Banned From Kickstarter For Being Cyberstalked 382
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.'"
Banned from Facebook too (Score:3, Interesting)
According to her she was banned by Facebook too. Methinks there is more behind this story.
Appalling, but not actually surprising. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is absolutely ridiculous. I'm simply appalled that they would even SAY THAT. I'm not really that surprised though, as I've been on the receiving end of Kickstarter's questionable behavior as well.
I submitted a Kickstarter for a generic USBHID interface board (For making game controllers and input devices, though it really had tons of applications) and they rejected it for no reason. When pressed for an explanation, they said "Kickstarter is for creative arts projects and [my] project did not fit."
So, I guess having a DOZEN Kickstarters for Arduino clones going at any given time is okay, but if someone wants to make something that hasn't been run into the ground yet, fuck 'em! I mean, wow! I was only trying to get $500 together!
Re:First they came for the women (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey I have a guy that follows me around and vandalizes the building I live in. Can I stay at your place?
Sure. I live in Texas. We have the Castle Doctrine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine [wikipedia.org] I own several guns. Bring chips.
Note that arrest is also possible.
Re:down (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead the hive mind wants Kickstarter to accommodate the stalker. How clever.
No one want Kickstarter to accommodate the stalker. How about they put a little effort into blocking the spam ? What kind of internet startup can't deal with a spam problem ? Blaming the victim because your system isn't set up to deal with abuse is out of order.
bs? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [ycombinator.com]
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/s97g4/banned_from_kickstarter_for_being_a_stalking/c4c5j7r [reddit.com]
Re:typical female rational (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:With all due respect... (Score:5, Interesting)
OK so there's some speculation she might be a con artist. The project she claims was banned [rachelmarone.com] :
"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 [kickstarter.com] 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."
Re:With all due respect... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well she's a self-defined "drama queen" [okcupid.com] :
"(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?"
Trying for her second 15 minutes of fame? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been reading her PR. It looks like she did a small arts festival, and wants to do something else. She's tried being in a band, writing magazine articles, modeling, and organizing events. But no one is paying attention. There's little about her written by anyone else.
Sometimes she gets it right. Read her "John Galt is homeless" [hplusmagazine.com], a brief reply to Ayn Rand. "We need to face the fact that Randian capitalism is no longer a way to advance oneself but a way to make oneself poor. The roles have now been reversed and it is no longer survival-of-the-fittest but survival-of-the-most-willing-to-please."
I've met so many people like that in the SF art scene. They're wild, crazy, fun, and can't quite make it. They tend to end up bitter by age 35.
Re:Interesting: marketing. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not buying into it either.
First, there's this claim [experimenthaywire.net] on her page:
That's total BS. First, you can't "hide in your basement" for 10 years to avoid being personally served with a restraining order. Hire a better process server.
Second, the police do take it seriously, especially if you have any information that can identify the person. It's how one of my cyber-stalkers ended up getting fired, despite being thousands of miles away.
So, she knows the guy - and has a bit of history with him [reddit.com]. So I'm not convinced. Not when she's lied about other stuff (like claiming her past project was booted when it was actually funded).
Then there's her complaint about Facebook.
In other words, she created a fake Facebook profile and when she couldn't prove it was hers, they locked her out of it. If she's not happy with Facebooks' policies, there's a simple solution - don't use it. If your business depends on Facebook, you have bigger problems than some random cyber-stalker.
As for Kickstarter, here's the way I see it. If they allow individuals to delete comments in a comment submission queue, then complaints will never be brought to the administrators' attention. So that's not going to work.
But judging by this comment [slashdot.org] (and following the provided link verifies it on kickstarter [kickstarter.com]), since she's lying about her past project being banned by kickstarter whe it was actually funded, what else is she lying about?
Bottom line - a liar, a publicity hound and a drama queen, with a co-dependency problem with her stalker (she needs the publicity as much as he needs to stalk), call the wambulance.