Internet Stalker

Reader’s Question

I am being stalked on the internet by a loser. I own a turn base game site with a forum, and kicked this loser out of it for attacking other players verbally and being verbally abusive and threatening to me after I repeatedly warned him to stop. He then joined a site group at MSN that was created by a number of my site players and continued to verbally abuse players there, but soon directed all his verbal attacks at myself trying to claim I have been unfair, among other ridiculous accusations. You can read these at (site given but withheld).

He emails me on a regular basis demanding this and that or threatening to do me “in”, and tries to add me as a “friend” whereever I go online. If I create a blog account someplace online, he joins and tries to add me as a friend (of course, I deny him or any connection with him). It is not my imagination either, as he always uses his real name or the name he used at my game site. Hard to mistake a name like (name withheld). This has happened at such sites as Facebook, Yahoo 360, MSN Groups, Flickr, other game sites, small obscure forums, Wikipedia, Yahoo Groups, etc. (I never display which Yahoo Groups or MSN Groups I belong to so he would have to join thousands to find me in one.) When I post in a forum he finds me at, he starts posting after me, accusing me of all sorts of things. I have never replied, other than the first email or two after he was banned from my game site to fully explain why he was banned and to send a copy of the report to his ISP and The Metropolitan Police — Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard said there was nothing they could do due to it being online.

One would think that after being ignored for six months or a year, such a loser would go find someone else to harass. Not this one. It has been three and a half years and it is still going strong. Overall, it has lightened a little over the years, but remains consistent. This man is obviously sick. All he really knows about me in real life is that I own a game site, play chess, am female, am a grandmother and live on a ranch in the mountains of Lake Tahoe, and most of all, I have no qualms about booting a naughty player off my family game site — something all my site players know about me. But somehow he has developed this hateful obsession with me because I booted him out of my game site.

I believe I have been taking the right approach in totally ignoring him. So why won’t he stop harassing me after all this time and is there anything else I can do?

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

You are taking the right approach. Individuals who stalk and bully others are often extremely narcissistic. In the situation you describe, his “narcissistic pride” has been offended by your removing him from your website. Narcissistic individuals:

1. take no personal responsibility for their behavior,
2. have a tremendous sense of entitlement,
3. feel entitled to punish others who offend them or confront their behavior, and
4. increase their feelings of nacsissism by thinking they are highly intelligent and creative about tracking you down.