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Banned From Kickstarter For Being Cyberstalked

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-are-responsible-for-the-actions-of-everybody dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Rachel Marone has been a victim of cyberstalking for over 10 years. In 2011, she had a project on Kickstarter shut down because of the high volume of spam posted by the stalker in the comment section of the project. Recently, Marone's manager spoke to Kickstarter again to see how she could avoid having a new project banned if the cyberstalker showed up again. They replied, 'If there is any chance that Rachel will receive spam from a stalker on her project, she should not create one. We simply cannot allow a project to become a forum for rampant spam, as her past project became. If this happens again, we will need to discard the project and permanently suspend Rachel's account.' On her website, Marone sums up the situation thus: 'I am being told that I cannot crowdfund because I am a stalking victim. ... With so many women being stalking targets this does not seem reasonable to me.'"

3 of 382 comments (clear)

  1. Re:With all due respect... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is a really long thread on reddit.
    http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/s97g4/banned_from_kickstarter_for_being_a_stalking/

    I was pretty mad at first. A little more reading and now I think they did the right thing.

  2. Here is a relevant posting by the "victim" by thrift24 · · Score: 5, Informative

    As you all know I have a rockin' tight ass, a successful project on Kickstarter that you've all funded, and a cyberstalker that goes by the name of FrankSinatraDirtyTalker1915@comcast.net.
    I originally met "Frank" back in College, where we dated for a bit. I should point out that he's not an old man, as his username might imply, but rather someone who is simply obsessed with Frank Sinatra and my gorgeous rockin hard ass.
    Anyway, when I broke up with him he took it pretty badly. It was our Sophomore year at Rice University and I had just discovered gravity bongs and going down on another girl while blazed out of my gord. As I've admitted, these were confusing albeit fun times for me.
    Meanwhile, "Frank" was raised as a Mormon but had recently converted to Scientology. I guess you might say he was experimenting with his own hallucinogenic homoerotic drug. This drug/sex/cult cocktail, combined with my round pulchritudinous derriere, and the sudden shock of losing his ability to play his daily role of dressing up as Dr. Parnassus while gently fondling my perky nipples and supple breasts that he had affectionately named the Merry Mammary Sisters of Nippopolis, and Queens of the Breastiary - led to Frank's complete mental breakdown.
    I don't blame Frank for my rockin body, just as I don't blame you for being attracted to my intelligence and funding my project on Kickstarter. However, what I do not like is being stalked. I hope you all do what I do when you see Frank's messages on any thread related to my project. Just lick your index finger, point it at Frank's username and then say, "Ooooooooooooo ICE COLD! Mama thinks you're a BAAAAD BOYYYY! OOOOOO Ice Cold..." then point the same finger back at your left nipple and make a sizzling sound "SSSSSssssssssssss" and sing this little rap
    Thank you all again for funding my project on Kickstarter. You're clearly invested in a winner!

    also relevant:
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3840589

  3. No one is or has been stalking Rachel Mendelson by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Rachel "Haywire" aka "Marone" aka "Mendelson" is a well known con artist, grifter and volcano of libel. She also collects an SSDI check for mental disability.

    Ms. Jaeger:

    It has come to my attention that Rachel Mendelson aka "Rachel Marone" aka "Rachel Haywire" aka "Transhuman X" may be allowed to use kickstarter again only 2 years after she took $3,000 with a fraudulent kickstarter effort. People are angrily posting on this page even as of a few months ago, and she has no plans to print the CD or to make any of the charitable contribution percentage she promised from this project. Please do not allow her to make any more kickstarter efforts, and defraud more people. Here is the page and the comments from people who never got their CD from her. By kickstarter's own rules, she should be required to return the donations at this point, not start a new fraudulent kickstarter campaign. She is very likely to start a new kickstarter account called 'Rachel Marone', be aware she is abusing kickstarter for financially fraudulent purposes.

    Here is the link to the project that never did anything but take money:

    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/machinekuntrecords/sanity-is-slavery

    where you can see comments of complaint from its backers:

    "If you’re a backer of this project, please log in to read this post.
    3 of 4
    View Previous Comments

                    Fb_profile_picture.thumb
                    Erik Roy Tomren on September 26, 2011

                    so when is this coming out? the hard copy version, not the download.
                    1.thumb
                    Cat on February 24

                    It's a year after this posting, almost two years after this was funded, and I have yet to receive my hard copy of this album. Very displeased. :/
                    Fb_profile_picture.thumb
                    Steve Cross on March 15

                    Is the hard copy ever going to appear. A further update would be nice. I am not very happy!!

    "