alt Hacker News> So, his experience is probably well outside the norm.
Absolutely not. I've been a minor OSS celebrity for a while and even on that scale, it attracted a good number online stalkers and harassers.
Basically, if you're ever "newspaper famous", there will be completely unhinged people convinced that you're the one talking to them through their microwave, as well as rational people who make it their life mission to follow your around and "expose" you / put you down, simply because they think they deserved the limelight more than you.
Replies
> Basically, if you're ever "newspaper famous", there will be completely unhinged people convinced that you're the one talking to them through their microwave
I was interviewed by a semi-famous YouTuber in Taiwan (~100k subs) and reaped a ton of benefits. Had one bad encounter though: one of the viewers came into my restaurant and had a super bizarre interaction with me about it, standing next to me and talking well after close while I washed dishes, repeating talking points from the video and not getting increasingly strong hints to leave. Had to straight up throw him out in the end.
Never really felt unsafe, but it was bizarre to have such an uncomfortable interaction with someone fawning over me like that, all because they saw me in a video with only 150k videos!
nit: "rational people who make it their life mission to follow your around and "expose" you"
^ those are not rational people.
> minor OSS celebrity
Look into any kind of OSS drama and you'll realize the OSS community may have a higher proportion of crazies.
I was once in a high up position for a somewhat popular project. I can confirm that it attracts obsessive people with anger issues.
It scales with popularity and changes with demographic. I’ve known non-famous CEOs who needed security details when visiting any conference or public event because they had stalkers who would reliably appear and try to get close to them.
Even on HN I had a stalker. With a previous handle I wrote a long comment about a subject that someone found insightful. They scanned my whole comment history until they found a comment where I mentioned a company I had worked for, then did a process of elimination to figure out who I was, then started contacting me through email and other channels demanding more conversation and writing on the topic to answer their questions. It was very unsettling. I’m now more careful to leave out any identifying facts on HN.