Words carry a lot of weight if you put enough importance behind the one saying them, regardless of if it's from online or offline. Having a strong mind doesn't really make someone exempt from that.
I've seen my fair share of this from a few people I've known, in a variety of styles. One of them was highly unattractive, and employed both pity to direct attention away from her abusive behaviors, and information control on a surprisingly wide scale to make her target appear crazy, dishonest, violent, whatever she wanted. It's one thing to have one person tell you you're wrong about the truth, but it's an entirely different thing to have other people tricked into reinforcing that with misinformation. Was really fun being the target of that sort of thing.
The movie that was responsible for it's name I found to be really good. 69 years old now:
College. She took some kind of creepy liking to me, and became friends with all of my friends to ensure she could stick around. She stuck around for a long time by using them that way, even becoming my damn roommate in a four person place.
She had a way of being seen as too draining to not let her get her way. It was just easier to just let her be than deal with her bitching. She banked on this a lot to drain others into getting what she wanted. She made abrasion into a sophisticated means of control.