[Jugglernaut]

This is one of her responses: "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 [e-mail].

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!"

Yeah, I understand kickstarters position fairly well now.

[avree]

I'm pretty sure you just made that up.

EDIT: Nevermind, you just took it from http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/s97g4/banned_fro... , an obvious reddit troll.

[agent409]

Oh thank you SO much for recognizing that. Yes, that is one of her stalker's more popular bits of copypasta.

[rms]

Obvious Reddit troll, please keep that crap off of Hacker News.

[Fargren]

I think it's far more likely that that was posted by a troll or by the stalker than by her...

[dhimes]

Agreed. In her blog post she says that this is someone who "stalks" hundreds of targets. A stalker that stalks because of a personal vendetta/obsession, as the troll post implies, wouldn't do that.

[bbwharris]

At the risk of being downvoted myself, please downvote this submission. It's irrelevant and obviously a troll.

[web_chops]

If its true (any direct link ?), it puts the whole conversing part into a different perspective.

[ErrantX]

Seems unlikely to be a true comment in this case.

However, She is a very odd cookie - and appears to have said some strange things (including engaging trolls) in the past. So I would believe Kickstarter if they said there was more "engagement" than Rachel lets on.

[doktrin]

This is false and should not be here.

[antidaily]

Sounds like a fucking idiot. Which doesn't mean she deserves to be harassed. But WTF @ that comment! Who would want to give someone who talks like that any of their money?

[agent409]

Not sure if it helps your perspective or not, but the quoted material was written by our stalker rather than Rachel. He has many accounts on social networking sites and manufactures credibility by replying to his own posts with links to posts on other sites (usually ones he's written). He's been doing this for a long time. Even I have a hard time sorting out the sock puppets from the non-sock puppets sometimes. He's a brilliant, evil, genius. I would be jelly if I hadn't seen how he actually lives and had a glimpse at his mental illness.

For instance, he has this really bizarre fascination with women named Vanessa and Rachel. He's been "married" twice, once to a Vanessa and once to a Rachel. He has this compulsion to have three women at once (named Vanessa or Rachel) that he describes in metaphysical terms.

He does tons of designer hallucinogens he buys from labs in Japan. He often talks about himself in psycho-spiritual terms of superiority, such as "I've gone farther out than any mage. I flew right past [Carlos] Castaneda into expanses of the abyss he'll never know".

More often than not I find myself feeling sorry for him. Until, of course, he goes on the offensive again.

[hellerbarde]

Except for the fact that she should absolutely _not_ have engaged and/or acknowledged the stalker, I don't see a problem at all with the formulations/rhetoric in this response. She kept the vocabulary clean[1], and the content should not bother any grown-up at all.

I don't know the demographic of her project, but if this connects with them, the wording of this seems perfectly okay to me.

[1]: I guess that depends on opinion. YMMV

[LeafStorm]

> She kept the vocabulary clean

It may have been "clean" in the sense that little profanity was used, but it was also full of sexual slang and drug references, and clearly intended to shame Frank (not saying he didn't deserve it, but on the other hand I think a bit more tact is in order). So I could see Kickstarter considering it a violation of the "Don't post obscene, hateful, or objectionable content. If you do we will remove it and suspend you." guideline.

If she did think informing her backers was a good idea, she could have said something along the lines of:

"Hello, backers, you may have noticed that some guy named FrankSinatraWhatever has been posting spam on my threads. Unfortunately, Frank has been cyberstalking me for a while due to a failed relationship from college. If you see Frank posting anything on my project, please just ignore him. Sorry about this, and thank you all for funding my project!"

Still gets the point across without being vulgar, tactless, or ego-stroking.

[pyre]

  > So I could see Kickstarter considering it a violation
  > of the "Don't post obscene, hateful, or objectionable
  > content. If you do we will remove it and suspend you."
  > guideline.

I hate speculation like this. If Kickstarter considered it in violation of that part of their TOS, then why not explicitly state so rather than saying that she was 'encouraging spam' and that spam is in violation of the TOS? Chances are that they did not consider it a violation of those terms.

[saraid216]

According to the OP post, the violation was of Community Guidelines. Those can be found here: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines

It was not speculation.

[agent409]

What's your reasoning? Nowhere in the KS guidelines does it say you're not allowed to receive spam, only that you're not allowed to generate spam for your project. Please advise?