Gather Friends?

Didja ever sometimes wonder if you must be goin' around with a target painted on your back or something?

I feel that way fairly often these days. And I'm not really down about it, just curious or looking at it from a human nature standpoint more than anything.

Let me get right to the point. In the past few days I got zinged by another Gather "friend," the third zing in about a coupla months time, and I'm wondering just how that term is truly defined. A brief synopsis of the three examples in question will give credence to what I'm talking about:

1. This past Tuesday I posted up an article called Nude Butt Cheeks Doth Not A Writer Make. Right after I posted it I thought that it would be funny to put up a cartoon picture of a naked guy for my avatar, just to add spice to the article. It was kinda late and I was sleepy, so I did a Google search, found something, and put it up.

Bottom line, I was 100% wrong. I never looked at the pic, looked at who owned it or had the copyright, or whatever. I just put it up, which was dead, dead wrong.

Know how I found out that I'd messed up? A Gather friend turned me in. Gather, in turn, had to pull the picture down. And post up a notice that I'd messed up.

Know how I felt about it afterwards? Awful. Awful that I'd abused someone's copyright, awful that I'd been turned in, awful that I'd wasted Gather's time, and awful that a friend didn't feel that they could come to me and tell me I'd done something wrong.

Here's my question - is this a Gather friend?

2. About a month ago I wrote a spoof article that satirized some of the worst Gather articles - y'all know the deal, the ones where people are obviously just after points, the ones that you literally can't read due to spelling or word tense issues, stuff like that. It was meant to mock the worst and most horrible. As a result, I had a few Gather friends accuse me of writing personally about them, and one Gather friend even wrote these super long riffs about how I was simply angling for points, views, or whatever. Quite pointed stuff. Their first riff was okay, the second was troublesome, and by the third I was simply wondering why in the hell I was letting someone continually malign me within my own article. As a result, I deleted the third one. And wish I'd done the same with the first two.

Here's my question - is this a Gather friend?

3. One to two months ago I was alerted by someone (who was obviously out to start trouble) that a lady on here was telling people that I was lying regarding some things in the current article that I'd posted. The lady who supposedly was doing this was a Gather friend, and never said it directly nor straight to my face. Instead, one of her friends did that for her, and to her credit did it to my face within the article thread itself.

Here's my question - is this a Gather friend?

Folks, look. I know I've committed the sin of being popular, and for some that makes you an instant target. But this goes much deeper, what's swirling around in my mind is this simple question - is this how friends treat friends? Are we not supposed to help, nurture, and guide each other? At the very least, are we not to be civil to each other and give each other the benefit of the doubt in appropriate situations?

To me, it's pretty simple - if you like me and what I write, hang out. If not, leave, there are tons of good writers here on Gather that I'm sure you'll enjoy instead. Grace them with your presence. In the end, it's really simple what I want here on Gather. I want to have fun, hang out, experiment with an article concept or two, and enjoy....

Gather friends....my real ones...