Thursday, August 18, 2011

The DM / Mabus Affair Explained

Check out this excellent summary of the take-down of infamous internet troll/spammer/nutjob/threat David Marcuse, also known as DM or Dave Mabus.

Case Study: How a Notorious Spammer Was Brought Down via Twitter

As a relative of a few mentally ill people, I feel for his family for what it must be like to live with him, but considering his obsessiveness, I do think he may be one of the rare internet nutters who could escalate to violence.  I hope he gets the psychiatric care he needs, and if not, at least he may have learned a lesson in the difference between protected speech (Canadian style) and illegal speech (death threats).

5 comments:

KJ said...

I assume you got spammed by him too, did you ever receive any elaborate death threats? I think the best ones that I got were along the lines of:

'shred - we are going to exterminate you and your family

RANDOM CAPTAL LETTERS

*CLOBBERING TIME*'

Things like that.... I hope he gets the treatment he obviously needs.

LadyAtheist said...

I only got one spam from him. I don't know whether to take that as an insult or a compliment!

ex-minister1 said...

thanks for the post. I didn't realize how wacked out he was. He was first on my blog 10/2011 and I get a post one or twice a month. He introduced me to Randi which was cool. I expect he didn't mean to do that.

LadyAtheist said...

That's kind of ironic!

Skeptics books were the final step to atheism for me. I had always been somewhat skeptical but the social pressure to believe made me want to try hard to fit in. Reading "Not Necessarily the New Age" and then Randi's "Flim Flam" helped me frame my skepticism as uh... skepticism.... and then I realized I was skeptical regarding the supernatural claims of the Bible which are just as ridiculous as other supernatural claims.

Anonymous said...

Ironically, that picture of Mabus has a problem.

Its not Mabus.

That picture started its rounds on PZ Myers blog.

I don't know who it is.

Bertram Cabot Jr.