Although this seems to… come with being a girl gamer, it doesn’t mean that I have to put up with it.
No one said that I had to like it.
I’ve had at least one person admit to saving pictures of me (that I’ve publicly posted on social media, but this sort of behavior is highly inappropriate to begin with, especially if you’re a man doing any of this to a woman) on their computer, hate-watching my streams and taking screenshots of me while I’m live, making fun of my children and me for being disabled, and — along with a friend of his — actually telling me that I should end my own life and murder my children. These are not the kind of people that I want to be interested in me in any capacity because this behavior practically screams stalkerish incel, is cruel and unnecessary, and is usually the precursor to other, worse behaviors that tend to at least attract the attention of law enforcement. I screenshot some of his Tweets and posted them on Twitter, especially if he ever actually follows through on anything that breaks or would break the law, or — the worst of all, God forbid — actually attempts to do something to me in person, or succeeds. This is the kind of world that we are living in, folks…
There are reasons that I am uncomfortable with meeting a lot of people from the Internet, and this practically screams all of them. I wouldn’t mind going to a few conventions or meet-ups that I already know are, or would be, safe, but I still have difficulties wrapping my mind around meeting someone that isn’t from this area who’s from the Internet in person. Once I find a more subtle way to post about it to avoid it being searchable, I might post about the one long-distance relationship that I at least tried to be in, finding out that his family was hiding critically important things from me and… other people in general, and had to be the one to report them to various authorities. They seriously wanted me to keep these things “secret” for them.