"I've Had A Cyberstalker Since I Was 12"

[DefunctTheory]

Ummm...so...the OP got zorched. Is the topic still valid?

I'm not sure why the OP being booted out would somehow negate the link posted, nor the base question. He wasn't banned for this thread.

The degradation of the topic into nitpicking over exactly how many of the years cited were actually stalking, and the general vibe of 'she was asking for it/deserves it for being dumb,' however, might invalidate it.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Well for one we are talking about a point in time here were he had allready stalked her for years with excessive phone calls, messages and similar things.

At this point she had not told him to stop.

She had ignored his calls and ultimately blocked his number, not because she was frightened of him or believed if she did tell him to stop that he wouldn't do so, but because she didn't want to hurt his feelings. At this point, she still clearly considered him an acquaintance and felt sympathy for him, and while his behaviour may have been mildly annoying it would not, by any definition, constitute stalking or even particularly abnormal behaviour. It became stalking at the point she outright told him to stop and he didn't do so. That was the problem. If she had said "Please stop messaging me so much" and he'd gone "I'm really sorry, I'll try to keep my messages to a more reasonable level" and then only contacted her occasionally, they would probably still be friends (at least, in the casual acquaintance you occasionally chat to online sense). You cannot at first glance tell the difference between someone who is well meaning but lacks social skills and someone who is likely to turn into a malicious stalker.

The "I've had a cyberstalker since I was 12" thing is slightly misleading, because technically Danny wasn't a stalker when she first met him. There might have been a totally innocent explanation for his unusual behaviour, it's merely in retrospect that it becomes identifiable as a pattern which would later lead to stalking, hence why it's important to mention and include.

If she doesn't want anything to do with the guy she should have ignored him completely, off and on responses just keep him on the hook and keep him fixated, which does neither him nor her any favours.

But it's very clear that she didn't not want anything to do with the guy. She clearly enjoyed talking to to him occasionally and cared about him enough to want to avoid hurting his feelings. His level of contact was excessive, but as mentioned repeatedly that doesn't immediately indicate that a person is a stalker, especially if you've never actually told them to stop.

In real world, things aren't black and white. It isn't the case that you either want to spend all your time with someone and reciprocate everything they throw at you or you hate them and never want to see them again, just as it isn't the case that as soon as someone does something you find annoying or weird you immediately cut them off, or even if you do cut them off that you never give them a second chance. People have feelings.

But keeping them on the hook, not really engaging with them but not really ignoring them either, just makes everything go worse.

It doesn't sound like she did either, to be honest.

She reciprocated contact she wanted and ignored contact she didn't. That is not abnormal behaviour, it's just being friends. It's not meant to be that much effort, you're not meant to have to constantly second guess whether someone might stalk you for a decade if you don't immediately break contact with them, not that there's any guarantee that would even help.

And no, I am not f****ng blaming the victim. It's obviously not her fault that she met the guy and got stalked. But there are better ways she could have handled it and if we just keep screaming "VICTIM-BLAMING!" and demonize anybody that tries to talk about how to prevent such things from getting as bad as they got then these things will happen over and over again.

Wow, I'm "screaming" now, that's news to me.. I must be screaming involuntarily.

But nope, sorry, this is totally victim blaming. Trying to give well meaning "advice" which comes down to avoiding perfectly normal behaviours or imposes extensive sets of responsibilities on potential victims to "avoid" rare scenarios which they probably have no experience or understanding of, and then, when confronted, claiming you're just trying to have a reasonable conversation about prevention. That is kind of what victim blaming means. No need to get mad about it, if you find it objectionable then don't do it.

In fact, let's make this easier.

"Don't take unbooked minicabs, always book with a licensed company" is prevention advice, it's merely asking you not to facilitate something which is already illegal.
"If you feel threatened by someone on a bus, go and sit near the driver" is prevention advice. It gives actual advice as to what you can do if you feel something is wrong.
"If you go out at night, don't wear short skirts" is victim blaming. The "advice" it gives entails an unreasonable level of adjustment and thus, indirectly, punishes normal behaviour.

This is very squarely in camp 3. If you phrased it differently, like "if you feel threatened or harassed by someone online, it's usually best to ignore them" - that's prevention advice. It's advice which, as the article points out, is widely corroborated by front line services dealing with cyberstalking cases.

Saying "you have to either respond to everything someone throws at you or break off contact with them completely, regardless of whether you see there is a problem or not" is unreasonable, and thus it is victim blaming.

 

[renegade7]

future victims

That's really the problem though. There's no way for a person to know for sure that they're going to be a victim in the future. There's no single checklist of signs that a friendly but occasionally intrusive acquaintance is going to start trying to intimidate your friends and family and ruin your career out of spite.

The real harm of stalking isn't that you feel uncomfortable with the amount of attention someone has been giving you. It's that moment when the victim realizes that the behavior isn't just an issue with boundaries but a genuine obsession, like when Danny (Roni's stalker) showed up at her college uninvited after they hadn't spoken in person for years, when the victim realizes that the person has been monitoring him or her for years.

In retrospect, it's obvious that his behavior before that point was seriously problematic, but the fact is that everyone has at least one or two acquaintances that they consider themselves on more or less friendly terms with despite the occasional boundary problem, and people don't go through life expecting that every unwarranted IM is going to be the prelude to years of malignant obsession. Teenage girls constantly get unwanted attention from socially awkward guys, mostly because almost everyone in high school is socially awkward, and don't expect it to turn into a decade long saga.

Can I just also say that I find it strange that it's so common for these kind of things to somehow involve journalists? With Eron Gjoni it was also about "ethics in journalism". And this was in 2013, a full year before that unpleasantness, and involving two people who from the sound of it had very little to do with video games.

Swing and miss. In case you've been off the interwebz, it's a very apathetic place.

I just want to say that I don't really buy this. My experience has been that the trolls and creeps that the internet is stereotypically infested with are extremely rare, usually easy to ignore, and are really only encountered if you take the time out of your day to go looking for them. This might have been true a decade ago, before the days of full-time moderators and internet users who are older than 14, but it's not even remotely true now.

 

[Amaror]

Saying "you have to either respond to everything someone throws at you or break off contact with them completely, regardless of whether you see there is a problem or not" is unreasonable, and thus it is victim blaming.

Well that's funny, because I never said that. Not in any way.
What I said was:
"If you have someone frequently breaking boundaries that make you uncomfortable, tell them."
I know that that's not easy, you don't want to hurt anybodys feelings, but it is generally the best thing to do for both participants. And if the person is just socially awkward and you tell it to them in a non-threatening matter, they will generally be happy about it. Because they don't know that they're breaking boundaries and being told allows them to learn and improve themselves.
It might not be an easy thing to do, but I hardly think that that's an unreasonable amount of adjustments.
The other thing I said was:
"If you don't want someone in your life, cut them out of your life completely."
Just for the case that she didn't want him to be in her life, which apparently wasn't the case in this instance.

At this point she had not told him to stop.

Yes, I know. That is my point. She should have told him to stop before she started blocking his number.

But you can just keep twisting my words and call me a dirty "Victim-Blamer" if that makes you so happy.

That's really the problem though. There's no way for a person to know for sure that they're going to be a victim in the future. There's no single checklist of signs that a friendly but occasionally intrusive acquaintance is going to start trying to intimidate your friends and family and ruin your career out of spite.

The real harm of stalking isn't that you feel uncomfortable with the amount of attention someone has been giving you. It's that moment when the victim realizes that the behavior isn't just an issue with boundaries but a genuine obsession, like when Danny (Roni's stalker) showed up at her college uninvited after they hadn't spoken in person for years, when the victim realizes that the person has been monitoring him or her for years.

In retrospect, it's obvious that his behavior before that point was seriously problematic, but the fact is that everyone has at least one or two acquaintances that they consider themselves on more or less friendly terms with despite the occasional boundary problem, and people don't go through life expecting that every unwarranted IM is going to be the prelude to years of malignant obsession. Teenage girls constantly get unwanted attention from socially awkward guys, mostly because almost everyone in high school is socially awkward, and don't expect it to turn into a decade long saga.

Can I just also say that I find it strange that it's so common for these kind of things to somehow involve journalists? With Eron Gjoni it was also about "ethics in journalism". And this was in 2013, a full year before that unpleasantness, and involving two people who from the sound of it had very little to do with video games.

Yeah, I didn't mean it as "To avoid stalkers do this" and more of a general advice on how to deal with people that break personal boundaries and act socially awkward. It is really best to just tell them. It's not easy, because people are generally afraid to hurt other people, but it is the best for both participants.
I had a small phase when I was really young were I was calling a friend of mine a bit too much. After a while she just told me what I was doing. I looked back at what I was doing, realized she was right and stopped it. I don't think it would have lead to anything like stalking, I just didn't really realize that I was calling too much, but I do think that being honest is the best thing to do in that situation.
As for journalists being affected, I think that has more to do with how we know about it. Some random person having this happen to her is a lot less likely to write an article about it on the internet, then a journalist.