Take special care which bloggers you follow on the Net.
Unnamed Blogger (UB) [Lisette] rails against narc behaviors, but I see UB use them as well. I often felt nervous on UB’s blog, afraid to say the wrong thing, because UB goes off on commenters all the time if something seems even slightly narcissistic to UB. Especially if you’re still traumatized, this can traumatize you all over again. My comments often were not posted, despite being positive and affirming of UB’s posts and UB’s experiences. I began trying less and less when I saw how others got treated for saying the “wrong” thing.
UB posts things–naming names–about other bloggers and researchers and the like, which sound very slanderous, making false accusations. I do not dispute UB’s own experiences, and it may very well be that UB tells the truth about narcissistic behaviors, but I found such posts about other bloggers/researchers to be very disturbing. I often could not understand why UB made such accusations.
UB found a very narcissistic, abusive way to attack me Tuesday, out of the blue, while making no attempt whatsoever to resolve things peacefully first. I had never said one unkind word against or to UB, and had in fact been very supportive.
UB’s attack was frightening and slanderous. The measures used were overblown and litigious. The attack was intimidating, a favorite narc tactic. It made me feel like a frickin’ criminal, and was humiliating.
It is the sort of thing corporations and people like Trump do to silence people who can’t possibly afford to fight back.
Threatening someone for quoting something in her online diary which she found helpful in her journey of recovery, is a good way to throw her back into her traumatized state of 4 years ago. But I have worked hard to get out of that state, so hopefully I won’t stay terrorized for long by UB.
As far as I’m concerned, if you really care about helping people, then you won’t threaten them with lawyers for liking your stuff and telling friends to read it. That just strikes me as being more concerned for your own self than the people you claim to want to help. It also shoots you in the foot, because word-of-mouth (i.e., reblogs and the like) is how your site builds readers.
And why the threats? Because, three years ago, I quoted a tiny portion of UB’s blog, with full attributes to UB and links to UB’s blog. As always, I obeyed Fair Use, which states that you can legally copy small portions of a work for the purposes of review, critique, satire, research, that sort of thing, as long as you cite the source. We need this to keep the marketplace of ideas going, or else our free speech will be stifled. I did it to promote UB’s blog, or to show my abusers (who were reading) that I wasn’t crazy, or to cite the sources for things I wrote.
I fully set off quotes as quotes. I never copy an entire post or page, but brief portions of it. WordPress also automatically pings the sites I link to, which leaves traces for the site owner that they have been linked. And Internet practice among blogs is to cite author and link; I do this.
I love it when somebody links me. This leads to a spike in hits, and helps my Google ranking. I’m doing to others what I want them to do to me.
Heck, I shouldn’t even HAVE to defend myself or explain myself, because I did nothing wrong or illegal. Pretty much every blog I’ve ever read does the same thing now and then. Including UB’s.
Not only that, but for ELEVEN YEARS, this website has been full of various attributed quotes found in the course of my research into such diverse topics as religion, abuse, marriage, narcissism, literature, movies–taken everywhere from other blogs to church websites to Wikipedia to experts–and this is the one and only time I’ve received a message like this.
Because, well, Fair Use. UB must’ve found some shady ambulance-chaser.
I was accused of owning a business and profiting from this. I own no business: I am a hobbyist blogger and writer. I receive no profits related to UB’s blog in any way, shape or form. This is an online DIARY, NOT a business. But UB made no attempt whatsoever to find this out, just set an attack in motion and terrorized me. Treated me like some kind of content scraper for making a note in my online DIARY.
My online diary of recovery from abuse, I might add. What I use for therapy.
My therapy was under attack.
What I used to heal from various abusive relationships, was threatened with scary language and lawyers. Let that sink in and see how egregious it is for someone to do this.
Imagine you have poured your heart, fears, worst abusive incidents, including things which could be considered rape, into a blog for years. And then someone comes along and sends scary lawyers to threaten you for it, sends you into panic-mode for days.
This is what happened, from someone who claims to be here to help narc abuse victims.
From UB’s past comments, UB’s blog gets more hits in a day than mine gets in a week, or maybe longer. So this is a big blogger beating up a little one.
UB’s accusations and attacks were slanderous, libelous, insulting.
UB’s attack also ignores that UB has, in the past, posted things about others which could have caused those people to sue for libel. All I did was cite my sources, a practice which I had mentioned a couple of times to UB, without UB ever telling me to stop. I did not defame UB; I had only positive things to say. In fact, it was BECAUSE OF UB that I examined every single link on my site a couple of years ago to make sure it included the author. This is because UB stated that quotes from UB’s site should include authors and not just links.
This attack has caused me a great deal of anxiety and reminds me of attacks from my own narc abusers. My physical, emotional and mental responses have been exactly like when my real-life narc abusers attacked me.
For days, my mind and body have been on high-alert, panic mode. My body is weakened. I am afraid of more attacks. I can barely manage to keep up with my household responsibilities; my research has stopped; my studies have stopped. I jump every time the phone rings, and dread checking my e-mail and snail mail.
And now I have learned that my father has taken ill; I have quite enough to deal with, without someone on the Net stalking me.
I have discovered the history of UB’s visits to my own blog, and see that UB had been looking at it for months–but without making any attempt to find out who I really am. There was no concern shown for my stories of trauma and abuse. UB did nothing but go on the warpath.
I see UB continuing to visit my blog regularly now, showing that I have picked up another stalker. I have blocked UB and hope that will end it.
UB has attacked other bloggers as well just for linking to UB’s posts, and carried out smear campaigns against them, another narc tactic.
I wonder if UB would have a conniption fit if UB knew I printed up some of UB’s posts back in around 2012 or 2013. Maybe UB would tell me to burn the printouts. And what about the Wayback Machine? Will UB threaten the Wayback Machine next?
In my opinion, UB has a very black-and-white, negative viewpoint which causes UB to accuse far too many people of narcissism, and keeps UB “stuck.” UB has created a hierarchy of narc abuse victims, which excludes anyone who has not experienced UB’s select kind of abuse. Each kind of abuse from each kind of narc relationship has its own traumas which differ from others. All kinds of abuse also have similarities. They should not be turned into some kind of cliquish separatism.
I have seen comments by UB and friends which actually sound like they look down on people who have not experienced their particular kind of narc abuse. As if only one kind of abuse victim deserves to be called a victim. It ignores all the different ways people can be sucked into abuse, without showing lack of the victim’s character.
It makes light of the real trauma experienced by all kinds of abuse victims–and re-traumatizes victims of other kinds of abuse by making them think it’s somehow their own “fault.” You know, just like the abusers told them. When they’d hoped to find a support system on UB’s blog, people who don’t judge them.
UB appears to hate anyone who tries to move on from negativity and hatred of abusers. But each person needs to decide his or her own path to healing.
UB has a group of friends who gang up on targets, using very narcissistic, bullying behaviors, just like the narcissists which UB rails against. This kind of behavior has caused abuse victims to be re-traumatized.
Beware of such behavior, claiming to support victims, but instead terrorizing and alienating them. I have read the testimonies of people who have relapsed because of UB and friends. I will no longer associate with that group.
I also have to reconsider everything they taught me about narcissists and dealing with them.
I will not identify this blogger, nor the blog, nor will I give any other identifying information. So as far as the public knows, it could be anybody. But do keep an eye out for behaviors like this as you wander the Net looking for support groups after abuse. An inhospitable environment, full of landmines and litigious site owners, is no place to find healing, but rather further trauma.
Update 10/3/21: These threats came, I believe, the day before (or maybe the day of?) my mom called to say my dad was dying very soon.
A recent post by PopeHat adds more legal legitimacy to what I did, and shows that Lisette had zero legal basis to threaten me. Now watch as I use Fair Use to quote him:
The United States, conscious of the dangers of libel tourism and pro-censorship legal systems, has enacted the SPEECH Act, 28 United States Code § 4102. The SPEECH Act prohibits American courts from recognizing foreign defamation judgments obtained under regimes that do not provide defendants with free speech protections as robust as those available under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the laws of the relevant states. American courts have found that there is “no meaningful dispute that the law applied by [Canadian courts] provides less protection of speech and press than First Amendment and [state] law. Canadian defamation law is derivative of the defamation law of the United Kingdom, which has long been substantially less protective of free speech.” (Trout Point Lodge, Ltd. v. Handshoe, 729 F.3d 481, 488 (5th Cir. 2013) (upholding refusal to recognize Canadian libel judgment under SPEECH Act). Any Canadian judgment you obtain against Mr. Loder will be worthless – both because Canadian courts lack personal jurisdiction over him (as also required by the SPEECH Act) and because his speech is clearly protected by American law.
While this case refers to libel, this concept of protecting all First Amendment Rights of Americans sued by foreigners, seems to apply across the board. I’m not a lawyer, but this is what I’m gleaning from here and here.
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