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be famous enough the minor goddesses clamor for your random gifts

- goddess wisdom anthology

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Those who think they can use the Internet to terrorize people and hide behind the anonymity of the net and outwit law enforcement should think again, The Department of Justice will be relentless in its efforts to identify, arrest, prosecute, and punish the perpetrators of these horrendous acts and seek justice on behalf of their victims.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Blanco

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SEP 2, 2013: Ditmas Park, Brooklyn

She had worked for a couple of months in a restaurant in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. She started seeing Sufjan around, he would come in to the restaurant on a regular basis. She lived just a couple blocks away and she later found out so did he. She didn’t know who he was at the time but noticed him because he always acted oddly when she was waiting on him, really nervous and jittery. It seemed like he might have a little crush and she thought he was kind of cute. She found out who he was when she saw his name on his credit card and realized her sister was a fan of his music.

One day he called in a to-go order to pick up, but it showed his whole name and number on the caller id. She thought it was really weird that he wouldn’t have a private number considering hipsters seemed to know who he was and he was kind of awkward and shy. She would frequently see him walk by and quickly look in while she was working, like trying to see if she was there. She also started getting a lot of hang up calls from private numbers during all her shifts.

During this time she went online to check him out and found his blog. There wasn’t much there, just random pics and grammar critiques, but then one day something weird happened. She ran into him at their neighborhood cafe. He acted more jittery than usual. He ordered his coffee to go but then sat in the seat at the table next to her. He was turned slightly away from her but kept making quick glances over his shoulder, tapping his foot frantically and rubbing his neck in a nervous, self-soothing sort of way. She got the sense he was trying to think of something to say to her, but after a few minutes of his odd behavior he got up and left. She spent the day feeling really weirded out by the energy of the interaction. Later she looked at his blog and just an hour after he had left the cafe he posted this:

She had gotten into the habit of reading the comments people left on his posts (yes, she had a crush now, too). a lot of them were really bizarre and even kind of insulting, but in a familiar sort of way. She kept feeling like maybe these bloggers were real life friends of Sufjan’s? After he posted the emotionally wrought post from above, one of the blogs she had a feeling might be a friend of Sufjan’s posted a comment saying “Sufjan in love.” she was like whaaaaaaaaat??

This blogger also thought the post was uncharacteristic for Sufjan, saying it might be the most personal post he’s ever made:

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WTF?

He didn’t come in again for another week and when he did, again, it was the same story as the last time, jittery nervousness, etc., right down to the out of character emotional outpouring on his blog just an hour after they saw each other: 

Then two days later this post “i want to hold you but i got this problem.” apparently the problem of slicing people you hold apart? (enchanting ghost anyone? Did you cut your hands on me? Are my edges sharp? Am I pest to feed?)

Again the other blog runs its weird commentary… the world is death, etc. (a theme that later shows up on Sufjan’s personal blog.)

The narrative was getting fucking weird and she was becoming more and more fascinated with whatever it was that was going on. She had no clue really. At this point is seemed relatively harmless, but he definitely seemed troubled. She was torn between being totally concerned for him and still crushing on him, as well as feeling like she had become a real life character in some bizarre mystery novel.

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WTF? Squared

She’s confused about the nature of the unfolding narrative. She’s beginning to feel worried for him. whatever he’s going through it feels kind of big, considering his odd behavior and emotional social media outbursts. After their last meeting at the cafe some time goes by where she doesn’t see him and she’s wondering if he’s ok.

She finds on his blog a photo that is an exact replica of a photo she had taken and posted to her travel blog two years earlier. It’s of just an ordinary intersection, in Hong Kong. The resemblance between their photos is eerie. Remember this detail because its importance will become clear later in the story. 

This coincidence is just too wild for her to wrap her mind around. She’s a romantic and loves to get swept away. The whole narrative, although a bit weird, is also starting to feel like some cosmic meme about following signs from the universe to meet your destiny. Who knows if any of that crap is true, but it’s fun believe (or make believe) in it. So she decides to take a chance and ask him out. He had been calling in To-Go orders as “Steve” and she saw his actual name (Sufjan Stevens) and number on the caller ID at work, so she risks it:

He didn’t answer the text but that morning he puts up the post shown below and captions to, “love your neighbor. all manner of love at any cost.” They’re neighbors so it feels poignant. Also, that morning he goes into the restaurant where she works for breakfast, after not having been in for a month. She wasn’t working but comes in shortly after he had left and the other waitress tells her he was there. 

Again the other blog has a lot of interesting interpretations on the meaning of Sufjan’s post, ending with “but why does it have to be so hard?“

He seems to be crafting a narrative about his selfish and self-hating proclivities. “I am a man with a heart that offends with its lonely and greedy demands.”

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Sufjan’s Private Life Consists of Bot Blogs, Paid Followers and 100s of Catfish

So, as I mentioned before, she was keeping an eye on a few blogs that seemed to have an odd way of interacting, with each other and with Sufjan’s personal blog. This one (averagecockerspaniel.tumblr.com) seemed to always have the inside scoop on exact location details for wherever Sufjan happened to be, even though this character claims to live in Germany.

He finds the exact location of Sufjan’s studio based on triangulation?

He finds the exact location of Sufjan’s video shoot based on a bathtub photo?

He finds the exact location of a hotel Sufjan’s staying in based on the curtains?

He figures out Sufjan is flying to arizona?

She also watches another blog that behaves oddly, pinknarcissus4.tumblr.com. this one manages to find the exact location of a restaurant Sufjan ate at based on a fortune cookie? And it just so happens this restaurant is only about half a mile from where Sufjan actually lives.

These two blogs also have strange interactions with each other. They always seem to be caught up in conversations where they’re mercilessly dissecting Sufjan’s motivations, intent and meaning, while insulting each other.

As the situation continues to become stranger and stranger there’s more on these blogs, and others, that seem to be very intimate interpretations of what’s happening in Sufjan’s personal life. She starts looking around at other fan blogs for “celebrities” to see if that’s how everyone acts towards their celeb “idols” for lack of a better term.

She looks around, and well, no, she’s not finding anything like it. in fact Sufjan’s page always has tons of comments and ideas about what he’s doing, saying or thinking, while the other celebs just have likes and reblogs, no comments… she’s beginning to get the sinking feeling that these other blogs are not just fans or friends of his. She’s starting to feel almost certain that they are actually him, and she’s becoming very very concerned for his mental well being.

(Below is an example of the kind of interactions these apparent catfish blogs are having with each other on a regular basis.)

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Marzuki Stevens & Friends with Benefits

Increasingly she is seeing his friends in the neighborhood and they are coming into the restaurant where she works. Their attention towards her is inordinate and anything but the business as usual style of relating to your server. It’s creepy and she’s starting feel like she’s on display. She guesses maybe he told them about the message she sent, but also wouldn’t he get plenty of attention like that? Maybe at first it would be a laugh for them all. She figures it will die down after a week or so. It doesn’t, the intensity builds.

These are the people most commonly involved. At the time most of them lived in Ditmas Park as well. (Oddly, most of them sold their homes and moved to Europe and the west coast two months after the first time I publicly posted this girl’s story, in late October, 2015.): Friend 1 Friend 2 Friend 3 Friend 4 Friend 5 Friend 6 Friend 7 Friend 8 Friend 9

Friend 10

One of her co-workers has a mutual friend with Sufjan, they’re friends on facebook, so she is connected to his friend through one degree of separation on facebook. At that time her account was mostly public and linked to her Instagram. She figures if there was any curiosity whatsoever on his part, bad or good, he could have easily found her that way. She wonders if she should try to test her theory. Soon after she finds her inspiration.

Sufjan posts a pic of some art he’s seen. Again, there’s an eerie resemblance to a photo she had posted years earlier, so the same day as his post she posts her photo on instagram. (Sufjan’s on the left, her’s on the right.) She figured it didn’t really matter, if he wasn’t looking at her Instagram or didn’t know who she was then he wouldn’t see it. If he was looking and reacted, she would know her instincts were correct.

The day after this, she's sitting in the neighborhood cafe reading. She glances up just at the moment a man with a little blonde girl is walking by. He’s on his way out but he pauses momentarily and stares her dead in the eye in a way that feels confrontational and menacing. She is shaken and trying to figure out WTF, but dismisses it. Next week on the same day the exact same thing happens with the same man and the same aggressive stare down. Now she’s kind of freaking out. Who the fuck is this guy? 

Suddenly she feels like she remembers his face. She googles Sufjan’s brother and there he is in the image search, the guy from the cafe. She also finds a photo of him with the kid, his daughter. 

After she saw Marzuki the second time, he showed up at her workplace that same evening. She wasn’t working yet. She came in 15 minutes after he left. The other waitress tells her he’s just left when she comes in to start her shift (She’s been updating the other waitress on the weird Sufjan drama, so now the waitress is updating her). A few minutes later she sees Marzuki passing outside the window. He looks in the window and makes direct and prolonged eye contact, menacing. 

The next night as she’s walking to work she wonders to herself, “Who is it going to be tonight?” A few hours after she starts her shift, Marzuki’s ex-wife, Lindsey Benson, comes in with their daughter and her current boyfriend. Lindsey is taking a lot of sideways looks at her and paying close attention to what she does and says. Lindsey’s boyfriend has a sheepish and embarrassed demeanor, as if he’s begrudgingly being forced to participate in this childish recon mission Lindsey has been sent on.

Over the next few months, this scenario with Marzuki plays out over and over again. She would see him many times a week in the neighborhood cafes and he would do his best to make sure she saw him. She can’t figure out what he wants.

All she can guess is that maybe Sufjan has fabricated some story and his friends are reacting based on that. What the story is, she has no clue, but clearly it has his inner circle feeling activated. She’s very confused, like what the fuck is actually going on here? She hadn’t seen Sufjan in a bit and now she’s getting drop in visits and death stares from his friends and family?  What is the story they’ve been given? Why is this even a thing?

Marzuki Stevens begins to feel like a persistent and menacing presence in her life.

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Is there an echo in here?

After this point all kinds of weird echoes start happening between his blog and her instagram. At certain points there’s a very obvious call and response pattern happening. Still, it’s relatively ambiguous so she starts to feel it’s all her imagination. She’s been mentioning it to friends, of course, it’s too weird not to, but now she starts requesting people pay active attention to her posts and his responses, to test if she is seeing things correctly… and no one thinks she’s imagining any of it. This coupled with all the strange irl experiences with him, his friends and his brother, it’s just becoming too over the top. What is this guy hoping to achieve? Why is he playing games?

At this point the “coincidences” between what she posts then what he posts become too numerous for me to list, but continue to stack up…

Finally she decides to do something more bold. At this point she feels certain that, for whatever reason, he’s paying attention to her online. She has seen him walk by her apartment through the window before. Her imagination is now running wild. Does he know where she lives? She posts on her instagram “I’m on the porch, come say Hi.” Half an hour later two of his friends go walking by her front steps. So many coincidences...

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Meeting Yourself on the Internet

She quits her job. In the position she’s in she can really only draw the conclusion that she is being messed with. For what reason, she can’t say. All she knows is that she wants it to stop. She’s still seeing all his friends and his brother on a regular basis. None of them have lost interest. It’s irritating to say the least and she’s beginning to feel frightened.

The call and answer posts between her Instagram and his blog come to a head, to the point that her friends are monitoring his blog incessantly. One day she is out of communication for 5 hours while on a flight. When she turns her phone back on it explodes with texts from her concerned friends.

She stops posting on instagram and makes her facebook completely private. Whatever this form of passive aggressive harassment is, she wants none of it. The last thing she deletes is a Tumblr account. The last thing she posted on it was Sia’s Chandelier video. She continues to watch the blogs to see if she can gather any more information about what exactly is happening and why. Soon after her Chandelier post, Sufjan posts a video with chandelier as a soundtrack then averagecockerspaniel immediately comments on the post saying “another cryptic message from Sufjan Stevens” 

Blogs that comment oddly start popping up and then quickly delete themselves.  A blog that had been started a couple of days earlier (goldenmeanie.tumblr.com, now deleted) comments on this post saying;

“What do you suppose the cryptic message could be? Discussing what’s art and what isn’t isn’t a reasonable topic? Says who (whom? for the grammar police)? What’s the meaning of life? Is that a reasonable topic? To make art? For what? To work your butt off just to die? For what? To love? What if you never can get to it? Maybe there’s no meaning to anything and we shouldn’t discuss any of it; we should just stare catatonically at a wall (or screen) all day and live inside our heads. That’s fulfilling. And why do you know everything about everything the man posts? But I do like those dancing pectorals and they do make me kinda wanna swing from a chandelier.”

She follows the link to the goldenmeanie blog and starts reading the posts. In utter horror she realizes what’s being written is the story of her experiences with Sufjan from her perspective. The tone is condescending, painting her as pathetic and desperate, sitting around and pinning for Sufjan to come and save her from her miserable life. One post as an example:

“… and that was the moment she decided to throw in the towel (for the 537th time), the moment she realized they really had nothing in common, the moment she realized there really was no way, the moment she realized she just had to forget- all this she realized as she worked her glutes at the gym, just like the time before, and the time before that. “But it can’t be so bad,” she told herself as she narrated in third person, “if he never picks you up, he can never let you down.” And she awoke to find it had all been just a dream, a horrible, nasty dream.

Now if she could just stop dreaming of kissing his lips, his soft, pink lips.

Am I total jerk, or do I just like things the way I do?”

The last line stuck with her. it almost seemed like the author’s aside, commenting to himself about whatever it was he was doing, whatever it was he was trying to punish her for. Tired of the bullshit she decides to take matters into her own hands. She starts a blog of her own and begins commenting on “her” story on the goldenmeanie blog, starting a conversation with “herself”…

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“Sarah Lyle” Sarah Gosset

She goes to the goldenmeanie blog and starts reading it. The writing that’s there has been written from her perspective about what has been happening between her and Sufjan. She creates a blog and leaves some comments to start a conversation and explore why this person is doing this. She communicates with this character for 4 days.

The character starts telling her in exact detail everything that has happened between her and sufjan, how many times and when she had deactivated her social media accounts, then recounts the details of a time she ran into Sufjan on the street one night, right down to her facial expressions and what she said to him verbatim.

WTF??? That confirms it; this IS about her and her “relationship” (I use that term loosely) with Sufjan and the person doing it is either: 

Someone she told the whole story to, about the mind games Sufjan is playing

Someone he told the whole story to, about the mind games he is playing

Or it’s him.

It being him is the simplest explanation. Why would any of his friends, or hers, care enough to sit online making fake blogs writing about her on the off chance that she may find it and interact? On the other hand, would an awkward and eccentric introverted guy with a master’s degree in fiction writing go online and write stories based off things happening in his real life? That seems pretty plausible.

After 4 days of tall tales and incomprehensible metaphors, she can’t stand wading through the lies anymore, him writing to her as if he is her and bending all the truths around, making her sound like a desperate and pathetic mess of a person that’s just waiting around for Sufjan to come into her life and save her from herself. She tells the character she won’t communicate that way anymore. she wants the truth. The character gives her a phone number out of Tacoma, Washington. 

She calls and a woman answers. She is reeling. Not only is this person fucking with her life and trying to humiliate her, he actually has people helping him do it. All the woman wants to know is:

“Who are you in love with?” 

Horrified by the cruelty of it she says, “What are you a coven of witches?” and hangs up. The character immediately posts again saying: 

“I’m curious about your witches comment. Have people been messing with you? For me it’s been a back and forth between just me and him. But nothing else. It’ll sound “out there”, but I’ve heard of people being “gang stalked”, where a group of people band together to make a person think they’re losing their mind. I read it in a Vigilant Citizen forum before they were shut down and it seems that a lot of people have experienced it, but nobody believes them because it sounds too absurd, and that makes them feel even crazier. Anything’s possible in this crazy world. There are spirits of another world that mess with us and these days nothing shocks me.”

Now that is waaaaaaaay fucked up. Not only are they mindfucking her now they are trying to plant the idea of gang stalking in her head??? What kind of psychological warfare is this? She does an information search on the number and it’s registered under the name, “Sarah Lyle” who she later discovers is actually Sarah Gosset.

She begins to feel persecuted and powerless, with no clue as to how to get this person (people?) to leave her alone. She’s living in a story that sounds too crazy to be true, so crazy in fact that she’s even having a hard time believing it herself. Things become very dark for her from this point forward. For the first time in her life she starts having suicidal thoughts. 

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‘Get it?’

She keeps following clues that lead her to more of the odd blogs. During her exchange with the goldenmeanie blog “Sarah” had put the phrase get it in quotes (’get it’), which she found odd. I’ve never seen anyone do that either. A few days later there was a commenter on Sufjan’s blog that also put ‘get it’ in quotes. She poked around on the blog a bit more and found posts that seemed to weirdly explain the way he was behaving on his personal blog with posts like this.

In this way she began to follow little breadcrumb trails he left to his other blogs. If you threw a pebble in one, so to speak, the ripple of that particular emotion or sentiment would run through them all. The waves of emotions each experienced were being experienced and written about simultaneously on all the blogs. If one was going through a “breakup” they were all writing about loss and heartbreak, if one had a new crush they were all discussing the excitement of something new, etc. Suddenly she was very deeply submerged in what appeared to be someone’s secret universe and she was having a lot of trouble fathoming it.

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Rabbit Psycho

Now it has become undeniable. There is something very very strange and unsettling going on and it has something to do with her. Everything she had been holding off judgments on was now conclusive.

She was on this guy’s radar.

He was running catfish blogs to mask his identity online.

He was watching all her social media.

He was using other people to help him with whatever it was that he was doing.

The post that her friends were talking about in their text messages from earlier, was a response from him in reference to something she put on her instagram, directly defending herself against his surreptitious attacks on her. He had essentially called her a loser so she changed the title of her instagram to “nobody going nowhere.”  A double negative. In response he changed the title of his blog to “my illuminating rabbit” with a rabbit lamp as the blog’s background and posts a photo of a grammar lesson and a caption about the double negative. From this point forward he begins to refer to her as “rabbit” and “bunny” in his harassing posts. averagecockerspaniel weighs in, as usual:

her friends are still watching the unfolding insanity:

On multiple occasions she stops posting on instagram and deactivates her facebook to get away from the creepy attention. After a few weeks she would usually return hoping he had lost interest in the game. She was pissed off and didn’t see why she should allow this disturbed person to run her off of all social media, after all that’s how most of us keep in touch with friends these days. She was new in NYC and wanted to be in contact with her old friends while establishing her new life.

Soon after his latest attack she deactivates all her accounts again. He doesn’t like being locked out of her private life (which he later makes clear) so he responds with this:

This has now gone far beyond annoying and confusing and is crossing over into downright abusive. Then something even more disturbing and unexplainable happens.

She’s at home, getting dressed for the day, she chooses a camo shirt to wear. Within 15 minutes this post goes up “Team camo. I’m hunting for rabbits. Run rabbit run. XO” This is the first clue in the terrifying discovery that he has somehow managed to hack her computer and is watching her through her web cam.

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"Mike”

She’s starting to become familiar with the characters he’s creating in his little blog universe. They all have their own flavor. The more she looks the more she finds. She even finds pockets of straight / gay porn bondage bdsm blogs, with a high emphasis on women in the subordinate / submissive position. Some even show woman being straight up beaten (it’s disgusting that you can just watch gifs of this stuff on tumblr).

Most of these blogs have been established for a long time and only post once in awhile. She notices a pattern, the ones that are targeted at her are the most emotionally volatile. They pop up new and start leaving erratic and off the wall sounding comments on his Sufjan.com blog. When she follows the links to their posts she finds more writing about her and the unfolding situation between them.

A month or so after the conversation with “Sarah” she finds another blog noway1000.tumblr.com with a similar narrative. Wanting answers, wanting an end to this bizarre game, wanting some form of truth, she leaves a comment. This character starts telling her the same story “Sarah” told her of a thwarted love affair… there’s some soul connection, manifesting through an internet connection, but for whatever reason they just cannot get near each other. He names this character “Mike.” 

She never mentions Sufjan’s name but the character continues to bring Sufjan up and steer the conversation back to him, trying to probe her for information about how she feels about Sufjan. (Are you in love with him? Why are you in love with him? Why do you think he’s special?) The tone quickly becomes shaming and violent. He calls her desperate, pathetic, delusional, a stalker and an erotomaniac. Halfway through their correspondence "Sarah’s” blog, which had been sitting blank for over a month, suddenly reactivates and joins the conversation, backing up "Mike” in his harassment, complete with bitstrip comics of “Sarah” saying she’s ready to throw down, with her fists up. At one particularly volatile part he forgets himself and says this (”Mike’s” comments in grey, hers in white):

Wow! The audacity. The arrogance. The self importance (maybe impotence is more like it?) It’s stunning coming from someone who presents himself to the world as a soft spoken man of God.

In his grand finale he goes on a 48 hour rant complete with conspiracy theories postulating that she is a government manufactured bot sent with the evil intent to destroy Sufjan Stevens’ life, and in fact that is satan’s greater purpose as well, sending out demons to extinguish Sufjan’s light and therefore one of god’s greatest assets.

This is 48 hours of him spinning off on his own, there’s no interaction from her whatsoever. This is going on while simultaneously on Sufjan’s personal blog he’s in some manic sounding fit of gibberish posts that resemble a schizophrenic’s word salad. He closes by saying "OMG someone revoke my tumblr privileges like now please.” Sufjan posts that the same morning as "Mike’s” final post in the 48 hour tirade.

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Love & Hate and the Conundrum of What is “Real”

The last interaction (where he was “Mike”) was fucking bonkers and all over the place. It went on for literally weeks. She saved all the dialogue even after they both deleted their blogs, because obviously something totally fucked up was going on. At the onset of the correspondence “Mike” was nice, he then became  aggressively inquisitive, then transitioned to insulting and degrading and then somehow flipped it into sexting? Whaaaaaaaat? 

After the sexting "Mike” continued on with degradation and humiliation. She rode the waves and followed his lead. All the while, when he turned violent, she made sure to reiterate, “I am not trying to hurt you. Why are you trying to hurt me?” She had no clue why he (them?) seemed to want to make her suffer. She didn’t even know him. Why did he even care? Again, whoever was writing this knew very intimate details about her life… her star sign, how clean she kept her apartment, private things about her social media accounts, even calling out specific posts she had up and their captions. She wanted to uncover more information, so she went along with whatever it was he had in mind, observing his direction and reactions.

She’s becoming acutely aware that he is indeed suffering from mental illness. Well, I mean, duh. Well-balanced people don’t just get online and dedicate themselves to terrorizing other people. She found more and more of his blogs talking about a constant desire to commit suicide, incessant manic depression, a lack of faith in the strength of his relationships and accounts of early childhood abuse, possibly molestation.

Her heart was breaking for him. Despite what he has been putting her through she still has been “getting to know” him in this weird way. She felt she understood why he was acting out like this… building an online fantasy life to escape the pressures of his real life where he’s a quiet and shy guy that just wants to be left alone to make music but he’s constantly recognized and hounded by everyone. He often talks of feeling used and not seen for who he really is in his relationships and because of being molested as a child he struggles with constant feelings of rage, shame and unworthiness, so he hates being idealized by his fans. In fact he hates his fans with a vengeance. They don’t know who he is at all and he’s tired of them all talking about him as if they own a part of him, speculating about his personal life and sexuality. It’s none of their fucking business and they make him want to quit music for good and disappear.

It’s killing her inside to be reading all this stuff, knowing he wants to die, knowing he feels alone. He’s sucked her into this world center stage but won’t allow her far enough in to actually try to make any difference. Every time she tries to offer support he slices her apart. He tells her she’s a muse being used, he’s just mining her life for material to write about, as he does from all his pathetic “fans” and she is not fucking special. In fact she’s the antithesis of special. She is ordinary, dull, untalented and ignorant. That’s why he enjoys fucking with her so much. He plays out this dynamic in little dramas he creates for his characters on his catfish blogs...

He posts links to the forms of control that sociopaths and narcissists use to manipulate their victims, letting her know she’s been had. He writes chapters and chapters of violent poetry exemplifying her idiocy and rubbing it in her face, mocking her for being so stupid as to think she could ever help him. 

She continues to bear witness to his mental illness, spinning out anonymously on the internet, unable to help in any way and terrified that sooner than later he will find the courage to finally kill himself or get caught so deeply in his delusions that he decides to make real his violent fantasies about her and act them out in real life.

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Borderline Personality Disorder

She is afraid, for herself and for him. She knows unchecked mental illness can often spiral out into terrible circumstances. His isolation has already enabled him to become so distanced from relating to people that he’s now engaging in stalking and cyber harassment. Not only that he seems to feel justified, even entitled to be doing what he’s doing. 

She starts doing serious reading on Borderline Personality Disorder, Manic Depression and profiles of stalkers and cyber bullies. She finds a wealth of information that describes the way he’s acting out in perfect detail. One example:

Even his catfish blogs begin to talk more openly about his delusions. Much of it is from the POV of his victim, as though she were talking to him, but often he flips and uses the same character to speak for himself (the first and second to last examples are written from his POV, the others are supposed to be her) In the last entry he talks about calling for her suicide, a common theme, where he suggests his torment of her is meant to push her into killing herself:

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St. Vincent AKA Annie Clark

By now she’s doing hours of detective work and digging, trying to get to the bottom of what he plans to do in his little game and how he’s doing it. She found dozens of blogs that were a part of his network, where he was obsessing over his ex-bandmate, Annie Clark, writing as though they were currently involved in a romantic relationship.

There actually is some evidence that while they were touring together he was kind of fucking with her head and leading her on. Her album Strange Mercy was written after she finally ran away to Seattle, ostensibly to escape his mind games, while a lot of his Age of Adz album seems to be a response to Strange Mercy. It’s difficult to decipher the true nature of their relationship, but if you go from the lyrics on the albums it sounds as if it was platonic yet close, where Annie wanted more, but sex and emotional abuse were insurmountable issues, most likely stemming from Sufjan’s early childhood traumas. Possibly it was their split that sent him over the edge and further into this strange Internet universe he’s created for himself.

Her song Actor Out of Work appears to be about his Borderline Personality Disorder style of love dysfunction – relating to people you feel strongly for in a love / hate way.

You’re a supplement, you’re a salve You’re a bandage, pull it off I can quit you, cut it out I think I love you, I think I’m mad

Many of his blogs dedicated to Annie often post Actor out of Work and tag it #mine

He responds to Actor out of Work with his song Pleasure Principle:

I never meant to cause you pain My burden is the weight of a feather I never meant to lead you on I only meant to please me, however

I’m nothing but a selfish man I’m nothing but a privileged peddler And did you think I’d stay the night? And did you think I’d love you forever?

They seem to do this throughout many of their songs, little shout outs to their tumultuous relationship, coded clues only likely to be understood by people close to them. For example; In Annie’s song Dilettante, (another song about head games, “Don’t make me wait. What’s so pressing you can’t undress me, anyway?”) there’s a line that says, “Wake up Avenue C.” There’s an Avenue C just a couple of blocks from where the girl lived in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. In light of all the other clues, after hearing this song she figured maybe Sufjan lived on Avenue C.

Then, Lo and behold!

In 2017, she was able to find public records that show Sufjan owns an apartment on Avenue C. Stranger and stranger “coincidences.” Her intuitions keep proving to be correct.