Snoopy, Snare, Jasmine and Miss Della were not the first people from the internet who I have met in the outside world.....
Those of you who know me well, know that I love a good debate, so it's probably not a surprise to you that I got in a few "heated debates." It was a general forum, so there would be arguments and debates on everything from television to politics. It was a completely vanilla forum, so I had a different username and a less sexy persona.
Anyway, there was one particular user, that always used to rub me up the wrong way, in the knowledge that I had a short fuse and little to no self control when responding to trolls, he would literally follow me around the boards disagreeing with whatever I said or creating topics and polls deliberately designed to grind my gears. Eventually I resolved to ignore him completely and just skip his posts (there was no ignore function.)
Noticing that I was ignoring his perpetual trolling of my posts he started making a point of mentioning me in pretty much every post, nothing too serious at first, just name calling and general "banter" This particular forum had an @'ing feature so whenever you were mentioned in a post you would get a little notification. Every time I logged on there would dozens of notifications from this guy where he had mentioned me in a post.
I continued to ignore him. After all it's only the internet right?
This when things turned much darker. He then resorted to constantly making threats about me in every single post. Saying he was going to find me and "Do me" that he would bring "The boys round" or have me "dealt with" Eventually I stopped logging into the forum and thought it would end there. Not content with stalking me off the forum, he decided that he would find my social networking pages, first my twitter was attacked, with constant messages, containing everything from abuse, to really nonsensical tweets about coming round for tea etc.
Having blocked and reported him on twitter, he then found my facebook and started harrassing me with messages, he even tried to add my then girlfriend as a friend.
Things were getting really creepy. Again we blocked him, changed our privacy settings, and naively thought the matter would be over.
Then the phone calls started, god knows how he got my number. Most of the time I’d ignore the phone, but at the time I was living with my girlfriend, I couldn’t ignore it all the time in case she picked up. And she didn’t really know the full truth of the problem. Anyway one night it rings again and I pick up the phone ready to tell him to get fucked. He told me that he’d found out where I lived and he’d rounded up some of his ‘firm’ and he was nearby...
I was genuinely scared but pride made me call his bluff. I went outside and started shouting, the neighbours must have though I was a maniac. Then around the corner comes this battered old car, which started speeding at me. I shit myself and run inside the flat. My girlfriend was freaking out as she’d seen what was happening. They pulled up outside and parked in front of the flat, and five of the biggest lumps I’ve ever seen got out.
They were huge, I mean huge, proper bruisers each and every one of them. They were more like the trolls from Lord of the Rings than any man I have ever seen. For some insane reason I decided I best go out and face them, living in the countryside the police are pretty slow. I told my ex that I would go talk to them and try and smooth things over, I told her to lock the door behind me and ring for help it things went badly.
Stepping out into the cool night air, I heard the door click behind me, knowing that this was real shit or bust time. One of the guys walked towards me and held out his hand for me to shake, with a really chilling grin on his face he said, good evening Mr. [real name removed] you know who I am don't you? His friends laughed and started walking towards us fanning out, one of them picked up a piece of wood that was in the street, and I noticed knuckle dusters on another...
It was at this point that I realised that they were up to no good, started making trouble in my neighbourhood, I got in one little fight and my mum got scared she said your moving with your auntie and uncle in Belair I whistled for a cab and when it came near the license plate said fresh and had dice in the mirror if, anything i could say that this cab was rare but i thought nah, forget it yo home to bel-air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight i yelled to the cabbie yo home, smell you later! looked at my kingdom I was finally there to sit on my throne as the prince of bel-air.
- Spoiler: show
