The commenting here is interesting, as is the post. I have some general comments to make about cyberstalking and situations like this - but want to preface it with the disclaimer that I've never heard of Rachel before and cannot sit in any form of judgement on her . However, I was cyberstalked (and then RL stalked & harassed), so I know that it sucks and it can be dangerous. I have no idea what Rachel's stalker has d…
After doing a bit of googling, I believe what we have here is a set of borderline personalities that are unfortunately drawn together. They have plenty of outlets for their antics; we shouldn't be indulging them here.
Don't fall for this guy's sockpuppet spam. This is exactly the kind of thing he was doing on Kickstarter, and has done on Reddit, Hackernews, here, Rachel's various blogs, and yes, all the way back to the days of Livejournal being the amazing mecca of social networking.
His name is Jason Christopher Hughes AKA Michael Nath AKA Thylacine AKA antisense is over 40 years old. He's been at this game for a long, long time and has made social engineering an art form.
Most of the posts in here that look like layers of confirmation of "facts" about Rachel are all the same person posting through TOR or I2P. If Hacker News admins were to verify the IPs of most of the other posts attacking Rachel, they'll see a wall of TOR and I2P exit nodes, just as any of us who have checked out the logs of his behavior in the past have been able to see. You let this guy brainwash you into believing all his propaganda against Rachel, and you've just weaponized yourself in his favor. Please do not. Keep an open mind. Use your critical thinking skills. Do not allow the emotional shock value of the propaganda to interfere with your thinking. I know it's hard. It's especially hard because Rachel is a very reactionary individual. She has that rockstar vibe to her, and she doesn't take crap from anyone. That makes her an easy target, clearly, because anytime the "moral high ground" seems a little shaky, it's a vulnerability in her defense against her cyberstalker.
He's been stalking several of us for years. Most of us don't ever talk about him using our typical logins because he'll shit up the administration and our posts until we get banned. He's phenomenally good at turning people against his victims.
Unfortunately it's hard to collect evidence against him. He only attacks maybe 10 or so people at a time. He's never going to become a priority for the FBI or local police because they either have bigger fish to fry or don't understand how to handle him in a way that his behavior can be documented. Making all of this public is a big push for all of us who he's been harassing for over a decade. We're tired of it. We want it to end. We need help.
Not your personal army and all that, sure, but it would be nice if we weren't alone in trying to bring this guy down.
[Edit: Originally posted to /., forgot to change some text for HN. Sorry I'm terrible.]