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Banned From Kickstarter For Being Cyberstalked
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.'"
Now she got Slashdotted too.
"i represent an unbearable burden on some system and am upset that they won't accomidate me"
You're an idiot and should be kicked in the nuts.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
So... What are you wearing?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Don't blame the website for not wanting to put up with your baggage. Blame the stalker. Take legal matters in your own hands and go after him/her.
People who avoid victims because they don't want to deal with the fallout are the worst kind of cowards. And in your hypothetical situation the answer is easy - just like in this situation with kickstarter.
What the people running the service have done is send a world wide message that anyone can control their service by destroying projects at will.
Of course they will back track very soon. They'll have to, but the mind reels trying to figure out how they did not see this correctly in the first place.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Now she got Slashdotted too.
Isn't that interesting?
Looking at her websites and everything, she looks like one of those artsy people that would benefit incredibly from exposure. Actually, anyone doing any sort of business on the net needs exposure to get noticed.
Over the last decade, I've become extremely cynical about things like this.
If she were really getting threats and people were posting illegal things like child pornography as she said, then the cops would be involved to go after this guy and take him out. But no. Things are continuing for some reason and here she is getting all this free publicity and hits on her website.
Read up on any of the "Gorilla Marketing" type of books out there and you too will become cynical of any sort of public exposure.
From her website:
In my How Facebook Deleted My Ass article I discussed how my account was deleted because I was accused of impersonating myself.
. I don't consider FB to be that credible either, but then again, I wonder what made them come to that conclusion?
And if she is in fact truly being stalked, I blame the marketing people of the World for making public exposure of any sort a cheap way to market products, services, people, art, etc ...
After all, we do live in a World where people actually burn themselves to death to bring attention to issues. What's a little cyber-stalking?
A single stalker can shutdown a project because of spam? Either it's a false story or kickstarter has a crappy system.
If it's really true I'm sure 4chan and gang might have a fun time shutting down ALL the kickstarter projects.
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.
And WTF is a "transmedia artist" ? She uses various media, multimedia ?
She is a painter trapped in the body of a sculptor?
It's very possible that this is all a bs story on her part and she's just whoring for attention.
Kickstarter may have made the right call.
Reddit uncovered some more info about her, that doesn't paint her in a very good light:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3840589
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/s97g4/banned_from_kickstarter_for_being_a_stalking/c4c5j7r
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
Sure. I live in Texas.
Cool
I own several guns.
That was assumed from the previous statement. In fact I thought it was mandatory.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
She makes claims that "police say he's too good for them and FBI won't investigate". Something I personally find very hard to believe considering she's claiming that he's systemically sending "her and hundreds of other victims child porn and infant rape fantasies".
Someone who doesn't fuck up when massively sending crap like that to hundreds of recipients for a decade? That's inhuman. And on top of the cake, her letters with the moderators clearly state that she actively talked to this stalker on their site.
I find it completely credible that stalking could go on for a long time and that law enforcement wouldn't help at all. Many years ago my girlfriend had a stalker. He was leaving weird messages on her car at home and at work and showed signs of escalating like messages on her bedroom window, which was in the back of the house. We went to the police with the notes, a summary of when and where things had been done as well as the text of the law against stalking and they refused to take a report. Her employer didn't like someone coming on to their property to harass an employee, so they had one of their attorneys do all of the paperwork and force the police to take a report. The guy was identified and convicted of stalking. Stalking is ignored by law enforcement until after the victim is raped or killed, then it can be used as evidence of pre-meditation.
That may be the best option. If you show how easy the system is to abuse, they'll have no choice but to change the system.
If the person was using the link to send the project creator a message directly, yes.
Personally I don't see why that link even exists.
But all comments on the comment pages and in project updates can only be placed by backers. You can only become a backer by pledging at least $1. Payment is processed through Amazon, which uses credit cards.
Now, would this really deter a determined stalker? No, probably not. But at some point, buying $10 throw-away credit cards each time you'd get booted off has got to become tedious, and expensive, at some point and certainly puts up a barrier.
Regardless, KickStarter is probably in a difficult position with this - they already can't check every single project in detail (the ones that collect $3M get a one-on-one webcam session, of course), so imagine if they'd have to verify claims about messages they get.
That said - I highly doubt there was so much 'spam' that KickStarter had to intervene. Their system handles hundreds if not thousands of messages, status updates, pledges, etc. etc. every hour.
OK so there's some speculation she might be a con artist. The project she claims was banned :
"My client Rachel Marone ran a Kickstarter project called “Extreme Futurist Fest” in April 2011. She was banned because her cyberstalker posted 300 spam comments to her account. "
did go through apparently :
"Extreme Futurist Festival 2011 aims to unite the most radical thinkers around the globe in the fields of science, medicine, transhumanism, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, hacking, philosophy, and the arts."
So there's that.
And people in the comments are complaining about being stiffed :
"Apparently this is going on (http://rachelmarone.com/banned-from-kickstarter-for-being-a-stalking-victim.html), but there's no mention of this Kickstarter at all. I highly doubt we'll see anything soon."
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Well she's a self-defined "drama queen" :
"(originally posted by Rachel Haywire, 2/12/09)
[...]
Here is to the drama queens. Those of us who had so many issues we pushed every last person away. Here is to the drama queens. Those of us who dared to direct and star in this experience of human tragedy as opposed to blindly sit around laughing at the semi-divine comedy. Here is to those of us who refused to define our existence by a false notion of singular identity. Here is to us.
We may be your dancing monkeys but at least we are dancing. We will know each other by the scars that we wear with pride. Drama should be looked upon with utmost respect. The greater the drama the greater the person. The greater the play.
There are few things that define the existential crisis of humanity better than drama. Why be dismissive of this crisis when we can passionately engage in it?"
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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.
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Erik Roy Tomren on September 26, 2011
so when is this coming out? the hard copy version, not the download.
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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. :/
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Steve Cross on March 15
Is the hard copy ever going to appear. A further update would be nice. I am not very happy!!
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