A question-- Does anyone have an answer?

This is just a question.  And maybe the answer is that it is just a troll-- Before I even begin.  But thought I would post this to those that may be smarter than I am.

 A friend of mine, today, had someone post a horribly nasty 'note' on their Facebook account, publicly, where any one that also saw the picture this friend had posted could read it.  It was so defaming, so untrue, and terribly attacked my friend's character, yet this person was 'supposedly' upset over the issue my friend presented.

Shock filled me.  It was a long well written post.  You could tell they had thought about it before writing it, and had spent considerable time crafting their response, but it was so filled with hate and anger, and maybe even hurt.  I mean, this person was passionate about what they felt like my friend had done wrong-- to the point of seeming to hate her personally, not just the issue that they felt like she had wrong.  To top it off, it was so full of either complete misunderstanding, or out and out lies, that I could not help but respond.  As much as I could I tried to stick to the issues that were brought up, and the facts as I know them instead of lowering myself to attacking character.

My friend and I are very close.  I know her very well, and I know the facts were at best twisted.  In the post I could hear the person's anger and bitterness in their wording, even though, it seemed as though they did their best to write as if they were not bitter.  What really shocked me was, there was no provocation, and the other person was someone I had met before and thought was a friend of my friend.  I called my friend and asked what the circumstances were, and she was as floored as I was.  She just had not seen this coming.  She even mentioned that, even though they were friends, it wasn't someone she had spent a lot of time with, and so she didn't know what this person had against her, or why they did this in this way.  Why do this publicly to a friend?  --


Even if not a super close friend?

Has anyone had this happen before?  I'm sure someone has, but I am just trying to understand this and make sense of this.  I can't really accept the thought of the person being a troll, because to my knowledge they have never done this to anyone before.

If they felt so hurt, or upset, wouldn't they go to the person privately?  But in such a public format--

It just shocked me.

It probably isn't my business, but it was just vicious and very wrong (both content and how they went about it).  I felt as if I had to speak to defend my friend's honor.

Any words of understanding or wisdom?  I would love to hear from people.  You can PM me if you would like.  Or respond on twitter or here.  I am kinda trying to figure out proper etiquette-- if you will, and also really trying to make sense of 'why?'.

Thank you for reading this, and listening, and for any responses you choose to send my way (in advance thank you.)

This is Cat out.