Red flag on the play, whistle, rebound. Actually, this is something I've been thinking about for several months.
I know what being public means, probably better than a lot of people. I can 'see' so much stuff because I'm good at lurking. I've talked about that here on Pinky blog. I have encouraged you guys many times to check your proxies, use your browser settings to cruise the webs anon, or at least vaguely. It's really not that big of a deal, I really don't care what you do, but since I can sometimes see details most people would think were private or at least protected from anyone outside their sphere being able to find, maybe it is a big deal.
I like baiting. Baiting lets me see all kinds of things. I can usually tell the difference between real people vs crawlers and spam, sometimes glaringly so, but the point is I can tell. I can't always see motivation, but I sometimes get hints. I've talked about that before, too. Again, not a big deal. If any of that really unnerved me I'd have gone dark a long time ago. I've been saying it won't be long until the entire world is public and we can all see all of it anyway. Even if you go off the grid you can be checked on fairly easily, and I don't mean putting GPS trackers on your car or because you talked to someone on a phone. But I don't care about that, either.
I set that bait out a long time ago. I caught the bait being taken. This isn't a petty thing, although it has nothing to do with my personal life in general, and I'm not even upset about it. I had a feeling sooner or later this bait would be taken. And now that it has been, I have no further use for a public personal facebook. That's right, I did all that for one person.
I need to see who I can trust. This person is not my friend on FB and has never returned contact after the minutest out of the way positive one line of comment I left in the most remote place you can imagine, again, not on facebook. Even though we met in real life during a big event and I was asked to turn over my intellectual property and help flip a fandom over, aside from free professional legal advice and an unrelated very brief late night phone call, this person has never in any way contacted me as a real human being with value.
After a particular bait hook went out, this person went through my public timeline and did recon on my family. The bait hook had nothing to do with my family, and I expected a very different kind of recon.
This person is a public relations professional. I feel this was a very unprofessional mistake. I just needed to know that in case something comes up for me in future.
I let that sink in for awhile, as you can see by the date. Making my facebook more private wasn't a rash decision based on emotion of any kind. I seriously doubt it changes anyone's ability to lurk me, actually probably makes the game more fun for some. Making this decision is more of a message. I have no idea if that message will be received, and since the bait took 5+ years, you can see I really don't care and that I have unlimited patience as a lurker deluxe.
There are other people that are much bigger threats or problems for my family, and I wasn't worried about that. I don't feel threatened by this person at all. I could feel flattered that I was worth that amount of stalking from someone who's been so around, but honestly, I'm just not that vain. I have laid out my life for the public, my personal flaws and fails and all the crawling I've done just to get here, and I challenge that person to do the same. Let's see a public relations expert truly go public. Own it.
I say that as a friend. Anyone who knows Pinky blog knows I own all my people, and I check on them. If I've met you and you impressed me, I number you among friends, even if you have no idea. That doesn't mean I am a rug to walk on or a toy to play with. I've already been tried by fire and lain in the abyss. I know what the dark is.
