Nutcase: A True Story About Being Cyber-Bullied

A few weeks ago I was contacted out of the blue by a man called Gilbert Ohanian. He'd found my name and email address somewhere and for some reason he wanted me to read and review his book. Little did I know, when I agreed, how batshit fucking crazy this guy was. I have since learned.

The emails that began it all.

He seems fair nice and reasonable here, right? So I read the book and then I did what I always do when I read a book, I wrote a review. You can read it on Goodreads or on Amazon if you're interested, but suffice it to say that I am not a fan. Then I went to bed and thought no more of it. Until the next day.

When I woke up, I noticed I had a couple of notifications on Facebook. I can't think why, but one of them stood out to me a bit more than the other.

Morbo?

Yeah, it was the one about destroying me. I was particularly intrigued, because I haven't even posted anything on that page in a while. So that's the one I looked at first.

No, not the scammers list!

As you can see, I was a little confused at first. My second comment, which may be a little confusing to you right now, was made after I checked that other notification. This is what I saw.

Patt Lep and Carla Bowyer, two people who definitely exist.

It turns out though, that wasn't the full story. See, there's an interesting quirk of Facebook where if you block someone, they can't see your comments, even comments on their own posts. Apparently Mr Ohanian was not aware of this (and still doesn't seem to have worked it out), so he posted comments directed at me and then blocked me with some (but not all, for some reason) of his sockpuppets.

You may feel it unfair of me to state so confidently that these accounts are sockpuppets; They may be friends of his, or even fans. I admit, that is a possibility. But as you read on I think you'll agree that it's unlikely.

I then went to check my email and discovered that I'd also been contacted on Google Plus. Now, my Chestnuts review never actually made it to Google Plus, so the comment is on a totally unrelated post, and it doesn't actually mention Chestnuts or Gilbert Ohanian, but I think you'll agree that there are some fairly suggestive similarities.

I still don't know where the racist/misogynist stuff came from.

So maybe Didier Rabette is a real person who hates me for some totally unrelated reason. Maybe. It's possible. But it's definitely another one of Gilbert's sockpuppets, right? Right.

I didn't hear anything more for a couple of days, but then I decided to show the harassing posts to my sister, because I thought she'd get a laugh out of it, so I got her to load it up on her computer. That's when I discovered that I hadn't even seen the half of it. So I got her to screenshot it so I could see what was going on, and I responded to the invisible people. Again, that seemed to be the end of it. Until today. Today is when shit got real.

I love how he posted the same link four times.

That picture "Marvin" posted there is Daniel Perry, his punishment for the heinous crime of having clicked "like". I assume it's a public photo, because I doubt Gilbert has the skill to find anything that's actually hidden. I should point out that all my contact info (Facebook, G+, blog, email, etc.) is really super easy to find, I just post it everywhere, so if you're thinking it took any internet detectivery to find me, it didn't.

That was just the tip of the iceberg though, as I discovered when I checked my email.

47, I think. You count them.

I've posted 68 reviews on Amazon. Gilbert commented on 47 of them. Before you start applauding the effort though, you should realise that 45 of them were exactly identical and presumably just copied and pasted.

Wait, people would pay me to write reviews?

There's so much wrong with this (beyond the simple factual inaccuracy of all of it) that I don't know where to start. I mean, who would pay me to write reviews of books I hadn't even read? Why would negative reviews be more expensive? Who's paying me to talk shit about someone else's book? Why would anyone do that?

You can see why he's so worked up about one bad review though. I mean, I am an Amazon Top Reviewer.

Woo! 210,716th!

With that ranking, it's almost certainly possible that someone will read my review and decide not to buy the book because of it.

As for the ones that weren't copy and pasted, "Book Ninja" wrote this one first, presumably before thinking of the rest.

I think he realised after this one that being a paid reviewer isn't actually bad.

And Ohanian actually posted one under his own name (on both Amazon and Goodreads).

Information about me on my own website. Clear sign of narcissism.

I recommend giving that one a read, because it's probably the craziest of the whole lot (Facebook comments included). I mean, he starts by claiming that he never sent me the book. I still have the emails, Gilbert! And in case there's any doubt on that score, here's the details showing that the email with the book came from the same weird address as the original offer.

What sort of email address is that?

The craziest part though, is that even after saying that he would probably come to Australia to beat the shit out of me if it weren't for all the animal hunting (which he hates), I think he genuinely feels like he's the victim here. I don't want to go all armchair psychiatrist on you here, but I'm totally going to. As I mention in my review, Ohanian seems to see all conflict as bullying, and himself as always the victim. So it's simply not possible that I don't like his book for the reasons I stated, I must be bullying him.

And as well as posting that same comment on Amazon, he also had a little conversation with his sockpuppet,

"I sure do agree with that thing I just said!"

The odd thing about this one is that deleted comment here. Since it was my review and I have email notifications on I got a copy of it anyway.

Why would you replace that with the copy/paste one?

And that seems to be it for now, but I have the feeling that this crazy train isn't likely to stop there. Especially not now that I've reported his accounts on Amazon. I'd have reported his Facebook ones too, but I don't know how to report someone I can't see or interact with. Knowing Facebook, you probably can't. But I'll be sure to keep you updated as the saga unfolds.

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Small update (2015-01-15): Gilbert posted on Goodreads again to claim that none of this had anything to do with him and to reiterate that he couldn't care less what I think about his book.

If the excerpt was totally unrelated to the subject, why was it in the book?

So I review his book and then suddenly get harassed about it, then he writes an angry "rebuttal" to my review, but the harassment had nothing to do with him. Sure. My favourite part is how he thinks I was seriously bragging about being ranked 210,716th. I notice he also didn't address the fact that I have proof that he actually did send the book to me and he blatantly lied about it, but what could he possibly have said to that?

Is this the end? Or will Gilbert continue his insane crusade against one bad review of his terrible book? Find out (if I update this post again)!

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Update the second (2015-01-15): You know how Facebook has that "other" category for messages sent to you by people who aren't on your friends list? Turns out you don't get notifications for those, so I only just realised I got these.

Getting good mileage out of that one photo they found of Daniel.

Apparently Terry and Daniel got some of these too, for being my "partners in crime" (ie. clicking "like" on my original post). My favourite bit is the one where they call me "Mathew Halls". Usually it's my first name people misspell. Here are the ones Daniel was sent.

I guess they did find more photos.

I thought for a moment I was Daniel's boss, but I guess he actually works for this Mathew Halls guy.

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Update 3 (2015-01-15): I didn't mean to post so many updates all at once, but I just checked my email and found this.

Anonymous, aka. Gilbert Ohanian pretending to be his own son.

I checked, and that does actually seem to be a highschool email address. I'm not cropping it out of the pictures though, because that "if anyone finds out my email address I'll be suspended" thing sounds like a transparent attempt to get me to remove the evidence that Gil actually sent me the book himself, because he never backed off on that bizarre claim.

I'm really hurt that GloZell Green Simon probably wouldn't like me though. It's been my lifelong ambition to become friends with some YouTube comedian I've never heard of. I'm looking forward to reading this blog he's going to start though. I had a hateblog written about me one time before, but that was just Haug, it doesn't count.