Articles from February 2017

Twitter stopping trolls like the ones who targeted me last month

A month ago, I was targeted by a troll lynch mob even though I was not actually their usual target.

(You can read about it starting here; there are several posts on the subject in January’s archives.)

Their usual target, S, has been accused of being a catfish to a reality show star.  S claims he is NOT a catfish, and that he is a man who had an affair with the star, but she’s trying to cover it up.

All I wanted was his side of the story.  In trying to find out, I inadvertently brought down the troll mob on myself.  It was frightening because I did not know what they were capable of, but I did know they harass people just for talking to S, and that their harassment of S has been relentless for years now.

This group of trolls keeps getting blocked by S, and their accounts shut down by Twitter, but they keep making new accounts and harassing further.  I saw myself that when I blocked them from my blog, they’d use proxies to come in.

Well, Twitter is finally stepping up to stop this kind of thing.

From today’s blog post:

Stopping the creation of new abusive accounts:
We’re taking steps to identify people who have been permanently suspended and stop them from creating new accounts. This focuses more effectively on some of the most prevalent and damaging forms of behavior, particularly accounts that are created only to abuse and harass others.

Hopefully this will finally stop their harassment of S.  I also hope this will keep the trolls from my Twitter; I’ve blocked a bunch of them, but who knows if they’re keeping an eye on me anyway with new accounts.  Because yes, I still see them come to my blog now and then.  One visitor even came from a link in a Twitter status by one of the trolls.  That was just last week, I believe.

This is also good because, even though I reported two of them to Twitter, it went nowhere.  But now I see one of the accounts is gone: Maybe my report helped S get the account shut down.  You can tell by their Twitter handles that they made the accounts on purpose to harass S.

Is S for real?  I am inclined to think his evidence is much better than the star’s.  Her story keeps changing.  But even if she’s telling the truth, the behavior of the trolls is wrong.  I hope Twitter will do what it claims it will do, and stop it, not just to keep the trolls from S, but to get them to lose interest in me as well.

UPDATE 2020: I have proof that Sam is who he says he is, so the trolls can pound rocks.  He’s opened up more online publicly and to me.  I will NOT post private proofs here because it’s his business only to post these things and I will not violate his trust.  But publicly he now has a podcast with his girlfriend (who I’ve verified is a real person–and that she has visited him).

 

Re: The current political situation

So much is going on that I can barely keep up.  My friend Lucky Otter calls it hypervigilance, says that the abuse is now happening on a national scale…. We have the flying monkeys in large numbers….

I’m starting to burn out on news from the White House.  It’s nonstop crapstorm every day.  I spend hours just checking news feeds on Twitter. But I keep hearing that we should all be vigilant so we can protest through various channels and keep our voices heard.  But I do have other things to do….

Then I watch movies of the White Rose Society, and hear how Germans didn’t do enough to stop the Nazis, for various reasons.  We can keep the same thing from happening here, and it looks like we just might do so–but not if we stop watching.  But what about the other things I need to do?

I’m following not just American newspapers, but German and British ones as well, to get more global perspectives.  Der Spiegel is about to publish the English version of a scathing series on Trump.  That’s the magazine which also put a controversial picture on the front cover, of Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty.

It’s all maddening.  Those of us who have experienced narc abuse and other kinds of abuse, we can recognize what’s going on, but the flying monkeys call us “libtards” and laugh at us.

I also see the exact same complaints coming at US that we made towards the Republicans during the Obama administration, yet they don’t even seem to notice the hypocrisy.

Yet Obama–while it’s common and possible for any President to have narcissist traits–was not the full-blown NPD/sociopath now sitting in the White House.

We get accused of wanting the president to fail, and oh, how disgusting that is.

Hello, the Republicans came out and SAID they wanted Obama to fail.  They obstructed every single thing he tried to do.

We are afraid of what will happen if Trump fails.  Nobody wants the country to fall apart.

I see from European papers just how frightened people are overseas, because we don’t just affect our own country.  Our actions affect the world.

The actions of Trump in the past couple of weeks are so frightening that even Republicans are complaining.  What does that tell you?  A Republican judge blocked the immigration ban.

I’ve had a soft spot for McCain ever since the 2000 election, when he should’ve been the one nominated, not Bush.  McCain would never have approved torture.  I also love how McCain used to work with Feingold to make positive changes.

I wish McCain were our president right now.

But I do have hope, as I see forces aligning to keep Trump from causing too much damage: protests, donations, judges, even White House officials and Congress members, leaders of other countries, and yes, our Constitution with its checks and balances.  Maybe he will be removed from power because of his obvious mental instability.

Of course, Pence is next in line and I’m not happy about that, but it seems like he’d be less of a threat to the well-being of our country.  Not because of his policies–blech–but by behaving more Presidential.  Even Bush behaved better than this, and I despised Bush.

Too much is happening to blog about it every time something happens.  I also don’t want to alienate readers.  But if you wish, you can follow my Twitter, where I’ve been getting much more political.  Mostly retweets, but of things I see that I feel are important.

My abuse-blogger friends are writing about feeling triggered by the state of the country right now.  They recognize what’s going on, are quite familiar with narcissists, flying monkeys, gaslighting, and the like.  My experience with abusers was short-lived compared to theirs, since they tend to be children of narcissists.

I’ll point you to my friend Lucky Otter, who wrote a post here.  The post and especially its comments have been helpful.  She has written several other posts on the topic as well.

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