So here’s some news: Sabine can’t make it up this weekend, her car broke down on her way up, luckily only about twenty miles out of town, but that means we’re holding to do the video until next weekend. One of us will be going to see the other and we’ll do the video then. So that means until then, I still have to sit here and wonder what the HELL questions were asked. It’s really biting at my brain wanting to what was asked of me. I still think this will be a fabulous video meme and I’m really excited to finish it, and thanks to everyone who participated.

Anyway, this is about to get serious.
Everyone remembers the post I did about an online friend, Scarlett Barry, right? Okay, well today I noticed a surge of hits on the site, easily over a hundred, and they were all going to that entry. And I had no idea why. I thought, did Scarlett link people? Did something happen? So I click on a link to the site where everyone was coming from and the link leads me to a thread in a forum talking about how there is this girl, Angela, stalking this other girl, Scarlett - and copying her life.

And now it’s story time. A while ago, and it started last October, I had a horrid stalker issue, too. She was going to everything I had, youtube, flickr, last.fm, everything, and just compulsively reading and studying everything. I’d talk about something, she’d talk about it, she’d post my words on her site. Same site layout. I’d post a video, she’d start doing it. I’d post a profile picture and she’d change hers a day later, copying mine. She even bought the same shoes. As you can imagine, this was frightening, but more so because I knew this girl. We had been friends. For the longest time I didn’t know it was happening, until she confronted me, and said, stop going to my site. And I’m like, aroo? I was completely baffled when she accused me of stalking her, and she’d say things like- “I check my stats, everyday, and I see users visiting every day. If you take an interest in my life, talk to me.” I’m thinking this is a good thing, to have returning visitors, and everyone knows that not everyone who reads will comment. Oh well. Then she says to me, “You knew I’d find your blog eventually.”

So then I check my stats, which I might add I’d never thought to do before, and was horrified to find that several of my already limited hits were coming from the same house in my small town. But I had no real way of proving it was her. So one of my roommates and I investigated, we went to her site and looked, and were horrified to find said instances above. When we saw the same shoes, both of us just fell silent, and from that point on we just kept our heads down and didn’t know what to think. She’d done crazy stuff like this before, I was told, so okay, just let it go and she’ll get bored with you eventually, he told me. Finally, months later, after she’s moved to another city, she confronted my OTHER roommate and accused me of stealing her music. Specifically, Corvus Corax, Patrick Wolf, and Kaizers Orchestra. (I hear a few of you chuckling right now, and I would have too, had I not been horrified) Anyway, she said she just “happened” upon my last.fm to find this discovery, which I told my roommate was bullcrap, everyone who ever uses last.fm knows you have to search to find someone. Which he later confirmed. She said she went to my youtube, saw a video that had the music, and THEN searched me on last.fm. ANYWAY, that’s when we stepped forward and I said, look, there’s an insane amount of hits coming from the city she’s in and they didn’t show up until two days after she moved. What’s the deal?

She denied the whole thing, despite the fact that I was told flat out that she admitted that she “couldn’t stop going”, and continued to insist I was stealing her life. To wrap this all around: I didn’t know this sort of thing happened frequently. I just didn’t think people were this weird. Many nights I sat in my room, sick to my stomach, thinking of how much anger she had when going to my sites. Do I move it? Close it? Leave all of you behind? That didn’t seem fair in the least. So I just did what I’ve found most victims of this do- Ignore it and hope it stops. I just felt this insane amount of sadness for her because you have to be so lonely, confused, and insecure to do something like this. I even tried talking to her again, and being friendly, and I tried hard. But that was me being naive, because she’ll never change. So I’d pretty much forgotten about the whole thing, as my issue ended back in January, and then these stats skyrocketed today, and I go to this forum- And it’s talking about my friend Scarlett and how she has a stalker too, named Angela. I looked at these photos I am about to show you- and just died. This happens to other people, I thought, someone else knows what this is like. And it’s not illegal so there’s nothing you can do about it except sit back and watch. The funny thing is- in BOTH situations, Scarlett’s and mine, when confronted about it- the other girls deleted their journals, yet still said- “It’s not me, it’s her.”

Has anyone else experienced this? I guess I just want to reach out to anyone who’s had this happen, because it’s startling, it’s frightening, and it’s just a huge mess. Please, share your story. And for those of you that made it this far: here are some photos of Scarlett (you should recognize her as the first girl) and Angela below her. They are, truly, terrifying.)

A few online articles are deeming this frightening phenomena as a form of “role-playing” that is “completely healthy” and something most girls will “grow out of.” How is this in any way healthy? And how is it in anyway fair to the victims? To put it simply, there is nothing that can be done about this, and that terrifies me. There has to be a way for us to stand up and take legal action, or something. Sure, many people say to me, that’s the price you pay for putting your life on the internet, but that’s wrong. Hell, that’s why I use a pen name, but that kind of logic makes it socially acceptable for girls to steal other girls’ pictures and post them on their profiles on MySpace, building a persona out of this other person’s real life. And then they deny it, accusing the original, people send nasty messages saying: “I know the real ____.”

What is this world we live in?