Hey friends! I know that a lot of us in the Sciles and Scerek part of the fandom have been receiving anonymous hate from a particularly dedicated Sterek troll for the past few months both on tumblr and on AO3. These threats run from bland "your writing is shitty" and "blah blah heterophobia" all the way to rape threats, death threats, and encouragement of suicide.
Since this is a new year, I'd like to start with a clean slate and make sure that everyone in the TW fandom, especially those of us in the rarepair groups, can take care of each other. After what happened in the SPN fandom and the targeting of vulnerable users, we need to look out for each other more.
Our main Sterek troll goes after people who post Scerek fiction. If your AO3 account isn't set up to receive anonymous hate there, they'll track you back to our tumblr to harass you. This troll is ONE single person who lives in Milan, Italy. Their location is above. While the IP address changes slightly, it's stuck in a range that all goes back to one single location. No matter how they try to pretend to be different people, it is all just one sad solitary and disappointingly uncreative spammer. You may have notice particular spelling and grammatical inconsistencies as well. ;)
An easy way to find out more about this person is to install an IP capture tool, like statcounter on your ask page. Once you have someone's IP address, you can run it through a geolocator program for their physical location. You can also contact their IP provider and let them know they're sending rape and death threats to minors OR contact the milan police department, the Europol cybercrime organization here, the FBI here. It may seem like overkill, but cyberbullying is a crime and we've seen recently how devastating the consequences can be when someone vulnerable and young is targeted. YOU might be able to shrug off anon hate or delete it, but someone like this could cause serious harm to someone struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts and we need to protect each other. I don't want to lose anyone in our community because of one butthurt little shipper.
Report the IP address to Tumblr. Hit the ignore button on your anon hate. It will block that particular IP address and while it won't solve the problem when the IP address changes, it will give you some breathing room.
Keep a list of the IP addresses from your abusers and make it public. Publish your threats and tag everyone in the community. Be loud, be public, a lot of people in the Sterek fandom haven't seen what we've been going through and were honestly shocked. This isn't your problem to handle alone, this is a pervasive issue in our entire Teen Wolf family and I don't care what part of the fandom you're from, we need to work together to end it.
Take care of yourself first and foremost. If you have to turn off anons or take a step back from your online life, then do whatever you need to do in order to make yourself feel safe. Your health and happiness is the most important part.
