Tag Archives: cyberbullying

out with the old, back in with the creepy familiar

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It is almost the end of 2017, and quite the year it has been! I have enjoyed this year with friends and family, and like life it has had it’s ups and downs. It has also now marked the return of someone extraordinarily unstable in my life.

On this blog, in the past, I spoke about cyberbullying and cyberstalking. As in an adult who was doing this to me. They did it via Facebook, and Facebook has shut them down two times that I know of.

This person was someone who was only ever in my life long distance. I never met them in person. They are related to someone I used to know. I thought they were nice, we even used to exchange Christmas presents. But as my old life waned and I recovered from breast cancer and life moved me to wonderful Chester County, as I fell in love again and then had my own family, they waned from my life. It’s like they were jealous and unable to be happy for me.

Eventually this person decided they could not fit into my life and stopped communicating. At the time this saddened me, but relationships end.

Then one day they were back. This was cyberbullying and cyberstalking attempt number one. They took whatever I wrote here and on the blog’s Facebook page and whatever else they could scrounge up by lurking on Twitter and they perverted it, distorted it, even oddly sexualized it. It went on for months. They even virtually befriended people who were politically opposite from me on local issues. Eventually Facebook shut it down because among other things they were doing all of this from way across state lines in another state not close to here. Though not enforced often enough, the Feds do have laws about cyberbullying and cyberstalking.

Then this person went away, until it happened again. I found out last night they they are back yet again, because apparently they have been at it again for a few months and weren’t getting enough attention.

Last night I found out they had actually reached out to a friend of mine via their social media page. This friend, who is no stranger to harassment for her beliefs, contacted me.

We realized that this person has once again been out there for months. My friend commented that she put a lot of effort into harassing me.

This time, rather ironically, she (yes it is a woman) has this site up about cyberbullying and elder abuse, so they can….well….harass me again. This time they refer to themselves constantly in the third person and although they aren’t, they are calling themselves essentially an at risk elderly person or senior citizen. They are maybe late 50s or tops 60.

They are posting my private information like an old email address of mine which mostly collects spam. They have completely fabricated scenarios that are patently false and actually actionable.

This is still a very sad, twisted, and angry person. They probably want me to take action because they want the attention. They are essentially obsessed with me. I am sure there were other people they have been fixated on, and I am certain I won’t be the last. I also doubt their family in Pennsylvania are going to be happy they are back at it and once again fixated on me.

People are already reporting them to Facebook. Now Facebook is quite slow in dealing with cyberbullying and cyberstalking, but eventually they shut people down. I don’t know how many of these harassing pages this person will continue to create about me until they are finally stopped, but it will happen eventually.

Sadly, I am once again learning that messed up people like this are very real on this planet. Their goal is to create misery, harass, and steal joy.

I am as always, grateful for my friends and family and all of you my dear readers.

Thanks for stopping by.

curt schilling takes on cyberbullies. good. for. him.

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Good. For. Him. 

Seriously, I have quite a bit of respect for former Phillie and World Series winning former RedSox pitcher Curt Schilling.  Talk about good sportsmanship.

Why?

Because he took on cyberbullies  to defend the honor of his precious daughter. 

It started innocently enough. He sent a tweet out to congratulate his daughter on where she was going to college.



Even if he is a public figure he should be allowed to do that, right? 

Apparently not, and soon it was raining cyberbully trolls on Twitter.



There were a lot more than this and some were kids, but a lot were adults including a DJ somewhere and some part time person who worked for the NY Yankees.  So Curt took on cyberbullies and outed them to the world.

Good.For. Him.

As you all who read my blog know, I was cyberbullied over a period of months last year . I knew exactly who was doing it , and much like  Curt I kept a record of it. This was done to me via Facebook. Not many people “liked” the page and I found out after the page was removed that my friends reported the page daily to Facebook for months as being vile and cyberbullying. 

I had the main cyberbully, the author of the page, and then there was a person who shared the posts and obviously fed them information. I considered them a bully too. 

Then there was the handful of people out there who would chime in. Not one of them knew me, had ever had a conversation with me, had ever met me socially. They knew nothing about me.  They didn’t know the cyberbullies.  They didn’t like some of what I wrote and some cases, and that was the justification for their behavior.

Around 20 or 22 men and women, some who are members of the Chester County community and them participating with a cyberbullying effort is kind of astounding, yet they did it. They  just decided to pile on in that mob mentality that any kind of bullying often takes on. A few of these people even have school age children. 

And again, they didn’t know me, they have still never met me, they have never ever had a conversation with me, and they had nothing to judge me on other then they didn’t like some of the things I had written over the years. It sounds crazy and it is crazy. But it happened and it’s true.

Shortly before Christmas, the page disappeared. It was a wonderful Christmas gift and I have never publicly thank my friends (but I am now)  who worked so hard to get that page removed. You see Facebook, doesn’t take cyber bullying particularly seriously when it is happening to adults  , and I had gotten to the point where I was tuning it out but occasionally saving screenshots as evidence. (I was advised to do that by law-enforcement. )

Now I’m sure my critics are saying “I can’t believe she is making this all about her ” but I am not. I merely sharing my personal experience as it applies to what I am writing about. And unfortunately for me, I can now say I have personal life experience with cyberbullying. And similarly to what Curt Schilling writes about, it’s not too difficult to figure out who it is exactly who is bullying you. And it’s astounding that people think it’s okay that these things are done to you. Or that you won’t discover who it is exactly. What is even more astounding is contemplating how people who used to be part of your life in a loving and supportive manner actually do these things, let alone total strangers. A thin line between love and hate and all that.

As I said before, as an adult, you often have the ability to have better coping mechanisms then the kids who experience cyberbullying , but it doesn’t mean anyone should experience it. When it happens to our kids, the cyberbullying is often just part and parcel of other real-time in-your-face bullying that kids experience.

What Curt Schilling has done is huge. He used his celebrity for good here. He is to be commended. Because of him an even brighter light now shines on cyberbullying and he has given courage and fortitude to those being bullied; through his actions and his position he has shown people how wrong this is. I also applaud him for doing this as a father for his child. That is love.

Now it would be terrific  it if other celebrities and sports figures would follow suit and just spearhead a grassroots nationwide campaign to declare war on #cyberbullying. For those who are doing the bullying out there, save your retort. Opinion is one thing, cyberbullying is something else entirely.

And it doesn’t just happen to kids. It happened to adults and not much is done  to combat adult on adult cyberbullying.

Before I link up Curt Schilling’s blog post, here is some other coverage on this:

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling fires back after trolls’ violent, sexual tweets about teen daughter

 NEW YORK DAILY NEWS. Published: Monday, March 2, 2015

Christian Science Monitor: Curt Schilling defends daughter from Twitter bullies with help of followers

Former Red Sox pitching star Curt Schilling named the cyber bullies on Monday who targeted his daughter online with vulgar comments.

By Lisa Suhay, Correspondent MARCH 2, 2015

Washington Post Early Lead 
Yankees fire part-time employee who sent vulgar tweets to Curt Schilling

By Des Bieler March 2 at 8:31 PM  

Boston.com: Schilling Throws Perfect Game With Response to Misogynist Trolls

Here is an excerpt from Curt Schilling’s blog post:

The world we live in…Man has it changed. ADDENDUM!

MARCH 1, 2015
by 


I thank God every day that Facebook and Twitter, instagram, vine, Youtube, all of it, did not exist when I went to High School. I can’t imagine the dumb stuff I’d have been caught saying and doing.
If you are a dad this is something you well know already, if you are a dad with a daughter this is likely to get your blood going. If you are a boy, or young man, or husband, and you haven’t experienced children yet, or haven’t had a daughter, it’s next to impossible for you to understand.
My daughter, my one and only daughter, has worked her ass off playing sports the past 9-10 years. She’s loved it, and I’ve loved being able to both watch, and coach along the way.
Last week we were told she’d been accepted to college and will begin playing softball there next year.
Clearly an incredibly proud day.
tweet 1
And of course, like any dad in the modern world I said so.
Now I’ve been using computers since 1981. I was a professional baseball player for 22 years. I played 10+ years in Philadelphia. I played 5 in Boston. I shared a locker room with well over a thousand teammates and I played and lived at school a year before doing so.
That’s all to say I am absolutely aware of social media and how it works. As someone who’s said about 2.34 billion things he shouldn’t have, I get it.
….tweets with the word rape, bloody underwear and pretty much every other vulgar and defiling word you could likely fathom began to follow.
Now let me emphasize again. I was a jock my whole life. I played sports my whole life. Baseball since I was 5 until I retired at 41. I know clubhouses. I lived in a dorm. I get it. Guys will be guys. Guys will say dumb crap, often. But I can’t ever remember, drunk, in a clubhouse, with best friends, with anyone, ever speaking like this to someone…I understand this……I have a nasty habit of talking, a lot, about anything anyone asks me and totally unconcerned about giving you my opinion. You will never question where I stand, right or wrong agree or disagree on anything….The amount of vitriol I’ve heard is not an issue. I am sure I’ll hear more.
But I have to ask, is this even remotely ok? In ANY world? At ANY time?
Worse yet? No less than 7 of the clowns who sent vile or worse tweets are athletes playing college sports.
I knew every name and school, sport and position, of every one of them in less than an hour. The ones that didn’t play sports were just as easy to locate.

I’ve kept every tweet…