sister wives

My stalker troll brigade has disappeared

My posts for the past week describe what this is all about, starting here.

I guess the trolls lost interest and went back to their usual target, the alleged “catfish,” once they finally realized I have no connection to him.  But this is something they do: harass people simply for talking to their target, and try to bully them into the trolls’ way of thinking.

Which is one big reason why the whole “catfish” story doesn’t pass the smell test with me.  If it’s true, then just put your story out there, and don’t try to force and harass people into agreeing with you.  This kind of behavior is familiar to those of us who have dealt with abusers and malignant narcissists.

I pointed out their behavior was bullying, and that their websites look like not-credible hate sites, so I became their target.  I don’t like people being bullied, and have been known to yell back at people who pick on my friends.  The “catfish” is not my friend, just some guy whose blog I follow, but it bugged me anyway.

But I stood up to the onslaught, and I’m still standing while they’re gone.  Maybe a straggler comes in here or there, but that’s all.  And the post that ticked them off so much, is still up.

Even my Twitter hits have gone way down, showing a lack of interest from them.  I also went to the Twitters of their usual targets, and started blocking all the trolls I found there.

On Tuesday, I woke up to find a very disturbing friend request in Facebook.  Someone had spoofed my friend Todd’s account, but not in the normal way used by hackers and identity thieves: Both first and last names were spelled wrong.  There was absolutely no attempt made to look like Todd’s real account.  The picture was not the usual studly man or hot woman.  No, this was a scary-looking dude with a sneer and brandishing an “Evil Eye” tattoo on his upper arm muscles.

Yeah.  That doesn’t look like a hacker.  That looks like I picked up a stalker.

Considering what the trolls had just been doing, I was convinced they had tracked my real name down on the Net and were about to make sh** get real.  I had one hand on the phone for the police.

I reported the account to Facebook, and also told Todd about it.  But he was almost certain it was from a Nazi, not one of my trolls.  See, Todd keeps his timeline public, and is always ranting about Neo-Nazis, which makes this plausible.

So I calmed down.  I also spent part of Tuesday reporting two trolls who contacted me on Twitter.  All the troll IP addresses I collected (EIGHTY!!!) are in the comment ban bin.  I use a plugin which sends all spam and blacklisted comments into oblivion, so I never see them even to delete them.

For about 48 hours now, activity both here and on my Twitter has been quiet.  I have no idea why it suddenly dropped off, but I’m finally breathing again and going back to normal.

Crisis over.  Back to reality.  Which is good, because we have to get ready for a remodeling project soon.  That’s plenty to deal with.  😛

 

FAQ on stalker threat and is it past?

Okay, a few days have passed and the threat has lessened.  Some sleep, some getting back to the normal routine, and being with friends, has made me feel better.  So now it’s time to re-evaluate the stalker troll threat.

1. How did I know they were a cyber lynch mob?  Because they’ve been watching the Twitter and blog of a certain person they believe needs justice done to him, “S.”  Whether he does or not, I don’t really know.  I’ve heard his side of the story, but I’ve also heard the other one, from “M.”  But the speed of their responses, tells me they have been watching him like a hawk–stalking him.

There’s a lot of S-said, M-said, without real smoking guns for the most part, on either side.  I’ve seen no proper journalistic investigation done into this to prove anything, just what was said on a TV show in a genre which is known for being deceptive.

But I do know that the group of trolls was pursuing “justice” with cyber mob bullying instead of using appropriate means.

I do wonder if someone has been impersonating S on the Net.  This is only a suspicion, but it would explain some things.  Such things do happen now and then.

2. What kinds of things have the trolls been doing?  Not only had they been harassing S for months with non-stop disparaging posts on Twitter and his blog, but they had been doing the same to anyone they considered his friends–or even people who just asked questions of him on Twitter.

I had reviewed the history of their behavior, not just his own story of it, but by following a link he posted on his blog to his Twitter.  He invited readers to see what they had been doing.  I reviewed it for some time, not just how they treated him, but how they treated another person who claims to have actually met him.  I’d google S’s name and find hate sites and Youtube videos against him.

I also saw these people get blocked or their accounts shut down on Twitter, only to make new accounts.  I read how they were using proxies to get into S’s blog after he blocked them from it.  Again, these are all things which S wrote about on his blog and invited his readers to see for themselves.  Another reader went into detail in a comment about how disgusting the trolls’ behavior was.  She said there were thousands of harassing tweets from the trolls in S’s archives.

3. How did I know they were a threat to me–malicious, not just curious?  Because I had just posted on my blog a description of what they had been doing, that their behavior was at least as bad as anything they accused S of doing.  In my Statcounter, I saw them follow me from my Twitter to my blog.  My Twitter was brand-new, I only had one follower, and I could recognize her in my stats, so I knew it wasn’t her.  I also saw them poke into my posts about abuse, showing particular interest in certain ones.

4. How did I know the troll mob was following me to my blog, and not just people like me who simply wanted to know if S was telling the truth?  Because they made themselves known to me.  One posted a comment to me on Twitter which was not malicious at all, but did show she believed M and not S.  Why are you watching S’s Twitter (where I had just posted something, and drew their attention) if you don’t believe or like him?

Another posted a comment here on my blog which took a sweet memory I had of a friend, and twisted it into something dirty and shameful–and made it clear this person thought I was referring to the guy the trolls are after.  The comment made clear that they saw me as a new target.  Then this person subscribed to my blog, making it clear they were also going to keep an eye on me and make more harassing comments.

The following morning, I found a new “follower” of my Twitter: It was a brand-new account, looking just like the fake ones used by the trolls to harass S.  The profile description was vulgar.  Friendly people don’t have such a thing in their profiles.  This one was meant to harass me.

I found another profile today in my Twitter block list, another troll.  In the haze of the last few days, I don’t recall if this person followed me or made some disparaging comment to me, but it was enough to get blocked.

Another way I knew: I began blocking anyone who came to my blog from Twitter, because I knew what brought them here.  Yet even after I blocked them, they began using proxies, instead of quietly going away.  (This is similar to the behavior of my narc ex-friends, as well.)  This is the same thing the trolls had already been doing for months to S’s blog.

When I installed proxy blocks, the same people began going into the Google cache and Wayback Machine.  Those hits were not actually on my site, so I couldn’t block them, but the recorded pages still included code which transmitted data to my statcounters.  I could see the trolls were sharing pages with each other.

5. But can they really do anything malicious to me?  At first, I thought they could.  But I do not use my real name or picture on my blog.

After a few days of collecting IP addresses–DOZENS of them–I have turned off the blockers.  They were effective, but all those IP addresses in my .htaccess file seemed to turn the site a bit googly.  Instead, I put the IPs into my comment blacklist.

Not just the WordPress blacklist, either: No, they don’t go into the spam folder or the trash bin.  I use a spam blocker plugin which sends all spam and blacklisted comments straight into oblivion.  This is even better than Akismet, because I never have to see any of them.  😀

I could mention a couple other things, but that might give them ideas.  But I have a couple of means to keep such things from becoming threats.

THAT INCLUDES CALLING THE POLICE.  I HAVE THEIR IP ADDRESSES AND COMPUTER INFO.  One even graciously provided her name and e-mail address.

Yeah, they’re still watching.

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).

Reblog: Lynch Mob 2.0

From this post by Steve Moore:

A mob, Young observes with considerable insight, is a group of fools and cowards. … Mobs rape, they lynch, they immolate, they beat, they terrorize, they loot, and they laugh. … And they are on the Internet.

…Mobs are senseless. They are the very definition of “insanity.” They exist in a world where all reality is—at least for a time—abandoned. They therefore tend to attract the senseless and the emotionally damaged.

They are bent on “justice” and will stop at literally nothing to get it. Every mob, however, defines “justice” for themselves. Hence, lynchings. Justice for mobs usually consists of vengeance or bile spewed on people they hate—frequently for irrational reasons.

If the justice system under which a group lives does not deliver the verdict, the penalty, or the speediness the group requires, a group of people who perceive that they have been wronged or disenfranchised can transform into a mob in an instant. It doesn’t matter to a mob what is truly right, what is legal, what is actually true, what is important or what is sacred.

…Trolls are vigilantes.

…Internet mob trolls guard their identity with their lives. Why? Because their lives would change forever if their secret hatreds were made public.

…Another Internet mob targets Amanda Knox for the same reason as did Leyland with Kate McCann—they believe her guilty, regardless of the evidence, and believe they, as Brenda Leyland said, are “entitled” to exact revenge.

…Amanda Knox haters frequently defend themselves by saying that they are fighting for the victim, Meredith Kercher, who was 19 when she was raped and her throat cut by a known burglar.

…People who send or re-transmit 25 – 100 angry, abusive social messages a day, (especially if to the same group of people) regardless of how right they believe their cause, must come to grips with the fact that they need help.

…Finally, if you are attacked by anonymous trolls, know this: They are afraid of you. If they weren’t, they would not hide their identity. Take comfort in the knowledge that they fear you, and they live in the shadows because they are terrified that one horrible day, they may be exposed and have to take responsibility for their words.

These are just snippets of an excellent article on Internet mobbing, by Steve Moore.

 

 

 

I saw the trolls combing through my posts on sexual abuse

These stalker trolls are combing through my posts about sexual harassment and guys who sexually abused me.  I discovered this in my stat records.

They’re looking at my posts about sexual harassment, sexual abuse from exes, and manipulation by my ex-friend Richard (who has absolutely no relation to their alleged catfish, though one troll sent me a jeering message suggesting that it was the same person).

I’ve already gotten a disparaging comment from one of them, and another followed me on Twitter for the obvious purpose of harassing me.  This tells me they are NOT looking at the stories with sympathy or empathy like most people would.

They’re getting their jollies from my stories of abuse.

THIS IS FRICKIN’ DISGUSTING.

>:(

This is a vigilante group which claims to be getting justice for the victims of an alleged catfish.  Except I’m neither that catfish, nor a victim of him/her.  As far as the catfish is concerned, I’m nobody.  They have attached themselves to me anyway.

They have also attached themselves to lots of other people in the past several months.  You can find them in the tweets and replies on this guy’s Twitter.  There are THOUSANDS of harassing messages not just to him, but to others, anyone who is friends with him or even just talks to him.

Let’s shine the light of day on these cockroaches.

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).

The trolls made me afraid of how they’d misuse my abuse stories

It’s not just me: This group has been harassing various people for MONTHS.  And now they’ve been screwing with me for no reason at all.

This is a site about abuse.  It contains details of abuse and manipulation, in order to help others recognize abuse and manipulation in their own lives.  I consider the details of my story to be necessary to the public record, which is why I keep them up despite their nature.  I also include details of things I know were my own missteps, because I believe my readers need to be able to trust I’m telling the truth.  I’m shining a light on abuse instead of keeping it locked up tight.

But it works best if everything is read together, in context, not bits and pieces picked out and turned into something to criticize or jeer at.  These trolls have got me frightened of what they’re up to next, wondering why they’re so eager to dig up stuff about me (my abuse stories etc.), and what they’re doing with it.

Maybe–based on their searches and a comment one made on my blog–they want to say, “Hey, look what else the catfish did.”  Or, “Look at this gullible person who became another catfish victim.”  Except…That’s not what happened.  I’ve never been a victim of a catfish, and certainly not their favorite alleged catfish.  I had no interest in getting lured in.  I just wanted to give the guy a chance to tell his side of the story.

This is the kind of thing that shuts up abuse victims.  And yet the trolls claim to somehow be defending the alleged victims of the alleged catfish.  I think some also claim to be victims, though I’m not sure.

Who am I to these trolls?  Why are they doing this to me?

It is, by the way, the biggest reason why I tend to believe the alleged catfish’s story that he is really a man and not a catfish.  True victims don’t behave like this cyber lynch mob.  Many of you are victims of abusers and sociopaths and know how such people can get when they band together.  Rather, this group behaves exactly like the group the alleged catfish’s alleged victim originally claimed was going after her and harassing her.  I think they are the same people.

I wanted to spend this weekend watching Wagner operas, reading, and working on my novel, since I came up with some more ideas.  I want to play with my new Twitter.  This has derailed my creativity because I can’t concentrate when I’m spending every hour scanning for trolls to block.  And I have responsibilities.

I deleted one of the trolls from my blog’s e-mail subscriptions, after discovering I can do that.  I had to turn off the setting that automatically publishes my posts to Twitter, because it just brings them back in.  Hopefully I can soon turn it back on.  For now, the trolls are mostly blocked, and doing most of their peeking with the Wayback Machine and Google caches.  But I’ve seen some of the things they’re looking at in the Wayback Machine [I believe these were sensitive parts of my stories of narcissistic abuse], and wonder why they’re so interested in those particular pages.

Some stuff I found:

Kashmir Hill’s How To Keep Internet Trolls And Harassers From Winning:

The common refrain is that this is the price we pay for being online, that the cost of free speech is ugly speech. Citron says that argument ignores the speech rights of those harassed. “I think we forget the expressive rights of the person who is being victimized, the speech rights of the person being silenced,” she says. “After the harassment, I stopped blogging about harassment for a while. I felt silenced and I backed off.”

 

Joel Stein’s How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet:

The people who relish this online freedom are called trolls, a term that originally came from a fishing method online thieves use to find victims. It quickly morphed to refer to the monsters who hide in darkness and threaten people. Internet trolls have a manifesto of sorts, which states they are doing it for the “lulz,” or laughs. What trolls do for the lulz ranges from clever pranks to harassment to violent threats. There’s also doxxing–publishing personal data, such as Social Security numbers and bank accounts–and swatting, calling in an emergency to a victim’s house so the SWAT team busts in. When victims do not experience lulz, trolls tell them they have no sense of humor. Trolls are turning social media and comment boards into a giant locker room in a teen movie, with towel-snapping racial epithets and misogyny.

…A 2014 study published in the psychology journal Personality and Individual Differences found that the approximately 5% of Internet users who self-identified as trolls scored extremely high in the dark tetrad of personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and, especially, sadism.

…

Though everyone knows not to feed the trolls, that can be challenging to the type of people used to expressing their opinions. Writer Lindy West has written about her abortion, hatred of rape jokes and her body image–all of which generated a flood of angry messages. When her father Paul died, a troll quickly started a fake Twitter account called PawWestDonezo, (“donezo” is slang for “done”) with a photo of her dad and the bio “embarrassed father of an idiot.” West reacted by writing about it. Then she heard from her troll, who apologized, explaining that he wasn’t happy with his life and was angry at her for being so pleased with hers.

West says that even though she’s been toughened by all the abuse, she is thinking of writing for TV, where she’s more insulated from online feedback. “I feel genuine fear a lot. Someone threw a rock through my car window the other day, and my immediate thought was it’s someone from the Internet,” she says. “Finally we have a platform that’s democratizing and we can make ourselves heard, and then you’re harassed for advocating for yourself, and that shuts you down again.”

This is why I don’t use my real name or picture on the Net.  (I don’t even use a real name for my books.)  This is why security on my site is locked up tight.  This is why I often shut off comments on my site.

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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