Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a long time, college may be out now for the Easter holidays, but there’s a big push to get work done now as university is looming. At least now I’ve got some time on my hands to actually post here. When I first opened this blog I talked about this being solely about my love for music, movies and everything 80s, but also, to chat about experiences I’ve had in the past online, and in real life. This is one of them. Your discretion is advised as this is a very sensitive topic and some readers may relate to this.
In April 2012 I rejoined Twitter for the second time after being hacked and locked out of my first account. As you know by now my sole purpose for joining social media around that time was to find friends and connect with fellow fans of the eighties. This edition of Story Time is a real account of when one of these 'friendships' went sour.
I received a follower request in October of the same year by
a woman who claimed to be a big fan of the band Spandau Ballet, the proof was
in her username really so I thought 'why not?' I followed her just to see where
things would go. About five minutes later she contacts me and is very grateful
for me following her back, and goes on to say that she is 27 years old, 28
years old in the morning, Italian and she has loved Spandau Ballet and other
eighties groups from being very small, like me! I thought 'geez, we have a lot
in common, she has an excellent taste in music! I'll carry on talking to
her". At this time I could not fault her one bit, there was a bit of a
language barrier and it was hard to make out what she was trying to say, but
credit to her she tried her best. We would talk almost everyday about music,
and eventually she went and created a private Facebook account, added me there
and we would talk regularly on Messenger too, but more about general things
like family, weather and pets. In a few short weeks I felt I had really got to
know her quite well. She spoke very candidly about personal things, such as
being brought up in a dysfunctional family environment, her father dying of
lung cancer when she was a teenager etc. I felt sympathy for her and protected
her when trolls struck her page. Little did I know, she was one of the biggest
trolls I would ever associate with.
Eventually we would talk everyday. She got me to create an
account on the popular messaging app Kik as she claimed the conversations were
completely private and nobody else would see them. She was always concerned
about privacy and even blackmailed me to change my profile picture on Kik to
myself, using the excuse that her mother wanted to know that all of her ‘cyber
friends’ were not scam artists. Things got rather desperate. She said if I didn’t
do it within the next hour her mother would take a sledgehammer to her
computer, broadband router and electronics. I complied, but I wasn’t going to
use a personal photo of myself as I knew all the dangers that would arise. I
went on Google and uploaded a photo of a model that looked like me. She bought
it, thank goodness. I felt after so long that I was being suffocated by this
person. She always wanted to talk, no matter what time in the day it was and if
I was busy or not. I deliberately left my phone at home whilst I was at school
to avoid her because there was no way I was going to let her get in the way of
my education. There would be several messages demanding to know where I was and
she didn’t buy for a second that I was at school. She even went public on her
Twitter account talking about me, even if she wasn’t mentioning my name, I knew
she was talking about me. “If she is not on by 11 o’clock Italian time I’m
going to sleep”. This woman was very controlling, and expected me to believe
the unrealistic lies she began to spurt. A funny one I remember is that she
said that she wasn’t going to be online that night because she was going to a
restaurant with her family. Four hours later she messaged me saying she was
still at the restaurant, and she hadn’t been served yet! I couldn’t believe
what I was hearing. There was no way somebody would wait 4 hours to be served
and not get any food. If I was faced with a delay that was even three quarters
of an hour long I would refuse to pay and walk out. It went on for a while and eventually I confronted her about
her lies, saying I didn’t believe her for a second. She didn’t take well to
this, argued with me for about an hour, and cursed me out, becoming very
abusive, calling me names such as narcissistic, ugly, fat, (bearing in mind she
only had the photo of the model and not me), rude and other things I do not
want to repeat, in very poor grammar so it honestly became quite laughable. My
mother saw the emotional distress this was causing me, seized my phone and very
politely told this woman to cease and desist. I ignored her after that and at
least twenty messages came through where she was trying to still provoke me. She
was so desperate! Eventually I had enough of her and straight out blocked her
on everything. This is where things got worse.
She stalked me and several of my best friends on Twitter,
retweeting everything she assumed was about her, even if it wasn’t. But the
sneaky thing was, she did not use her own Twitter account as I had her blocked.
She created many fake accounts, used photos of the reality star Amanda Bynes
and said it was herself, despite many sceptic followers. Soon accounts posing
as her ‘friends’ would attack me, saying I was a bitch for bullying someone I
didn’t really know, I didn’t know what she was going through, and that she was
self-harming because of me. Now, I didn’t aim any abuse at this woman, I did
call her clingy and asked her to back off on several occasions, and any insults
that I threw at her, were in my own defence. Every time I blocked and reported
an account, a new one would crop up. A pattern was soon forming, they all had
similar grammar, so it all boiled down to one person. The excuse was someone
else was attacking her, which was not true. It was getting to the point where I didn’t feel safe on social media anymore, it was like she was constantly trawling my profiles to find what juicy gossip about me to use for her own personal gain and then when I least expected it, launch an attack on me. I had blocked her so many times it was getting ridiculous. I stopped using my real surname on Facebook and opted for something different, but something simple so my loyal friends and family could still find and interact with me. I neglected to go on Twitter for quite a while, but when I did eventually return, I locked it so people who I approved could view my tweets and talk to me. Twitter was a godsend. Eventually in November 2016, after four years of hell and dragging me through pointless drama, getting blocked by celebrities for no reason, and endless trolling, all her accounts, including two supposed Toto fan pages vanished overnight without a trace. To this day, some of her ex followers believe that she got tired of Twitter and just deactivated her pages, but I have a different opinion. I believe that she was reported a lot to Twitter for abusive language, cyber bullying and targeted harassment towards me and others, they disabled all her accounts and possibly blocked her IP address from making anymore accounts. One old page still exists today, but has not been active since October 2015. I felt a sense of relief knowing that her reign of terror was finally over. I returned to Twitter and picked up from where I’d left off from 2 years prior. I wasn’t afraid to go on Facebook again as I made sure beforehand to block all of her known accounts.
If this experience has taught me something, it’s to be more sceptical
of what you read on the internet. Giving people the benefit of the doubt is
completely harmless, but there’s times when things can sound too good to be
true. Looking back, I was completely clueless and naïve and did not spot the
warning signs until it was too late. One thing’s for sure now, I’ll know to be warier
around who I add as friends on social media, and get rid of them at the first
sign of trouble to be able to let go of the past more easier and for my own
sanity. Thankfully, the woman, has not attempted to return to Twitter since,
but still posts on Facebook from time to time. I couldn’t care less though.
Only people I truly care about, whether in the cyber world or in reality, can
hurt my feelings
Thank you for listening,
- S
