Smarties
In 1998 I started work having had a small break of 6 years since dropping/being kicked out of college. I got a job as a very junior (as in seems quite bright but never had a job so we don't want to pay him much) software developer. I didn't know a great deal about computers, I'd picked up everything I knew from playing games on the Amiga and a 16 week long C++ course that the DHSS sent me on. What I'm trying to say is: the internet was an entirely unknown and infinitely exciting strange new world to me.

So I started hunting down people who were at my school for e-fun (names changed a bit to protect their miserable reputations):

John Henderson
In a word: turd. In a few words: spiteful, cowardly turd. Had tried to be "nasty" to me in the past but merely managed to amuse me with his patheticness. What really riled though, well a bit, is that having done the software course, I sent speculative job applications (begging letters) to all of the software companies in the area. I didn't get many replies but of the few that I did get, one was from him. "Dear Stopmeandslapme, I was most interested to read your CV. Unfortunately we don't have any positions suitable to someone with your unemployableness" or something like that.

I got myself some dodgy email addresses, I would always use the name of another boy from school so as to add to the confusion/suspicion. His company, naturally, had a crappy website with email addresses of everyone who worked there, so I sent him a few daft CVs. And I sent his colleagues daft CVs to "forward to John who knows me". The company website had his picture which I played around with in Paint Shop Pro to email to his colleagues.

Example "John Henderson Landscape":


Simon Cock
He was (how can I put this without using the word "cunt"? I can't) a cunt. Bit of a bully. Google, Friends Reunited, 192, these were my tools. He said where he was working on Friends Reunited so I did a search on his name and his company name and bingo! His e-mail address. Now, previously, I had set up a punk group on Yahoo Groups (before it became Yahoo Groups, click if you remember what it was called before Yahoo bought it). I then spammed various punk websites, well, rather less subtle, newbie remember, I gleaned lists of email addresses from message pages on punk websites and signed them up without giving them a choice. Can you still do that?

The group was quite active in those early days, many people were fine with the fact that they had suddenly started getting e-mails from other punk dudes. There were a few begging to be unsubscribed but they eventually managed to find the unsubscribe link on the emails. All was rosey until the troll to end all trolls joined the group and started to get abusive. The arguments were legendary, I was congratulated by people at gigs who enjoyed reading the mayhem. We had death threats, peoples details being posted on websites accusing them of being paedophiles, my own details ended up on a anti-fascist website with some guff about me being a prominent Neo-Nazi using technology to wreck anti-fascist sites. All good fun.

Using one of my dodgy email addresses I created a group just for Simon. Signed him up to it and sent him little daily snippets from the troll. "I've asked you to debate calmly with me but you won't, you've insulted me, you started it", that type of thing, nothing abusive, just random nonsense. He said "I don't know who you are but I don't want to be in your group, please unsubscribe me". He was ignored. He DEMANDED to be unsubscribed. He was ignored. He worked out how to unsubscribe. I resubscribed him. This went on until I got bored.

Peter Brookswank
I needed another victim, someone weird, someone with a peculiar name that I could find on Google. Tried a few. Aha! Can't be too many people with that name around. A Smarties lid collecting fansite? Could it really be him? I seem to remember he collected Smarties lids at school but surely he hasn't carried that through into adulthood? He had. The following email exchange occurred:

Me (as S Hunt): "Hi Peter, saw your email address on www.sadbastards.com. I too collect Smarties lids, I have over 180,000 of them"
He: "Wow, 180,000. You must have been collecting for ages. Would you like to trade?"
Me: "Sure send me your wants list and I'll see if I have any of them"
He: "silver L, orange q, purple m, blah, blah"
Me: "I have duplicates of most of those"
He: "Great, what do you want in return?"
Me: "Just send me a picture of your penis"

No reply.
Never heard from him again.
Well not under the name S Hunt anyway...

Footnote:
The abusive guy in the punk forum was not me! After MY details appeared on the anti-fascist site, I had had enough and handed over control of the group to Dave out of Riot/Clone (namedropping!) who was well respected in the punk scene and didn't take any shit. The group fizzled out after that as people were only there to argue with the troll.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:00, 8 replies)

so
you're a cunt then?
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:11, closed)

I would like to offer my congratulations to Vipros for summing this up accurately.

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:15, closed)

Sorry
What exactly is cuntish about a bit of harmless wumming?
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:23, closed)

I'm with
Amorous Badger
( JimmyD I let my best ideas go to waste, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:33, closed)

Confused
The guy on the punk forum making threats, and putting peoples details on dodgy sites wasn't me! Perhaps I should have made that clear?
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:54, closed)

ah I see
in that case I withdraw my previous statement
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:59, closed)

!
Think I better carefully re-word it if that's what you all thought.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 19:05, closed)

errr
Geocities??
(morrigan456 made sex wee on, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 21:54, closed)