How many of you have had stalkers since becoming online “personalities”? I’ve had a few over the years, especially on h2g2, but I thought this was mostly behind me and hoped that any weirdos who felt like stalking me these days would at least do it privately so that I wouldn’t know they were there. But there is one that keeps showing up, over and over again. This is a person who unceremoniously dumped me as a friend by email several months back, saying they were fed up with me, then said “thanks for all the fish” and that was that. Or so I thought. But no, comments galore started showing up here, which at first I just deleted hoping this someone would take the hint, but later I was forced to mark them as spam so the unwanted comments went directly there. And then the other day they left a “comment” for me on my three words.me post, describing me unkindly, then yesterday another comment in my spam… seriously, wtf?
Does this person not have a life, do they not know how to move on? Especially as – they dumped me! And told me in no uncertain terms that I was no longer considered a friend. And well, this was and is totally fine by me. So why on earth would they keep stalking me and leaving comments here? I have found myself wondering of late “what would Raincoaster do?” but hope this person decides to do the decent thing and bugger off before I have to ask Rain for advice…
How do you deal with stalkers, trolls, flamers, etc?
casa azahar 
Yeah, I’ve had some issues in this area, too, and it really stressed me out for a while. I had enable comment moderation for starters, then I had to block the email address, and then had to mark as spam. This person also started to harass my blog friends, too, both on their blogs & via email. It was horrible. She even started an anti-WC blog! The whole thing ended when she admitted to a friend of mine over email that she is very mentally ill, was very sorry, and has been gone ever since! WEIRD!
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Yikes, that really does sound awful. An anti-WC blog! What a nut case.
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She was DEFINITELY a nut case.
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I feel quite left out here – I’ve never had a stalker. But I do love the way Rain deals with hers. Although the quality of her stalkers has dropped!
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Weelll..
1. I’d pity them that all they could come up with for a parting shot was ‘thanks for all the fish’.
2. You’ve obviously arrived, sweetie. You’re not anybody unless you have a stalker, don’tcha know?
3. Kill them. Kill them all.
(I take no responsibility for point three. That was from Foley)
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Haha, Foley! 🙂
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I have an ex-friend stalking my blog. He figured it out by looking at another blog, and started subscribing and trying to post to my comments. I personally regard the guy as roadentia so I just delete his comments, unsubscribed him a few times, and refuse to otherwise acknowledge him. Still, it makes me want to shower just to think of the guy looking in on my blog. I doubt that I’ll have to do much more than blow him off like this.
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I remember you mentioning that guy before. What a creep.
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I keep myself reasonably anonymous just because I want to avoid stalkers. There is at least one person in a nearby post code who would pelt me with a few snotty comments every day if he knew I had a blog. And I prefer to keep my blogging at a remove from most of those I count as friends in daily life. Anything could happen at any time — I’ve been blindsided once too often by people I thought were my closest and most loyal friends.
I did have one troll of sorts who popped up out of nowhere and seemed determined to pursue a fight over a post I put up about a news item. I realized too late that he was there just for the sake of provocation and annihilated the whole post. Since then I’ve simply refused to pass the initial comment of someone who seemed only interested in picking a fight, and I don’t think I’ve lost anything by doing so. There’s a difference between espousing “free speech” and letting any asshole whatsoever into your living room.
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I’ve never had a stalker on my blog, or a troll or a flamer or anything like that. There was one fellow who posted some comments that had nothing to do with the posts, but when I pointed it out to him politely, he left.
I figure my blog is more or less self-regulating. I don’t get a lot of traffic in the scheme of things, and compared to most of the blogs I frequent, I hardly get any comments at all. Even if there were potential trolls or whatever out there, I’m sure I’d simply bore them into leaving.
I’m not sure what I’d do if some troll-jerk started hanging off my blog. I’d like to think that I’d simply ignore it and basically do nothing, but I know that’s a lot easier said than done. I don’t take myself seriously enough to want to go to comment moderation, and really what are people going to say – stop all those accordion videos you anchovy you?
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Well, I’ve basically done nothing other than remove posts and, since they now go into spam, I don’t even have to do that anymore. I agree with you about comment moderation – I’ve never used it and actually find it annoying when others do because it disrupts the flow (and sometimes the sense) of a comment thread.
Heh, you anchovy you.
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I think we shared the one on h2g2.
No problems with my blog, but then hardly anybody knows I have a blog in the first place, as it’s still fairly new. I do wonder about page hits from exotic locations, but at least one I found to be known as spammer which crawls the net.
Your problem is definitely weird and I hope it will be solved soon.
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I haven’t had a problem since I had some idiot take exception to some material I gleaned from the National Archives about the father of Joseph Brant. I had posted the information and explained that there is conflicting information about his father but that according to the information at the Archives “XXX” was listed as his father. This woman got completely bent out of shape and attacked me as “lying” and that her family had “always known that YYY was his father”… I replied that I didn’t say that “YYY” was not his father but that according to the information at the Archives, he wasn’t. She attacked me repeatedly about this and it wasn’t until the genealogical website finally had to ban her. Ironically, she never tried to email me on the subject which was odd since my email was listed. I simply unlinked myself from the conversations and I never had another problem with her.
When I HAVE had trolls on YouTube or LiveVideo or elsewhere, I have always blocked and reported and never responded. It has generally worked. Other people had trolls and gangs of mostly teens who targeted them on YouTube. In those cases, they often engaged them in back and forth which only inflamed them. In most cases, these gangs repeatedly flagged their videos until YouTube, without actually investigating, suspended their accounts.
Of course, there were a few trolls on the CBC Coronation Street boards they finally closed and that was that.
The block and report generally works with people who are simply looking for something to fight over. When they don’t get a response, they move on. That doesn’t work with people who have fixated on you. I just haven’t had that problem.
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Boy, you sure get around!
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So – just to be clear – you know who this person is (in on-line terms anyway)?
If so, and they are posting here, and presumably submitting an e-mail address, can you not remind them of the “thanks for all the fish” e-mail?
Of course I don’t (and don’t want to) know the three word etc comment, but I would have thought any response beyond asking them to stop is asking for trouble (and maybe even that is).
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Tell Math… You still in contact with Math?
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Ooh, haven’t heard from Math in ages. I don’t think I’ll be requiring his services unless my stalker turns into a troll.
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Well, he’ll be here tomorrow LOL
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I haven’t had to deal with undesirables yet, unsurprisingly. Still, I’d recommend putting on rubber gloves, and using dish soap and hot water. Add two cap fulls of bleach to the dish soap and water.
Oh no wait, that’s to get rid of noxious fumes in a cat box 😉
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Well, let’s clarify here: what this sounds like isn’t stalking, it’s just trolling. Stalking is when this person tries to find out information about you personally, possibly to show up in person and confront you. Posting nasty comments about you and reading what you write online aren’t stalking.
As for trolling, remember what Paul Newman said: If you don’t have enemies, you don’t have character.
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I bow to your superior knowledge of All Things Internet.
So between Paul Newman and Oscar Wilde I guess I’ve got it made. 🙂
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Oddly, 59 year old, fat, grey haired men don’t tend to have stalkers. Go figure.
I once dealt with a friends stalker though. Faxing the entire Encyclopedia Britanica from a borrowed IP address and filling out forms with their name at Nigerian Prince sites seemed to work. Cutting and pasting the RCMP logo as the header for an email helped as well…
😀
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“Oddly, 59 year old, fat, grey haired men don’t tend to have stalkers.” Unless they ask very nicely…
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Sounds icky, as these things invariably seem to be – whether the friendship and ‘un-friending’ is conducted in real life or online. Luckily, I haven’t had to deal with any trolls (of course, I had to make my blog password-protected last year due to a Bitch, but she didn’t even have the character to be a troll), although, before I went private, I did get a couple of emails from a single guy who’d come across my blog and wanted to meet up, having convinced himself we were perfect for one another. Needless to say, I didn’t respond and he eventually gave up.
I hope your troll person will do the same.
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Remember, too, you have no power over them as long as you’re afraid to name them. If you really REALLY want to stick it to them, name them and then don’t link to them. Then they have no way of telling what you’re saying other than continuing to hang on your every word.
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Oooh…. evil! 🙂
No, I haven’t named and shamed this person, or even said if they are male or female, because we have many mutual blog friends and I thought this would be, well, mean.
Meanwhile, they haven’t turned up in my spam since I posted this so perhaps they’ll leave me alone now. You know, just like they said they wanted to do when they dumped me.
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Just reply by posting their user name, first time once, then twice and so on. they’ll be freaked out before you get to 13 🙂
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