So as I was saying, there's a troll bothering me online who I hadn't came across for about a decade, prior to 2017. Now he's constantly harassing me on YouTube, registering with female aliases on wikis and forums to stalk me, or giving my address to other idiots, and saying that I deserved to be arrested for personal issues that has nothing to do with him. He knows I know who he is, so he's just trying to act sarcastic nowadays.
There's a forum I go on about gaming. He signs in every single day just to read my posts, even though I just talk about games, and I set my profile to private. I can see he does that by looking at his profile. He even has my friend in his avatar, except he looks like a black person with an afro. The administrator on there seems scared to ban him, as he makes excuses not to intervene and tells me to simply ignore him.
I was posting on a relationship advice forum a few years back, where the moderators had been removed. So he kept creating multiple accounts and frequently spamming for months, until the owner eventually turned off registration. However, the forum is absolutely ruined now. Nobody can post any more either.
Unfortunately, I contacted the police about him many times and they claim they cannot do anything about him because he is overseas. I've got evidence that he is the guy I say he is, but some forums we were on where I had proof, closed down. So there is only so much evidence I was able to save.
He is definitely from either Australia or New Zealand. He posted an IP address once on Wikipedia when he was pestering me there. The ISP I discovered he was using at the time doesn't cover Australia, but he could have just been in New Zealand on a holiday. It definitely was not a VPN, as it was with Spark's mobile services. And it's hard to use proxies on Wikipedia, as many of them are blocked.
I don't want anything to do with him, but he has been doing this every month for nearly 4 years. But I have known him for years, as he was on other forums I joined in the 2000s.
Some people must be born crazy...
Taking the risk that this is a bait for me this kind of stuff makes you suspicious, you know
Had similar issues here. I had a friend who decided to hurt me with my worst fears and traumas when I was something like 2 or 3 weeks out of mental hospital and still being driven to suicidal thoughts and actions by those fears (which she was very well aware of). She apologized me, straight-backed, (though it seemed to be more of a way to brag for others than a personal apology), I forgave her and I would've let it go, but she got furious when I didn't want to be friends again. I "should have understood" her response. To put it short, I'm talking about a person who requires understanding from everyone around her, but who doesn't have to understand anyone.
As far as I know, this stalker of mine still checks me every day on various platforms, which I'm not letting to affect me in any way. Not to be too certain though about her, I've seen some matching visits in some places, which is not a proof. Very likely tho.
I guess she's still ranting about me in her personal blog, it's been the case since 2019. She used to use parts of my messages in her smear campaigns, with word twists and exaggerations and even pure lies that serve her purpose, so it would be very easy to check if she still does that. If I just checked her blog, I'd know if she still stalks me. Not checking lol. Haven't done that for months, and without a "there she goes again"-clue from a friend, for... a year, I guess.
For me, the major thing was just to stop caring about it, as unjustified and unfair it was. I don't know about your situation enough to recommend anything, so I don't recommend that without any reservation – if there's any risk of getting really hurt by this, brushing it off can definitely be dangerous. In my case, there was nothing she could really do for me, even though she told she has fantasies of violence towards me, she wants me to die etc. She tried to intimidate me with a court proceeding, which was purely ridiculous given that I haven't done anything to be considered as a crime (and as a law student I think I know that. I was maybe a bit harsh with my responses to her gaslighting and smear campaign, but on my view it was justified. I didn't break the law and I think she's well aware of it too. Usually people like this are just acting bigger than they are.)
So, in my case, going no contact (a common guideline when dealing with either a narcissistic or otherwise abusive person, the latter of which at least applying to this) was the thing that helped. It includes no active contact AND no checking on them, not reading their messages etc. If that's a safe option, consider that.
If you go no contact, it's not gonna be easy, I can tell you that. I'm fairly certain my stalker still goes on about me, lying and exaggerating my actions, and I know that is the case until she finds a new victim. Before me, she had another "best friend forever" to trash and lie about. Before her, another. And another. And another. You know how it goes. For me, it's probably gonna last several years (for "some reason" this person is not a very skilled friend-maker, which is definitely not my advantage in getting rid of it). People like this are usually extremely clingy, filled with grudge, and – to quote my therapist – they are just so scared of seeing themselves that they need someone to lie about for everyone in hopes that no one sees through them.
In this regard, when you're a victim, what might help you is telling yourself that at least
you know you are not the coward here, you
don't have to lie and result to a child's stage to feel good. You know what is true. You know the one who has the distorted sense of reality and is scared to meet their own eyes, and it is not you. Like my therapist likes to say, "You are the master of your mental barricade and you don't have to let them in".
The roughest part for me was when I learned she's sending messages for some common friends of ours and lying to them as well, disconnecting messages from their context and her responses in a way that serves her purpose. But because I learned that by these common friends – who forwarded these messages for me with words like "lol she apparently things I'm buying this" – I also saw that even though it looks very bad for my side, people have already seen her ways to act.
I hope the same applies to you as well. Just recently I came up with a quote about it: "You don't have to tell your side about it.
Time will."
To sum it up: going no contact and brushing it off were the key for me. When I think about her, which happens rarely nowadays, I usually just shrug and maybe smile at a thought of her adorable pets or something. If I'm feeling especially happy, I might even give a short thought for the memory of her eyes because I've never seen anyone with as beautiful eyes *laughs* and it's a thing that is safe to think, since it's completely apart from the personality. Of course grudge hits me sometimes, like this morning, but it doesn't last long.
Best of luck with that. I know it's rough. If you ever want to chat about it, I've got experience