A couple months ago, somebody really went off on me about a harmless picture I shared that another friend had posted. It showed a couple firemen with their shirts off, standing around talking, not even in sexy poses or anything, and said "Suddenly my house caught on fire". Clearly intended to be a joke, and the person who went off on me knew my husband used to be a volunteer firefighter. He made a nasty comment on the picture, implying that my sharing it was giving him body image issues, complete with a sarcastic "thanks" at the end. Then proceeds to make more nasty comments when my husband and a male friend made comments defending me and saying if the picture gave him body image issues that was on him. Within an hour he'd deleted all of his comments, sent me a non apology message complete with a lecture on how "objectification leads to abuse" "you of all people should understand" "jokes with your husband are fine but Facebook is a public place ya know" and similar condescending nastiness.
This same person had gone off on me less than a month prior, because I shared a horoscope thing I thought was interesting, but had only skimmed through it, and missed the X number of years of bad luck if you don't share thing that was way at the end. His comments implied I personally was wishing him bad luck and that I was bullying him by sharing it. That time, I deleted my post because I thought it was my fault that I missed the bad luck thing at the end and felt bad for apparently making him feel bullied.
After his nastiness with the firemen photo I shared, he posted on his page about how Facebook wasn't a good place for him and he'd be leaving Facebook. So he got all kinds of virtual hugs and sympathy, and of course nobody saw the mean stuff he did to me because he deleted all his comments (we are both in the local music community and had about a hundred mutual Facebook friends).
So after getting all this sympathy for his nastiness, and all the virtual hugs and everything, he's back to posting again the next day like nothing happened. Then making some nasty vaguebooking posts that were pretty clearly directed at me, since I didn't apologize for my post that supposedly gave him body image issues, didn't delete it, and didn't respond the way he wanted to his non apology.
I ended up blocking him on Facebook because at that point reading his posts just enraged me, but I wonder if there would have been a polite way to call him out for his manipulative sympathy seeking "leaving Facebook" post right after what he did to me that I might have missed in the heat of the moment?
If it matters, this was my former band leader. I've posted about him here before, but that was some years ago and those posts don't seem to be turning up now when I tried to find them for background. So for a brief background, he expected me to teach the same songs over and over again to his friend the clarinetist in rehearsals, while not expecting his friend to practice because his friend was "busy" then broke up the band when I told him that wasn't working for me after a year and a half of teaching the same guy the same songs and hearing him make the same mistakes at gigs.
