A response to Cummere Mayo

At the tail end of August, an anonymous account joined SLU to post a bombshell of sorts in accusing the Justice League Unlimited of tracking and correlating IP addresses within Second Life — in clear violation of the terms of service — for the purpose of connecting different accounts to one another. A la the RedZone fiasco earlier in the year, the original thread about the JLU spawned a discussion ranging for over ten thousand posts and a second thread that is presently nearly five thousand posts long at this point in time. While the original issue about the IP addresses drifted out of focus relatively early, the discussion's main focal point became the existence of a secret JLU wiki containing reams of private, personal information about "griefers" that the JLU members had consolidated through their own research in dealing with people they had labelled as enemies. Rightly seen as a much larger privacy concern than even the IP address, the majority of both threads has been discussing this development and the morality of it.

At some point in the first thread a certain Cummere Mayo came along and began asserting herself as a member of law enforcement in real life. While her credentials were never explicitly stated she provided strong implications that she was or had been a police officer or detective of sorts and began posting comments critical of the JLU in her supposed capacity as someone with a law background. These posts became more difficult to believe the longer she bragged about her RL background, culminating around the point that she bragged about having done something to secure a warrant that allowed somebody to "hack" the JLU wiki "in less than three minutes" and lay open its contents to federal investigation and, apparently, lots of amusement over how the JLU had worse security than an Xbox. A number of people, myself included, rightly questioned how ridiculous this all was (one long post in particular was beautiful in how it ripped her bragging apart point by point) which led to Cummere "clarifying" her original comments in more and more bizarre and unbelievable ways. While I had been critical of Cummere prior to her hacking claim, that was really the point that anything she said veered off the track of possible and straight into lying territory.

Despite the fact that there are more people questioning Cummere's believability than there are people defending her now, for whatever reason I have become the fixation of her rebuttals; my reputation in SL as Joshua Nightshade since 2004 is well-established, as is my forum behaviour. Nevertheless, that has not prevented Cummere from making a number of accusations against me that are not just untrue, but also against my very publicly known character.

The original accusations were relatively simple: Cummere stated publicly (and, childishly, added a note about it in her signature that remains today) that she was putting me on ignore on SLU because I kept arguing with her. She dropped a remark asking people to stop quoting me because "it was bad enough that she had to ignore my IMs in Second Life too." I have never contacted Cummere Mayo in private on any medium whatsoever and I certainly have not IMed her in-world.

When I said as much, she changed her story to suggest that it had not been me that IMed her, but people I had asked who were passing her messages for me because she was ignoring me.

Similarly untrue, I have never asked anyone to speak with her on my behalf either.

With both remarks I asked Cummere to post the full text of the messages she said came from me (and the names of the people who purported to contact her for me) and she simply ignored the request for more information. This is important to underscore, because it's a recurring refrain for Cummere's pathological lying.

Several weeks later the question of Cummere's legal qualifications came up when she claimed to have gotten a case number for her complaint against the JLU but refused to provide it publicly or even any information about the police station it resided with or even the officer who filed the case. From Cummere's first post on SLU back in the beginning of this year up until this point, her public SLU profile has stated that her location was in Arizona; it was certainly not information anyone could take as secret as it was to the left of every single post she made on the forum. When someone pointed out that they had no idea where to even begin trying to track down this supposed case, I suggested Arizona might be a good place to start given the fact that she lived there.

This set her off to a degree that was nearly comical and she attacked me for disclosing private information about her (which, again, I only knew because it was added by her of her own volition in every post she made here.) People quite rightly pointed this out and mocked her for it which caused her to amend the complaint once again: she wasn't talking about the profile, but the fact that I've been sharing her real life location in-world, on additional forums, and on other Second Life blogs.

As before, this is simply false. I have hardly logged into SL for more than five minutes at a time, a handful of times, since the middle of the year (for a year prior to that, my account had even been disabled by me out of disinterest). I don't post on SL blogs, and the only forum I am registered with is SLU. Cummere claimed I brought it up in a Linden office hour, but as the Lindens post the chatlogs of their office hours online publicly this is quite easy to disprove: the last Linden office hour I attended was in 2008, before Cummere was even registered on SLU, and she wasn't even present at it in any event.

But, like before, I asked Cummere to simply post the text of the comments she said I made. Cummere steadfastly refused to do so, or provide any examples of things I'd said at all whatsoever anyway. She simply ignored the comment and changed the subject.

A few days ago my attention was brought over to a blog that she is associated with which featured a long, rather homophobic article about me accusing me of leaving threatening comments about Cummere that had to be moderated and removed. Apparently it's been linked in her profile all this time, but I have had signatures turned off on SLU since sometime in July after a few new posters used theirs for spam. The blog is supposedly owned by an individual called "CLB" whom I will plainly state that I certainly believe is actually Cummere Mayo. 90% of the articles on the blog are written by and attributed to Cummere, and the few that are attributed to "CLB" sound the same as Cummere anyway: certainly, "CLB" has had very little to say up until they began accusing me of attacking their site.

On the 24th, a blog entry went up where at long last a vestige of the elusive proof I've been asking about for weeks showed up. "CLB" posted a few sets of cherry-picked comments left by me on SLU where I was critical of Cummere, then compared them against some comments they claim had been posted on their site by "Joshua Nightfire" which is not an identity that is or ever has been mine, nor have I even heard of it until Cummere posted about it a few days ago.

The quotes "CLB" compares to mine simply appear to be rewritings of what I posted on SLU with some swear words and slurs thrown in; a constant complaint of Cummere's has been that I have called her a "cunt" and a "twat" on SLU and I am a misogynistic gay male, but like with the Linden office hours this is also easy to disprove: there are no posts on SLU by me where I have called Cummere either of those things, and the last time I've used "cunt" or "twat" respectively were months before the JLU thread (and, more or less, my contact with Cummere in the first place) even appeared. In fact, I have had so little to do with Cummere in all respects prior to the end of August that her insistence that I have either heard of her much less have been stalking her prior to the JLU thread at all is both bizarre and, again, easily disproven. In any event the best "CLB" seems to do is compare demure critical posts of Cummere against alleged posts left on their site which cannot be verified by anyone else and haven't been seen by anyone other than "CLB" or even Cummere — she's repeatedly claimed that "CLB" only told her of them second-hand and she has no way of posting them because "CLB" deleted them before she was made aware.

A side point, it's been no question that I have been on a trip in China for nearly all of September. I said as much in both threads she was posting in (and discussed China and photos I'd taken with a lot of SLU posters) so it was never any secret. "CLB" raised the suspicion that "oh it's interesting that the volume of comments against the site lessened when Joshua mentioned on SLU that he was on a trip" — however, the funny thing is that actually I've been on that trip for the majority of the time that "CLB" claims I've been leaving comments on their site, and in fact the cherry-picked comments from SLU were posted by me while in China anyway! Cummere — sorry, "CLB" — apparently does not do her research very well.

Going beyond the comments, and the identity "Joshua Nightfire," "CLB" posted the first two parts of an IP address that they claimed were associated with that identity, my alleged comments, and my alleged posts on "some other forum" that is never identified. I would question why they didn't post the full IP address, but even the segment they did make available demonstrates it isn't and has never been mine: 203.59 is something that does resolve to Australia, but is not the geographical area of the part of the country I live in and isn't actually a range I have ever posted from. The vbul software has a handy capacity of tracking all IP addresses that an account has ever posted from so out of curiosity I asked Cristiano to check and see if those digits were ever associated with my account. Unsurprisingly, they aren't, and the IP address is not mine. On a whim I would venture that Cummere — sorry, "CLB" — simple googled for an Australian IP address range and thought they could raise the spectre of it belonging to myself. Again, I have never contacted Cummere anywhere and certainly not in private: her attempts to engage me in PM were unwanted, and I had to put her on ignore myself just to get her messages to stop. Obviously if she is willing to go so far to make things up there is no advantage in me speaking with her in a space that doesn't have additional witnesses.

The blog entry by CLB wraps up by saying "if this isn't the same Joshua I guess he has more important problems than Cummere." Well, no; Cummere has publicly accused me of a number of things that are flat-out untrue, and the "Joshua Nightfire" comments are only a part of it; she's made these accusations and given how obviously untrue they are I am not the one who needs to worry about refuting them. If she had any sort of constitution or integrity — certainly as a purported member of law enforcement — she would retract them on her own. She claimed that I had been messaging her in-world and had talked about her in Linden office hours, and these are a lot more difficult to wave away by pretending that it had to be someone with a similar name just trying to pretend to be me. This other identity only ever appeared when I provided plenty of evidence that refuted her claims that I've ever bothered her in SL, so she turned to this blog to try and drum up suspicion that I've been messing with her there.

One of the funniest parts is this:

For the record, neither I nor my fictitious doppelgänger have ever asked Cummere to apologise; the idea that I believe she has put me through a "shit-raking" is a fiction on the same level that I could have any interest in harassing her for years. "Defamation" is also a word that only Cummere has used (interesting that it's one "CLB" also posts), and not something I have ever said to her. Cummere's accusations and claims about her legal experience are just so entirely unbelievable that I don't even really need to refute them: nobody who has ever met me would possibly believe I would behave the way she claims, so I really am not worried about any damage she might be doing to my reputation.

The only reason why I am bothering to refute this is because Cummere has an apparently extensive and deeply troubling history with a number of people in the past, ranging from disputes in SL with other residents to lying about legal disputes with LL or petitions getting certain Lindens fired. I am, sadly, just the latest target in her psychopathy that has been going on for years. When Cummere is extensively impersonating police officers, however, and going so far as to manufacture letters from alleged minors who were supposedly harassed by JLU members, I think those claims are tremendously troubling given the backdrop of her apparent inability to tell the truth about anything else. Ultimately I think the record speaks for itself and I'm not truly concerned that anyone believes her made up stories, but I have decided to commit a response to type in the effort that it would be associated with any future google searches for "Cummere Mayo" by anyone else who finds themselves a target for her pathological lying and storytelling.

In summary, I am of the opinion that every post Cummere Mayo has made about her background is false; I think she suffers from a very severe delusion and an inability to tell the truth. I don't believe "Joshua Nightfire" has ever left comments on her site or anywhere else. I don't believe she has ever been contacted in-world or anywhere else. I think she's simply making things up for victimisation and I am the latest person to come under her cross-hairs. These traits are sad, but given what she has done with them I believe it's important that anyone who engages her in the future is aware of who she actually is.