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Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.

Or so they say. But in this age of text messaging and Internet blogging, gossiping—that once-harmless pastime enjoyed by miserly spinsters on lazy afternoons over cups of tea—has ridden the wave of the future and taken a turn for the worse. Hushed speculations that used to be kept within the confines of sets of friends are now widely publicized fodder for everyone. And in this viral age, you don’t have to be a celebrity to be gossiped about on the Internet. It could happen to anyone, as it happened to me.

The worst thing about it is that it is so public. When before, the gossipee could live her whole life not knowing that everyone thought she was a (insert derogatory comment here), now it’s broadcasted for the whole world, and even the gossipee, to see. That the population thinks you’re fat/nerdy/uncool/unpretty could all just be a click of a mouse away. The second worst thing about it is that it is so permanent. At least in the past, gossip, however terrible, was just passed from mouth to ear to mouth to ear. Now, if you’re branded on the Internet, you’re branded for life. Your only hope would be that the blogger or forum-administrator—who comfortably hides under a pseudonym—would delete the entry entirely. Then again, if he/she was malicious enough to namecall or start a rumor about you in the first place, it would be foolish to expect any concessions from that person that would reverse the damage done.

And so you try and do what you can but there aren’t a lot of options. You can ignore it, with no effect; or you can try and fight back, in vain. The most you can do, really, is blog about the truth yourself but you must understand that the one who draws first blood calls the shots. She has the shock factor on her side while your feeble attempts are easily misconstrued as damage control—a way to make the sordid claims a little less embarrassing, a lot more palatable.

I don’t know. They say it’s good that all this technology gives power to the people. But sometimes you wonder if this is the kind of power that the people know how to wield in the first place.