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Let me tell you a long story.
10 years ago
General
Today, I had a nice long talk with my old musician friend Pongball. Between her and 
powerlord, I feel I have come to better understand a series of incidents that happened over a decade ago, when I was heavily cyberbullied by a musician who called himself virt, whose real name is Jake Kaufman. My memories of those events gave me panic attack triggers that I still have. As a result, it has made it very difficult for me to randomly encounter his music, or even his name on different websites. In recent weeks, it triggered two separate painful panic attacks.
There was an IRC music community I used to participate in during the late 1990s and earliest 2000s called #sstrax. It was a group that specialized in module music arrangements of the music from SquareSoft video games (such as Final Fantasy), but also included arrangements of music from other games and some original compositions as well. I was involved in this community off and on, with occasional hiatuses where I was absent.
Sometime in the early 2000s, I returned to #sstrax after a hiatus, and there was this new musician I had never met before who called himself virt. The first impression I had of him was that he the crudest, worst-behaved person I had ever met. I don't have a perfect recollection of all the events, but it wasn't long at all before he started to bully me. He would sexually harass me, invade my personal boundaries, and even stalk me across different IRC channels, all in creepy ways. And he had an entourage (or "posse") of people who took his lead and would tag-team harass me in a similar manner. He was really the worst cyberbully I have ever had. And since I'd never met anyone who behaved like him before, I didn't have the experience to know how to deal with it. The result was, his bullying hurt, and the more it hurt, the stronger he bullied me, until I had emotional meltdowns. And he seemed to get off on my pain and suffering, as if it was a direct goal in and of itself. I had never personally encountered so much raw random malice.
But one of the worst things about it, was when I asked my various musician friends for help, but they weren't willing to help me. Many privately admitted that his behavior was extremely abusive, but most feared becoming targets of bullying by him and his entourage. Some even responded by saying things like, "But have you heard how good his music is?" They didn't want to alienate him, because of his musical abilities.
I listened to some of his music, and...it didn't impress or interest me, except in how much it seemed to reflect his very unstable personality. He was like an egomanic who demanded praise and worship from everyone all the time. Worse than that, he seemed to treat his music as an extension of his personal sexual dominance. He seemed to reserve some of his worst abuse for me.
With my friends unwilling to help me, and IRC channels and operators unwilling to apply any discipline to him, I was basically ostracized. I couldn't remain in #sstrax (or even in #vgmusic) while he was there, and he wouldn't stop trying to find anyway he could think of to inflict suffering on me. He was a total monster to me. I ended up retreating into a private IRC channel, where I could ban members of his entourage who tried to follow me there.
The last time I ever had any interaction with virt, was also the most surreal exchange we ever had. After one his entourage (posing as virt) had joined my channel and trolled me heavily, I said only "Good bye, virt," and kickbanned him from the channel. Soon after, the real virt showed up, to apologize for the behavior of his friend, and seemed to want to make amends. One of my friends in the channel privately messaged me then, and warned me not to allow myself to be baited by him, pointing out the likelihood that virt was trying to mess with me while high-fiving his friends in another channel. So I kept it brief, and he left. I never heard from him again.
But in more recent years, I keep running into gaming- and game-music-related websites that mention him. Apparently, he became a famous composer, who made music for increasingly high-profile video games. So I mainly just avoided it all. And for a time, that worked.
In one of
spelunkersal's public art streams (perhaps even more than a year ago), Sal ran an in-stream game music playlist. None of the music was labelled, so when there was something I did not recognize, I would ask what it was. Then there was this busy-sounding chiptune that played. I asked what it was from, and he said it was from a recent game called Shovel Knight. Since it sounded unusual, I asked Sal if he knew who did the music. He said it was someone named Jake Kaufman. After a few moments trying to remember why that name sounded familiar, I felt a jolt of panic, remembering exactly who he was. I had the gradual onset of a full panic attack that reached full force within an hour.
I kept returning to Sal's streams in the future, and he hasn't done game music playlists since that I can remember—just his usual heavy metal playlist.
I decided to educate myself a little, and maybe learn a bit more of what had become of virt. I learnt then that he had always actually had bipolar disorder, and publicly admitted to having been an abusive internet personality for years. Some of my friends opined that he seemed to have mellowed over the years, and was no longer a cyberbully. I didn't know if this was true, but I really wanted it to be true, so I decided to take it with a grain of salt. And with that, I thought, as long as I can avoid his music, perhaps everything would be fine.
Then just a few weeks ago, came some startling news. One of my very favorite video game franchises, Battletoads, was to make its first new video game appearance in two decades. And they were to...appear as guests exclusively in the Xbone port of Shovel Knight. I was instantly full of extremely conflicted emotion—I felt obligated to at least keep updated on new Battletoads games, but the very presence of this musician or his music made me immediately flash back to the horrifying abuse he used to subject me to. I had a nasty panic attack then and there, and it seemed to last for days as I kept having mini-triggers and night terrors afterward.
I decided to try to face some fears, so I sat down and watched a complete YouTube playthrough of Shovel Knight. With this controlled exposure, I could mentally evaluate the game and hopefully innoculate myself to its music. And...I actually sat through it all. I thought, hopefully, I had faced my fears and could get over my problem.
But then just a few days ago, I randomly encountered the musician's name on another website, and bam—another sudden full-scale panic attack. Logically, it seemed like the stupidest trigger, as I thought I should be getting used to seeing his name on video game sites.
After I talked more with some old friends, I finally narrowed the exact nature of the panic trigger, I realized it was far more complicated than I had earlier assessed. Anything that abruptly reminds me of him causes me to flash back to the memories of cyberbullying. And frankly, those memories are...still not okay. Because what he had done to me was not okay, and could never be okay, because my friends confirmed to me that the way he had treated me—in front of an audience, no less—was really every bit as bad as I remembered. virt had a solid public IRC reputation as a complete and total jerk.
So, after trying unsuccessfully to reach Powerlord again, I found Pongball and had a discussion with her. Apparently, I wasn't the only person virt had bullied. He had bullied many people over his years on IRC, and anyone who called him out on his treatment were themselves just as severely bullied. Some of those bullying victims completely quit game music, as virt has completely poisoned any peace or enjoyment they had once had in it. Eventually, many of my old friends (including Pong) who had declined to help me, came to regret their complacency. Pong told me that what happened to me and others was truly horrible, and it had been proven to inflict psychological damage on other people besides me. People didn't always take cyberbullying seriously back then. But now, more people do, because it can drive even more vulnerable people to self-injury or suicide.
Pong considered virt talented, but she also stressed that she considered me talented. But she discussed how virt and I were very different people. virt was accustomed to being praised and worshipped and always being the center of attention, and couldn't seem to deal with it when someone gave him anything less than that. In this sense, people thought him insecure and vulnerable, reasoning that's why he bullied people. But I was different in that I never seemed to have that problem. I explained that, when I was a child, I was a concert pianist who was coerced into playing in front of ever larger audiences of ever more judgmental strangers, and there was a pretentiousness to gushing praise that made me increasingly uncomfortable with being praised at all. I eventually moved away from piano and towards digital music. And when I make music, I want most of all for people to enjoy it and feel emotionally uplifted by it if I can help them feel that way—and I want to enjoy doing it. And if I cannot help them find that, then it only encourages me to do better next time. And whatever the outcome, I want to be treated like a normal person, and I want people to feel like they can talk to me about my work as easily as they talk about the weather. Just...I don't like a lot of gushing praise. I really don't have the guile to act like anyone's hero anyway, so I'd rather not entertain that. Instead of telling me you think my music is so great, I'd rather people tell me more specifically what they liked about it, so I can take mental notes.
Pong told me it's very possible that virt would offer me an apology if we were to talk about it today. Thing is...I already considered he might—if he has indeed matured the way I'd been told he has. But I realized that I wasn't sure if it would matter. Traumatic memories are stored in the amygdala, where their recollection can alert the body with a fight-or-flight response to instinctively protect a person from perceived imminent danger. If I were a primitive human being in prehistoric times, it might have saved my life. But today, it just gives me harmful panic attacks. And since the amygdala is a part of the brain that is not easily swayed by time or reason, the panic attack triggers remain firmly in place even when the entire rest of my conscious mind wants me to just get over them. I would like nothing more than to just finally be okay about what happened over a decade ago, and be unaffected by anything virt does. I'm not really a grudgeful person, and it is logical to find a way to put the issue to rest. The paradox is, even if he were to be the nicest, kindest person alive today, he won't be able to undo the panic triggers he gave me. We can't just unring that bell—I still have to live with those consequences. So does that mean I forgive him? I'd like to be certain of it, but I think there's a visceral instinctive part of me that may never quite be able to do so.
Truth be told, I doubt I would have any problem whatsoever with him now if not precisely for those panic triggers, and I'd surely get rid of them if I knew how.
In the unlikely event that virt ever learns of this journal's existence, Pong wants him to know that she doesn't think he's a jerk anymore. She hasn't in years. She thinks he's become one of the nicest people now. (Unbelievable. Why couldn't I have first met that nice virt to begin with? Instead, I only met the online sex offender and his psychotic entourage, and never wanted to see, hear or speak to him again. Those are memories I could do without.)
powerlord, I feel I have come to better understand a series of incidents that happened over a decade ago, when I was heavily cyberbullied by a musician who called himself virt, whose real name is Jake Kaufman. My memories of those events gave me panic attack triggers that I still have. As a result, it has made it very difficult for me to randomly encounter his music, or even his name on different websites. In recent weeks, it triggered two separate painful panic attacks.There was an IRC music community I used to participate in during the late 1990s and earliest 2000s called #sstrax. It was a group that specialized in module music arrangements of the music from SquareSoft video games (such as Final Fantasy), but also included arrangements of music from other games and some original compositions as well. I was involved in this community off and on, with occasional hiatuses where I was absent.
Sometime in the early 2000s, I returned to #sstrax after a hiatus, and there was this new musician I had never met before who called himself virt. The first impression I had of him was that he the crudest, worst-behaved person I had ever met. I don't have a perfect recollection of all the events, but it wasn't long at all before he started to bully me. He would sexually harass me, invade my personal boundaries, and even stalk me across different IRC channels, all in creepy ways. And he had an entourage (or "posse") of people who took his lead and would tag-team harass me in a similar manner. He was really the worst cyberbully I have ever had. And since I'd never met anyone who behaved like him before, I didn't have the experience to know how to deal with it. The result was, his bullying hurt, and the more it hurt, the stronger he bullied me, until I had emotional meltdowns. And he seemed to get off on my pain and suffering, as if it was a direct goal in and of itself. I had never personally encountered so much raw random malice.
But one of the worst things about it, was when I asked my various musician friends for help, but they weren't willing to help me. Many privately admitted that his behavior was extremely abusive, but most feared becoming targets of bullying by him and his entourage. Some even responded by saying things like, "But have you heard how good his music is?" They didn't want to alienate him, because of his musical abilities.
I listened to some of his music, and...it didn't impress or interest me, except in how much it seemed to reflect his very unstable personality. He was like an egomanic who demanded praise and worship from everyone all the time. Worse than that, he seemed to treat his music as an extension of his personal sexual dominance. He seemed to reserve some of his worst abuse for me.
With my friends unwilling to help me, and IRC channels and operators unwilling to apply any discipline to him, I was basically ostracized. I couldn't remain in #sstrax (or even in #vgmusic) while he was there, and he wouldn't stop trying to find anyway he could think of to inflict suffering on me. He was a total monster to me. I ended up retreating into a private IRC channel, where I could ban members of his entourage who tried to follow me there.
The last time I ever had any interaction with virt, was also the most surreal exchange we ever had. After one his entourage (posing as virt) had joined my channel and trolled me heavily, I said only "Good bye, virt," and kickbanned him from the channel. Soon after, the real virt showed up, to apologize for the behavior of his friend, and seemed to want to make amends. One of my friends in the channel privately messaged me then, and warned me not to allow myself to be baited by him, pointing out the likelihood that virt was trying to mess with me while high-fiving his friends in another channel. So I kept it brief, and he left. I never heard from him again.
But in more recent years, I keep running into gaming- and game-music-related websites that mention him. Apparently, he became a famous composer, who made music for increasingly high-profile video games. So I mainly just avoided it all. And for a time, that worked.
In one of
spelunkersal's public art streams (perhaps even more than a year ago), Sal ran an in-stream game music playlist. None of the music was labelled, so when there was something I did not recognize, I would ask what it was. Then there was this busy-sounding chiptune that played. I asked what it was from, and he said it was from a recent game called Shovel Knight. Since it sounded unusual, I asked Sal if he knew who did the music. He said it was someone named Jake Kaufman. After a few moments trying to remember why that name sounded familiar, I felt a jolt of panic, remembering exactly who he was. I had the gradual onset of a full panic attack that reached full force within an hour.I kept returning to Sal's streams in the future, and he hasn't done game music playlists since that I can remember—just his usual heavy metal playlist.
I decided to educate myself a little, and maybe learn a bit more of what had become of virt. I learnt then that he had always actually had bipolar disorder, and publicly admitted to having been an abusive internet personality for years. Some of my friends opined that he seemed to have mellowed over the years, and was no longer a cyberbully. I didn't know if this was true, but I really wanted it to be true, so I decided to take it with a grain of salt. And with that, I thought, as long as I can avoid his music, perhaps everything would be fine.
Then just a few weeks ago, came some startling news. One of my very favorite video game franchises, Battletoads, was to make its first new video game appearance in two decades. And they were to...appear as guests exclusively in the Xbone port of Shovel Knight. I was instantly full of extremely conflicted emotion—I felt obligated to at least keep updated on new Battletoads games, but the very presence of this musician or his music made me immediately flash back to the horrifying abuse he used to subject me to. I had a nasty panic attack then and there, and it seemed to last for days as I kept having mini-triggers and night terrors afterward.
I decided to try to face some fears, so I sat down and watched a complete YouTube playthrough of Shovel Knight. With this controlled exposure, I could mentally evaluate the game and hopefully innoculate myself to its music. And...I actually sat through it all. I thought, hopefully, I had faced my fears and could get over my problem.
But then just a few days ago, I randomly encountered the musician's name on another website, and bam—another sudden full-scale panic attack. Logically, it seemed like the stupidest trigger, as I thought I should be getting used to seeing his name on video game sites.
After I talked more with some old friends, I finally narrowed the exact nature of the panic trigger, I realized it was far more complicated than I had earlier assessed. Anything that abruptly reminds me of him causes me to flash back to the memories of cyberbullying. And frankly, those memories are...still not okay. Because what he had done to me was not okay, and could never be okay, because my friends confirmed to me that the way he had treated me—in front of an audience, no less—was really every bit as bad as I remembered. virt had a solid public IRC reputation as a complete and total jerk.
So, after trying unsuccessfully to reach Powerlord again, I found Pongball and had a discussion with her. Apparently, I wasn't the only person virt had bullied. He had bullied many people over his years on IRC, and anyone who called him out on his treatment were themselves just as severely bullied. Some of those bullying victims completely quit game music, as virt has completely poisoned any peace or enjoyment they had once had in it. Eventually, many of my old friends (including Pong) who had declined to help me, came to regret their complacency. Pong told me that what happened to me and others was truly horrible, and it had been proven to inflict psychological damage on other people besides me. People didn't always take cyberbullying seriously back then. But now, more people do, because it can drive even more vulnerable people to self-injury or suicide.
Pong considered virt talented, but she also stressed that she considered me talented. But she discussed how virt and I were very different people. virt was accustomed to being praised and worshipped and always being the center of attention, and couldn't seem to deal with it when someone gave him anything less than that. In this sense, people thought him insecure and vulnerable, reasoning that's why he bullied people. But I was different in that I never seemed to have that problem. I explained that, when I was a child, I was a concert pianist who was coerced into playing in front of ever larger audiences of ever more judgmental strangers, and there was a pretentiousness to gushing praise that made me increasingly uncomfortable with being praised at all. I eventually moved away from piano and towards digital music. And when I make music, I want most of all for people to enjoy it and feel emotionally uplifted by it if I can help them feel that way—and I want to enjoy doing it. And if I cannot help them find that, then it only encourages me to do better next time. And whatever the outcome, I want to be treated like a normal person, and I want people to feel like they can talk to me about my work as easily as they talk about the weather. Just...I don't like a lot of gushing praise. I really don't have the guile to act like anyone's hero anyway, so I'd rather not entertain that. Instead of telling me you think my music is so great, I'd rather people tell me more specifically what they liked about it, so I can take mental notes.
Pong told me it's very possible that virt would offer me an apology if we were to talk about it today. Thing is...I already considered he might—if he has indeed matured the way I'd been told he has. But I realized that I wasn't sure if it would matter. Traumatic memories are stored in the amygdala, where their recollection can alert the body with a fight-or-flight response to instinctively protect a person from perceived imminent danger. If I were a primitive human being in prehistoric times, it might have saved my life. But today, it just gives me harmful panic attacks. And since the amygdala is a part of the brain that is not easily swayed by time or reason, the panic attack triggers remain firmly in place even when the entire rest of my conscious mind wants me to just get over them. I would like nothing more than to just finally be okay about what happened over a decade ago, and be unaffected by anything virt does. I'm not really a grudgeful person, and it is logical to find a way to put the issue to rest. The paradox is, even if he were to be the nicest, kindest person alive today, he won't be able to undo the panic triggers he gave me. We can't just unring that bell—I still have to live with those consequences. So does that mean I forgive him? I'd like to be certain of it, but I think there's a visceral instinctive part of me that may never quite be able to do so.
Truth be told, I doubt I would have any problem whatsoever with him now if not precisely for those panic triggers, and I'd surely get rid of them if I knew how.
In the unlikely event that virt ever learns of this journal's existence, Pong wants him to know that she doesn't think he's a jerk anymore. She hasn't in years. She thinks he's become one of the nicest people now. (Unbelievable. Why couldn't I have first met that nice virt to begin with? Instead, I only met the online sex offender and his psychotic entourage, and never wanted to see, hear or speak to him again. Those are memories I could do without.)
