I probably shouldn't write this but I'm going to.

I thought I should post something today as a response to a bit of cyber bullying I have been at the brunt of.  However the more I thought about it, the less apt I was to do this, I certainly don't want to draw attention to this man or increase traffic to his site but I still want to at least mention it.

As anyone who reads my blog is aware I am a massive Doctor Who fan, in fact a fan of anything science fiction/fantasy, but my first love was and always will be The Doctor.  I've already blogged about twitter and how this medium introduced me to many other Whovians and has allowed me to discover brilliant blogs like Cultden and participate in live webshows like TalkingWho which all feed my love of the Doctor with facts and pictures and interesting articles.

I'm also a bit of a techie, although this label is dropping slightly as I haven't been in the business for about six years (this is a long time in the technology world)  I have given talks in schools and to my own children about the dangers of being online and the threats that are out there, I have told them the obligatory, never give your real name, address etc. On Twitter before I follow back a new follower to my account or indeed add an account I have discovered, I check out profiles and previous tweets, this is about as much as you can do on twitter to verify who someone is.  My 14 year old daughter loves twitter, it is her window into the world of Doctor Who and Sherlock and the music that she likes (the less mentioned of this music the better, we have differing tastes here)  She is a very sensible girl, not only top of her class but the highest ranking student in her entire school, beating students that are three years older than her in all exams.  She is a published writer and an accomplished musician.  I wouldn't normally divulge this sort of personal information about my kids to the Internet either here on my blog or on twitter as I feel it comes over as bragging and you don't need to know this, but I want to give you, my reader a little background, because lets face it you don't know me from Adam.  My daughter has a phone, an ipod, a laptop, I trust her enough to allow her to use twitter without supervision, from a very early age she has been tech savvy, even now she will come to me before using a new website that hasn't been recommended by myself or school, if she is unsure of anything or finds anything at all suspicious she asks first.  I mention her super brain so that you will see she's not some little girl with no common sense. She also is unaware that when I do her fortnightly 'housekeeping' on her laptop I check everything, she forgets her mum is a techie sometimes.  Therefore I know exactly what she is up to without having her feel untrusted or make her feel like a child when she is becoming a young adult.

So to the reason for this post, a few days ago as is compulsory in our house after work and school we all take half an hour of personal space, to chill out from our days, for my small child this involves Phineas and Ferb, a glass of milk and a few chocolate biscuits, for my daughter and I it's checking our twitter/emails with a cup of tea.  We all sit together in our family room, daughter and I showing each other interesting posts or pictures on The Doctor that the various people we follow have posted throughout the day.  My daughter was a little unsure of a link and asked if I followed the person concerned (we have many of the same people on our feeds as we share the same interests) I did follow this person I remembered adding them many months ago because of the name, I thought it was a good name, I knew that I would have checked out profiles and tweets I said go for it.  This is when I felt stupid.  She was horrified by being directed to a site not of pictures of other Who fangirls like she is but of pornographic pictures.  At this point I re checked the profile of the person concerned and yes, this person appeared from his profile to be a legitimate Doctor Who fan site, this is where I got somewhat angry.  I have nothing against porn, I have nothing against people linking to porn from Twitter what I take massive objection to is a Twitter account that is quite clearly aimed at getting Doctor Who fans to follow it, linked to websites with pornographic pictures of girls. I tweeted to this man to simply ask him to reword his Twitter profile so that young Whovians who came across his account would not automatically add him thinking he was a Whovian, this conversation became increasingly nasty and personal to me so I left the conversation.  I could feel myself getting upset and angry and frustrated by my 140 character limit.  This was not a conversation I was going to win.

Tweeting that I was crying and upset was only going to add fuel to his fire and make me appear irrational, this also isn't the way I am as a rule and don't like the thought of people thinking I'm some emotional woman.  I stayed off Twitter for a day as I knew that I wouldn't respond in a rational way.  I came back onto Twitter to find this man had researched me and other users that had become involved in the conversation and had written a blog about me taking tweets out of context and using other blogs that I follow as weapons.  This initially upset me very much, but mainly because of the emotional state I was in due to a test I had endured that day and nothing to do with this man.  He has copied and pasted a paragraph from a blog I follow (a blog that is Over 18 verified) and used this to say what a harridan I am.  I would like to know how I am responsible for what others write on their blog. He has since written another blog in response to some comments that were left for him.  Not by me, not by anyone I know, saying he will take the blog post down if I apologise to him on Twitter.  I have nothing to apologise for and I've got to be honest since he wrote that blog about me the traffic to my blogs has increased massively. I don't know who reads his blog or mine for that matter.  What I do know is that the people who actually know me personally are the only ones that really matter and anyone who believes anything online, my blogs included is taking a bit of risk with their trust. I do not have to justify myself to anyone, neither do I have to prove or disprove anything this silly man has said.  I did nothing more than ask him to reword his Twitter profile to make the thousands of under 18 Whovians aware of the things he would be posting.  He has turned it into a personal attack of me and my parenting skills and also chastised me because of a single paragraph on one of the blogs I follow.  So dear reader take heed one day someone may hold you responsible for what I have written here.

So readers after deciding not to write anything I appear to have written a very long winded post about nothing much at all.  I mainly wanted to apologise to anyone who follows me on Twitter for my emotional outbursts the other day. 

P.S I had it brought to my attention that the wonderful SFX Magazine had written an article on this man and his dubious behaviour back in March, you may want to check it out.