This man (who is 38) got exposed by my friend for messaging her 13 year old sister inappropriately in a chatroom. She screenshotted and also video recorded the chatroom and posted it online. This caused a years long obsession with her and he claims he’s signed up on every site so he can monitor and report her. Besides stalking her and making a whole site where he archives everything she says so he can twist it to make her look bad, he’s also doing this thing where he finds things he deems “questionable” about her (and also other people who exposed him) like:

  • “None of these toxic people like dogs. That should tell you everything you need to know”

  • “These people support piracy. I’m glad I have a conscience, I cannot say the same for the toxic people I’ve encountered.”

  • “Every one of these people have been banned (because he spams reports on multiple accounts). The continued existence of my site proves I’m not the guilty party here.”

He also admits to spamming reports on her, for instance if she makes a very obvious joke he deliberately takes that joke literally in the reports. He wants to get her banned. On his site he records himself clicking the report button and filing reports on her. He claims that he is the one being stalked and harassed.

This is an update for the previous thread. I’m helping my friend file a police report (she lives in the US, this man lives in Australia) but I’d like to know if there’s a name for this particular aspect of the harassment.

  • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
    27·
    17 hours ago

    Ad hominem fallacy. The person who has been exposed for various things, instead of trying to refute the argument of the accuser (e.g. “they’re misrepresenting the facts”, “I couldn’t have done that here’s an alibi”)

    … they just make their own accusations to make others mistrust their accuser. All of the examples you listed were ad hominem attacks against your friend.

  • floo@retrolemmy.comEnglish
    20·
    19 hours ago

    Vindictiveness or being vindictive

    That’s probably the closest to what you’re describing

    Edit: if you’re talking about what the fuck is wrong with Trump and why does he act this horrible way, and why do all Republicans act like Nazi pieces of shit?

    The word for that is “Nazi”. It’s because they are Nazis.

  • cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    16·
    19 hours ago

    “Whataboutism.” Firefox flags the word as misspelled, but it’s just a new word and if you search it, you’ll find a lot of articles. It’s a controversial debate tactic in which you attempt to shift the focus from something you want to protect (or yourself) to something the other person wants to protect (or themselves).

    A good example of this is when we say “Trump is in the Epstein files” and people on the right say “well so is Bill Clinton.” Except the left really doesn’t want to protect Slick Willy (or any child predator, for that matter) so it’s not a good whataboutism. Normally you would point to something good he’s done, but I can’t come up with any examples.

    • Eq0@literature.cafe
      4·
      19 hours ago

      That would be a slightly different scenario. Here we have the accuser and the accused. Then the accused discredits the accuser by bringing in unrelated facts. As another commenter said, it’s an ad hominem attack. Whataboutism would be, in this context, answering “but Trump/Clinton/Julius Cesar did it too” implying (so it’s not that bad, they are worse than me)

  • Glide@lemmy.ca
    2·
    14 hours ago

    A friend of mine once described this kind of behaviour as acting like “welfare moms.” While there’s a certain level of sexism there that I am sure she really didn’t mean in the moment, I get the point she was making: parents who sit at home scheming up the next excuse to call social services on that other parent that they pretend to like but also keep an air of superiority about. And that’s all it is. Convincing yourself that you’re better than everyone else not by lifting yourself up, but by tearing others down.

    It’s commen behaviour in narcissists, too. Contrary to popular belief, narcissism is often found in people with low self-esteem. They try to validate themselves by bringing everyone else down below them. It seems like obsession with another person outwardly, but it’s still self-obsession: “this person made me look bad, but they’re so much worse than me. I need to prove it (even to myself).”