Leandra Ramm is an aspiring mezzo-soprano with a problem. Someone has posted thousands of internet messages asserting a lack of talent, and reinforced the messages on a blog under Leandra's name and by posting obscene messages on her own website. The police in New York (where she lives) claim they have no jurisdiction over activities apparently perpetrated by a resident of Singapore, but the Singapore authorities have no reason to show interest.
Many people suffer from online persecution and are often more intimately related to their persecutor, such as the woman who broke up with her lover and within days received shocked emails from her friends asking about her new website. It turns out that the spurned male had created a website in his former affianced’s name, uploaded all the bedroom photos and videos he had amassed, and emailed her friends from the website address with an innocuous, “Come and look at my new website.”
There is a question under these stories that I cannot yet articulate, but it goes beyond understanding the difficulties of the individuals who live under this shadow, or their efforts to rebuild a life and reputation; it goes beyond even the motives of the malintents perpetrating this suffering or the role of society in perpetuating and hopefully reining in this behavior. There is something happening here that I feel I need to look at very closely.
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