I had a couple of days off.
  • roger_purvisroger_purvis Posts: 968
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    well they do say there is no smoke without fire. This tends to be true in my experience.
  • cnbcwatchercnbcwatcher Posts: 56,681
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    At the beginning of the year some people in college were spreading rumours that I was sleeping with a lecturer! The lecturer in question didn't find out but I was worried for a while because I was hoping she wouldn't find out about these rumours. It was in no way true as I would rather eat live bees washed down with sulphuric acid than sleep with the lecturer in question :p The irony is that a few months later those lads who spread the rumours were claiming to have been dating the same lecturer! One of them claimed he spent the night with her before the exam for her module :D
  • Chilli DragonChilli Dragon Posts: 24,684
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    My neighbour phoned the police and told them I was keeping a goat in my house. It didn't ruin my life but she's always ringing the authorities about me with a different, untrue, story each time.

    I'm also, apparently, a prostitute, a neglectful mother (no kids!), an arsonist, a drug dealer and a fly tipper.
  • TrollHunterTrollHunter Posts: 12,496
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    When I worked in the fitness industry, one of the scrawny fitness instructors started a rumour that I was using steroids. My private personal training business was potentially at risk due to the reputational damage this could have so I had to nip it in the bud very promptly.
  • Paul_DNAPPaul_DNAP Posts: 25,801
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    Pitman wrote: »
    someone PM'd me that you liked to half inch biros :o

    It were no cheap biro, it was a really nice fountain pen. We were not allowed biro in school as the teacher thought they corrupted our souls or something.

    Anyway - yes, whenever I stay in a hotel that has a pen on the bedside table that pen comes home with me and when I visit a trade fair I make sure I get a couple of pens. I plead guilty to that charge.
  • Si_CreweSi_Crewe Posts: 40,202
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    Sort of.

    When I was 11 (just before I started high school) I used to hang around with a bunch of mates, as you do. We used to build forts in the park, play war and go for bicycle rides but it was the early 80's and we were also kinda nerdy and we were just getting into video games, computers and electronics as well.

    One evening, after school, we were in town, hanging around the 1980's version of PC World, drooling over all the newly-released games for the Vic 20, TI-99 and Atari 400 when a bunch of the local yobs appeared and started taking the mickey out of us.
    By way of retaliation we all got on a different computer and wrote little programs which displayed various dubious comments all over the screens.
    This made the yobs rather cross.

    Got into school the next day to find there was a rumour going around that the yobs had met up with us in the local woods and we'd all been "bumming" because we were all "queers".

    Moved to high-school for the following term.
    New school, new opportunities, fresh start and all that.
    Except that the yobs wasted no time in telling everybody about the group of 12 year old "queers" who'd just started at the school.

    Funny thing was, we were all fairly normal kids and we were fairly smart, good at athletics and participated in a variety of activities so we usually ended up being better at most things than the yobs, who were too busy sniffing glue and smoking cigarettes to be either smart, gregarious or athletic, which made them even more cross.

    Even when we got into fights (which happened a lot) we'd usually win.
    Trouble was, you'd go into the toilet, a couple of yobs would follow you in and, when they came out with bloody noses and ripped shirts, they'd just claim that they'd been attacked by one of the queers and barely escaped with their arse intact.
    And a lot of people chose to continue to believe them, probably because as long as the spotlight's on somebody else it's not on them.

    With hindsight, I suspect we probably caused quite a few problems for the teachers as well.
    I mean, if we'd just been a bunch of sad, emo' kids, we'd have been quietly bullied and it could have been ignored but, instead, it resulted in ever-escalating tensions and constant trouble which had to be dealt with without really blaming us for defending ourselves.

    Anyway, after high school, I went to college in a different town, none of the yobs went to college at all and, as a result, I could stop spending all my time defending myself and explaining myself to morons and I could finally get on with my life.
  • ArcanaArcana Posts: 37,521
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    Supratad wrote: »
    Quite the contrary, I think it's their best album.

    My brother used to play Rumours all the time when it came out. Back then I was listening to 'new wave' almost exclusively and so it felt like he was trying to ruin my life.

    Nowadays though I find it quite listenable.
  • SchmiznurfSchmiznurf Posts: 4,434
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    Paul_DNAP wrote: »
    It were no cheap biro, it was a really nice fountain pen. We were not allowed biro in school as the teacher thought they corrupted our souls or something.

    Anyway - yes, whenever I stay in a hotel that has a pen on the bedside table that pen comes home with me and when I visit a trade fair I make sure I get a couple of pens. I plead guilty to that charge.

    So everyone is right to think you are a pen thief. ;-)
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 464
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    well they do say there is no smoke without fire. This tends to be true in my experience.

    Unfortunately some people are poisonous enough to spread rumors without a scrap of truth. The fact others believe in no smoke without fire helps them. It can and does ruin peoples lives.
  • SchmiznurfSchmiznurf Posts: 4,434
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    In high school I skived one day with a guy and I was seemingly the only person in school not to know he was gay. The next day everyone said I was having sex with him and sucking him off, it lasted a little while and pissed me off but it never ruined my life.
  • NeverEnoughNeverEnough Posts: 3,052
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    Si_Crewe wrote: »
    Sort of.

    When I was 11 (just before I started high school) I used to hang around with a bunch of mates, as you do. We used to build forts in the park, play war and go for bicycle rides but it was the early 80's and we were also kinda nerdy and we were just getting into video games, computers and electronics as well.

    One evening, after school, we were in town, hanging around the 1980's version of PC World, drooling over all the newly-released games for the Vic 20, TI-99 and Atari 400 when a bunch of the local yobs appeared and started taking the mickey out of us.
    By way of retaliation we all got on a different computer and wrote little programs which displayed various dubious comments all over the screens.
    This made the yobs rather cross.

    Got into school the next day to find there was a rumour going around that the yobs had met up with us in the local woods and we'd all been "bumming" because we were all "queers".

    Moved to high-school for the following term.
    New school, new opportunities, fresh start and all that.
    Except that the yobs wasted no time in telling everybody about the group of 12 year old "queers" who'd just started at the school.

    Funny thing was, we were all fairly normal kids and we were fairly smart, good at athletics and participated in a variety of activities so we usually ended up being better at most things than the yobs, who were too busy sniffing glue and smoking cigarettes to be either smart, gregarious or athletic, which made them even more cross.

    Even when we got into fights (which happened a lot) we'd usually win.
    Trouble was, you'd go into the toilet, a couple of yobs would follow you in and, when they came out with bloody noses and ripped shirts, they'd just claim that they'd been attacked by one of the queers and barely escaped with their arse intact.
    And a lot of people chose to continue to believe them, probably because as long as the spotlight's on somebody else it's not on them.

    With hindsight, I suspect we probably caused quite a few problems for the teachers as well.
    I mean, if we'd just been a bunch of sad, emo' kids, we'd have been quietly bullied and it could have been ignored but, instead, it resulted in ever-escalating tensions and constant trouble which had to be dealt with without really blaming us for defending ourselves.

    Anyway, after high school, I went to college in a different town, none of the yobs went to college at all and, as a result, I could stop spending all my time defending myself and explaining myself to morons and I could finally get on with my life.

    That's a fairly standard experience in the 1980's. About halfway through senior school a rumour started circulating that I was gay. I was of course upset by this because I was 14, full of hormones, and frankly just looking to have sex. And I was attracted to girls. It did for a time mess up my head and I could tell that my friends looked at me differently as if they were thinking "is it true?". It was humiliating in the extent that there was an assumption that I was feeling things for other men that frankly I just wasn't. Anyway I started dating left to go to college and uni etc and that was the end of it.

    A few years later I met on of the main perpertrators and I discovered he thought I was gay because I played for the school cricket team and he thought that the sport was a little "poncey"! I guess that's when I finally learned that those who start rumours tend to very small people with incredibly narrow world views.

    And even today I could still dispatch him to the boundary with an elegant cover drive.
  • dip_transferdip_transfer Posts: 2,327
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    An ex Girlfriend once tried to ruin my life by spreading rumours that i frequently beat her, It was all so she didn't have to give the real explanation as to why we split up. Fact was she Couldn't keep her knickers on.

    It all came out a few years later, You find out who your real friends are when shit like this happens. I sometimes bump into old friends that believed her, I don't give em the time of day , and the ex she's in a shitty marriage last time i heard, ain't Karma great :D
  • Paul_DNAPPaul_DNAP Posts: 25,801
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    Schmiznurf wrote: »
    So everyone is right to think you are a pen thief. ;-)

    I don't count taking something that someone has given to you for free as theft.
  • cris182cris182 Posts: 9,595
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    An ex Girlfriend once tried to ruin my life by spreading rumours that i frequently beat her, It was all so she didn't have to give the real explanation as to why we split up. Fact was she Couldn't keep her knickers on.

    It all came out a few years later, You find out who your real friends are when shit like this happens. I sometimes bump into old friends that believed her, I don't give em the time of day , and the ex she's in a shitty marriage last time i heard, ain't Karma great :D

    Same here, And she claimed i stole from her. Luckily for me non of my friends believed this as she didn't realise i was telling them all about her cheating and a few of them actually helped me plan to leave her

    So when i left and she told the lies and said she had thrown me out they knew this was not true as i had been planning my escape for months

    Some of her friends believed her but i know for a fact one of her closest friends didn't as she told me so
  • roger_purvisroger_purvis Posts: 968
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    these tales are all one sided.
  • MaxBetaMaxBeta Posts: 500
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    My neighbour phoned the police and told them I was keeping a goat in my house.

    No that was R Dean Taylor, we're talking about Fleetwood Mac.
  • cris182cris182 Posts: 9,595
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    these tales are all one sided.

    And coming from those who know they were just rumours and not the truth
  • PitmanPitman Posts: 28,495
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    Cryolemon wrote: »
    No, but someone at school once claimed I'd committed suicide when I had a couple of days off.

    no smoke without fire :cool:
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 464
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    these tales are all one sided.

    Hmmmm. Maybe we need a "have you ever ruined someone's life?" thread?
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