Have you been targeted with character defamation?

[Anonymous]

Maybe in highchool, college, or workplace?

How did you tackle it?

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I had a very gossipy colleague one time who spread false rumors about not just me but a variety of other members on our team. I didn't really know how to tackle it; I just kept my head down and tried to prove they weren't true through deeds rather than words.

Thankfully she did it to so many team members that all of us started to collectively realize it and ally with each other against her. I don't know why she did that. For example, she spread a rumor that our designer was secretly sharing our designs with another company when he was so loyal to ours. She ended up pissing all of us off so much with all these false rumors. Maybe it's because she was the only female engineer on our team; she might have felt threatened in some way and felt the need to spread gossip about all of us to make us look bad as some way to ensure her own job security.

Then finally she got caught leaking company IP to customers. Then the boss tried to discipline her and she tried to blackmail him by threatening to leak even more IP. Thankfully, he fired her at that point.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

In my case, she told a bunch of customers that I didn't fix a bug in our code because I wanted to deliberately sabotage our company. The real reason I couldn't fix it is because it would require a big design change; I submitted a technical proposal requesting the design change and its associated costs which my manager never approved.

So the customers started turning against me. Yet I didn't want to stoop to the level of trying to defend myself to the customers over such a malicious lie so I just tried to stay professional. Still, it drove me nuts. I'm working my ass off and she's spreading all these horrible rumors about us.

[Sonorous]

Yes & how I tackled it was dependent on the specific circumstances involved. There was an obvious consistent pattern of me disagreeing with the defamation. But the form differed. Some situations called for more hostility than others or more passion behind my words & expressions, while with others, I could just ignore them & act in ways that show how they're wrong.

[Zestyassmf1997]

I lucked out and had a hefty chunk of evidence, as well as witnesses, who all testified that her claims were total bunk.