Anonymous trolls: Not just for blogs!

There has been much talk on the interwebz of late about trolls. Actually that's a lie, it's not of late, it's always. There is always someone unwilling to put their name to a comment for all sorts of reasons, not just to flame (though that's normally the case). But you're deluded if you think not putting your regular email address on a comment or blocking out your name in a tweet somehow grants you traceless anonymity.

The other day I met up with my Aunty Steffi (not her real name, except for the Aunty part), in the city on her lunch break. She has only just found her way to the world of Facebook and all she knows of blogs is that I have one and it's where I word vomit occasionally. She pulled out a piece of paper and slid it across the table for me to read.

"This was on my desk when I got in to work yesterday" she said, her face defiant.

Click for larger image

"Oh my gawd you have a TROLL!" I screeched. A totally appropriate response given our food court location.

As someone who has been teased for laughing too much and too loudly, seeing this cowardly unsigned letter made my blood boil.

Now this could have been an awful story. I could be telling you how Steffi was so upset by the letter that she now feels uncomfortable going to work. That she has let this cretin win... but that's not the case. Because all of the women in my family are of the kick-arse variety.

"That's terrible, Steffi! What did you do?"

"I stuck it up above the kitchen sink and wrote next to it: 'Can the person who left this on my desk please come and see me so we can discuss this like adults'"

Her colleagues have rallied around her in support and the ongoing "Shhhh you're breathing too loud" jokes that have started since the discovery of the note are made loud enough for whomever printed the note to hear. She won't go down without a fight... and she most definitely will not go quietly.

And just like all things on the internet, all things in an office are traceable. The IT department can, within minutes, find out which computer sent that document to the printer...

So, Steffi's troll, welcome to the 21st Century where there is no such thing as anonymity. Douche.

Have you been bullied at work?

Of Twitter Haters and PR Fails

This post was going to be a standard Mummy Blogger post about how I got up at 5:30am the other day (alternatively known as the ass crack of the day, a time when no human should be awake) so Tricky could see the bus that Map Guy had hired for a bucks party. It was going to be warm and fuzzy and leave the females in the audience with aching ovaries at all the cuteness of an excited toddler's dreams coming true as a bus pulled in to our driveway and took him for a ride up and down the street.

But all that went flying out the window when I checked Twitter at our post-awesome-bus-trip breakfast on the edge of the Swan River and saw this:

Gee, tell me how you really feel.

So I had a look at Biker Vet's account, found out he followed fourteen people, had nine followers and tweeted mainly about bikes, the defense forces and bad PR. No other tweets anything like the one directed at me, so it obviously wasn't just a random hate account. Someone I know? An ex? A friend of a friend of a non-friend who's decided to be a super mature keyboard warrior, hiding behind a pseudonym?

I of course decided to take the moral high ground and not be caught up in it. Well, I would have, but it was much more fun to do this:

Which I think sorta upset him. Or perhaps it was the half dozen retweets of it? Or the tweets of others, like Super Daddy saying not only did he give a flying fuck but a rat's arse too. Love my tweeps!

He countered:

Riiight. So I'm a clueless, vacuous bimbo who needs to get a life, yet HE'S the one spending time sending hate tweets? The irony bubbled up around me and I went for a swim in it! Irony spa FTW!

But I'm thrilled to find out I apparently work in PR. Sending a few muesli bars and calling people Dear Blogger? I could totally do that, thanks Biker Vet for your encouragement to change careers!

By this stage a few people had noticed and were asking what I'd done to make this guy so cranky at me. I told them I had no idea and he was obviously watching my tweets because he replied:

And attached this photo with one name blocked out:

Yes, that's right. I did a reply all to @claytonwfu5y who had spammed us all (that account is now suspended because I always block and report spam) and for that, I am being called horrid names as if we're in a playground. And for the record, one of the others in the group, who understands what a reply all is, retweeted it.

Interestingly on Biker Vet's timeline he complains about clicking on a link that has now infected his email account... there is NO LINK in my tweet, I'm complaining about said link in my tweet, yet I'm the spammer?  Sheesh!

Just after that tweet I get an email from a newly created Biker Vet gmail account (a warning popped up that it was a new linked account) saying "This was posted to my business twitter account. It may not have come from you. Please confirm." with a copy of the same image with the name blocked out.

Ohhhh right, so he checked it was from me after calling me a clueless, vacuous bimbo? Way to jump the gun, Biker Vet.

So I assume (possibly making an "ass out of u and me", but hey, I'm gonna go with it) that the name blocked out is Biker Vet's business account that he mentions. I also assume that Biker Vet has no idea that I can find this out by a two second search of my own timeline. And voila, we have our answer.

Mr Biker Vet, you are unmasked... and I could spill the beans and tell the world (well a few thousand readers) who it was that was posting such crude comments about me, but I'm going to restrain myself for a few reasons, number one, because I don't want a barrage of readers to go to your website and give you traffic and number two, I won't be pulled in to a defamation lawsuit.

But I know who you are. So how about I click on over to your page and see what you do, shall we? Oh, look at that, you do personal training and... wait for it... PR! Can you say PR Fail?

I have replied to both tweet and email (cc-ing in his real email address that took a whole five seconds to find on his website), stating that it was a reply all to a spammer... and he's refusing to reply to me. Radio silence. Crickets chirping and tumbleweeds. Me thinks he's not so tough now that I know his real name?

So kudos, Biker Vet, for a massive PR Fail before your PR company is even off the ground.

What have we learned from this adventure? The internet is forever, everything is traceable, I'm now classed as Twitter Royalty for having a hater and my tweeps are awesome. The end.

I'm putting this to bed now. No Twitter flame wars on my behalf, thanks.