Robert Palmer is literate. Smoetimes.

On Twitter, someone by the name of @jlbc3 posted messages to about 85 percent of the users I follow, saying:

You know Robert Palmer? He’s one of the biggest arseholes you’ll meet. I’m going to call his boss & ex boss to say so.

The user isn’t following anyone, has no followers, and otherwise has no metadata (a location or URL, for example).

While I’ve grown accustomed to the level and tenor of Twitter spam, this appears to ratchet things up a notch. To the point, I have to say, where it might not be spam at all. Someone — it would appear — is deeply upset with me, and has decided to vent that upsettedness by posting anonymous Twitter messages to everyone I know.

For example, if it is spam, the very first message is curious:

@roberpalmer Still up the biz with Miriello? I’m not surprised, screwball that u are. You really ought to get a life before I tell your boss

While the majority of the messages were the same, sent around the same time, and were probably generated by a script, this first message (while addressed to a misspelled version of my username) knows enough about what I’ve posted online to name a place where I used to work. As an aside, I don’t think I’m really still “up the biz” with them, not that I really know what “up the biz” means. Taking into consideration the use of the Britishism “arsehole,” the messages’ author is perhaps someone in the UK. All the people I know there are really quite lovely.

Moreover, the message was sent to everyone from personal friends to Stephen Colbert, which would suggest that an automated script went and processed all the Twitter people I follow, rather than picking and choosing individuals for maximum hurting. In fact, one current client that I follow (and who follows me) was omitted from the distribution list.

The threat in the message, overall, is benign. Still, it’s bothered me enough to get me up early to write this. Since I work for myself, my boss is me. My “ex boss” is Ron, whom I enjoy a genial relationship with. In either case, I’m actually very comfortable with this individual making these calls, since I know at least I’d like to talk to this person.

Hopefully I’m the only one affected by this quirk of the Internet. In any event, I feel like I should apologize for this happening. I don’t want to be a bad person. If someone thinks that I am, I’ve no idea what I’ve done to deserve this sort of publicity. If anyone has any problem with anything I’ve said, done, or posted, I hope they feel comfortable enough to talk to me about it, or at least post something with a name or email address attached.

Sorry, everyone. I’m happy to listen, happy to talk, and happy to put this behind me.

Update (Sep. 12): It looks like Twitter has removed @jlbc3’s account, so the Twitter links in this story will take you to an error page. If I had to guess, this means the whole thing was just a scripting exercise for someone, and I made a mountain out of a molehill. Still — I’d rather have made a mountain out of it than dug myself into a hole by doing nothing. Hopefully it’s not the start of a spammy trend.

3 months ago