TOOLBAG TUESDAY

For years, philosophers have debated the greatest value of the Internet. Information? Communication?
For Sean, it would be posing as his ex-girlfriend to ask her friends about him.

Which brings me to Toolbag Tuesday: technology edition!!

Sean was crazy, a stalker and a hacker, and I happened to be an unfortunate pawn in his plan. And I fell for it.

Brittany told me all about Sean when we talked on the phone one day. We lived in different states, and I didn’t really keep up with her other than what was posted on her MySpace page. Yes Myspace! Sooo 2007!

We were talking on the phone because Brittany had deleted her MySpace page after Sean hacked in and read messages she wrote to other boys.
(Myspace….Facebook’s slutty older sister!!)

Brittany said Sean used to constantly look through her text messages and emails, and said she wouldn’t be surprised if she came home and found out that he had ransacked her apartment.

"I'm done with MySpace!" she said. "I don't want him knowing what I'm doing or where I am!"

As such, I was surprised to see that Brittany had created a new MySpace page two days later. There was a profile picture and everything. Her “about me” section? “I AM CRAZY!!!!”

I was even more surprised to see that she had sent me a message, with obvious grammar mistakes and girly abbreviations that didn’t sound like her at all.

Perhaps the following line in the message should have been a red flag:

“I am sooo bummed at the moment bc my phone is dead--i cant call anyone and i dont get my new one until tomorrow. so don’t call me.”

(Oh, YES I DID log onto MySpace specifically to find this message. It was sent three years ago.)
Sean goes on:


“i know you think that sean is a bad guy and that he is crazy but i am pretty crazy. what happened was: sean read the emails that i had sent to 2 of my guy friends and they were pretty over the top.
if he had written them to any girls--i would have flipped and broken up with him. i am now totally bummed and no phone and just sad. i know yall hate on sean but he is a really good guy and now he is over me. what do i do??”


I never noticed the irony of the “now he’s over me” part, considering he was so NOT over her that he created a fake MySpace page as her to message her friend.
(He spent time uploading a photo and filling out her favorite bands and everything.)

How was I supposed to respond to that message? There were several things wrong with it. First, I had never met Sean or even knew about him, so I couldn’t have “hated on him.”

Second, Brittany and I had just talked a day ago and I thought all this was resolved.

Third — and I do remember thinking this — when your phone dies, why do you need to replace it? Why not just charge it?

Nonetheless, I must have had other super important things to do like change my MySpace profile song, because I sent back a simple response, actually thinking that it was Brittany.

I wrote, “Well, if you’re scared he’s going to break into your apartment, then I would just forget him.”

An hour after I sent that, Brittany’s page was deleted.
Brittany and I laughed very hard when I finally called her and told her what happened, and we imagined Sean reading that response, probably red in the face and throwing things.

He never did break into her apartment, and she has since moved elsewhere and moved on.
Today, I called Brittany to chat about jobs and life and I told her that I was going to write about Sean in honor of Toolbag Tuesday.
I reminded her of the MySpace message he sent to me and I read it aloud to her. We laughed again.

“I would never write that!” she said, and I agreed.

It’s so weird that I decided to write about Sean today, she said, since he recently has been stalking her on Facebook.

(She didn’t get a page until this year because she didn’t want him to find her, and her profile picture has been a bowl of spaghetti until recently.)

Brittany said Sean found a birthday party “event” she had attended two years ago, and this week started commenting on all the pictures and writing on the event wall.

Sean also just sent Brittany a message, telling her that he misses her and knows she has a new boyfriend because the new boyfriend is in her profile picture and that’s fine and he hopes their future kids have the new boyfriend’s baby blue eyes. Which is creepy.

At least he sent it as himself this time.
I told her to lock her doors.

-Jenny