Wednesday - August 23, 2006

Blog Felon

Well, it’s official. The blogosphere now has its first official (accused) felon. Blogger Debbie Frisch, official blog-nut-troll has been served in Eugene, Oregon on charges of stalking and telephone harassment. Blog P.I. has the full story on this latest development in a sad but frightening affair.

It all goes back to her sudden, deranged obsession with Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom and her subsequent harassment and threats against his children. The charges in Oregon appear to be from an unrelated series of harassment attacks on colleagues at the University Of Oregon prior to her troubles with Goldstein.

The saga of Deborah Frisch, long-time comment troll and all-around kook, took another troubling, but not exactly unforeseeable turn in the last 48 hours. As far as we know, she is now the first troll of the political blogosphere to face criminal charges relating to such activity. On August 21 she was arraigned in an Oregon courtroom on charges of stalking and telephone harassment.

According to Don’t Hire Deb, a blog devoted to documenting Frisch’s outrageous behavior while depriving her own site of traffic, Frisch posted either $4,000 bail or $400 to a bondsman, and must reappear in court on September 25th. As is speculated in DHD comments and elsewhere, this likely stems not from Frisch’s well-publicized Jeff Goldstein-related misadventures (to the best of our knowledge she’s never called him) but rather similar interactions with former colleagues at University of Oregon (where she was denied tenure in 1994 and served as an adjunct until July 2001) including calling, emailing, and a quickly-removed post to her blog.

Just a few months ago, Frisch was an obscurity known only to the blogs she trolled, such as Eugene’s Oregon Commentator and Steve Verdon’s Deinonychus Antirrhopus. But at this point, she is undergoing the most severe public self-destruction we’ve seen yet.

-- Blog P.I.

You can go read the rest of this sorry history and current developments at Blog P.I. or you can visit Deb’s blog and see for yourself. The blogosphere can be a dangerous place. People will get out of control at times and there will always be trolls out there looking for something to jump on and obsess over. The blogosphere does bring out the best in online interactivity and communication of ideas but it also brings out the worst in some people. As long as the blogosphere and the internet is free and wide open that will always be the case. Somehow we all have to live with that. And the trolls out there need to take note .... you can go too far across the line and then you’re in deep guana. Just ask Deb.

_{(thanks to Squiggler for tipping me off on this and for bringing me up to date on the saga)}

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/23/2006 at 04:19 PM   
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