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Something happened on Friday night, and it has been weighing on my mind a lot, and not in a good way.

I want to say right off that I admit that we are all virtual strangers. Or, at least, I am. I don’t talk to many people outside the meats. There are 2-3 people I talk to on a more personal level/outside the dev meats on places like discord or CaringBridge, but otherwise it’s not like we’re anything besides a hi, how you doing in a big mess of flying text on a Friday night. So I don’t expect people to know things that go on in my day to day life, or things that went on in my life months or even years ago, and I don’t know anything about yours.

The other night we got to talking about crazy fans like your Swifties, Arianators (I think that’s what you call Ariana Grande fans) and so on, and how they can be pretty brutal if you piss them off. I shared my experience with my own crazy fan. A YouTube family blogger who has gone viral a few times once visited New York City when I lived in Manhattan. During filming, the dad stuck his camera in my face. I had no idea who he was or what was going on. It was weird, but people in New York are weird. A few weeks later, my mom is calling to tell me all her friends who watch this Christian family’s YouTube blogs on YouTube saw me. I went back and there I am, plain as day. Not my best look, of course, because imagine how you would react if a stranger stuck his DSLR camera in your face while you sat on the bench waiting for the subway?!!

When I asked this YouTuber if he could blur me out of the video, the fans were OUTRAGED. Multiple statements like, “you’re in public, you can be filmed whenever!” “It’s not against the law to be filmed!” “Huh, I hope you know every time you walk into a store, you’re on camera!” “People film me all the time and it’s no big deal.” One fan even did a deep dive on me. Scrolled through my Facebook and googled my name. She found articles, obituaries, and high school databases. She found support groups I was apart of on Facebook and joined those groups to read up on me. She signed me in for free samples of diet pills, tampons, baby diapers and formula, a Gerber Life plan for my dead son (this was before I had my twin girls and Anya died) and more. I still continue to get US mail to this day.

What I was told? “That’s your fault. You shouldn’t have posted this stuff in Facebook.”

My name isn’t Ashley Jones or Jessica Smith or Sarah Clark or some common name that a million of other women have. My name is a unique spelling and my last name is a rare one. My married name makes me even rarer. (Thanks, by the way, to my dad who gave me my name, and to my German and Russian husband, who added to my already Italian last name.) If you google my name, you won’t find many hits, but the ones you will find are extremely personal. You will find things like my brothers’ obituary, my two children’s obituary, newspaper articles from when I acted and worked in various local theatre performances. You may even find info about my band and where we play. Chances are you’ll find my address or where I lived in the past. After this incident happened, I tried to hide my name and my address from being seen on websites like 411.com, whitepages.com, spokeo, etc.. My facebook account is locked down as securely as I can lock it down and these days I use an alias to further protect my privacy.

Yes, I know that we’re not friends and that in the grand scheme of things, you know very little about me. You likely didn’t know that my whole name combined is a grand total of thirty-five letters (not including two hyphens). But here is one thing you should know: if something has me upset, there is a valid ******** reason why it is upsetting to me. Sure, receiving tampons, diapers, baby items, life insurance may mot be bothersome to you - who doesn’t like free stuff, right? But as someone who went through a stillbirth, an ectopic pregnancy, multiple miscarriages (more than 10), and years and years of infertility and loss, believe me when I say that that mail not only bothered me, it crushed my soul. Same with the diet crap. And continues to do so, because as I mentioned, I still get mail occasionally. When I say something is traumatic, then that alone should be accepted. Why are we questioning and dismissing what someone finds traumatic? I am so over being gaslit all the time.

Instead of blaming me, and making statements about how it’s my fault this happened, why not make statements about how inappropriate these acts were? Who does this??? Who goes on a Facebook and Google deep dive because someone simply asked, “Can you guys please blur me out of your video at 11:42?” and then a few days later, tag them and say, “Hello, did you see this? Can you please remove me from the video?” and then, “Guys, please. I know you can see this post. I really want to be removed from your video.” Don’t piss off the super fan is right.

Yes, I know the arguments. I know that, again, we’re all virtual strangers. You don’t know why things like this are traumatic (I shouldn’t have to explain. I should just be able to say it was traumatic and that is that…) And I also know this blasé, bad a**, ‘you’re a dumbass and I am superior,’ ‘I don’t mince words; I say it as it is,’ ‘******** your feelings,’ is a gimmick or an act. People accept it and seem to enjoy it. I just go with the flow. (What is my other alternative?) But regardless of a gimmick or an act, it needs to be said that I’m talking about something that really truly happened. Something was traumatic as ********. I get that’s the schtick and most people think it’s an okay quality, but being human is also a good quality.

I get enough of that bullshit in real life. I don’t need it on my escapism as well.

Just a reminder that there is a real ******** person on the other side of the screen.