Designoplasty Web Design and Development Blog

Something new I’m learning to deal with is my blog stalker. She doesn’t read this blog, at least I hope she doesn’t. But I’ll take that risk this time because I just need to talk about it.

She started off being a supportive commenter, I looked forward to hearing from her. Then it got a little weird because she started commenting on every post right after I posted. Now, I’ve been a fan of blogs before and realized I was commenting too often, and held back. Once you get the first comment too often in a row, you realize it’s not healthy, no matter how friendly you are or how much you like the blog. Most of us have the ability to realize that before we’re told.

It was becoming a problem because my blog was almost becoming her blog, and she would start giving advice to and replying to the other commenters with advice I wouldn’t give. Also, commenting first all the time sort of sets the tone for the comments in general and I felt she was intimidating other readers from commenting.

One day, she commented five or six very long comments in a row on one post. It was a bit much, and I emailed her to tell her I had combined some of her comments, and that I had adopted a very sensible comment policy copied from other blog’s policies. I told her not to worry about it because I understood getting overly excited about a blog post and having a lot to say. I also explained that was what was so great about having our own blogs, is that we could post our thoughts on our blog and then link back. This would be great for her because she had a lot more than even one full blog post to say.

She was not happy. I can understand, none of us likes to be corrected like that, but honestly, at this point I was almost hoping she would take offense and never come back. She kind of told me off, which was fine, but she kept coming back and seemed to have calmed it down.

Then one day, she started a comment argument with me that totally roped me in. The problem was, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Her comments didn’t really make sense, but I though she was just being passionate. I kept commenting in ways that would give her a chance to explain what she really meant, since I thought she couldn’t possibly mean what she was actually saying. She would come back with even more ridiculous comments. Eventually, 36 comments later, she because so personally insulting that I just stopped and shut down comments. Three days later, after talking with friends about the situation, I deleted all of the comments from that post. I decided not to accept comments from her at all anymore.

Months later, I was on somebody else’s blog about the same general topic as mine and I was telling other people how I had this crazy commenter. Well guess what? This blog also had a crazy commenter with a different name. This person replied and knew exactly what had happened on my blog and tried to start that argument up again. Then I realized it was her. I apologized to the blog owner for causing this situation and said I wouldn’t comment on that post anymore, as not to continue that old debate. Then, the blog owner commented and said hello using the crazy commenter’s real name, which I hadn’t mentioned. Apparently they were also dealing with her.

Then the stalker commented in the strangest way, sort of acknowledging a sort of multiple personality disorder. Something like “I don’t know why you would refer to me as BlahBlah when I’m clearly posting as YaddaYadda.” OK, I finally realized that there was more going on here than an overly passionate or even overly aggressive person.

From then on, she has used multiple aliases to try to sneak onto my blog and other blogs. But her tone is pretty easy to spot. Today she posted a comment under a new name and had me fooled for about 10 minutes before I realized I needed to delete the comment. After she noticed the comment had been deleted, she tried commenting again using her usual insults, confirming for me that it really was her. I’m pretty sure she has other identities on my website that are “nice” and there’s no way to fight against that.

It’s kind of scary. Since I emailed her the one time, she has occasionally emailed insults to me which I never reply to and save in case for some reason I need evidence, which I hope I don’t. I’m nervous about even posting this in case she’s truly stalking me because I know she feeds off attention. But, I think it’s something more and more people are going to be dealing with. It’s new situation for me to learn to deal with.

First, I have acknowledged that she has a serious medical condition, and there can be no reasoning with her. Second, I have realized that in general, if a commenter’s comments don’t make logical sense, I won’t let them through at all. People who are willing to listen to reason, even if they disagree with you, have a whole different tone than people who just want to disrupt your blog, or are mentally impaired in some way.

Because of her, I’ve actually changed my style of commenting on blogs. It took me a while, but I learned not to argue with crazy people falsely thinking they will come to reason. I am much less likely to post a negative comment now. In fact, I’m much less likely to even post a negative post because it tends to attract the crazies more.

If you have a crazy commenter story, I’d love to hear it.