blog stalkers

Fallout from my Troll post=I keep fighting

The trolls, of course, got upset with my exposing their tweets to the world the other night, as was expected.  I discovered a new (to me) troll account in my notifications the next day, with a whole bunch of scolding tweets.  Instead of reading them, I blocked her (which made them all vanish) and reported her.

Just trying to choose five tweets while reporting her to Twitter Support was nerve-wracking.  These people are monsters.  If she thinks I’ll read all her book-long tweets to/about me, she’s deluded.

While glancing over and choosing the five tweets, I noted that these (and other) trolls complain about their “targets” asking for help reporting them.  They remind me of Trump and his cries of “presidential harassment.”

Victims of Twitter bullying often find that Twitter Support is no help, so they need to ask their friends in an attempt to get Twitter to pay more attention.  This is our survival mechanism–so of course the bullies try to turn it around on us, gaslight us, and project their own harassment onto us, for using the best means we have to get online justice.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the concern trolling I saw in those tweets.  “She blocks us for telling her the truth!”  No, I block you for being a bunch of bullies and a$$holes who can’t accept that other people can come to different conclusions than the ones you want them to…

And I block you for being creepy.  Like, seriously creepy.  Frickin’ stalkers who go digging for info on complete strangers.

One said to me yesterday, “We know everything about you,” and used my first name for her Twitter handle.  These trolls have done this to me before–specifically “Darcy,” three years ago.  It only confirms that they found my Facebook back then and were the ones sending me at least some of the weird friend requests coming in back during that time.

And yet–I never gave them my real name.  I never connect it to my online handle.  I don’t know how they got it.

Why bring these things to light? Why bring their wrath on my head every time I expose them for what they are?  Because these trolls have hurt a LOT of people over the past five years; a few of the people hurt are my friends.

People who do their best to track you down and learn “everything about you” when you refuse to give them that information, are stalkers, and no one to give any sort of credibility to.

That’s the kind of people these trolls are: bullies, stalkers, bunny boilers, psychopaths, abusers.  They’ve hurt countless people over the past 5 years with their harassment campaigns and refusal to allow people to come to their own conclusions.

This is what narcissists do to keep their victims under control.  By refusing to play along, we thwart them and their schemes over their victims.  By refusing to play along with the trolls, I become a threat to the triangulation campaign they have been running for years.  And by keeping my own mind, I’ve watched their claims fall to pieces–same as with everyone else who’s tried to control me in the past.

These trolls keep trying to bring me down because I’m a threat to them.  By standing up to them, I take their power away.  And that makes them angry, so they have to find ways to make me feel frightened or small.

You know what?   So what.  The more abusers try to shut me up, the louder I say it.  I proved this to Richard and Tracy eight years ago.  The more these trolls try to scare and ridicule me, the more I speak out.

Lots of people have deleted tweets and closed accounts to get these trolls off their backs.  I just keep blogging and tweeting.  (From my grandpa’s eulogy, it runs in the family. I also have Scottish ancestry: They’re fighters.)  Same thing on Facebook: Most comments are supportive, but I get laughs and snarks as well on my political posts. But that just makes me post more because our democracy is at stake and I’m trying to wake people up to it.

 

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).

A little bit about Internet Safety and checking your abuser’s blog

Over the years of reading blogs by and about survivors of narcissistic abuse, I’ve come across the concept of checking up on your abuser even after you’ve broken off contact with them.  This seems to be a natural human tendency: checking their blog, website, Facebook timeline, Twitter.  Of course, the common advice is not to do this because you need to cut yourself off, go through the withdrawal process, then move on and heal.

But I have another reason to put forth: Maybe with Facebook or Twitter they won’t know, since those platforms (from what I can tell) don’t allow you to collect stats from your visitors.  But many blogging and website formats do allow it in some form.  Even WordPress.com allows you to install a Statcounter–You get limited information, but enough.  Blogger blogs allow both a full Statcounter and Google Analytics.  Especially if you have those two stat collectors working together, if you have a stalker after you–such as your abuser or narcisssistic family or sociopathic ex–you can track that person’s activities on your blog for years.

This is helpful for a blogging abuse/rape/other trauma victim.  But don’t forget:

It works both ways.

One of my stalkers has recently revealed to me where she works now.  It’s not through direct contact, but by checking my blog from work.  She has also been checking my church’s website from there, even though she hadn’t looked at it for some time.

(And yes, this makes me wonder a bit, the day after nearly getting into an accident on my bike.  I was riding with traffic, on the right, following all the laws, when somebody turned right in front of me.  My son said this person looked at me before they turned!  A few months ago, the same color vehicle started backing up into me right in the middle of the road.  I don’t want to live in fear or paranoia, but it’s enough to make a person wonder if somebody’s gunning for you.)

I had no idea where she was working.  Last I knew, the newspaper said she’d graduated college, but that was a few years ago.  I never would’ve thought of this place.  I wasn’t looking.  I avoid Googling her as if it were going to burn me.  But here was the information, given to me on a silver platter, unasked-for.

So keep that in mind when dealing with your narc ex-whatever.  Maybe they already know where you live, but you’ve changed jobs.  Or maybe you’ve moved.  Keep in mind that stats do NOT reveal home addresses without a subpoena, but work IPs reveal employer information because it’s a public place of business.

Now, I’m not some crazy stalker out to track down and harm my abusers.  But information like this in the wrong hands–I began to think I should post a public service message for my readers:

Don’t check the website/blog of your abuser/rapist/stalker/narc family/troll/etc.  Don’t think they won’t know.  Don’t give away where you are.  Just let them go.  Cold turkey!  I know at first it can be tough, but over time, it becomes easy.

The weird world of online psychopathy

I think I am now starting to get back to a feeling of normalcy after a rather disturbing incident a couple of hours ago.

Some people apparently take reality shows way too seriously.

I’m not sure I want to describe the whole wretched incident.  I’ll just say:

There is an alleged case of catfishing involving a popular reality show.  Not only that, but there is also a whole mob of people who harass not only the alleged catfish, but anyone who thinks the alleged catfish is who he says he is.

Now I don’t know if he is who he says he is.  Reality TV is notorious for deceiving the public, but he also lacked a few key pieces of evidence.  All I wanted was to know the truth.  I do the same thing with my other favorite reality show.  (No, I don’t watch many of them, or much of anything.)  I check some websites, maybe ask some questions, then get back to other things.  When the show’s on, I’m interested; when the season ends, I lose interest.

However, a while back, a person connected to the alleged “catfish” bizarrely mistook me for some other person.  I am not that person, do not behave like that person, do not know that person, and set them straight.  I *thought* this had been cleared up months ago.  Yet all of a sudden, tonight they accused me again of being that other person.

The mob of harassing trolls then latched onto me and started checking me out.  I could see them in my stats, and got a couple of comments from them as well.  One was incredibly snarky.  I deleted the snark, blocked the person, and wondered why someone would say such a thing to a complete stranger they know nothing about.

The thing is, the troll mob is at least as disturbing as any alleged “catfish.”  They act obsessed, harassing not just the alleged “catfish” but anyone who’s just a bit nice to the “catfish” on Twitter.  And this has been going on for many months.

Is the “catfish” really a “catfish,” or is it an innocent person whose name has been dragged through the mud for ratings?  I haven’t a frickin’ clue, and I don’t need the trolls telling me what to think.  They have shot all their credibility to heck, not just with their harassment but with various hate sites they’ve posted around the Net.  I’ve seen both hate sites and legitimate abuse sites, and believe me, you can tell the difference right away.

If the “catfish” is indeed a “catfish,” then he/she would obviously be suffering from some kind of mental disorder to continue to insist that he/she is real.  But that would make absolutely no difference regarding the troll mob.

Whether the “catfish” is severely disturbed, or is an innocent person, the existence of this troll mob is still bizarre, its members act obsessive, and they are guilty of harassment.  There is no reason for these people–who appear to be mothers–to carry on like they do.  I’ve seen just a fraction of their tweets to various people, and they’re full of name-calling, ridicule, disgusting sexual comments, false accusations.  And when their accounts are shut down or blocked, they make new ones.

This has gone on for MONTHS.

And I wonder, don’t any of these people have lives?  Why are they so obsessed with a reality show?  Did they never learn that such behavior is wrong?  How would they react if one of their kids got treated this way at school?  Why don’t they spend all that time on something more productive–family, politics, charity, creativity, etc., etc.?  There’s a lot going on in the world that deserves their attention instead.

In any case, I was so angry at being accused yet again by the “catfish”‘s friend of being some other person, when I’m just an innocent viewer of the show examining the evidence I’ve been provided with, that I swore off the whole show.

There’s a darkness emanating from this whole thing.

Forget watching the show and wondering if it’s all lies.  Forget trying to sort out who’s telling the truth.  This is too much frickin’ drama and life is too short.  But I wonder how long it’ll take to shake off the trolls before I can feel safe checking my messages/stats again.

There is just so much psychopathy on the Net that it is insane!  I’ve been going online since it was a modem connected to the phone line and 300 baud was state-of-the-art, yet I’ve never seen it this bad.

And because of this crap, I’ve just lost several hours, full of angst, and also missed that a dear friend just turned his Facebook back on.  Ugh!

Comments are turned off in case the trolls come back here.

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).

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