News / Education
Katherine A. Scheri: Internet Troll Extraordinaire!
“… You are a joke my friend. You don’t have the intelligence or the backbone to admit that you are a hack. You cannot defend your comments because they are indefensible. You have only confirmed with your censorship that you are a jellyfish…I know when I am dealing with a complete moron and hopefully now so do your readers. You are an idiot sir…”
It comes with being a semi-successful blogger. Eventually you’ll get hate mail. Enough people exist in the world that it doesn’t matter how nice you try to be; some of them are going to hate you for no other reason than they disagree with you. Your opinions will garner disproportionate hatred, and some of the people who hate you won’t be able to contain themselves. You’ll end up with hate mail. There are two kinds of hate mail. The first is the standard trolling type comments which appear on random posts. They’ll engage you because their mothers don’t love them (maybe?). They need attention, but the only kind they know about is anger. The second kind of hate mail are the private e-mails that they’ll send to you after they take a few pot shots on your blog. Trolls fall under the mistaken impression that sending them to your inbox rather than directly to your blog protects them from being exposed which is obviously not true.
I usually let private variety e-mails pass because most people don’t really mean it; they just suffer from temporary internet insanity. Very rarely, however, I get one like what Katie from LA sent to me yesterday. The full exchange is here, and I encourage you to read it for context. I wrote an article months ago about the fallacy of easy fixes and how some companies prey on parents’ desperation in order to make profits. I used the Total Transformation product to demonstrate my point. Some people agreed with me, some disagreed. I argued with some who never saw eye to eye with me while other’s I argued with and we eventually came to a respectful understanding. Katherine Scheri, though, would not quit. She held on like a rabid dog and stoutly refused to accept that the post was not written specifically for her. Rawr! Read the whole exchange to get context. What follows is the end of our last exchange, which is perhaps the biggest bullshit line in the history of bullshit, and her private e-mail she sent afterwards.
Katie: “… Keith, you can attack me until the cows come home. My initial contact with you was to guage how you would handle a discussion, your technique and of course, if your commentary was backed up by supporting data. Clearly, you are reactionary, are void of any diplomatic skills and as I have stated numerous times, are not credible. You needn’t be concerned about anything that I have to say any further. There are millions of fish in the sea and relatively few who would not jump at the chance to sell their blog for six figures or more especially in this economy. Clearly you are quite happy with your mediocrity. Again, I wish you well and good luck with your blog. Regards, Katie from L.A.”
My big regret here is that I can’t post the comment I screened because I sent it to spam and then deleted it. I didn’t think it would get this far so I brushed it off. Damn, because that one was pretty good too. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the balls to post it, it was because it contained nothing but insults and I figured I’d just nip it in the bud by pushing the eject button on her. Anyway, this is her private e-mail message to me (the e-mails she’s referring to from me are the ones that are automatically generated by my blog whenever I reply to a comment on the blog. I didn’t send her any personal e-mails other than to express my intention to follow up with this very post):
Katie: “I didn’t expect to hear from you again so I blocked your email. I noticed that you didn’t have the balls to post my response to you. You are a joke my friend. You don’t have the intelligence or the backbone to admit that you are a hack. You cannot defend your comments because they are indefensible. You have only confirmed with your censorship that you are a jellyfish. In a typical spineless manner you post only your lie so that the few readers that you have think you fared well? I am irate and unhinged? Your kidding right? That’s fine. I know when I am dealing with a complete moron and hopefully now so do your readers. You are an idiot sir. One that will end up getting himself sued. The first amendment only goes so far. It does not allow you to slander and defame businesses or individuals before you end up with a lawsuit. I certainly do not have an issue with bringing your site to the attention of the legal department of the Transformation’s publisher. If it make you feel like you still have your balls to have the last word then so be it. Fortunately, I retained a copy of my response to you so that the client could see what an idiot you are.”
She Should be Embarrassed: Typical Troll Behavior
1. “Yeah! Yeah! Well, you have no idea who you’re dealing with!” Is a typical troll behavior. But, with Katherine Scheri it took an interesting twist. See, Katie figures if she pretends to be some sort of hot shot that I’ll say something like “Oh, jeez, Katherine, I had no idea. How can I fix my argumentative ways?” I wonder how she got it into her head that I would do that. The whole reason she started arguing with me was so she could gauge my ability to take criticism? Wow.
2. For a level headed person, threatening to get me sued doesn’t seem so level headed. On the one hand she expects me to believe her entire interaction with me was because she was assigned to read my blog by her “syndication firm” (the mysterious no named one). Now she’s so rabidly upset that she’s calling me all sorts of names and talking about slander.
3. A total failure to understand the first amendment in typical troll style.
Perhaps the best line of all is her closing, her last communication with me. I forwarded her e-mail to some relevant people yesterday because I want a record of what she’s been saying and I wanted her to know that other people were listening to her ravings. Here’s her last e-mail, preceded by my message to her letting her know my intentions.
Keith: “I’ve gone ahead, Katie, and forwarded this note to some relevant people so they can see how hateful you are and so I can have a record of your threats to me. I also have every intention of following up on this with a blog post about you. My intention is to rank number 1 on your name so that anybody who googles you will find this e-mail. Remember, you sent it to me so I can do that.”
Katie: “I would stick to having your now, one-way arguements Keith. It is easy to block someone from responding openly on your blog but then lie about what they said. That is what a ball-less coward does. My sympathies to your wife. You can try to intimidate me as much as you like. Waste as much time as you want. I finished with this yesterday. I think that you are all fools. Have fun and good luck with your blog.”
(Really, Katherine, calling the people I forwarded the e-mail to fools? What did they do to you? Why are they fools?)
And then, to really expose herself, she looked up one of the recipients of my forwarded message and reported his company to the BBB (Better Business Bureau) even though she has had zero business dealings with him or his company. Stay classy, Katherine! Her complaint is as follows (ignore the bad grammar):
“CEO sent a threatening email to defame me personally using the internet and attachment to my name in multple search engines. I am an web consultant and reviewed a blog of a Almightydad.com. The blogger was representing that he had reviewed a product but was unable to offer any supporting evidence for his commentary. A public conversation took place on his blog and when he determined that his position was indefensible the blogger discontinued posting my rebuttals but continued to defame and misrepresent me personally. The blogger then communicated with Mr. Wu whom represented himself as the CEO of this company. Mr. Wu sent me an email indicating his intent to defame me using the internet with attachment to my personal identity via search engines. My only crime was to dispute the blogger’s lack of evidence for his commentary. I do not know Mr. Wu and have had no dealings with his company yet he has threatened me personally and professionally.
Mr. Wu is to retract any reference to my name using search engines or any other mechanism that he has employed.”
Katherine Scheri should know better than this, and now this is what’s going to happen: As a matter of public record I have posted these e-mails. Thus, whoever wants to know about Katherine Scheri is going to find these unedited e-mails from her to me, a random blogger who she knows nothing about but is willing to call a balless coward, idiot, a joke, a hack, a jellyfish, a moron, spineless etc… . To top it off she even decided to send her sympathies to my wife for having married me. Katherine Scheri is the epitome of an internet troll. She can’t handle debate, she irrationally calls names while pretending she is the one under attack, and she attempts to assert her importance as if her imaginary position should deserve respect (not her, her position). Lastly, like an exploding nebula, she attempts to destroy anyone associated with me. Katherine Scheri, my friends, has issues.
Other Trolls:
I got another typically trolling comment yesterday independent of Katie Scheri. This one comes from an article I wrote about Multi Level Marketing and the dangers of getting wrapped up in legal pyramid schemes. There are dozens of angry e-mails in the comment section of that post. You can see I don’t censor or omit comments unless they go beyond the pale. Judging by how much I actually allow, Katherine Scheri should know I wouldn’t have censored her comment unless it was completely hateful (which it was and I only regret that I don’t have it anymore). Here’s a comment, from Jon, regarding MLM’s:
Jon: “Keith Get a life! 1) Did you know that Harvard teaches mlm as a valid business model? (I suspect not) Who cares if you don’t like mlms! Who are you? How many people have you helped make over $100k in a single year? I have helped many through a MLM! But arguing with you is like arguing with a brick!”
Every week, I get a handful of these kinds of comments from random people. The ones like Jon’s I don’t mind. They do their venting, I respond, and they move on. It’s the genuine trolls like Katherine Scheri who are the real problems. If you respond to them, and they make it almost impossible not to, they’ll sink their teeth into you and just chew. I don’t have a good explanation for why they do it or what they think they’re accomplishing. I can only say, when it gets too over the top, it’s best to be the censor and pull the plug on them. And sometimes, on very rare occasions, they threaten. When that happens, the gloves come off. Katherine Scheri is now the proud owner of a 1st page google ranking of her name. Ding ding ding ding.
