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I don't know if this is the answer, but "just block them" isn't a solution. I've had someone call my work and try to get me fired, I've had someone make dozens

I don't know if this is the answer, but "just block them" isn't a solution. I've had someone call my work and try to get me fired, I've had someone make dozens of accounts on various social media platforms to harass me, and even when I blocked them they would post my personal information and make up lies about things I've done, and because I blocked them I had no idea, and then more people would believe the harasser because I didn't respond to it, and would pile on. Filing a police report for some of the more threatening messages didn't do anything, as the police basically told me there wasn't going to be anything they could do. Locking or whitelisting accounts like GitHub wasn't really an option as I work with it and I maintained a semi-popular project that I wasn't willing to just delete, but it came close. In the end the harasser gave up eventually, and I was lucky that my job didn't believe them, but it was a pretty shitty time in my life that had me really worried that these lies would stick around my name forever and I wouldn't be able to escape them in the future.

infogulch 8y ago
This kind of harassment is completely incomprehensible to me. Especially as the work of a single individual. How one can be so full of spite and hate and so empty of empathy, I cannot understand. I get how mobs can do this by stirring themselves up into a frenzy, but for an individual to persistently lie and flame someone in an attempt to ruin their life, without stepping back and reconsidering what is the point. I must be naive to not be able to comprehend this kind of behavior.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Some people aren't rational (well that's an understatement, we are all at times, but some people are almost entirely incapable of rational thought at all times.) Some people have severe problems and should be receiving professional medical help, but aren't. If you try to understand what's going on inside their head, you will probably fail because their thought processes are alien to your own. But more important than understanding how they think is understanding that they exist.

infogulch 8y ago

This kind of harassment is completely incomprehensible to me. Especially as the work of a single individual. How one can be so full of spite and hate and so empty of empathy, I cannot understand. I get how mobs can do this by stirring themselves up into a frenzy, but for an individual to persistently lie and flame someone in an attempt to ruin their life, without stepping back and reconsidering what is the point. I must be naive to not be able to comprehend this kind of behavior.

darkpuma 8y ago
Some people aren't rational (well that's an understatement, we are all at times, but some people are almost entirely incapable of rational thought at all times.) Some people have severe problems and should be receiving professional medical help, but aren't. If you try to understand what's going on inside their head, you will probably fail because their thought processes are alien to your own. But more important than understanding how they think is understanding that they exist.