The MakeMeThinner Support Forum

[GucciGoo]

Comments???

When a California woman recently gave birth to a healthy baby just two days after learning she was pregnant, the sudden change to her life was challenging enough. What April Branum definitely didn’t need was a deluge of nasty Internet comments.

Postings on message boards made cracks about Branum’s weight (about 400 pounds — one reason she says didn’t realize sooner she was pregnant). They also analyzed her housekeeping ability, based on a photo of her home. And they called her names. “A pig is a pig,” one person wrote. Another suggested that she “go on the show ’The Biggest Loser.”’

“The thing that bothered me most was, people assumed because I am overweight, I’m going to be a bad mom,” Branum says. “And that is not one little bit true.”

It was yet another example of how the Internet — and the anonymity it affords — has given a public stage to people’s basest thoughts, ones that in earlier eras likely never would have traveled past the watercooler, the kitchen table or the next barstool.

Such incidents — and there are countless across cyberspace — also raise the question: Is there anything to be done about it? Or is a decline in civil discourse simply the price that we pay for the advance of technology?

“The Internet really amplifies everything,” says Jeffrey Cole, of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. “We have a lot of opinions out there. All of a sudden there’s a place we can go to share them.” Add to that the freedom that anonymity provides, he says, and it “can lead to a rowdy Wild West situation, with no one to filter it.”

“It’s all things said reflexively, without thinking,” says Cole, who tracks the political and social impact of the Internet as director of Annenberg’s Center for the Digital Future.

“My guess is that if you went back to these people, a lot of them would have second thoughts.” And if you asked them to add their name, as in a traditional letter to the editor? “They’d be embarrassed.”

There are examples everywhere of anonymous comments that cause harm. On even the most innocuous sites — a parenting message board, for example — anonymity often leads to the type of response that would hardly be likely if names were attached.


“People post insults on here left and right,” one person wrote Monday on the New York edition of urbanbaby.com, a networking site for new mothers. “It seems the common word these posts have is Fat. Just because someone is overweight, fat, thick whatever you call us, doesn’t mean we are ugly, lazy or insecure ... So stop the childish remarks.”

News organizations, struggling to find ways to keep their readers involved in an increasingly digital and interactive world, are trying to strike the right balance.


Branum’s case fueled debate at the Orange County Register, whose Web site had only recently added a public comment section after news stories. OCRegister.com deputy editor Jeff Light says the site has modified its message board, only six weeks old, in response to staff concerns about inappropriate posts. Now, among other changes, language is more specific about what the site expects from those who post, and how a comment can be deleted.

Ideally, Light says, it’s the users, not the site’s operators, that should determine what is discussed, and how. “The comment area is not a journalistic space,” he says. “The point is for people to react freely.”

And Yahoo News took down its message boards completely in December, with the goal of finding a new system that doesn’t let a small group of vocal users dominate the discourse. “Our hope is to raise the value of the conversation,” says Yahoo spokesman Brian Nelson.

Harm can be much greater when people are singled out by name on the Web; such attacks can hurt someone’s career or home life. One entrepreneur is trying to help people recover from such attacks with a company he started last year: ReputationDefender.

“It takes one person 20 minutes to destroy your reputation, and it costs them nothing,” says Michael Fertik, who employs about 40 part-time “agents” on what he calls “search and destroy” missions against unwarranted Internet attacks. “It can take you 200 hours to try to clean it up.”

Fertik, who says his is the only company providing such a service, has clients ranging from victims of unfair comments on dating Web sites to people who feel they’ve been mistreated on MySpace.com. He also is helping several female law students fight what they call defamatory sexist and racist comments on a message board widely read in the legal community. Their story was reported earlier this month by The Washington Post.

Fertik says he offers “a PR service for the everyday person,” charging a fee that can be as low as $10 monthly, for a thorough search of Internet references. The “destroy” part starts with a polite letter and can occasionally lead to threatened legal action. (Generally, Web site operators are not liable for offensive postings.)

One person who takes it pretty much in stride is Branum, the California woman who was unaware she was pregnant until Feb. 26, two days before she gave birth. Her sister had alerted the newspaper to the story. Neither of them anticipated the nasty comments that rolled in.

But, Branum says, “it’s America. People are going to say what they’re going to say. It’s going to be everywhere, and you can’t stop it. Anybody’s allowed.” She says the flip side was the posts that came in defending her — and the cards and letters from people she didn’t know, wishing her luck.

Her fiance was less forgiving, even calling the paper to complain. Branum said she had a simple response for him: “Deal with it.”

[GucciGoo]

Now my opinion... I feel horrible for this baby. Her mom never knew she was pregnant, so the baby did not benefit from a healthy prenatal diet or vitamins. Who knows if this woman drank alcohol in the last 9 months or not.

I think the woman needs to get her act together and start a healthier lifestyle, because even though she is young now and can ambulate fairly well, that will not last. At some point she will no longer be able to keep up with or be active enough to care for this child.

[Serendipity]

I agree with you, Beth, but we both know that is easier said than done. Hopefully this mother will look and her child and see a reason to get healthy.

Yep, the internet is very much like the wild, wild west. I have to believe that the problems will work themselves out over time without too much government intervention. On the other hand, the wild west was improved by laws against having shoot-outs on the street. There are so many positives that the negatives will be policed out by us.....I'm wishing here. Isn't it true that there's always one in the crowd who acts up and ruins it for the rest?

[DogMa]

But it's just changed the venue of the discussion. If this woman had made the national news before the Internet, do you not think people around the country would STILL be saying these things? I think the same comments would be made; the one difference is she wouldn't know about them.

(As an aside, I actually know Jeff Light. What a complete ... umm, never mind. He's not one of my favorite people in the world.)

I hope the baby is OK, and I hope the mom gets some help and finds the program she needs to help her lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle. Because it would be nice if the baby could have her mom around for a long, long time.

[j0j0ruca]

Oddly enough this happend to a cousin of my mom's. She was rather large (carried it all in her belly) and didn't know she was pregnant until she went in to the hospital with pains. It turned out she was in labor. This was a good 15 years ago.

[bikipatra]

The woman will have to get through a lot of denial to see her weight problem for what it is. After all, how much denial do you have to be in to be pregnant for so long and really not know? I know a woman in Dallas who went through the same thing. She was young and just couldn't face being pregnant so she just told herself she wasn't.

[Tawanda]

I received a phone call at 6:30 a.m. one morning about 24 years ago, my sister telling me she had a baby a few hours prior. I couldn't wrap my mind around it.......she wasn't pregnant, I had spent time with her just a few weeks prior. I had to go to the hospital, look in the nursery, see her name on one of the little bassinets before I'd believe it. Yep, she had a big baby (right at 8#) and never knew she was pregnant.

I didn't believe it was possible until she did it. No signs and no symptoms out of the ordinary for 9 months.....until the labor pains began. Went to ER, thought it was kidney stones or gallbladder and they told her she was in labor. "Can't be! I'm not pregnant!".

I still wonder if she was in denial or if she truly did not feel that baby kicking and moving about.......

[JonnaD]

I've heard of this happening before also. They've found many of the abandoned newborns were born to women or girls who were in complete denial of their pregnancy.

[Mike]

This is horrible, yes. I agree with what everyone has said. In addition, we all need to realize that the internet is not a safe haven for anything. The ease of hiding and people not knowing who is saying what about whomever makes it easier for people who have negativity in there hearts to express such negativity, when, if it were in person, would not due to the possibility of scrutiny.
It is wrong for people to make these kinds of comments regarding someone's size, and I think we all know what its like. I grew up with this kind of prejudice being obese to morbidly obese all of my life. Di can attest to the fact that as I got older, I disregarded or simply didn't pay attention to it (mostly due to my own embarrassment).
I feel for this woman, and my only hope is that she can move on and do something positive with all of the negative that is happening to her right now. Perhaps something good will come of it, we can only hope.

[bikipatra]

I've heard of this happening before also. They've found many of the abandoned newborns were born to women or girls who were in complete denial of their pregnancy.

My mother works in women's healthcare and she says very often the girls know they are pregnant but afraid to tell their parents and that is why they "dispose" of the infants, sometimes killling them. That is one reason that in many states, laws have been enacted to allow mothers to drop off newborns at fire stations, the police, hospitals with no questions asked.

[ChynnaDoll]

Such a sad thing:+(

Love,
Chynna

[dmhearts]

I myself know where they are comeing from. Six years ago I had my second child. pregnant at 31 weeks when I found out. We had been tring for five years then, I was under alot of stress at the time, we had a couple of deaths in the family and starting a new job, moving into a new house and all. At 5"2 I carried all of my weight through the middle. But I was worried anyhow, I don't drink but is this baby okay! Well to make a long story short she was born weighing in at a very healthy 7#7oz, with nothing wrong, (thank goodness) She is now six. Since then I had to more. The last one was after haveing my tubes tied, so I am a firm believer that anything can happen. I can believe I am shareing this!!!!!

[bdg]

The sad thing is these comments happen all the time whether it is around the watercooler or on the larger watercooler of the Internet.

My hope for this woman is that she realizes that while people's hatefullness is a bad thing, she can prove them all wrong to the one person that should matter in her life now. Her child! If she is a good mother, cleans up her act, begins a healthier lifestyle for her child, if not for herself, then what is said on the internet means nothing and she and the baby will be better off. I hope this is what happens.

[SharonR]

Well I can't keep my mouth shut on this matter any longer.

When I got pregnant I weighed close to 300 pounds, and let me tell you. I feel everything, all the kicks, all the punches, him rolling over, everything. How she could not feel something was going in her body makes me think she was in real denial.

The whole thing makes me sad that even people who have been overweight judge her on being a mother. I think she could be a fine mother at 400 pounds or at 200 pounds. It's all in her choices. Give the woman a break.

It just angers me that so many people are judgemental. A little encouragment for the woman would go a long way I'm sure.

[JonnaD]

This is a little off topic, but maybe not - I saw a political cartoon this morning which showed Gore going into the water at a beach - The caption read "Did you see the ocean level rise when he stepped in?"

Instead of judging his policies and his issues on Global Warming, they are harping on his weight. Don't they understand they undermine their own positions when they focus on a person's looks instead of his actions?

In regards to the woman, we don't know what her circumstances are and what caused her to be in denial. We can only hope she gets help for herself so her baby can continue to have its mommy.