Don’t especially want to get into all this again, so although I’m going to retell the story due to a reader request, this time it’s the stalker’s name rather than my workplace that I’d prefer people not to mention if possible.
A bit of TEFL blogging history for you, ready for when APR Howatt writes A History of Blogging in ELT:
About 18 months ago, someone who I had had no contact with before wrote to me demanding to know the owner of the TEFL.net site so that his lawyers could contact him, or threatening legal action if I didn’t do so (!?) Having heard of this person’s bullying tactics and continual threats of legal action from other bloggers, and being someone who has an odd psychological need to stand up to bullies, I went on the attack. This consisted of publishing that email message, then starting an I Am Spartacus campaign when that just resulted in more and more threats of various vague but unpleasant types.
In my I Am Spartacus message (which was published in at least 10 places, back when that was a fair percentage of the TEFLsphere), I simply repeated that someone who I had never mentioned on my blog or elsewhere (and didn’t intend to) kept on threatening me with legal action and that I intended to use our ability to stand up to such a ridiculous situation as a lesson for other bullies of the TEFL world. All I demanded was that the threat of legal action was removed, and I would publish that fact. Instead, there were more bizarre threats by blog comment and email, emails to anyone who had published even a comment by me, emails to random influential TEFL figures, several long emails a day to the owners of the sites that publish me most (mostly containing more threats of legal action), blogs set up to attack me and those editors, and attempts to find out where I work. I have no doubt that if he had found out where I worked similar annoying if harmless emails, phone calls and even visits would have descended on my boss, who was very supportive but clearly too busy to deal with such a character.
As it turned out, he never sued me (nor probably had any intention to) and the whole thing started because my blog had tags for Sandy MacManus, who had been his chief online critic for the criminal TEFL-related fraud that he was later convicted of, and the EL Gazette, who he was convinced was about to write about him for the same reason. He soon gave up on me (perhaps when it was obvious I was neither going to back down nor give him any more ammunition by changing what I said about him??), and although the harassing emails to my editors continued his rage soon turned back to Sandy, who seemed for a while to be in serious danger of being unmasked by a blog that turned out to be written by said TEFL blog stalker, and who I think will now agree shot himself in the foot several times with racist abuse etc that allowed the stalker to go on the attack.
The whole thing finally faded more or less into the background when someone who we respected contacted us both and told us that the particular mental disorder of this person demanded attention, so that is what we should starve him of by blocking all his comments and not commenting on his own abusive and libellous blogs, and we took that person’s advice.
So, what did I learn from that experience (to answer the reader’s question in a less self-indulgent way)?
- TEFLers can stick together! More specifically, I Am Spartacus campaigns work (but only if you have made online blogging friends- plus some offline friends- who can help you out) and if your boss or future boss started as a TEFLer they will probably be very understanding too (despite my worries)
- You’re going to have to delete comments and block commenters sooner or later, so there’s no need to feel guilty about it or put it off. Comments are part of the content of your personal blog, so if you think people who read you won’t want to read that comment or reply to it, bye bye comment or commenter. If you block them and don’t reply to their emails, obviously they’ll soon give up
- If you are worried about being sued for libel, basically don’t have a blog based in the UK in any way. Not libelling someone helps with that, but as Private Eye can tell you, even doing nothing and winning said cases can be an expensive and time consuming process
- If you choose to go on the attack, it’s probably the guilt at the time, stress and inconvenience that causes people around you (in my case, around me in online terms) rather than worries for yourself that will cause doubts
- Attack isn’t necessarily the best form of defense, although I still live in hope that it showed a few TEFL bullies a lesson, if not the one I was clashing with
- To put it another way, you are unlikely to change someone’s mind by debating with them on your blog, but you might influence some others
- The best way of dealing with online stalkers is just the same as the best way of dealing with students- depends on 1000 things!
- Give away as little information as you can (despite a blog being a web log??)
Apologies if you thought this was going to be a story of screaming TEFL blog groupies going through my rubbish, not happened (yet!)
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