There's a strange phenomenon occurring in the Maldive inter-webs that I cannot explain.
For some reason, a lot of people appear to be commenting on the Internet lately, brimming with “inside information” about me. They usually start off right away with “I know him very well” - thus establishing that they're intimately familiar with me personally – then, with all the credibility of an anonymous Internet comment, proceed to narrate fascinating trivia about me that I'm often yet to discover myself.
This isn't exactly new, of course. After all, people have in the past mysteriously recollected having coffee with me where I was “openly” dissing their religion - along with a bunch of other people. The problem is, I've never even met some of these alleged co-conspirators in real life.
Another time, I got a panic-stricken call from a relative who'd just heard that I was "taken away" the previous night for “interrogation”.
Just go over that in your head. Someone somewhere felt an inexplicable compulsion to invent a story that went something like “yaamyn was taken to the cops last night for interrogation”. It boggles the mind.
Much more recently, I received information that I have also been busy hacking into Police servers.(WTF?)
Then there's the guy with the anonymous “News” website, ("adducommunity", was it?) who is privy to “inside information” that I mingle with the upper echelons of the ruling party – and considered this worth publishing as a story as well.
An anonymous commentator on Minivan News, who also miraculously “knows me”, confirmed that I am actually 'an innocent boy' – it was, in fact, “evil” Minivan News Corp that was at fault. Apparently, they were 'tricking' me into writing. Oh, poor me, then.
In another anonymous comment published by Minivan, one genius “knew” that I was yaamyn the blogger who, apart from his day job as programmer (and night time crime fighting duties-), also finds the time to write, produce and animate an entire TV series - resulting in the Maakana show producer, my namesake, complaining of getting harassed.
Detective “heck” then appeared on the scene to connect the dots and add 2+2 to end up with an absolutely fascinating conspiracy, and unearthed the unholy nexus connecting me straight to the President of the Republic.
As recently as yesterday, Private Eye 'tsk tsk' - also a Minivan News commentator - publicly revealed to my bafflement, that my source of income is actually political contributions from the ruling Party – and “by extension, Israel and American political lobbies", and therefore I am - maybe unintentionally - biased towards these benefactors of mine.
This was followed by a free psycho-analysis, that revealed that I “suffer from a simple case of self-loathing, insecurity and identification with a powerful other.”
"So, you have political views? How would you describe your childhood relations with your mother?"
Obviously, if I think published statistics prove that Palestine isn't perhaps the worst ongoing humanitarian situation in the world, then it must be some deep underlying psychological issues that make me feel this way.
What weirds me out most is that sometimes, these tools don't even sound like they're pulling stuff out of their ass to deliberately mislead others.
In fact, it often sounds like they are genuinely convinced by their own bullshit - so much that they actually come up and narrate intricate details of these marvelous gems about my life TO ME.
There's one "muslim boy", for instance, who commented on my piece in January.
"A very good article BUT first thing first;
The author of this article, Yameen Rasheed is a kaafir. Not for writing this article but he has left the fold of Islam a long time ago. So the author is an atheist and he is writing about his former religion."
What-the-what??! I don't even- :-0
At least, I have the consolation that if I were to die today, there's an entire army of highly informed strangers, all of whom are qualified to write my detailed biography - one that could be a bestseller.
To think all this time, I thought of myself as a quiet, introverted half-nerd that lived all of my life, until pretty recently, in a foreign country where I did not mingle or hang out with Maldivians - whether relatives or not.
The chances that you - or anyone, in fact - "knows me very well" are just absurdly remote. The number of people who actually know me well, I can count on the fingers of my left hand.
So, to set the record straight:
No. I do not hang out with the President trying to come up with ways to take away your religion. I don't give a flippin' shit about you or your beliefs except where you infringe on other's rights.
No. I am not paid "political" or any sort of contributions by anybody. I make my own living, and am happy with it.
No. I do not have any political allegiance in the Maldives, nor am I registered to any party. This might come as a shocker, but it is quite possible to have independent political thoughts - and not always look for a political teat to suckle on.
No. My views expressed here are entirely mine, and comes mostly from a life time of reading news and political commentary. I am definitely not "tricked" or "paid" or threatened or sodomized into expressing my thoughts in writing here.
Finally, No. You don't "know me well". STFU, already.
When an anonymous commentator on the Internet claims to "know me very well", or boasts about having had coffees with me (or similar) where they claim to have learned some precious, secret, insider information about my life, then you can take it to the bank that it is a figment of the person's imagination.
~Peace!
