Telling lies does not necessarily equal defamation.
Here's the thing. You'll need a whole boatload of money, and you should expect every aspect of your personal life to become public fodder. To paraphrase a very, very wise judge:
If you win, expect nothing to change.
If you lose, expect nothing to change.
Unless you're rich and/or famous, defamation suits are just not going to be worth litigating. They can't be litigated in small claims in your state, so you'd have to go to a higher court, and that's when your costs start mounting. And mounting. And then some more. You won't be able to collect a judgment, so ask yourself what exactly you hope to gain.
You're talking about a
message board. First rule of message boards: Idiots abound.
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(very off topic - but I saw your screen-name and almost fell over laughing because I'm also browsing a particularly vitriolic web forum and one of the members has a gif of that as her/his signature line! )
