I literally just posted about this earlier today. I used to frequent the Something Awful forums. I know, I know, but I was young and at least it wasn’t 4chan.
About 14 years back, I was having big issues with my partner and wasn’t sure what to do, so I asked the forums for relationship advice. I actually got a fair amount of well meaning advice, but also a harasser. They initially just ripped into me in response to my request, but SA was full of trolls so I ignored them. Then they responded to another new comment I made awhile later, but the forums weren’t huge. Just a coincidence, right? I continued to ignore them.
We went camping and got back a few days later. I checked my SA account and found this person had gone through my post history mocking and bullying me and had collected info to try to dox me. I was pretty carefree with what information I disclosed back then and they had a lot. They knew or at least accurately inferred: the name of the small town I lived in, the areas of town we had lived in, the year/make/model of the unusual car my now-ex drove, which university I attended and my major, where I worked and more. This all freaked me out so I reported them.
The mods’ response to my reporting a user for harassing and doxxing me was, and I quote, “LOL faggot”. Such fond memories. I quit using SA immediately and worried for weeks that something awful would happen. Pun intended. Luckily nothing did. I have scarcely thought about SA since until someone brought it up here a few hours back.
I literally just posted about this earlier today. I used to frequent the Something Awful forums. I know, I know, but I was young and at least it wasn’t 4chan.
About 14 years back, I was having big issues with my partner and wasn’t sure what to do, so I asked the forums for relationship advice. I actually got a fair amount of well meaning advice, but also a harasser. They initially just ripped into me in response to my request, but SA was full of trolls so I ignored them. Then they responded to another new comment I made awhile later, but the forums weren’t huge. Just a coincidence, right? I continued to ignore them.
We went camping and got back a few days later. I checked my SA account and found this person had gone through my post history mocking and bullying me and had collected info to try to dox me. I was pretty carefree with what information I disclosed back then and they had a lot. They knew or at least accurately inferred: the name of the small town I lived in, the areas of town we had lived in, the year/make/model of the unusual car my now-ex drove, which university I attended and my major, where I worked and more. This all freaked me out so I reported them.
The mods’ response to my reporting a user for harassing and doxxing me was, and I quote, “LOL faggot”. Such fond memories. I quit using SA immediately and worried for weeks that something awful would happen. Pun intended. Luckily nothing did. I have scarcely thought about SA since until someone brought it up here a few hours back.