Comments on: Be Careful Who You Poke

By: lansing wedding photographer

lansing wedding photographer — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:59:22 +0000

i haven’t been poked in months, thank God

By: fiona

fiona — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:18:07 +0000

Last time I checked you could poke someone on FB who is not on your friend or network list. The option to poke is still there.

By: Reader

Reader — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:13:13 +0000

1. Stalking can often occur at the breakup of a long friendship. As a result, there are often many arenas of “unfollowing” to be negotiated. It’s easy to forget some of the places you are connected, especially if contact has not been made regularly, or only at sign-up, through that avenue.

2. “Unfollowing” can be provocative and force a stalker into covert following or push them to other extremes (remember, they’re not healthy; they are stalking). Many choose not to block but ignore. It does help keep tabs on the sitation/one’s safety.

3. Twenty years of tech expertise here and I find Facebook’s security features far more convoluted/less straightforward than most. FB is invested in keeping your info open so that they can offer it to advertisers. Therefore, it is not in their interest to put the security features up front and make them easy for *anyone* to use, and they don’t!

By: OddNumber

OddNumber — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:09:36 +0000

I think they both were negligent by not blocking each other. Many people post personal information on their facebook pages and you’re enabling someone to mess with you by not blocking them taking advantage of the very well known security features on facebook. Not smart.

Also, from the other side of things, it is plain common sense that contacting them online is the same contacting them via a phone. Not smart. Yes, a poke is one of the lowest forms of communication, but in the case where a person fears for their life a poke could be quite intimidating.

By: Trabb's Boy

Trabb's Boy — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:55:51 +0000

I’m disturbed by the reaction of the commenters. If there is a restraining order against the person, she’s supposed to leave the plaintiff alone. The fact that he didn’t is not just a violation of the restraining order,it is an indication that she is unable to control herself, which means she may be a danger to the plaintiff. The plaintiff is smart not to block the person — leaving her facebook page the way it was gave him/her the equivalent of an alarm.

By: Skipweasel

Skipweasel — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:41:47 +0000

“Whom you poke”, Shirley?

By: Gail Pink

Gail Pink — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:25:26 +0000

The most obvious question can really not be stressed enough: Why is she FaceBook friends with a stalker / person she has a restraining order against?

By: not an artist

not an artist — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:25:20 +0000

Um, “little known option”– Seriously, if you don’t know about the many security features online, you shouldn’t be there. Blocking, or defriending, or making your profile ultra private are ways to protect yourself from crazies.

Its not even hard to set up. You go under the privacy section.

By: buddhaflow

buddhaflow — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:18:12 +0000

I’ve been stalked before. It sucked. I ended up having to leave my apartment because of it. She still has my email, and she sent me loads of harassing messages.

But you know what the beauty of email is?

You can just ignore it. It’s so, so easy to just not hit reply.

This charge is ridiculous, and makes a mockery of “restraining order.”

By: OhYes

OhYes — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:23:37 +0000

Seems like the “victim” wanted this to happen. Just block the dude and be done with it. If she doesn’t now how to block and defriend people, she shouldn’t be on the internet because she probably doesn’t know how to do anything.

It’s also possible that the person forgot their stalker was on their list. Reasonable, I guess, but why go through the courts for something so silly as a poke? Block and be done with it.

By: Felipe Venancio

Felipe Venancio — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:09:21 +0000

Why de-friend or block when all you need to get the person arrested is wait until it send you a msg (or a poke)? It smells like vengeance.

By: felixthecat

felixthecat — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:00:59 +0000

“Victim Precipitation”

If someone is “sophisticated” enough to open a Facebook account, they ought to be able to summon that wee bit of mental energy needed to block or de-friend someone.

By: Ellie

Ellie — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:57:16 +0000

As someone who, in the past, has had to take out a restraining order against a stalker, my sympathies are definitely with the plaintiff.

Some people are not sophisticated enough with regard to computers to understand how to defriend or block folks. But the person who did the poking knew exactly what she was doing. It was provocative – apparently deliberately so.

The person who stalked me, by the way, did everything possible to get around the restraining order and I had to have her arrested finally. Sometimes that is what it takes to get a person to recognize and honor appropriate boundaries.

If it hasn’t happened to you, you have no idea how intimidating it can be to have someone constantly intruding in your life who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “no”.

By: hearsetrax

hearsetrax — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:55:21 +0000

further proof we ought to be allowed to hunt certain type of people for the grins of it

By: JimRL

JimRL — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:37:28 +0000

HAHA I’d say I have never heard of anything so ridiculous but the world we live in today it’s not that surprising is it!

By: Aeris

Aeris — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:08:06 +0000

That’s just brilliant and made me laugh… thank’s for making my day. I do agree though, instead of filing a complaint about this I would have tried the blocking option first. Either the other person is somewhat slow or just WANTS it that way.