MagisterTom relates a dark tale of blackmail and corruption over at his site. If you are the type to react strongly to emotional, depressing stories, you are going to want to pass. But I wanted to add a few thoughts to his story. I'll be doing this more often in the future; taking blogs that catch my eye and responding to them.

I am going to be as light on details as possible. But I have been in a situation where a woman I knew was being blackmailed by an ex. He had indecent photos of her, taken during the relationship. He knew her social networking site. And he did his best to make her life hell--all over a little dispute that most of you would laugh at. I worked hard with her to fix the situation, and ultimately we were successful. But it was tense--I earned a new appreciation for private investigators that week. Since then, I've had similar conversations with two or three other women who suddenly realized that sexual material of them was on the web. I believe that Internet blackmail and blasphemy are a serious problem, and that we are just at the tip of the iceberg. There are many varieties--stealing e-mail, photos of drunkenness, etc. It's a serious problem.

I first want to say, that 95% of you have NOTHING to fear. Blackmailing monsters are not interested in your photos of a casual day at the beach with friends. I see a lot of somewhat irrational paranoia about this kind of thing on Xanga, and it irritates me. Sure, a friend could grab a profile pic and write "Greek wets the bed" on it in Paint, ha, but those type of shenanigans occur in every day life as well.

However, if by some chance someone ever tries to blackmail you on the web, remember this. The more you give a blackmailer, the more they can blackmail you. Do not respond to them. Run: lock all your social networking sites, and make sure they can't contact any of your friends. (For example, Facebook lets you hide your friends when people search for you). Block unlabeled calls. You probably are best ditching all old social networking sites, and getting stronger passwords. If you can overcome the initial barrage of threats and intimidation, the blackmailer will have nothing left to fall back on. And remember--the police and the FBI can be called in, especially if the blackmailer has revealed his/her identity. Save e-mails/phone calls as evidence in case it does progress to this point.

And for the Christian hook; God forgives. People forgive. Yes, our society can be intolerant. I chuckle hollowly at a society that claims to be so sexually open but brutally judges women who are. And let's not forget a church that is full of forgiven sinners yet recoils in horror when one is revealed in their midst. But overall, we live in a forgiving country, and remorse goes a long way. We all were young once, we all were stupid once. If one of your friends is ever outed by a blackmailer, don't run in horror. Run to them. They will need you desperately.

Um, next time I'm writing about clowns and happy music. I hate writing about this and desperately wanted to avoid this topic. But you need this, whoever you are, and I hope this helped

This is Episode 5 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. Episode 1 is here. Episode 2 is here. Episode 3 is here. Episode 4 is here. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

I was cheerfully stalking both Carly Lee's and Kylie's profiles on a regular basis, waiting for Kylie's profile to be pulled down. I could taste victory, and congratulated myself for being so clever to enlist Carly Lee's assistance in getting the profile removed. Then, I read a comment posted on Carly Lee's blog...by Reverend Creep, using the Kylie profile! He was watching Carly Lee's profile too! (Language slightly prettied up for my audience).

"You pervert, trying to pretend you are really me. I'm the REAL Kylie! You're just some creep sitting in your basement wearing your Grandma's panties, getting a high off pretending to me. No one will believe you!" --Kylie.

Um...wow! Now Reverend Creep was actively threatening poor Carly Lee, and I was responsible. (I also suspect Reverend Creep was describing his own behavior in that message, which is amusing now, but certainly wasn't then!). I sent Carly Lee a message where I finally detailed who the Reverend Creep was and what his full name and real profile was. She was suspicious of me by now, and who could blame her?

I had no choice at this point because of what I had put her through. I revealed my real self and some of the details of why I wanted Kylie gone. That was the last time I ever heard from her. A day later, the Kylie profile was gone. I had already anonymously warned two or three people who seemed to be falling in love with the Kylie profile. Now the rest were also free from Reverend Creep. So the story ends there.

But I still have unanswered questions. Why did the Reverend Creep pick Carly Lee's pictures? Did he somehow know her in real life? Or did he find her pictures somewhere, develop a bizarre crush on her, and then write a story around her pictures? Oh well, it doesn't matter now.

As for the three of us involved in this story?

The Reverend Creep is still preaching up a storm at a new church about 90 minutes from my church. The irony is, his Reverend profile sounds honest, soulful, and good. I suppose we could have been friends if he, you know, wasn't a creep. I should drive out to his church and offer him a knuckle sandwich sometime, but I've learned that the rewards of vigilante justice are less than what I had hoped for.

As for me, I'd like to think this episode made me more wary of falling in love on the Internet or guarding my heart when life is tough in the real world. Sorry, Xangans, but this story probably held me back from establishing deeper friendships on here, at least for the year after it happened.

And as for Carly Lee, the not-so-well-known model? Well, she went on to other things (PG-13). But  as you can guess, I have no affection for Carly Lee the model after all this...I've never watched the entire video.

This is Episode 4 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. Episode 1 is here. Episode 2 is here. Episode 3 is here. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

The story so far is that I found out that "Kylie", the Internet woman whose profile and blog seemed so attractive, was really a creation of the "Reverend Creep", a married pastor with far too much time on his hands. I found out that the real "Kylie" pictured in the profile had pictures elsewhere. The question was, who was she? And how could I get rid of the "Kylie" profile forever, before perhaps the Reverend Creep would lure some unsuspecting person into a face-to-face meeting or worse?

Anyway, all I had to go on was "Carly Lee" as possibly being the name of the person in those pictures. And I knew I didn't have enough information to go to the social networking webmaster with any accusation. See, they would only take down a profile for inappropriate content, or for being an imposter. And as I had said, I had lost the proof that "Reverend Creep" and "Kylie" were the same person.

I googled my little heart out, and after skipping Carly Lee the 5th grader and Carly Lee the adult entertainment star, I finally hit pay dirt by googling "Carly Lee model". It was her!

I found her modeling work on display. Carly Lee's pictures had been stolen to create "Kylie", there was no doubt about it. I then found her personal web-site based on a link. It wasn't that popular; Kylie/Carly Sue was still a mostly unknown model, which was why none of the people who befriended her had recognized her. (Reverend Creep was sneaky, I guess). But I still had no contact info. So I dug a little deeper and found a link to her site on the same social networking site.

I created another profile, and sent her the following message (paraphrased)

"Hi Carly Lee, I noticed this person is pretending to be you, and I don't think it's right that they are getting all these friends by stealing your pictures. I can't get (site name) to stop them unless you complain. Can you write them a note?"

You'll note that I did not identify myself, and I did not identify Reverend Creep. I felt bad to admit that someone of the Christian faith was so creepy, and I still was not sure to what extent Reverend Creep was a creep. By the way, Carly Lee was a materialistic model, and I found out that yes, it was much more about the person instead of the pics. I wasn't attracted to her, but that also could have been because the fake profile made me so mad.

She responded by putting a warning on her myspace that Kylie was impersonating her, and sending the info to the web-site folk. I then started to relax. I had launched an anonymous counterattack using a perfect argument. How could the webmaster not shut down Kylie's profile when the very model whose pics Kylie stole was complaining? And this way no one would know about each other. Kylie would never know about Reverend Creep. Reverend Creep would have his profile shut down, but not know who turned him in. He probably had just stolen those pics off a web-site anyway, right? And neither would know about me. Talk about a fool-proof plan! Well...it wasn't.

Episode 5, Aftermath, concludes the story tomorrow. I'll then also tell you who the Web celebrity is in the story.

This is Episode 3 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. Episode 1 is here. and Episode 2 is here. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

About 9? months later, I came back to the "Kylie" profile, expecting to see the profile shut down now that Reverend Creep had been exposed. However, to my surprise, I found that the profile was there and had more friends than ever! It appears that Reverend Creep had started to search for friends in his local area that he could add by way of using Kylie. And nearly everyone was saying yes.

What changed my apathy to anger was how reverential everyone was being. You would think this profile of a fake hot girl was the Pope's profile! Pretty girls were thanking Kylie profusely for the friend request. Handsome men were falling all over themselves to construct prose paragraphs praising Kylie's looks. It sickened me, and scared me a little when I saw just how enslaved our culture is to sexy women. Just one friend request from a beautiful woman seemed to have such an impact on people's lives!

Now I wanted revenge, badly. I wanted to wipe Kylie off the social networking map, and drive to Reverend Creep's home and punch the smile off of his face. The worst part was I knew Reverend Creep's location, his wife's myspace, what church he pastored now (he had been promoted in the meantime!), everything! But, what good was fighting fire with fire? Being a vigilante always sounds good in theory, but what if sending anonymous threats to "Kylie" revealed my own identity to Reverend Creep?

And still, I could not really discern RC's motives. As far as I could tell, he hadn't engaged in criminal behavior. There was no valid reason to ask the huge social networking site to shut down his profile. And he had erased the comment that revealed his e-mail address, so I could no longer provide real evidence that this Kylie profile was a fake. It would be my word against his, and no bored computer administrator would care.

Then, one day, I was on a date-n-rate site. I did a double take when I saw that the next picture was...Kylie! I had found the real identity of Kylie at last! But the site didn't give me a real last name to go with the pictures! All I had to work with was "Carly Lee", which probably wasn't even the real name of the person whose pictures were shown. And even if I found out who "Carly Lee" was, all it meant was that I could answer for myself whether I was more attracted by the pictures or the profile details. The question was academic at this point, wasn't it? But I love mysteries, and I was angry, so I dug deeper...

Episode 4: Attack will be posted sometime this week. As always, feel free to guess in the comments as to what happens next. And I haven't even said who the web celebrity is yet! Trust me, you have probably heard of them...

This is Episode 2 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. Episode 1 is here. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

The object of my Web affections, who I'll call Kylie, had just posted a warning about a man named Fred. Kylie claimed that Fred had sexually harassed her and posted a link to his web site. However, Kylie had made the mistake of not moderating comments, and this paraphrased comment was posted:

"Joe, I know this is you! I put your e-mail, joespoolhall@aol.com, into the site search and this site turned up under your e-mail! You're just mad because Fred kicked you off his site for being such an idiot. I can't believe you're trying something like this!"

I nervously typed in the e-mail that the commenter had left, wishing desperately that I had misinterpreted the comment. It was true. Kylie was not a hot young Christian businesswoman. Instead, Kylie was the creation of a man who had few friends of his own. That was why Kylie had seemed so knowledgeable of sports and other guy topics. But it got worse.

The man was OLDER than me, training to be a MINISTER, and was MARRIED. You would think that ONE of the three factors would have been enough for him to realize that pretending to be a woman was wrong. But I guess the lure of having many friends due to impersonating a hot woman was too much for him. I shall call him "Reverend Creepy", or RC for short.

In fact, I dug deeper and found out that RC had also created a Kylie profile for Xanga, but no one had commented on his blogs here. This was before Xanga allowed lots of profile pics, and so his hot pics weren't of much use to him here in drawing in gullible males and females.

To be honest, I wasn't that angry when I found all this out. Perhaps I was too stunned to be angry, or felt too stupid at being fooled. Also, I felt free, because the great dilemma was solved. I didn't have to wonder if I should try to fix Kylie, because Kylie did not exist! And I had escaped a very creepy situation, because I had never contacted Kylie. So I left the site alone, convinced that "Kylie" had been exposed.

Still, there were several mysteries remaining. Was there a real Kylie whose profile RC hacked, or did RC invent the story and then add the pictures of some random hottie? And why did RC create such a profile? There was a Kylie post in which she called RC a friend and asked people to add him. Was the entire Kylie profile just a cry for help or friends? But I didn't care at the time--I was free! Story ends here, right?

Episode 3, Anger, will be posted Wednesday or Thursday. You are free to guess what will happen next in the comments.

After all the enthusiasm I've displayed for Xanga meet-ups, I feel like I also need to admit to the dark side of the web. In May 2008, I posted a series about an experience I had in 2005? or so. I think I have enough new readers and that the subject matter is important enough to run it again, unedited. I'll run one episode each day and have a concluding post on Friday about how I feel now about it all.

This is Episode 1 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

It was a cold winter day many years ago, and I was sitting at home realizing that my friends had departed with the good weather. I had recently switched responsibilities at my job, and my best friend was busy working on a dissertation. So I sat down with my computer and started looking for new friends.

Yes, you heard me right. I had recently joined a social networking site and had carefully noted its search function. I could use it to search for people by age, location, gender, and religion. So after playing around with the search function, I decided to use it for the grandest possible purpose...finding some Protestant princesses aged 20-25 in a nearby town to build my Network of Hotness. (That sentence right there should tell you we're headed for EPIC FAIL).

As I hit "search" and viewed results, I came across a profile of a beautiful young woman who lived a few hours away from me. She was beautiful and intelligent. She was a businesswoman and had gone to Bible school. She had traveled the world extensively and liked sports. I could go on, but suffice it to say that the combination of a girly-girl who liked guy things went straight to my heart (or, um, a little lower, perhaps) and got my attention.

But, I am not paranoid for nothing. As I started reading her blogs, and looked at her photo albums, I became concerned. Here was a woman who claimed to be a Christian...yet she also unabashedly shared her love of sex and had pictures of herself in less-than-full attire. Thus, she was not living a truly Christian lifestyle as I understand the Christian faith. And yet, everything else was perfect, and she said she was looking to talk to interesting people. What now?

I spent months wondering if I should say anything, hanging around her profile but never commenting. I'm a persuasive guy. Couldn't I convince her that her views on sexuality were unworthy of a Christian, and then reap the benefits of a reformed soul? Or, it's not as if I have zero skeletons in my closet. Was I judging too harshly? Perhaps I should just talk to her first and gradually attempt to fix her later. I even considered sending her a note when I was going to pass by her town, and resisted with difficulty. I told some of my friends of my dilemma as a way to hold myself accountable, and waited. The months passed, the snow melted, and I wondered if I should just get this over with.

Then, one day, she put up a message that a fellow named Fred was harassing her and many of her friends. A damsel in distress?! Sounded like a perfect time to intervene. Yet, a comment on that message changed my view on the situation...

Episode 2, Awareness, will be posted tomorrow. You are free to guess what will happen next in the comments.