It's never happened...

By Wreybies · Sep 1, 2018 · 532 · 9
  1. I’ve been on the internet since the day it was born. Actually, since before that because when I was in the USAF in the late 80's, in the land of SCIFs, I made use of the communications channels that lent at least part of their code to what eventually became the modern Internet in 1991.

    And it’s never happened to me. Ever.

    Today I get yet another melodramatic message asking me to delete all traces of an account, a thing we do not do, and which not even the GDPR demands of us. Your identifying information? Yep, we’ll delete that. Your thousands of posts? Nope. Not going to happen and there’s nothing demanding that we do it. Sorry. No.

    But that’s not the core of the kvetch.

    I just don’t get what people are doing to cause these things to happen to them. In a fucked up way, I’m kinda’ wondering when and if I’ll ever actually have a stalker that I can’t get away from because I feel like I’m not getting the full experience, the whole ride, the complete park-hopper pass, so to speak. In the fic forums I follow, stalkers and personally appointed trolls are a dominant topic. Everyone’s talking about it, all the time, and me sitting in the corner feeling like the ugliest boy in the room, not even worthy of a stalking, because…

    It’s never happened to me.

    I’ve modded or adminned this forum for a decade now. I’ve banned the living daylights out of many people, some of them multiple times, all of whom thought it was personal, thought I “didn’t like them”, thought I sided against their politics, their gender, their religion, their {fill in the egocentric blank}, so god(s) know(s) there has been opportunity enough for it to happen.

    It’s never happened to me.

    Never.

    Every platform has a block or a hide or a delete feature. Every platform gives me a level of control over my engagement that means someone else only ever has the power over me that I give to that person.

    So what gives?

    Are we just drawing the line in the sand in completely different places? Is it the difference between adhering to a system of internal vs external loci of control? Is it just the difference between “I’ll just block this faff of a person” (click!) vs “I shouldn’t have to do a damned thing!”

    It’s never happened.

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  1. mashers
    I wonder whether it's related to the knowledge that ignoring/blocking that person doesn't prevent other people from seeing what they write. So they could be saying anything (potentially about you), and you wouldn't know, because you blocked them. So there's this grim fascination of having to know what they've said, which stops people hitting the block button. But they don't think anybody should read what this person has to say, so they conclude that the logical course of action is to have that person removed from the community.

    If that is in fact the reason, it's more than a little insecure on the part of the "victim".
    mashers, Sep 1, 2018
      John-Wayne likes this.
  2. Iain Aschendale
    There's just this part of me that trained in the same spaces as you that wants to go through all the recent comms, DF, and call for fire once I figure out what the target is.

    I'll be good :)
    Iain Aschendale, Sep 1, 2018
      Some Guy likes this.
  3. Wreybies
    @Iain Aschendale, in this case the shift-change briefing is pretty much blank for 244, 2018. The account was ancient, hadn't had activity in years, which was part of my bemusement.
    Wreybies, Sep 1, 2018
      John-Wayne and Iain Aschendale like this.
  4. Iain Aschendale
    Right... A couple years of that plus four years of 9-1-1 trying to sort out people's names and other identifiers to find out who they really were and what they were wanted for has left me with lifelong stalker instincts.

    Or is that what I was selected for?

    "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" is not a brain teaser, it's a sorting mechanism to determine if the person answering believes in creation or evolution.
    Iain Aschendale, Sep 1, 2018
      Some Guy likes this.
  5. big soft moose
    The reason its not happened to you is because you're not a triggered snowflake looking for something to be upset about. Mind you on a photography forum I once had a proper stalker... i'm talking naked photos (not as much fun as it sounds), lewd invitations etc, then when I rejected her blandishments accusations, threat, false reports to the mods etc etc. even after she was banned, she continued to net stalk me, email me at work and generally be a fucking nuisance.

    I'm not 100% sure but I think a female friend of mine threatened her with an ass kicking if she didn't cease and desist
    big soft moose, Sep 2, 2018
      Some Guy and John-Wayne like this.
  6. 8Bit Bob
    It's never happened to me either, and I pray it never does.

    I don't do much around the net to stir up trouble, though. I try to stay out of heated debates and all that, and I generally just try to stay pretty passive. Now, I know that doesn't stop people from trolling me or whatever, but it helps.

    I'm also interested, what do you mean by "stalking" in this sense? Do you mean attempting to find out personal information, or just like endless PMs, following you to different websites, etc.? I attempt to prevent the latter from happening by keeping all of my online accounts separate.
    8Bit Bob, Sep 2, 2018
      Some Guy likes this.
  7. Wreybies
    @8Bit Bob, I guess I mean everything you mention. When I am made to engage it on behalf of others, it tends to take the form of being harassed from one place to another, but it takes other forms as well.

    One version of it I am regularly made to handle are brawls that take place in other places migrating to this place. People get into it over at thatotherforumoverthere.com, get fed up with one another and then seek a new, similarly themed venue as a place to hang their hat. Well, guess what, similarly themed venues are bound to have some member overlap, so when you kick up your boots in your new place and then start vomiting forth all the shit that happened in the old place (your version of it, of course, where you are a pristine angel), there are going to be people here who know exactly who you are and what went down, and because humans are humans, will go back to the old place and let everyone know you're talking shit about them. Suddenly I get asked to deal with an issue concerning brand spanking new members who have a beef that is months old that started in some other place. I just blanket ban those issues, all involved. I don't get paid to CSI people's drama in remote crime scenes.

    And it's not like I haven't had people try to give me trouble in the past. I have. I've had members I've banned from here seek me out on F/B looking for a reprieve. Blocked. So simple. Block them. I don't care what they have to say about me to other friends we may have in common. Seriously, there's not enough fiat money in circulation for me to care, so the need to know what they might be saying behind my back isn't remotely an incentive to allow continued access to me. Again, it's happened, and there was always a very simple resolution. You just amputate the situation completely. There are WAY too many cool people in the world with whom to engage to spend time trying to fix broken toys.
    Wreybies, Sep 2, 2018
  8. John-Wayne
    My Goodness, thankfully this is my first and hopefully only Writer's forum. I was part of a gaming forum but I left on good terms. Mostly just lost interest, though I doubt any of them would be migrating over here to a Writing forum. Though I suppose it is possible, who knows in the end. The other reason I left it is because i found this forum.

    Outside of my Discord Server, and one set up by an LPer I like, I haven't had much interest in other Writing forums, and I do not believe I am part of any other forum. I have little to no interest in Facebook or Twitter.

    I can say I don't envy your position my friend.

    Edit: The only other sites I have interest are in relation to my professional Licenses (Pharmacy Tech) and Youtube for obvious reasons.
    John-Wayne, Sep 2, 2018
      Some Guy likes this.
  9. Some Guy
    It works both ways, in a sense. I use ' bait' accounts, so when someone does a deep dive on me, I'm ready with a harpoon cannon! It's fun, if you touch you can be touched back. It's truly astonishing how vulnerable trolls and stalkers leave themselves. When one goes for the bait, they get my full, err... attention, yeah, that's it...
    Some Guy, Sep 2, 2018
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