no comment for you

In some ways, it’s a mark of distinction. Undoubtedly, it’s also a minor irritation, a suck of my time, a waste of my energy, a drag on my psyche and an experience unfathomable to others, but I nevertheless must acknowledge that having stalkers is a sign of distinction.

For almost three years, I’ve been harassed by cyber-stalkers. They have sent over 300 emails to me, and they’ve sent a few to my friends, my supporters and my acquaintances. They have researched me in order to ferret out where I went to high school and to college, who my family and friends are, where I live and what I do for a living. They very clearly obsessively read every single blog post I write, and though I don’t have a way of finding out, I suppose they read everything I publish under both my pseudonymous blog name and my real name. These are people with an unwavering agenda to hurt, intimidate and slander me.

I know who my stalkers are. I know the reason that their twisted brains have provided for their going-on three-year campaign of hate. They are a married pair of bloggers who live on the Eastern seaboard.  A mutual friend introduced us, and we became Internet acquaintances, corresponding via email somewhat regularly. Their friendship turned to cast-iron enmity when I made what was to me a minor choice and was to them a grievous error.

The wife in the pair once wrote a sex blog. I was once the editor of the Tuesday sex-blog roundup on Fleshbot. For those readers unfamiliar with Fleshbot, it is the porn arm of the Gawker media group, and when your blog gets featured on the site, your traffic grows like an erection on Viagra (it also falls just as quickly; it’s a temporary tumescence). In May of 2006, I chose a post from this wife’s blog for my first roundup; I also chose to include a post from our mutual friend. Six weeks later, I once again chose to include a post from our mutual friend, but I didn’t include a post from the wife’s blog. This minor choice is the cause for the harassment I’ve suffered for the past two years and ten months. The irony is that I did consider using a post from the wife’s blog, but I could find none that fit that week’s theme. I certainly would have included another post in the future. However, once the wife perceived a slight, she started sending me waves of highly disturbing emails under her own name, and I backed off from having contact with her.

Within a few weeks, I started to get a barrage of abusive emails and comments on my blog sent from a variety of addresses and under a variety of names. I didn’t make the connection at first; I just assumed that my wide readership came with a price and this price was a handful of critics. Eventually, the mutual friend showed me a series of emails she’d received from the affronted couple about me, and it was clear from the phrases, the diction, and the ideas present in both her emails and my own that there were only two harassers and they were the married couple, my former acquaintances. I should note that this couple went on to cyberstalk the mutual friend, a friend of hers and four other people I know of. This couple are dangerous, amoral people.

Since that time, rarely a week goes by when I don’t receive an email or two—the only exception was last fall when I took a four-month hiatus from blogging. Each email comes from a new and different email address. Sometimes the emails come to the account attached to my blog; other times the emails come to my own personal account. Even though the names are often different (they like to recycle some; “Mike” is a favorite, as is “Anil,” “Mina,” “Minka,” and others), I always know it’s they who are writing. The names may change, you see, but the themes are always the same. I am a loser. I have nothing. I have no one who loves me. My ex-boyfriends are happy to be without me. I am old, fat, ugly, and pointless. My choices are bad. My writing is bad. My life is bad. I am bad. And I might as well die.

I know why my stalkers hate me so much. They hate me because I tell the truth. They hate me because I have connections, talent, support, and dedication that they don't have. They hate me because I've chosen an unconventional life and make no excuses about it. They hate me because I don't apologize for my choices. They hate me because they're threatened by me. And mostly they hate me because in their minds I rejected them. There is nothing I can write that will make them go away. Nor is there any other action I can take. They are a low buzzing sound in my life, and they probably will be until they get bored or die. Frankly, I don't care which.

Sadly, however, they have had effects on my life. When I began writing, I chose to write my blog under a pseudonym so that I’d have the freedom to keep my writing separate from my identity as a college professor. My stalkers successfully connected my two identities in a forum my former students would have access to, and despite my trying to remove that link, it stays. I no longer teach. Certainly, while I was depressed my stalkers’ venom affected my emotional state. Now that I’m not, it doesn’t.

Here is the most recent effect. In the past 36 hours I've received around eight comments from my stalkers. PNN doesn’t allow for comment moderation, thus giving me a choice not to publish my stalkers’ comments before anyone else can read them and therefore requiring me to police my site. I’ve chosen to turn off comments on my blog posts.

This saddens me. I like getting responses to my work. I like knowing that I’ve touched someone, and as long as that person’s reply is civil and thoughtful, I even like when people disagree with me. I personally don’t care a whit what my stalkers say to me. They can call me names until they’re positively cerulean. It finally resonated in me that these people have shown exactly how cruel, vicious, amoral and crazy they are, and therefore I can’t respect their opinions. Their words have no affect on me, not anymore. They’ve done their worst, and they have failed. However, my readers don’t know which detractors are my stalkers and which are not, and the people who like me come to my aid. Allowing my stalkers to comment on my site could turn my posts into a sludgy, toxic morass, and I’m not willing to let that happen.

It’s a long story with a short end. There will be no more comments on my pretty dumb things, not here on PNN. If you want to comment, and I hope you do, feel free to contact me through my helpful little “contact me” button located in my profile box, or go to my main blog at prettydumbthings.typepad.com.  I’m taking one for the home team. I’d rather forego the pleasure of knowing what you think than bring the hideous effluvia of my stalkers here to the global water cooler for women.

UPDATE: Comments are back. Magic PNN screens have been put in place, so yay. Express yourself.