Reddit reviews Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls

I'm feeling that SSG. Take heart. You're not the only one. Merely one of the vanishingly few (anymore) resolutely sticking to your own independently self-determining guns.

For reasons that are nobody else's but your own - ones you've chosen that nobody has taken away from you; maybe can't.

Because having whoever to tell you what to think or how - even on clearest directions HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND (from one of TIME magazine's '100 Most Influential People,' mind you) - just wouldn't serve the purposes, values ultimately - for which you stand tall enough.

To which, agree or disagree (on this point or that, you name it), I say bravo - even 'encore.' I personally applaud, appreciate, admire just such stuff as that.

Agreed and yes yes the natives are restless and the peasants absolutely revolting. But you, I like.

Even if, to be sure, my conclusory perspective and outlook differs (I think) from yours - at least on the significance of 'intelligence officers' ('posting in subreddits like ...').

I wish I could consider along with you (unless I got you wrong) that the main source of the horribleness and awfulness - the disinfo pervading our 'post-truth' times - were the 'intelligence community' (some implacable governmental 'other' acting in official secrecy).

But with the comic strip POGO as touchstone my sense to the contrary echoes: We have met the enemy, and it is us. Hailing from the McCarthy inquisitorial 1950s such irony so sharply summed up is only consistent with - time-honored long-standing wisdom based in total human experience from across every boundary and line that otherwise divides us.

Namely: for all the merely physical ills that ail and natural disasters that visit death and destruction upon humanity - the far far greater portion of damage done to our kind, especially the deeper darker horror of it all is - has always been - of horribly human origin and self-inflicted, in sole solitary fashion or mutually, group-wise - one for all and all for one.

Whatever enemies we face outwardly, and have to deal with - the worst of all proves to be us, our own kind AKA 'we the people' (for the worse not better). It's an awful worm can in view of how limited our resources at hand really are, how little to work with we have - other than human goods the richest of all desperately needed.

We're all we've got, our own kind's last best hope yet at the same time our own worst enemy, the very hand at our own throat.

Big Brother figures 'in translation' like a kind of psychological projection of us - of our species' dark side within. I might even have to link a 1996 NY Times oped by J. Gleick www.nytimes.com/1996/09/29/magazine/big-brother-is-us.html [ http://archive.is/UNaPx ]: Behind Closed Doors: Big Brother Is Us

To reflect even more richly I'd shift from 1950s POGO, & real life 1996 - to another exhibit in arts & entertainment evidence. A 1960s 'text' OUTER LIMITS: O.B.I.T. not knowing if you've ever seen this blood-chilling exercise in fiction's seeming laser light of transcendent 'super truth' - above & beyond merely literal IRL factuality:

Sen. Orville (congressional inquiry): Colonel Grover, why weren't the American people notified of the existence of this equipment?

Col. G: An installation check has revealed they're in use on our military bases. And we've discovered that these machines are also being employed in civilian life - industry, education, communication networks all over the country. It's like a debilitating disease. There are no records; it's awful. I feel responsible. I should have spoken out. It's the most hideous creation ever conceived. No one can laugh or joke. It watches, saps the very spirit. The worst thing of all is - I watch it. I can't not look. It's like a drug, a horrible drug. You can't resist it.
It's an addiction.

Reviews of this episode prior to the advent of FACEBOOK sound one way, all entertained to hell. But reviews since bring up FB routinely, citing this show as a prophetic warning of 'things to come' (as they have).

But it gets better plot-wise. In the finale what's behind the subversion when ratted out proves a brilliantly allegorical science fictionalization of our own pure inhumanity, a fantasized projection of the dark side within to out-do even Big Brother, namely - a Thing From Outer Space:

Alien (parting words to the Earthers before making his 'getaway'): The machines are everywhere. Oh, you'll find them all, you're intelligent people. And you'll make a great show of smashing a few. But for every one destroyed, hundreds more will be built. And they'll demoralize you, break your spirit - create such rips and tensions that no one will be able to repair. Oh you're a sad, despairing planet. And when we come here to live, you friendless, demoralized flotsam will fall without a single shot being fired. Senator, enjoy the few years left you - there is no answer. You're all the same. You demand, you insist on knowing every private thought and hunger of everyone - your families, your neighbors. Everyone but yourselves.

The 1956 film 1984 starring Edmond O'Brien is a favorite too, for its dramatic depiction of the 'nature of the beast' and dire issues of humanity - the struggle of the individual under post-truth condition merely for his own being - as a person, not a subjugated personoid.

From fiction to real life - dunno if this relates by your standard. But for me what it spells out is like lightning, a flash so brief one has but an instant to take in what's revealed by so much bright light all at once - about a darkness so deep, a landscape of our times littered in every direction with antisocial disinfo, pathologizing propaganda:

< I was at my lowest point in December 2013. Invited by a friend to visit Ireland together I jumped at the chance. One afternoon ... overlooking Galway Bay ... I started replaying moments of what had been the most difficult months in my life. I realized that, through it all, the worst part was feeling completely alone. Neither the lawyers nor the judges nor the cops I'd turned to had ever made me feel protected. Instead I'd been repeatedly told there was nothing they could do.
Standing on that cliff, reflecting, I had an epiphany: horrible as my experience had been, I couldn't be the only one. There had to be other people out there who had suffered the same ... It occurred to me that they were probably searching for the same kind of support I had longed for in my darkest days ... who understood the threat and knew what to do when a psycho was spinning out of control.
In that moment, drenched in the pouring rain, I decided I was going to advocate for victims the way I wish someone had fought for me.
I had little money, and zero idea how ...
[Those] whom I consider friends are fierce and fearless warriors. No two are alike [not a 'community' of the 'like-minded']. I represent actors and activists, suburban moms and struggling artists, recent immigrants, celebutantes, the super-rich (own-their-own-jet rich) and folks getting by on food stamps. But while my clients are special and unique the offenders are not. They are as boring and predictable as they are dangerous. ... Frighteningly, these offenders are all around us masquerading as regular people ... predators, stalkers and abusers are nothing new. What's different now is that many have harnessed the power and reach of internet to facilitate their crimes. Armed with nothing but a laptop and shielded by anonymity, a single bad actor can wreak unmitigated chaos and ruin the lives of countless vicitms. They stop only when we fight back. ... the offenders are not distinct and unrelated ... all around us, connected like points in a web... everywhere. What makes them so terrifying is that many ... are compelled by the same impulses that trigger other offenders to drive cars into groups of [people] and fire assault rifles into churches or schools. They are driven by rage and a thirst to strip victims of their agency and control. These offenders want to dominate, manipulate and punish ... all of us have the power to fight back. I refuse to let them win. > C. Goldberg, NOBODY'S VICTIM ("Deeply personal yet achingly universal - a bold and much-needed analysis ... in the era of the Internet. This book is an urgent warning of a coming crisis, a predictor of imminent danger, and a weapon to take back control and protect ourselves—both online and off. www.amazon.com/Nobodys-Victim-Fighting-Psychos-Stalkers-ebook/dp/B07L7SBGBZ )

In life's journey, on the road toward humanity's future and fate - those who don't stand for something in a critical moment as you do even if it's just one's own integrity of inward being (!) - will fall for anything sooner or later, if not one thing than another.

It's one of the darker object lessons of our current 'post-truth era.'

From copping out by playing 'ostrich' i.e. sticking your head in the sand and just ignoring whatever 'strategically' like 'maybe it'll go away' - to 'joining' some militant 'cause' with 'strength in numbers' no more lonely nights only 'instant friends' of a feather waiting to cheer new pledges (each and every one about as dubious as the rest, although YMMV) - to me it seems you just haven't fallen for any of that, SSG. More like captain in competent command of your own ship, not even asleep at the wheel - at the helm and on top of your own perspective, whence - "it's lonely at the top."

Not to "do" Ann Landers with 'wise advice' - but let not thy mind be dismayed, oi sez. As Newark NJ might rally NYC: 'Be proud of yourself, ya could be Philadelphia."

To which NJ might only be able to add for NYC - thanks for being you, exactly who you are and how. Especially with what you stand for, not least of which here - where the rubber meets the road in all its twists and turns.

Walk thru a storm with your head up & you never walk alone - hell, you're in the best of all possible company.