Juanita Berguson fell into the Poe trap some of us set-up to parody Joe Cienkowski on Twitter and now she feels stupid. So instead of admitting she made a mistake by jumping to conclusions, she’s looking to blame somebody else for her lack of intellectual curiosity by polling her users on whether or not to sue fake Joe.

You can see a full screenshot of her post opposite, without going to KimgdomInsight.com kindly sent to me by @valiaj

I asked Heidi (@heidiraff) to post the message below to Juanita’s website on my behalf, to set the record straight, but in keeping with her long standing hatred of transparent and open debate, Juanita has removed the post and banned Heidi from the website. So I’m reprinting it here in the hope that some of you might pop over to the original thread and make sure everyone following the story is aware of this non-insane explanation for Juanita’s continuing lack of honesty. Thanks!

http://kingdominsight.ning.com/forum/topics/do-you-support-identity-theft?commentId=2691844%3AComment%3A37323

Dear Juanita and Kingdom Insight users.

Once upon a time I used to post here, but was banned by one of Juanita’s business partners because I posted links to comments he made on my blog, in which he used threatening and abusive language on an article I wrote about the unfair treatment I received when I took part in one of Juanita’s radio podcasts. So I’ve asked a friend of mine to post this message on my behalf, to set the record straight about this latest debacle.

As you may know, Juanita uses Twitter to attract users to her brand. By her own admission she does this in an aggressive manner to provoke a response. Twitter is very commonly used in this way, due to it’s somewhat limiting nature of only allowing 140 characters of text at a time.

About 5 weeks ago, another user of Twitter who adopts a similar approach to self-publicity, began posting links to his self-published book, in which he claimed to present “scientific evidence proving that Darwinian evolution by natural selection is a lie”. At first he blended in with all of the other weirdos and no-one paid too much attention. But then he began posting increasingly strange messages with such regularity, while showing little or no interest in sensible conversation with the very people he was attacking, that some began to suspect that he was operating what’s known as a Poe account—a comic or satirical, often dark parody of someone who holds extreme views, which is almost indistinguishable from the real thing. (Google Poe’s Law)

Soon a number of similar accounts began to surface and an in-joke began to spread among a growing number of people. Each of these fake accounts used extracts of what the original user had said, but sufficiently altered so as to have an often very comical effect.

One such account was started by me. I assumed when I added Juanita to my ‘follows’, that she would read the messages I had previously posted and either get the joke and move on, or block me from contacting her. To my surprise she assumed that the messages you can read above, were in fact written by “atheist hackers” who had gained access to a genuine account. I accept that I may have told her this was the case, to see if she would be gullible enough to go for it, but in reality all she had to do to work this out for herself was see that the legitimate user was still using his account, often posting at exactly the same time as the many fake users. Instead she chose to see only what she wanted to see, which ironically led to her playing the joke on herself.

Because I knew that Juanita and Heidi had fallen out over the way Heidi was tricked into taking part in something she would never have agreed to take part in, had she known what was involved, I decided to try and help her out by using the fact that Juanita assumed my fake account was actually the real deal, to get her side of the story and make sure it tallied with Heidi’s account of events. To her credit Juanita wouldn’t do this and so I didn’t push it any further and my interest in digging any deeper ended right there and then.

But out of the blue and completely unrelated to anything involving Heidi, Juanita then proceeded to send a series of private messages to my fake account, saying that atheists call themselves moral, but they hack into accounts so as not to lose face in-front of each other. She came to the conclusion that my fake account was actually genuine, despite the fact that the evidence it was a spoof was staring her in the face and after days of my posting messages as that user which no-one could possibly think were genuine.

So rather than prolong her embarrassment any longer I sent her a reply message, pointing out that despite that she outwardly showed regret for the way in which she treated Heidi, she was actually operating exactly the same kind of assumption based thinking that got her in trouble in the first place, when she thought no-one would find out.

Operating this kind of dual standard is nothing new to Juanita, but she doesn’t like being reminded of it. Now, presumably out of embarrassment and anger at being exposed for a second time, I find that she is considering the options you have presented to you [here]. All I can say to that is this. Juanita had a chance to be honest and open with people when she invited me to take part in a radio show to discuss certain topics, which she decided at the last minute to set up in such a way that made it impossible for views to be expressed openly. She silenced the microphones of people who objected to this and put words in their mouth they would never say or agree to have said on their behalf.

Despite my personal dissatisfaction at a lack of an apology from Juanita for this, there was no need for that whole issue to raise its ugly head again, once we agreed between us, via email, to go our separate ways. But it was Juanita who dredged it all up again, by accusing Heidi of “siding with the atheists” simply because she had the temerity to point out the truth. All Heidi did was point out that, far from learning her lesson, Juanita was once again behaving exactly as dishonestly as she accuses only non-Christians of being capable.

I don’t like bullies and I don’t like liars. Heidi is too polite to say it, but Juanita is behaving like a bible bashing thug. She brandishes her opinion around the place as if anyone who disagrees is destined to either burn in hell or, heaven forfend, learn how to think for themselves. Her particular brand of fear theology might work on some, but she doesn’t like knowing why it doesn’t work on all—and I am proud, as an atheist, to call Heidi my true Christian friend, for not being afraid to remind Juanita of what she publicly proclaims herself to be, while privately acting very much in the opposite manner.

Matthew 21:12

Thank you for you time. You should now feel free to go back to talking about me behind my back.

Jim