Wow, a horrifying story: An American expat blogger living in Ireland is subjected to torrents of abuse online, much of it viciously anti-semitic, culminating with the delivery of dead flowers and ashes to his house and threats against his wife's life.

He gets a techie friend to track down the troll, and it's the son of some good friends.

WTF, people. Just WTF.

He gets a techie friend to track down the troll, and it's the son of some good friends.

Jesus.

Good god that's fucked up. Jesus, people! Act right!

I did not sleep well last night and today I feel like death warmed over. damn.

good morning everyone!

I would not have been as forgiving, FFS. This kid went way over the line.

Oh, yeah. And it makes no sense to me, because I thought that part of the draw of trolling was that they didn't really think of the targets as people like themselves. And here this kid is targeting someone he knows, someone he's probably had dinner with in his home.

But maybe that's the point: he can get an adult, someone presumably at home in the groanup world, to react to him. And that gives him power. It wouldn't be the same doing it to some random individual on the net that he didn't know.

In which case I don't see how confronting him with it changes the situation, except that he's been threatened with legal action. He might even be happy, because look how much effect he had, the guy was crying and worried.

He had been doing it for like 3 years.

holy shit.

I woulda started with the legal action, son of a friend or no.

McPhee is sick now too. poor sick us.

I have just had some of the most amazing no longer passive aggressive pushback from the developer once known as incompetent.

She doesn't want to implement the websites the way we were told, because she thinks I made the decision. She wants to see the requirements document. I send her the requirements document, telling her that it's not going to help her, since it's what not how. She replies by saying she doesn't want to get fired for being part of rogue development, and she needs the architect to tell her how to do it...the architect almost hung up on me, he couldn't believe she was being so stupid.

She also wanted to know if my boss and the other developer knew I'd been talking to another programmer, and how they felt about it. She didn't think I should be talking to him, she said. She doesn't want me to be investigating the things I'm investigating.

I did snap at her. I feel good about that. Thankfully I remembered to remove my manager from the to: list.