blog stalk

Trolls, stalkers and threats: ten years of my blogging experiences

I’ve had this blog since January 2009, and it has seen a lot in that time.  I’ve also had a website since around 2005.  So for the tenth anniversary of the blog and fourteenth of the website (merged in 2014), let’s do a little summary of what has happened:

For 3 years, I mostly wrote book reviews; not much happened.  Around 2012, it started to get a bit of traffic because I started writing about narcissism, which was just getting popular as a blog subject.

  1. In May 2012, two of my abusers came to my blog after not looking at it for a couple of years.  They discovered I’d been writing about their abuses, accused me of lying, threatened me with a lawsuit–and also threatened to stalk me at church.  I knew I was telling the truth, and zero lies.  So I stood my ground, kept the blog up, and continued telling friends/family/church friends/priest what was happening, as I had been doing for two years already.  It has now been 7 years, and no lawsuit.  The statute of limitations has also long since run out.  These two abusers still read my blog, but none of their many threats ever came to pass.  I count this as a victory.  I’m not sure why they check my blog anymore, because these days they often spend maybe a minute on it, and that’s not enough time to read anything.
  2. In August 2016, after I had supported a particular blogger for four years–comments, sympathy, reading her novel, reblogging her–she threatened me with a lawsuit for *quoting* her with full attribution (well within my rights under copyright law regarding Fair Use).  I took the quotes down, but after this, I wanted nothing to do with her anyway, or with promoting her blog.  But the fear and trepidation over this had to succumb to real-life trouble because a couple of days later, I got the call that my dad was dying in a few days.  That was a very difficult month–but I got through it, and I warn others about this blogger.  She is very popular online, and has had many other victims as well.  Or rather, she was–I’m very relieved to see that her blog is now offline and apparently has been for a while now.  Maybe people can still find good things in her book to help them understand narcissists, but she encouraged people to stay “stuck” in the anger stage–even yelled at people who said we should try to heal eventually–and blamed people for being victims of narcissists if they didn’t fit a certain category.  This is all very harmful, so I’m glad to see her no longer running a blog where she victimizes people who come to her for help.  Meanwhile, my own blog and website are still up, and I encourage you to try to heal and move on after your anger has run its course.  You’ll be much happier than if you endlessly try to find ways to “get even.”
  3. In early 2017 and again in early 2018, this blog was inundated with hits from malicious and obsessive trolls who had been stalking another blogger for a couple of years.  He’d attracted a whole mob of them, who now started checking me out for talking to him.  I had only just gotten a Twitter account, which they used to find my blog, where they began leaving snarky comments and combing through my archives looking for who knew what.  I used the blog for therapy and wrote all sorts of things about my past, so I feared what these people planned to do with it.  Even when the mob abated, I was told they still stalked my blog and Twitter and talked about me in their little circle.  I occasionally saw evidence of that, myself.  But for many months now, they still stalk the blog and Twitter account of their original target but seem to be leaving me alone.

 

Meanwhile, I have learned a lot about blogging and running a website.  I have learned things that have helped in healing from the past.  I’ve been working on a new novel for nearly four years now, a new passion, along with defeating Trump and what has become of the GOP in the last several decades.  I have learned a lot about and/or changed my mind about a lot of things, from politics to religion to abuse to history…. This has all happened over the fourteen years of this blog/website, and you can find it all in the archives.

I have also been very active on Twitter, here.  I don’t write as much on the blog as I used to because Twitter is a good way to share retweets and keep my followers up-to-date without having to go through the trouble of writing a blog post for everything that’s on my mind.  I encourage you to follow it (unless you’re a troll).

Improving….

Ever since I blocked the Unnamed Blogger (UB) [Lisette] last night, I’ve been getting steadily better.  I still suffer from physical effects of last week’s anxiety, but I can concentrate better on other things now.  I could swear this past week has been a blur; it feels like Tuesday was yesterday.  It’s been a blur of fear and anxiety.

As I told my husband, it feels just like when my narc abusers found my blog and threatened me, all over again.  The constant fear and dread of what will happen next, every move you make being watched.  But since I blocked UB, UB has made no attempt to come back in through other means.  So far.

Just knowing someone else can affect me like this, tells me UB is definitely a narcissist, turned into one by all that hatred of narcissists.  Yet another reason not to let hate of the narc consume you.

I hope that will be the end of it now.  I have so much on my plate: my dad’s health declining, house repairs, a cat who probably has cancer but we can’t afford the CAT scan to be sure ($1000!), church fundraiser, primary election, plus all the registration etc. for a child going back to school soon.

I don’t have time or space in my head for a new stalker.

It actually makes me feel a weird sort of fondness for my own pet stalkers, since at least they turned into just a little buzzing in the background.  They’ve been well-behaved for years now.  😉

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.

Beware: Sometimes even the narcissist bloggers are themselves narcissists

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.

Some thoughts on my sociopathic stalkers as I revise an old post….

I’ve been revising old posts and putting them on my front page for a time, so more people can see them–and so I can take care of formatting issues in an orderly manner.  This website has nearly 1000 posts and pages.  😮

While revising this one to sticky-post last night, I found a note:

[Update 10/22/14: About six months ago, at least one of my stalkers began using a new device and connection.  I thought it was a new fan, until they gave themselves away, probably Richard.  He seemed particularly interested in this post for some reason.]

As I revised the post and thought about that weeks-long obsessive stalking campaign a year ago, I began adding the following as an update–which seems like it should also be a new post as well, about how to deal with blog stalking sociopaths:

Since the time described in this post, when I moved to WordPress.org and could now block them effectively, Richard and Tracy switched Internet Service Providers and began stalking my blog with different IPs.

(For people who don’t know what that is, IPs are your computer’s “address.”  Some are temporary, some are fixed.  They are easily obtained by many website hit trackers, and can also be blocked when you have access to your website’s root files.)

They occasionally use somebody else’s IP, whether belonging to a business wi-fi or to a friend.  Once, the IP belonged to a hotel.  They hook up their smartphone(s) to an Internet connection, or use their wireless plan.

But their usual IP has been the same since September 2013, so I could block them at any time: I just choose not to.  Well, except now and then, when I want to mess with them.

Nowadays, instead of bothering me, I find their antics on my blog highly amusing.  Such as in the above note from October 2014, describing when they came on from an unexpected place in April 2014, began obsessively and hilariously stalking my blog and probably raised its Google ranking, and then sent a little “guess who” in my blog stats.

They knew I would catch their little message.  When I called out these obsessive little buggers, they made a PDF copy of that post.  This stalking campaign went on for hours a day for weeks, making me wonder where they found the time.

They searched my blog for posts on stalking, for hours at a time.  I even took their search terms and made new post categories out of them.  🙂  (You can see a few of them at the bottom of this post.)

I describe this all here.  And in that post, I also wrote,

Ah, Richard or Tracy, I will block and unblock you at will, because it’s fun.

But don’t think I fear you anymore.

On the contrary, this is highly entertaining.  Bring it on.

That particular stalking campaign stopped abruptly after they read that.  I guess they wanted me to be scared by it, not amused.  LOL

These antics also make me almost certain that they deliberately drove by me a second time back in January 2013 because they wanted to spook me.  (I know they know it was me, because I heard their little girl call my name when she first saw me.)  Because if they can do this, they can do that.  It fits their modus operandi.

These antics prove that they’re sociopaths beyond any lingering doubt.  “Normal” people don’t behave like that: They’d either try to make things right or go away eventually, not carry out a campaign of intimidation and obsessive blog-checking.  “Normal” people have better ways to spend their time than trying to terrorize people.

(Well, okay, Richie on The Slap did that to Hector.  But he’s a teenager who mistakenly thought Hector raped his BFF, and it only went on for a short time, leading to Richie’s repentance.  Oh, yeah, and he’s also a fictional character.  😉  He’s not a real-life 42-year-old with a family, who claims to be a Christian.)

This really is a terrible example to set for one’s children.

I’ve also encountered other sociopaths before them.  One, the webmaster of a group we belonged to, e-mailbombed and carried out a smear campaign against my husband for daring to say, “Hey, you need to make some changes to the website.”

Another, a girl who constantly carried out smear campaigns against other people on a computer bulletin board system back in 1994.

And no, neither of these sociopaths ever admitted to wrongdoing, as they terrorized others.  I don’t know what ever happened to the Avenger, but the old webmaster eventually ended up in jail at least two or three times–and on the sex offender registry.

These antics prove Richard and Tracy are sociopaths, and they do this because I’m one of several people who have seen through their masks and know what they really are.  I’ve seen before how Tracy can go after perceived enemies, how ruthless she is, even as the target protests his or her innocence–especially if the target tries to tell.

But they’re amusing sociopaths at least.  If you can laugh at sociopaths, their power over you is gone.

I am out of danger from my abusers: Statute of limitations has run out

A quick check of Wisconsin laws tells me that the statute of limitations for libel/slander is two years.  I never libeled, defamed or slandered my abusive ex-friends, but when they found my blog, they threatened to sue me for this.

Even if Richard and Tracy were to still think they have a case, it has been between two and a half to four and a half years since I told friends, family, my priest and this blog about what happened, hoping for support, venting and help with healing.  It has also been more than two and a half years since they made this threat.

They have suffered no job losses.  If they even have jobs, I wouldn’t know who they work for, and wouldn’t contact their employers anyway.  That just isn’t the kind of thing I do.  We also do not run in the same circles except online, even though we live in the same city.  They have absolutely no financial losses to claim because of me.

This tells me their threats were just intimidation meant to keep me quiet, that they were all bluster, that they hoped I was easy to intimidate, that they were indeed intentionally trying to gaslight me into doubting what I knew was true.

Instead, I stayed strong and brave, continuing to tell my story, keeping my blog up, keeping my mind and memory strong and secure against the gaslighting.

This tells you, the reader, to be brave and tell your own story of abuse.  Don’t let your abusers silence you!

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