Elizabeth Black writes in a wide variety of genres including erotica, erotic romance, horror, and dark fiction. She lives on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son, and three cats. Visit her Facebook page and her Amazon Author Page.
They are coming out of the woodwork. Plenty of people, especially women, have had to deal with Internet crazies. These crazies often show up in your Facebook private messages. Sometimes they aren't even your friends. I've had a slew of them recently, mostly men. Why do so many of these guys think that making a fake military listing will attract women? I've heard from numerous high-ranking military personnel, especially doctors, who say they are stationed in the Middle East. They're rank, all right. Unfriend. Block. Then there are the non-American men who immediately ask me if I'm married with children. Unfriend. Block. Or the men who tell me my profile picture is beautiful and they want to be my friend. When I told one I was married and not interested in hooking up with anyone, he said he'd love to pretend I was his sister. Yeah, sure. Unfriend. Block. Or the men who claim to have incurable illnesses (brain cancer is popular) and want to leave their money to me if only I leave them my bank information. Unfriend. Block. Women pull these stunts, too. I heard from one from Japan whom I friended, and I should have known better. She immediately signed me up for two groups on Facebook with explicit porn. This pisses me off because Facebook won't remove that kind of crap yet erotic romance book covers with a hint of nipple are nuked. Unfriend. Block. Or the other woman on Facebook who talked to me for a few days before sending me a private message to say she was in dire need of several thousand dollars and could I lend it to her? Nope. Those "I'm stranded in Europe and I need money" scams from people faking your friend's accounts are common. So are money scams on the web. Unfriend. Block.
Before I was a fiction writer and sex/relationships writer, I wrote political and feminist articles for several magazines and web sites. I was quite well known, and with the fame came the misogynistic baggage all feminists have to deal with. These were my first internet crazies. I regularly heard from men's rights activists who liked to tell me I was wrong about everything while calling me a cunt and worse. In case you don't know what they are, men's rights activists are men – mostly middle aged white men but some are younger and of color – who feel that their sense of entitlement is being threatened by gains made by women, people of color, and GLBT folk. There are also women in the men's rights movement. They are the men's auxiliary, and they support the guys in every way, even down to doing their grunt work for them. These women were most often wives, girlfriends, sisters, and mothers of the men in the movement, and they had a vested interest in seeing the status quo maintained. I estimated that women comprised about 40% of the movement. Some of these guys want to repeal women's right to vote. They claim the vast majority of rape allegations are false. These guys will whine to anyone who will listen to them, and that often consists of an echo chamber of their own kind. Now, they meet on the Internet. Before the Internet, they met in member's homes, church halls, or other public places. They're very politically active and they try to roll back gains made by women, people of color, and GLBT folk over the past 30 odd years.
Due to the influx of nutcases harassing me on Facebook over the past week, I've decided to host a radio show on The Women Show about internet crazies. Do you have your own tales of strange men harassing you on Facebook? Do you get email from Nigerian princes who want to send you millions of dollars (people still fall for that one?)? Do writers friend you only to immediately spam your timeline and private messages with junk about their books without so much as saying hello? If you've experienced any of this or know someone who has, this is the show for you. Here are details:
The Women Show – Internet Crazies
Host – Elizabeth Black
Guests – Phoenix Johnson, Christine Morgan, and Jen Winters.
Keep an eye on my Facebook page for more details.
Elizabeth Black - Facebook
