Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 23:00:17 +0000
From: Jascha Kessler <jkessler@ucla.edu>
Subject: Incidentally, adding to my anecdote of the other week...
there was a horrific news story in Friday's LA Times, I believe,
probably accessible on the Web. All about "cyber-stalkers," which is
all about terror, rape and murder. The piece centered on one poor
your going mad and destroyed woman, whose email address was put up
by a cyberstalker in his 50s, who keeps changing his services and all
that subterfuge, as one of those Personal Ads, "I want to be tied up,
I want to be raped, tortured, etc." and in the shortness of time a
dozen men showed up rapping at her door, and not tapping like ravens
either! She has moved out, lost weight from 135lbs to 90 and hidden
at her mother's. This, in LA, I believe. There are many more cases
like this cropping up, where women are fingered by a cyber stalker,
and other men pursue her, under the mistaken idea, or obsession, that
she wants to be a victim of this or that. It seems like a growing
and awful phenomenon. Imagine, if one's nutty colleague, say, wanted
to vex one to death: all that is necessary is some anonymous posting
saying that one is waiting to be hit, etc. We are entering the
Millenium of the Living Ghouls, I fear.
Jascha Kessler
Jascha Kessler
Professor of English & Modern Literature, UCLA
Telephone/Facsimile: (310) 393-4648
http://www.english.ucla.edu/jkessler/
http://www.xlibris.com/JaschaKessler.html
http://www.xlibris.com/RapidTransit.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Humanist Discussion Group
Information at <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
=========================================================================