Any big blog that’s been around awhile — like Urban Semiotic — has its share of rejected sycophants who just won’t go away after violating our publication policy or for being a personal nuisance.
Where the sycophant was once a public purveyor of love and boot-licking, they now turn to spewing hatred, trying to hide their identity — but failing in the most obvious, and duplicitous manner imaginable — and then insulting everyone involved in our ongoing effort to bring context to our lives by tearing down beauty and goodness in the vain hope they can somehow fill the void inside them with the failures of others.
We know how to deal with rejected sycophants. We rejoice in their inability to destroy us and we mock their misery in our private staff portal. We also add their hateful messages to our searchable private database so we can track their trends and threats.
How do you deal with the rejected sycophant on your blog who goes beyond being merely annoying and who thinks every thought and comment posted is directed at them even though none of it has ever concerned them at all?
If there a difference between a rejected sycophant and a stalker? What do you do when the rejected sycophant turns from the merely ugly and personally insulting to the eminently dangerous by making Terroristic Threats suggesting death and the destruction of servers and lessons earned at the end of a gun?
A terroristic threat is a crime generally involving a threat to commit violence communicated with the intent to terrorize another, to cause evacuation of a building, or to cause serious public inconvenience, in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience. It may mean an offense against property or involving danger to another person that may include but is not limited to recklessly endangering another person, harassment, stalking, ethnic intimidation, and criminal mischief.
In our experience on this Urban Semiotic blog, here are the main article categories that get the most Terroristic Threats indicating personal harm, general destruction and purposeful mayhem:
What relationships do you see between those topics? It’s fascinating those who demand the right to handguns are so quick to threaten you with the end of their guns; and those who say they love Jesus hopes he condemns you; and those who are sworn to “protect and serve” will not hesitate for a second to tell you what they’d do to you alone in custody.
Dealing with these issues is the burdensome part of publishing an international blog that discusses hard issues that divide the world — it would be much simpler to write a mommy blog or a celebrity blog where no cultural values or political norms were put in the jeopardy of being examined here.
Now we have no idea if any of those who make Terroristic Threats will do what they claim or not — but we can’t worry about that — once the threat is made, and we have proof of it, we are mandated by the humanity of living in a righteous society to do something proactive about those Terroristic Threats and we do.
You can’t hide who you are on the internet. There are trails and tendrils that always lead back to you and, using special software, you can be tracked and then the next logical step is taken: We report you to the FBI.
Calling in the FBI may seem like an extreme step, but what else would you do as a blog owner and caring member of society when we live in a world where blood and dying are now the expectation of the everyday ordinary? If someone is claiming to intend harm — what other options are available?
We are forced by the context of the world in which we spin to take no threat lightly and thus, we submit a report. We have been doing that for a long time. If anything untoward happens, we are on-the-record with the FBI, and after-the-fact all facts and can be checked and analyzed for purpose and being.
Working with the FBI can be a complicated process and I won’t go into all the details here to preserve the integrity of the investigations, but I will warn you this is not a simple task or a matter for the weak-spirited. Not only must the threat be verified by the FBI, but the person doing the reporting — in this case, us — are also vetted and analyzed and put into the database along with the Terroristic Threat being made to promise the process isn’t being ginned up or played out for personal satisfaction or retribution.
We think that is a fair and proper part of the process and we have nothing to hide. Terroristic Threats made over the Internet are a matter for the FBI and not the local police because those threats are being made across state lines along publicly owned and federally regulated pathways.
Local police aren’t really interested in crossing state lines to go after a Terroristic harasser in Florida, and the local police in Florida aren’t really interested in an internet threat delivered to another state… but the FBI can — and will — investigate and take on Terroristic Threats that cross state lines and regional boundaries.
Have you ever had anyone threaten you or your blog or your hosting service because of something you wrote or because of a comment someone posted on your blog? If yes, what did you do about it? Did you make a report to any agency or did you just let the threats stand in the wind?
We just keep adding everything to the database here and reporting what needs to be investigated and so far it is working great wonders for us — and for you in association with us — because you are a cogent and valued reader who prefers freedom of speech over intimidation as well as the unbridled want to publicly discuss difficult topics in a friendly and respectful manner against those who seek to dampen us with threats against our will, our shared body, our community of mind and our common human joy.