{"id":2996,"date":"2005-05-17T14:04:05","date_gmt":"2005-05-17T18:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2996"},"modified":"2022-10-09T17:06:10","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T21:06:10","slug":"stalking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2996","title":{"rendered":"Cyberstalking"},"content":{"rendered":"

A chilling story about a cyberstalker<\/a>. I found it via Broom of Anger <\/a>– who also has some experience in this arena. She’s got interesting things to say about the people out there, reading your blog, who get obsessed with you or fixated, or … I don’t know what. Like: they can’t get enough. They sit around waiting for you to post next. They build you up in a fantasy in their mind. They feel close to you. They never leave your blog. They are compulsively attached to reading your blog. Shivers!! So creepy.<\/p>\n

I had someone get a bit of a fixation on me (definitely not as drastic as the story I just linked to. Thank GOD.) I had been blogging for a year – but I had just upgraded to Movable Type, and so that meant I suddenly had comments on the blog, whereas before there were none. I was in a vacuum. That was when this person’s fixation blossomed, because now he could talk to <\/i>me, and feel like he was having a real relationship with me. I also made the mistake of responding to one of his emails – but it was early on, and the message was of the “Go, Sox!!” variety. That (responding to his email) turned out to be the WRONG thing to do. I didn’t think it would be opening up a can of worms to shoot back a “Yay, Red Sox!!” email back to this stranger. But I was Way wrong. I had acknowledged <\/i>him, I had emailed him back<\/i>, this was enormously important to freak-boy. He must be special<\/i> to me.<\/p>\n

I carry on off-line correspondence with a couple of you guys out there – and frankly, that’s because you have earned my trust, through how you behave in the comments. And how you behave on other blogs that I read. It matters. Civility matters, humor matters … but also, there’s something a bit more difficult to quantify. The alarm bells went off for me, in the situation I describe here, with the familiar tone he used, first and foremost. And then came the sexual references he started throwing into emails, the way he sort of blithely assumed that he knew me … and WELL … all of that added up to a distinctly strange ikky impression.<\/p>\n

New bloggers – if you want my advice: try to know the lay of the land as much as you can, if you start up any email correspondence with someone you don’t know.<\/p>\n

People are freaks. People are nuts. Especially if you write in a serious way about what’s in your heart, or about your dreams, your hopes, your passions … your old love affairs … as I do. KNOW that people will feel familiar with you. And KNOW that 9 times out of 10, it will be okay that they feel familiar with you, because THOSE PEOPLE ARE NOT FREAKS. But be on your guard for the freaks. Just know that they’re out there, and proceed with caution. Like, sorry – I know I write personally here, but you have to earn <\/i>that familiar tone with me. This guy, in his fantasy world, leap-frogged over the actual “getting to know you” part, and felt like I was his best friend, and also: (this was the scariest part) He felt like he knew me better than I knew myself. Ew.<\/p>\n

Very soon after the “Go Sox” exchange, the red flags started flying. (Thanks to McCabe <\/a>and Moran<\/a>, my two guides and protectors through this whole process!) I stopped responding to the emails. I hoped he would just get tired of me, and go away. Back off, dude. Back off. But freaks, in general, need neon signs. They are dense. Not only do they not get that their behavior is making you uncomfortable, THEY DON’T CARE.<\/p>\n

I emailed creep-boy: “Do not email me again, and do not comment on my blog again. This is your last warning.” He obeyed – but I knew he was still just hanging around on my blog, at all hours of the day and night. Not commenting … but … what? Scrolling through? Obsessing. Reading every word I ever wrote.<\/p>\n

I decided, after much deliberation, to try to embarrass him, shame him publicly. Hence: this post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A couple months went by – no comments, no emails, but I could see, through referral logs, that he was spending literally HOURS on my site. Dude: what are you looking for? As long as he didn’t comment or email me, I didn’t feel like I needed to do anything about it, even though it was ANNOYING. Then – he got careless. He made a comment. A creepy comment. I immediately told McCabe and Moran that he had re-appeared, and promptly reported him to his ISP. I mean, whatever. The guy spent hours on my blog, so what, right? That means my blog is a success, right? But I’m telling you: it didn’t. feel. RIGHT. He was not RIGHT. I knew it. I just knew it. Call it intuition. His ISP sent him a warning letter. He emailed me one last time – and his email was such a MEAN email – written in such an overly intimate tone – as though he really knew me, and he had a deep personal relationship with me, and I was his dear friend who had let him down, who was going down the wrong path and he couldn’t save her, how he felt like I should “get back into therapy, because clearly you’re not out of the woods yet” – I mean, it was almost comical. He didn’t even know me. His last email to me was an affirmation: that I had been right from the beginning that there was something weird about this guy. He had been hiding it in sweetness and sycophancy – writing emails where he called me “dear lady” or “I am at your service” – you know. Obnoxious. Ikky. Sycophancy like that is a huge sign that someone is NOT QUITE RIGHT. I just could feel that something weird was underneath that, but I couldn’t put my finger on it – and the second I made good on my threats, out came the raging angry freak. My gut had been right for telling me all along: This guy is weird, Sheila. He’s weird. <\/i><\/p>\n

There are so many ways to have misunderstandings in Internet communication. Things meant to be jokes don’t read right, sarcasm is missed, you need to put smiley faces to show you are benign and unthreatening … You know. All of that. A ton of times I have misinterpreted comments left on my blog … like: either I don’t get the joke, or I mis-hear the tone, whatever. All very common, and just part of communicating in typeface rather than face to face.<\/p>\n

Another lesson I learned from the experience.<\/p>\n

— Be a hard-ass with weirdos and FAST. Don’t wait. Don’t assume they will go away naturally. Trust <\/i>the creepy-weird feeling in your gut – if it comes up. Don’t second guess it. You’re probably right. Address it immediately. Be mean<\/i>. Be firm, in a scary way. And make good on threats. Report them, leave a paper trail, tell someone about it. I forwarded all correspondence from freak-boy to Bill and Jim … it got that weird. But I figure you can’t be too careful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A chilling story about a cyberstalker. I found it via Broom of Anger – who also has some experience in this arena. She’s got interesting things to say about the people out there, reading your blog, who get obsessed with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2996"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178438,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2996\/revisions\/178438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}