folk-rock groupie / gym rat / molecular biologist

I need to start out today's post with some technical some background. Try to stick it out because it's important to understand the rest of what I'm going to tell you, which should be pretty interesting to anyone who reads this blog with any sort of regularity.

I first need to explain, the best of my ability, what an IP address is. Basically, for the purpose I'm talking about it here, an IP address is a multi-digit number used to identify computers on the internet. It's not as simple as 1 computer = 1 IP address, though. Most service providers (AOL, Comcast, etc.) assign users a new IP address every time they connect to the internet, so a person's IP address can change. So a different IP address doesn't necessarily mean a different user or computer. To complicate matters, some businesses and other service providers use proxy servers that make all the users on their system seem to have the same IP address. Thus most people have IP addresses that will change periodically. And it's formally possible, though extremely unlikely, that people could appear to have the same IP address if they worked together or were in some other situation where they might be using the same proxy server.

Now that you know what an IP address is, you should know that I can find out the IP address (and some other information) of anyone visiting this site from my site meter and I can find the IP address of anyone who posts a comment from the service that hosts my comments.

I should also tell you that using an IP address, you can find the service provider from which it originated using a whois site, like this one.

If you're internet savvy, none of this should be a surprise. It's all standard.

So, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you might have noticed, as I have, that the comments over the past year have gotten increasingly... weird, for lack of a better word. I've received praise, criticism, and even insults that have been oddly personal considering these people are strangers. Comments have been surprisingly (to me at least) opinionated, tangential, and sometimes, just plain hard to follow. People have seemed, to a large degree, unable to form what I consider to be a rational, coherent argument (based on wild generalization or falsiications such as claiming to have watched EVERY Tegan and Sara video on YouTube. It's not possible. There are 3,530), or at times, even a sentence that makes sense ("I am not saying it is nature. I do believe it is very complex mixture, but the orientation is highly nurtured." What are the first and second IT's referring to? Homosexuality? If so, how is that different than the orientation you seem to be trying to contrast it with?).

In the past couple months, this blog has essentially become about me defending myself against these comments. It's been frustrating and exhausting. After my last post, where I very carefully tried to explain why I don't care for the idea of boy music and girl music and most gender roles in general, comments quickly devolved into the party line bullshit we've all heard OUR WHOLE LIVES and don't need to hear again, about how "Most guys who are more into chick things are usually gay. Most girls that are into guy things are usually lesbians." The people posting this myopic nonsense were people who have posted similar nonsense in the past, "Josh" and "Carl". I saw something in these posts I'd seen before, though. One person posts how they disagree with me, and then someone else posts about how they agree with the other person's post.

For the first time, sadly, it occurred to me that maybe these comments were written by the same person.

This, my friends, was just the tip of the iceberg.

Using my comment management log (which I'd never even looked at before), the first instance of more than one comment, supposedly made by different people, but using the same IP address was in response to my post on 10/20/06, over a year ago. "Dan", "JT", "Earl Dee", "Carrie", and "Charlotte" all posted from IP address 71.229.212.181, which whois tells us was generated by "Comcast Cable Communications, Inc. COLORADO-21 (NET-71-229-128-0-1)", which isn't a proxy server, so this IP address most likely represents a single user. The comments they wrote were pretty benign, if a little weird and narrative for a blog comment, but whatever. Most of them wrote about The Grudge 2, which I had written about in my post. "JT" wrote that he "liked the new, improved, and scarier Grudge 2!" and "Carrie" wrote that she also liked "the new, improved, and really scarier Grudge 2!" (I noticed this and thought it was weird at the time, but WHY didn't I pay more attention?!?). "Dan" and "Charlotte" hated it, though.

"Carrie" piped up in response to my post on 11/07/06 and mentioned that she was "Sorry to hear that someone is parading around the internet as you.", which is extremely ironic. "Jason" insulted me ("You seem like a capable man. However, dancing weekends away in a night club (buzzed & bored) makes it seem like you are in some self imposed and self limiting gay ghetto limbo.") and then tried to flirt with me and told me that he "Might even be able to help you out with your financial concerns. And no ...not in that way!" WHAT? Both used the the same 71.229.212.181 IP address, of course.

Things started to turn sour in response to my post on 11/09/06 about my frustration that referendum I, which would have created domestic partnerships for same-sex couple in CO, hadn't passed. "Josh" wrote about how he was just happy his parents accepted him and that I "need to cut people some slack" concerning their being uncomfortable with gay marriage. "Kent" revealed that he is 38, lives in Denver, is "discrete but out" and wrote about the "inablity of gay men to form strong bonds". Needless to say, disagreements ensued and you can read that if you want. "Debbi" chimed in (the first of many appearances in my comment section over that past year) coming to my defense and in response, "Kent" conceded, "Maybe I am a bit jaded. Maybe I live in a parallel universe and all the whole gay men are in your universe. I do not live in Denver and am actually 15 miles south of San Francisco, hardly a location where gaydom raises an eyebrow." I pointed out his discrepancy, (Does he live in Denver or doesn't he?), but he didn't respond and I forgot about it. WHY didn't I see what was happening?! And yes, all of these comments were written from the same IP address, 71.229.212.181.

Over the course of the year, the names and IP addresses slowly changed (though they all seem to originate from Comcast in Colorado), but the pattern did not; In response to something I wrote, somebody would about how they strongly agree or disagree, and then someone else would write from the same IP address how they agree or disagree with the first person. "Jason", "Vrill", "Sherman" (who describes himself as in his early 40's), "Mike", "Josh", "Nick", "Debbi", blah blah...

In response to my post about Tori Amos on 2/20/07, "Josh" went on a misogynistic rant and tried to insult me by writing things like "The fact that you, as a GUY, would view her as an influence in your life is slightly scary." and, "Good God Chris, grow some balls and begin to hang out with secure men." I told him I was shocked and disgusted by what he wrote and he wrote later that "As gay men we need to begin to see ourselves more as men and not watered down with estrogen in everything outside of our sexual activities. Perhaps it is my own gay issue, but I am tired of how women really seem to dominate our lives. I love women as women but really desire the masculine spirit in my life. I apologize if I took this out on you guys." "Nick" subtly insulted me about how I spent my time in Hawaii but "Debbi" was into it. He and "Debbi" had both been to Maui (funny, huh?) too. "Debbi" complained "When I was there a couple of years ago with my boyriend, all he wanted to do was play golf, get drunk and then have sex. There was a great spa that I went to every day and felt like a Princess. ", while "Nick" told us that "Maui has some great golf courses and when I have been there I have tried to play around at least once." and went into more detail about where, exactly, he likes to play golf there.

I mean, CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS SHIT?

In the comment section linked to my post on 4/18/07, "Nick" and "Debbi" compared notes about their visits to Spain (Those two have apparently traveled to a lot of the same places), while "Carl", in a daring first appearance, wrote "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." before "Josh" told him to "Chill baby and give CJ a break. This is just a blog." Beside the fact that it's crazy as bat shit, it's also noteworthy because they write from the same IP address in this instance (67.177.223.58, Comcast, Colorado again), identifying them, mostly likely, as the same person.

"Jim", "Carl", and "Mark" all agreed that Tegan and Sara suck (see 10/4/07). "Mark" went so far as to tell me he thinks I need to "grow some hair on those balls" (Where's "Debbi" when I need her?) and they all made poor arguments about why Tegan and Sara suck and Brittney's better. Well, "Mark" didn't really like any of them.

My post on 10/9/07 erupted in a personality-disorder, commenting, free-for-all with "Kent", "Marcel", "Mark", "Debbi", "Sullen", "Jessica", "Mike", and "Conner" all weighing in on the boy music / girl music topic and contributing 10 of the 16 comments, spread out over three IP addresses (67.177.223.58 again, 67.190.35.15, and 76.25.226.125 - all Comcast, Colorado).

And, as I told you before, it was "Josh" and "Carl"'s recent narrow-minded blather concerning homosexuality and gender roles in response to my post on 11/10/07, that tipped me off. And, I wouldn't believe it if I wasn't seeing it with my own eyes, but as I've been writing this, "Debbi" has come to my rescue to ask "Josh" and "Carl", "What is with you guys hammering away on gay guys and girl things. Lighten up." Atta girl, "Debbi". This time, all of their IP addresses (70.14.244.173, 68.241.141.19, 70.2.222.152, 70.2.162.22) trace back to Sprint PCS. Somebody's got a new cell phone!

So there you have it; For at least the past year, a huge part of this blog has been a farce created by a person with so little regard for others that they will betray what little trust we lend strangers. It's sad, pathetic, and disgusting. This person needs help. What's more, I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't the same son-of-a-bitch who was fucking with me a couple years ago ("Max"/"Derrick" - they turned out to be the same person too) and who was probably stealing my pics last year.

I feel better, though, now that I've figured it out. I was starting to wonder why I was having so much trouble being understood by these people, why some of them were so insulting and others so gushing, and I can see all of the insecurities this person tried to project onto me for what they are. I was thinking after I read the comments on my last post that I was just going to have to take the commenting down altogether. Hopefully I won't have to do that now.

I hope everyone who reads my blog is able to learn from this. So much of my time and energy and the time and energy of people who read this blog has been wasted. Needless to say there will be new restrictions to commenting on this blog coming soon.