Over the last week or so, there has been a flurry of communication and blogs about outing a man who pretended for a long time to be a $1000 an hour escort, in a graduate program for sexual studies and who could tweet while having sex. One of the key issues with this outing is the predatory aspects of how this blog was used.
I have been trying to ignore things until Ten did her first blog entry. It hit an emotional echo. I keep rewriting my comment on her blog until I just finally deleted it and kept it very simple complementing her writing.
I am writing this to get some clarity and thinking for myself and to get help get some confused and angry thoughts out of myself.
Internet
The internet as a whole is wild, fragmented, helpful and dangerous. It can reach into your life in direct ways such as viruses and it can reach into your life by exposing things including private things. It can also enable your personal efforts to be seen by millions for the possible impact of improving the world. A poor analogy of the internet is it is like "living in a city with no windows and everything is on video tape forever".Like any communication tool, the side effects of this world wide exposure can be diverse such as a trauma story resulting in thousands of dollars in donations to the ailing person or the opposite extreme of causing someone to lose their job, their family and and possibly their life. Because of this and some other reasons, law makers, organizations and individuals in countries around the world are struggling with how to control, how to expose more, how to hide more and so on. Here are some examples:
- Google wandering around your neighbor collecting email messages and more
- India wanting to intercept monitor Blackberry communication
- Headline grabbing US Senator trying to control core services by law
The list is fairly endless and the dynamics have been around for years and years.
Drama, Sex and Gossip
For years and years, long before the "internet" existed, normal people would get behind a keyboard and turn into something else. They could say things that they didn't believe in just for the shock or attention value. They could say things with passion that they would never say with someone in the same room with them. The disconnected nature of the communication caused whole new mental thinking.I didn't understand the version of it called 'flaming' was only the less evil version of it. It is where someone is just passionate about something and true to themselves. The gossip version of this is more insidious and deadly.
I knew gossip and its impact. I worked at a private resort complex when I was a teenager. It had all the issues such as me being 'fresh meat' for the clients. Even back then I was a flirt and often went together with my other teenage female co-workers to places on our day off. What I didn't know was the other teenage male co-worker was jealous of this and the gossip being feed to him by other locals would come to a head. In this case, it was a nasty fight between him and me with the gossip lies spilling out of his mouth.
A few years later, after my life came crashing down on me in waves, I got into a better mental state and was working at a university as cheap labor. I had collected some new obsessive behaviors like always being in control of where I was going to sleep and I was struggling to understand my feelings toward men.
I was spending time with female co-workers and students and discovered the electronic gossip was much quicker, more emotional and nastier. It was a rude shock to have my personal life presented in this light to many. Worse yet was one of the graduate students I was spending time, left near the end of the year, the gossip and sexual attacks were too much.It hurt.
My efforts were to take myself off this radar screen. I would keep track of who the gossipy people were and stay away from them and their friends. I would avoid taking my female friends to common hang outs and so on.
Then another drama happen and I got slammed again.This time 100 times worse. By this time I had taken my sexual activities mostly off the communities radar screen. I had gotten into a more public and controlling world and was a bigger professional target. In this case, the "who was sleeping with who" didn't relate to me but others higher up the food chain. It eventually got resolved at significant cost to many and I was on the winning side if you could call it winning.
At this point in my life, I couldn't understand why people enjoyed daytime dramas. My life no matter what I did had drama.
Unmasking of Alexa
I have meet my fair share of predators and I have spent enough time with police and criminal attorneys to know I am in no rush to know some things. There are all sorts of predators including rapists, child rapists, etc.The one thing I was forced to watch was a very smooth operator spend months chasing a good friend. I and other people told her he was just going to screw her and leave her. After spending months with him, she finally consented and the relationship evaporated after her fucked her.
It messes with my head that I am like him but have different goals. What makes me "okay"?
When I read about the unmasking of Alexa and other blogs like Ten's, I don't see a simple issue.
I see things like this guy will probably lose his job. He probably will not be stopped and will reappear. He messed up many people by his actions. The gossip and angst around this will be divisive and will bring people together at the same time.
I pray that the conclusion is correct and that the person who has been outed in this fashion is the right person.
Silver Lining
The good news is that Ten posted a follow up email from this the person being outed in her new blog before I finished this blog entry. One of the things I have to do professionally is read between the lines with emails.His message mentions very casually after leading with details about a web hosting service about losing his job "I’ve already been fired from my job, and so now I have to find a way to get myself home." It contradicts with "... been on the road this weekend..." , catching up with things, sending email to Alexa, etc. He is playing the sympathy card and validating his name and activities.
It is very hard to get fired from a non-appointed government job. My concern that the wrong person was outed has evaporated.
I don't view the negative energy in the internet as a good thing. Maybe in this one case, it is good?
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