In early February, I stumbled across my now ex-roommate’s (let’s call her J) blog and found out that she hates me. We’d never had any issues other than me waking up in the middle of the night to her having sex with her boyfriend (breaking literally the only rule I had asked for) and we’d always been friendly with each other. She’d told me multiple times that she was there if I ever needed something or someone to talk to, so I was shocked and hurt by this. I posted about my shock on my blog and my Twitter, unaware that she was actively looking at both of them, but decided not to approach her about it or act differently towards her unless her attitude towards me became like what she would write about me. She wrote me an apology letter and then a week later decided to move out because of what I wrote in a moment of anger and hurt when I found out.
J moved out in early March, leaving me with a single room. We exchanged some heated texts because I had noticed her actively stalking my blog (she waited until I left the room to go to class and then immediately went on my blog to look at everything I had ever posted), but she blocked me on Facebook and I thought it was done. I decided to block her boyfriend, M, and their mutual friend S just in case, because both of those boys had messed with me in a seemingly joking manner earlier in the year.
Fast forward to now. Aside from J sending in an insult disguised as a compliment to an anonymous university compliment page and me having to block her IP address from accessing my blog because she refused to stop going on it, things have been good. Yesterday, my RA comes into my room and tells me that there had been vandalism on the hallway by M’s room about me, negative and basically saying “**** [my name]”. J, M, and S are the only people on my floor, in my dorm, or even at this university that have any kind of problem with me. I keep to myself and don’t talk to many people on my floor, so there’s no way it was anyone else. I’ve previously told M and S to leave me alone after they refused to stop messing with the whiteboard on my door, but they refuse to listen. My RA said he’d discuss the vandalism with them and asked me what I wanted to do, to which I said I just wanted them to leave me alone. I tweeted something about how it would be nice if boys could understand that when a girl says to leave them alone, they want to be left alone, and this morning S quote-tweeted it and made fun of it. M also mocked my tweet when I made it and J liked his tweet. I’ve since blocked all of them on every form of social media I can find their accounts on and made my account private.
Basically, I’m creeped out. I’ve done nothing but exist and tell them to leave me alone, and these three people were stalking my social media and making fun of me. My RA said he’d talk to me again once he talked things over with M and S, so I don’t see any point in going to him again just yet. I’m hoping my RA can get them to leave me alone, but I don’t know if I should go to the Wellness Center to talk to someone about this whole situation or if I should just wait it out. We have just over a month until move out; is it even worth it at this point to make a big deal out of the situation?
Print out any comments on your blog from them, and any comments you have made on theirs, any tweets from them about you/and visa versa, any FB posts, etc etc.
Then
unfollow/defriend/ J, M and S.
Don’t blog about them (you may not have been)
Don’t read their blogs.
I would go to campus security or the Dean of Students or even the wellness center.with the info and say that you are starting to feel unsafe around them and don’t want things to escalate nor get an reprisals from this. I would escalate because by vandalizing they have escalated too.
I am aware that the first step is to stop posting about them on social media and block/unfriend them, which I have done. I never thought that their dislike of me would escalate to this level.
I’m confused about what you mean, @CheddarcheeseMN. I have friends outside of my floor, so I don’t feel the need to become best friends with my neighbors. Do you mind clarifying what you mean?
Sounds like you’re the initial harasser. Why on earth would you post online a nacissistic rant about her for all to read, then be surprised she read it?
It’s not necessary to “share your pain” with the world.
@seeniebeenie Instead of “sharing it with the world” (as GMTplus7 put it), I think a more appropriate response would have been to talk to your RA as soon as that hit.
I was referring to “I keep to myself” part of your statement. It sounds like you keep to yourself, sitting inside your room sending out negative tweets and blogging negative assessments of other people. I actually don’t have any Facebook friends who use Facebook to talk about other people behind their backs. There is a woman in my field who uses Twitter to badmouth people, but as a result people don’t think highly of her. Some people have chosen to have a social media presence that is uplifting, informative, or inspirational. Your original post describes problems that have arisen from your different approach (and your roommate’s) to social media.
I apologize for wasting everyone’s time. I know I reacted wrongly when I found out what they had been saying about me and why they’d been making fun of me behind my back by expressing my anger over social media, but there’s nothing I can do to change that. If they’d kept it on social media I would’ve been fine, but they escalated it by vandalizing the dorm with negative things about me. I’ve dealt with bullies before all through middle and high school but never of this magnitude so I was hurt when it continued into college.
I don’t appreciate the condescending tones and victim-blaming. I’ve tweeted about them precisely three times. I never instigated anything. I don’t sit in my room and send out negative tweets and blog posts. When I said I keep to myself, I meant I don’t start problems with people or make fun of them.
I came here looking for some advice other than “you should’ve known better” because believe me, I know. As someone who struggles with mental illnesses, I did not control the situation as best as I could’ve. However, I haven’t done anything to make them hate me so much.
I’d appreciate it if we could end this conversation. I realize I made a mistake by asking for help here.
Asking for help here may have been a useful thing. You are getting feedback from people who have no sides in this dispute and who can step back and evaluate the whole picture without bias.
Newsflash: If you blog on the public internet it is not stalking for someone to read it. How is anyone “victim blaming” here? You are both extremely childish.
Make friends in the real world. Writing your innermost thoughts on a blog is EMO.
I would go beyond RA…I have seen stuff like this happen in HS and usually if the authorities have a talk to the person then it goes away. My daughter had someone kind of cyberstalking her…she figured out who it must have been so we went to the Asst Principal. He said he would talk to the person, and we though “yeah, right, like he will admit it”. To our surprise, he did, he got some mild punishment, and stopped the behavior.
I would talk to Campus Security or Dean of Students.
Say that you understand that you had a part, but you are worried that things are escalating.
I can see why your roommate was mad because if you post about someone else’s sexual endeavors they kinda have a right to be angry. That being said, your roommate still took it way too far.
Just to reiterate certain points already made because I have personally observed similar situations (…in high school, not college, lol) :
Someone looking at your public blog is not stalking. You write a public blog, not a diary, for the sake of people seeing it. If you wanted privacy, you'd find a different medium. At the very least, you'd write it in a manner that kept your identity anonymous and didn't divulge personal details about your private life.
I physically cringed reading a lot of the OP about the back and forth social media flame wars. It smacks of middle school drama. All of this could have been prevented if either of you communicated your feelings like adults face to face. Neither of you even communicated on social media directly... you literally passive aggressively "subtweeted" one another. How is that going to allow for conflict resolution?
Invoking "victim blaming" to dodge responsibility reflects poorly on your character. I see a lot of this as less than mere one-sided harassment and more as a conflict between two parties that continued to escalate because of immaturity.
