I recently had my first negative experience with a commenter on my blog. I know, it took long enough, right? What happened was a social experiment on what “stop” actually means. You see, I thought it meant to cease the action all together. He thought it meant, “Yes, I’m enjoying my time. Please continue pestering the hell out of me.”
You see it was small things that built up to an uncomfortable situation. He wouldn’t leave conversations, he’d send kissy face emojis that I honestly found a little disturbing, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
I asked him to stop sending emojis. He continued. I told him the conversation was over and he’d continue responding. I told him to please respond with comments that actually contributed to the conversation or was relevant to the blog post and I got a load of throwaway posts that really did belong in the garbage bin.
At this point, I asked him to flat out stop commenting. I told him that if it continued, he’d be marked as spam, and ultimately be blacklisted from my site. So you know what he did? He went to my Instagram and spammed my DM’s.
I’d had enough. I blocked him on Instagram and proceeded to dig up the last comment of his that was in the trash. I posted it along with a message saying that he was the picture of harassment. That stop actually means stop whether it’s online or in person and to never feel badly for advocating for yourself. Those comments have now been taken down per this person’s request to remove all his posts, which I gladly did since I didn’t want that negativity on perfectly good articles. It’s also worth noting that he did offer his sincere apologies.
The thing that kills me though is that he also responded saying that he wasn’t actually interested if I wasn’t down. He just thought I was being funny every time I told him to stop. Jesus Christ on a stick, I think he may have even mistook my telling him to stop for flirting which worries me immensely. Where in the world are these concepts being taught that when a girl says “stop” she means something else entirely? Where in my “Please stop the emojis, the commenting, the spamming, I’m blocking you forever and ever” was there the impression that I wanted more?
And really, how do you say “Stop” if stop doesn’t mean stop?
Curious to see if any of you reading this have encountered a situation where it was Opposite Day and you had no idea that Stop meant Continue. If you have, how did you handle it? Did they try to make it seem like you overreacted or were crazy for advocating for yourself since they’ve clearly been called out in public for harassment?
Photo by Jose Aragones on Unsplash
Thats horrifying! Ive never experienced this outside of one of my daughters ex’s stalking our entire family digitally. Glad it seems to have settled down now.
Me too, thankfully a lot of sites have a great “block” feature. I’ve encountered these situations in person as well and I just can’t believe that we are speaking the same language and somehow not. Why are “stop” and “no” interpreted differently in certain situations? It just doesn’t make sense.
And an ex that’s digitally stalking would freak me out. They definitely need better coping mechanisms.
I won’t carry on with them. The first time I get that feeling because of what they are saying are sending they are gone.
I find that that is the best way to handle them. Kick them out before you spend too much negative energy on them.
This sounds alarming!
I don’t understand how and why some people misinterpret words like stop, no, don’t, go away, leave me alone, etc. These words DO NOT leave room for interpretation!!!
And I don’t get why some people try to force themselves into other people’s (online) lives even though their input or presence is not wanted.
And I will never understand why some people take time out of their lives to be obnoxious on purpose.
I hope that person you had to deal with has now understood that no means no and that stop means stop, and I hope he won’t swing by again.
I’d block these characters right away, and I’d mark their comments as spam. Bye-bye spamming stalkers and stalking spammers!
Yes, the individual has been spammed and blocked where necessary and I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt and say he’s learned something about what STOP means and if someone says they are going to block you that they mean THEY ARE GOING TO BLOCK YOU. I don’t know how they came to the conclusion it was all fun and games. I certainly wasn’t sending laughing emojis when I said go away.
No more spamming stalkers and stalking spammers either way!