On Harassment

Written: 2025-07-21

Are we really doing this again? AGAIN?

About two months ago, in the Tumblr Interactive Fiction scene, a creator was essentially bullied out of the community by trolls for not agreeing to their insane demands on their WIP. Quite a few other authors called out the behaviour, one being harassed in return for being the most vocal.

Though this is probably one of the most extreme case of harassment recently for the community, it's also unfortunately extremely common. Most creators will get a troll in their dms at least once during their time in the community. Those will moderate followings get them more regularly, with minorities getting the worst of it.

Once every couple of months or half a year, a popular IF creator on Tumblr will come out to remind people to have fucking common decency when sending message (or, you know... in general). This helps for a while... but when the discourse quiets down, things quickly return to business-as-usual.

During that last round of outcry, I joined along, alluding to my own experience, but mainly confronting the advice repeated ad nauseam to ignore the trolls. Since I'd joined the community back in mid-2021, I've had to deal with trolls and harassment on the regular (though not as worse as many other creators). While it sucked, it was still manageable for the most part. I'd screenshot the worst of them, and we'd made fun of those with friends.

But things actually got insane starting last summer.

Returning from a short-ish unrelated internet break, I found over 700 shitty dms sitting in my inbox.

Now, I'd never gotten this messages... ever. It was a bit cautious, but also pretty thrilled to see the notification, thinking one of my projects had blown up while I was gone, and people were excited to tell me what they thought about it. If only I'd listened to the pit in my stomach...

Instead, I got annoyed comments about my sudden disappearance (completed with rolling-eyes emojis), demands to return to work or they'd drop their support my projects (I still don't have a Ko-Fi/tipping jar, mind you, everything is free), threats to badmouth me to other authors and readers (so I'd lose support), insults about my projects (the detailed ones stung a bit...), insults about me (unsurprisingly many about being French, too many about bisexuality, and quite a few completely missing the mark on who I am), trashing me down about very milquetoast opinions (weirdly, they didn't even touch my pineapple on pizza one...), a handful of messages that definitely flared up some trauma (which I hadn't talked about openly), your run-of-the-mill kill yourself messages, and one dick pic (which was "hidden" by Tumblr) and then... there were a few that really freaked me out. I'm talking sicko descriptions of the harm they'd want to do to me if we'd ever cross paths, threats of doxxing me (like with not completely correct information, but still), threats of harassing my family...

I wasn't even done handling a third before I ended up clicking Delete all messages, and turned off Anons.I'd reported* the worst one I'd come across, but didn't have the energy or willpower to go through the rest.

I even ended up logging off and prolonging my internet break (IRL played a big role there, but that surely didn't help). I was dreading even typing the URL at this point, afraid I'd still get messages. Because a handful of users are that relentless.

And so, when they couldn't get to me on Tumblr*, they moved to sending me EMAILS! Another round of headache later, many email addresses blocked, so many emails added to spam, and I got to Christmas without burning down my whole internet profile.

It's tiring, and demoralising, and dehumanizing...

And it's not even my first rodeo! I've had weirdoes in my dms for as long as I've had accounts online... and that was back in the early 2000s, as a kiddo. And that's completely glossing over IRL...

Honestly, it sucks. You're forced to harden yourself to "survive" being online, to pretend not to see what you're sent/tagged on, to get used to people being assholes (usually for no good reason), and to be reminded of the same advices that don't really work because you can't stop people who take pleasure of hurting others behind the mast of anonymity.

Even doing your best when catering your online experience to the best of your abilities, sticking with safe spaces, surrounded by chill people, interacting only with people who passed the vibe-check... there will always be twats coming out of the woodwork to sow discord and hurt others. No matter how high your walls go, it often feels like there will be someone with a taller ladder.

So why am I stirring now that old mess again?

Can you guess?

Mmmhhhh????

Did you guess that I'm being harassed again? Yeah? Good job, you!

The messages haven't changed much. They're not as annoyed about me being not active, but more about not working on a particular project (dormant). They're questioning how bad my health really was if I could manage moving and now cycling (which, huh???!... have you heard of recovery? and it's not like I'm doing a triathlon over here...), and more recently my sobriety (since I'm not even showing off a 6-month-sober coin).

More serious however, I've gotten some uncomfortable allusions to that awful summer last year, including information which I had, again, not shared publicly - one going as far as pretending to be my dead friend. As well as vague accusations of terrible behaviour towards other users, people I'm not even interacting with.

It's exhausting... and my mental health hasn't liked having to deal with that again. It feel at time like being a clown in a circus, and visitors were given tomatoes (and sharp things) to throw at me, waiting for me to break so they can laugh.

But I don't want to give them that satisfaction. I don't want to throw in the towel. I don't want to leave behind my internet persona, that I've had for so long, and with which I've shared so many things I'm really proud of. I don't want to leave the fun spaces I'm in, or the cool friends I've made along the way. I know there is still so much I can learn and experience, and I don't want to give that up either. I'll be stubborn, dammit!

Watch me blossom even more!