In questions of who is the devil and who is the saint one truth emerges. Most are neither. . . and both.

Being online daily is a mixed experience as many know or are learning. Even paddle bloggers are not immune. I talk many times about how people learn differently. Of course they see the world through many different lenses as well. You could give a person a flower and some of course would find “evil” in the gesture. Usually we can agree to disagree. Sometimes though people feel they need to keep up a war. The problem with the online world of course is that it puts you in a place that’s very accessible. Friends, strangers, enemies, exes, are all given a ticket to your wanderings. With that comes all the good feedback you get every day, but also sometimes opens you up to harassment, stalking and daily attacks. Not always visible online, but behind the scenes. Still very disturbing none the less.

That brings me to my subject of the day which is not the normal cheerful stuff but is probably worth talking about; Online Stalking. Yeah, I know a couple other bloggers have dealt with this at one time or another. Usually it’s not a stranger, but someone you know or knew that wants to attack you for whatever reasons. Being online gives them a daily place to take out their vitriol energies. They can, if they have the choose to spend their time at such things, post to your blogs, Youtube accounts, Flicker accounts and everywhere else they can find you. And let’s face it, these days we’re everywhere! If they are feeling particularly nasty they can email anyone they think would care, cut and paste emails, change the words and context, even falsify documents and logins, edit pictures whatever they wish to make a case. These days it’s pretty difficult to sort out the real from the fantasy. Like in politics they can throw and throw and throw and hope that something sticks. Let’s face it folks, the digital world has a dark and seedy side too.

I’ve been dealing with one particular situation myself quite heavily for some months. It gets so you don’t even want to log into your site. I’m sure that’s their goal really. To keep you nervous, scared and generally unhappy. So obviously if they read this they know of course that they are having the effect they want. I know 3 other paddle bloggers who have went through this to some extent and it is hard sometimes. Of course each person who resorts to such things feels they have a right. Of course no one, for no reason has a right.

What we can do is often very little. An online restraining order is laughable if impossible to enforce. We need to address these things on our own. First of course we can respond to the person and try to work out the issues with them. Sometimes though it just does not work. Next we can block their comments. The thing is of course you still have to read them when you clean out your spam folders. If you own your domain you do have another option. You can block IPs. That means blocking the servers they use to access your site. This is a major step though, in that it also blocks everyone who shares those servers.  The downside of course is that with each new door you close the more you can enrage the person trying to harasses you. Of course they are open to email you endlessly, and email anyone else they know and generally keep up their behavior as long as they wish.

The online world for better or worse does tend to make everyone “public” figures. You can’t always warn people to be careful. Sometimes all the care in the world will not stop you from stepping in it. For my part, I just keep moving along in the realization that for all the negativity in the world, the good always has a way of balancing it out. Eventually.

* image by Michael Pacher

Related Posts:

1. go deep inside
2. Little Black Number
3. The Hauntings
4. See ya ‘round!
5. momentary systems analysis