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When I visit the Life Issues forum, I'll come across many similar problems. One type centers around the original poster talking about someone else's issue.

For example.
"My friend failed out of college."
"My cousin just went to jail."
"My boss hit on another co-worker."

Coming across these is strange for me, because I don't think the poster is qualified to post about it. The issue they post doesn't effect them directly, and, in fact, is only loosely related to their lives.

Sometimes, they'll tie it to their lives. With the boss hitting on a co-worker, they might say "I'm a girl and I work with this guy and I'm worried he'll hit on me". That's a pretty legitimate concern. To a certain degree, I understand that type of post.

Most of the time, it'll just be that, though. Talking about someone else's life.

Today I read a post about a guy who's friend was falsely accused of rape. He went through the whole incident (and the small part he had to do with anything). When I was finished with the post, it wasn't even an issue. He just wanted to complain that sometimes girls falsely call rape and hurt people's reputations.

Basically, an incident that had nothing to do with him, but he involved himself in anyway.

After I was done reading and dismissing it, I tried to figure out why people do things like that.

It's pretty foreign to me. If any of my friends were involved in an incident (which, come to think of it, did happen) I definitely didn't make it about myself or post about it on an online forum. It's not something I could imagine myself doing, but a lot of people in the LI tend to do it, so there must be some general type of motivation, right?

But I suppose 'general type's are too...general. It's probably that each person has their own strange reason for posting about someone else's life.

Maybe it has something to do with creating problems and conflicts for yourself.

A lot of high school girls (and..girls in general) do this kind of thing. It's called starting s**t, creating drama, that kind of thing. Basically, they just freak out and talk about other girls behind their back and it's a huge ordeal. It's a peculiar thing, because their lives are pretty calm, but then they make a big deal out of nothing.

Maybe the people posting have a similar issue. Their lives are calm or not hectic enough, so they involve themselves in issues bigger than the issues in their own life.

It's an funny thing.