Who are you?

For now, we're anonymous. Why? Well, we have nothing to hide. No agenda. We aren't, however, willing to be the focus of Ms. Lehtonen's and Mr. Tonello's unique form of online obsession. We have never had the dubious pleasure of meeting either him or Ms. Lehtonen (though we will admit to being geographically much closer to Mr. Tonello - let's do lunch at El Bulli sometimes, chum! You sure talk about it ad nausum, but on a Bonanza salary, can you really afford it? Come to think of it, it's phonetically so appropriate for you!). What we got fed up with is the curious obsession Michael Tonello seems to have with strangers. We haven't been doing that to anyone online - just publishing their own words and their own internet trail.

We were informed that Mr. Tonello is now posting as reconfortante on the GQ.com forums. He has a host of other names on forums where he seems to have conversations with himself as his various alter egos. Usually, it's to talk up his book. That's a pretty unique form of word of mouth. Bet John Grisham doesn't have to haunt Amazon putting up his own reviews as Yawn Risham or the like. Yawn is right.

Look for him as advent, centralparkwest and (we think) Hermes Guy on styleforum.net. He has a very unique style of writing and he seems to lose his temper fairly quickly at the slightest sign of cricticism. He's also posted his own comments shilling himself as (we think) larambla17 and others on YouTube and elsewhere online. If you know of any more aliases please feel free to post them.

He also seems to fancy himself a veritable consumer advocate. Scams! Lies! Fraud - oh, my. To which we call BS. Come clean, Mr. Tonello. Admit you sold items that people complained about and THAT'S what this is all about. Ebay booted you, after all. They must have had reasons. Or perhaps, let it go. It's been nearly five years.