Do You Face Your Attacker?

I know, it's been awhile since I've written. Awhile? A long time. And I'm not sure when I will write again after this. However I felt that this was important to share, and it's taken me awhile to work through this. You may remember my post a couple years ago about a rando that I met at the bar whose name was Awesome. I posted a sound clip of numerous voice mails that he had left for me, as I had thought they were extreme and funny and wanted to share them with my readers. All of 30 people read that post. A couple of days later someone posted a nasty note on Reddit linking to my blog, claiming to be Awesome and making up random things behind the phone calls that they supposedly left. I knew beyond a doubt that it was not the person who left the voice mails and had an inkling that it was someone I knew that posted it. This didn't stop the hundreds of hate comments I received, death threats and my picture and personal information (Facebook account, email address, and other links to my personal information) being posted on other trolly websites. I received emails and Facebook messages and ended up completely blacking out all of my accounts. And then it ended and the trolls moved on to someone else to attack. I never thought that I would out who felt the need to do such a malicious thing. However a few weeks ago my brother told me that he was told who it was. I screamed. I screamed bloody murder for about 10 minutes. It was someone who I went to high school with. We were never friends, nor were we enemies. To my knowledge, I never did anything to him. When I found out, all sorts of revenge ideas were streaming through my head, I wanted him to pay, I wanted him to know what hell he put me through, I wanted to see his remorse. And I wanted to punch him in the face. With my fist. The next day, I wanted to contact him and meet him in person to let him know that there are consequences for your actions. And then the anger subsided. Nothing I said would change what happened. It was years ago and it doesn't matter any more. I'm not writing for anybody to get angry for me. More of a lesson. Every action has a consequence, and just because you can't see the person's face, they are human and they have feelings. Also, don't name your kid Awesome. Or Wispy. So, Jeff. If you are reading this I hope that you never do what you did to me to anybody else.

A long winded response

Where to start? Well, from the top. Last Tuesday I posted about a series of voice mails. The post is still up but the voice messages are gone. I received some hateful comments, but kept up the ones that had a valid point. After all, it probably was wrong for me to put the voice messages up in the first place. Then on Sunday night around 10pm I started getting comment after comment, the first one reading "you're a dumb c**t, fuck off and die". I'm sorry, what? They kept coming in, and some nice person told me that my blog had been forwarded to some forum, where I quickly followed to. It was eye opening, someone claiming to be the guy in the voice messages had posted about finding my blog, and then linked to it. So in less than 24 hours, thanks to this phony and the forum housing mob mentality, my blog went from having about 20 viewers to 6,635 angry trollers.

So, I'd like to address some audiences here: Awesome, the forum trollers, the poster, and any other concerned parties.

1. Awesome, if you ever do read this, and feel humiliated, I am truly sorry. When I posted this that did not cross my mind. It's a fault of mine, probably because I am self-deprecating and do not think twice about embarrassing myself. I felt that the post was anonymous enough that there would be no way for it to hurt anybody involved.

2. Forum trollers, I don't have a better name. I received 75 comments on my blog in 2 hours Sunday night before I shut down the commenting. I didn't go through them, I only deleted. Why? Because being called a c**t and getting death threats is a little unnerving, and unwarranted. "I wish I lived near you so that I could rape and murder you." So I selected them all and deleted. Unfortunately there were some very valid points - even if I didn't agree with them, I would have kept them on. But since I couldn't control the comments, I removed them. I didn't ask for any of this attention, nor do I want any of this attention. I had 20 followers before, I was not the one who published that post on the forum to get attention. Then there are the people who went way too far. I'm sorry, but finding out all of my personal information and attacking me via facebook? Seriously? One message said: "Get ready, you're so fucked. :)" Also, if you listened to the message, and read what the "AsimAwesome" wrote, you'd realized that his story is fraudulent, he's a fake. But thanks anyway for all your kind words.

3. Dear "AsimAwesome", why? I know that you're not the guy who left the phone messages, unless your story just doesn't make sense because you've forgotten some of the important details. Or all of the details? If you were personally offended, you could have asked me to take the voice messages down.

4. This turned into a racial thing, which is crazy to me. I have done some of my own research on the name Asim because I have only ever heard it pronounced "A-sim" and "A-seem". I had no idea that it could be pronounced "Awesome". I have yet to find any information or examples of when it is pronounced that way, but if anybody genuinely does pronounce their name that way, then I'd like to know. It's like the name Kailey and it's derivatives. Is it Kay-lee, or K-eye-lee? There are a million different forms of every name these days.

5. I contacted the other website that posted my personal information and encouraged threats. They took my contact information down but did not get back to me. The reason I'm not listing the forum site or the other website is because I have no desire to give them any credit or attention. Sites that encourage malicious behaviour are pointless.

6. What I learned. I can make fun of myself as much as I want, but that's it. Whether the person construes the message to be rude, humiliating or hurtful is fair enough. I also learned about mob mentality and how it's pretty unnerving to be the focus of an attack. You probably shouldn't be on any social media sites if you don't want to be found, that was a really quick lesson learned. I am now completely unlisted everywhere. I think. I'm also going to keep the comments function disabled for the time  being. This isn't because I can't handle comments that are negative, but because of all those slightly less friendly ones. If ya don't like my blog, don't read it.

Awesomely Awful (and my love life)

Since I moved a little over 2 years ago, I have to admit that I haven't really dated. I dipped my toe in the water only to find the water was freezing and full of weeds. I hate weeds. I got caught in them when I was swimming across a lake when I was a kid and even though I had a tube or some other flotation device, having your leg caught by a gross weed is fucking terrifying.

Where was I? Oh yes, dating. Some of my friends love dating, even if they have horrible dates, they still go out, time and again. Me, I'm not so keen on a bad date, I'd rather just skip it. That and living in a big pond has made it harder to meet cool people. I might get ronery every once in awhile, and I know that I should be thinking about finding a mate (says my mom), but I'm cool with being single. As the CREEEEPY Rogers guy who fixed my cable yesterday said as he sat beside me on my couch and looked around my apartment "it must be nice living alone, you can do whatever you want and nobody will bug you". Yes creepy Rogers man, it is nice. I might get a dog or cat to cuddle with at night though.

Anyway, I really got sidetracked there. What I wanted to tell you about was this guy, his name is Awesome. Really. He is another reason why I hide in my basement apartment. The ONE AND ONLY time I drunkenly gave a guy my number, this is what happened. 3 voice mails later. Before I got the chance to give him a call back I had 3 voice messages from him. For other women out there who've felt nervous about a random guy, I'm sure you'll see how his extreme enthusiasm was a little unsettling. Although he did seem like a nice bloke, it was unnerving to see this behaviour escalate to the level of stalker mentality - it's scary out there, especially since I was only 22 at the time! Enjoy my friends, hopefully you'll like it as much as my dad did. He is Awesome's biggest fan. Fact.

UPDATE: I've actually decided to take the voicemail down because someone via reddit is pretending to be AWESOME (not Asim, trust me people, that's how he spelled it) and create a sob story. Unfortunately (and fortunately for me) he got some important details wrong and I was able to pretty quickly assess that it was some asshole trying to get attention by making up a story.

Hey guess what!

I registered a domain name, what what! So now instead of www.strugglesaurus.blogspot.com (which you can still, of course, use because it's still awesome) you can go to www.lexinthecityblog.com! Woo! Just a little warning, if you forget the word "blog" in the address you'll be taken to a playboy website. And not mine. Damn you playboy!!! Damn you!! Oh well, it'll be a pleasant detour for some people if they accidentally type in the wrong address.

Wow, how did this announcement turn into me vomiting out my thoughts?

So, the awesomeness that is lexinthecity, there's a little strugglesaurus in all of us, now has its own website. Tres exciting!

PS - Awesome. (Because using the word 3 times in one post seemed like the thing to do.)