Just Ramblings

Image by Joe from Pixabay. I put this image here only for aesthetic purposes, it is pleasing to the eyes. It has no connection to the article.

There is something wrong with my online accounts. I just get this feeling when I'm on my Facebook News Feed or my emails … like things are so chaotic. Maybe the internet has really become chaotic, but every now and then, I wonder if I did something wrong somewhere. Like a program with a bug, my online life is just wonky. I'll always be looking for what's wrong, but today, I thought of how I should have ran my accounts.

I had this complete idea of how I would run my online life years before I started using the internet. I read a lot of things in the New York Times and Reader's Digest about how the internet worked, its dangers, and what to do to stay safe on the internet. They said you should not tell your real name, show your face, tell your age, tell your nationality, or tell your gender. They said the name you use on the internet should not expose any of these things. I obeyed all these things when I was starting out on the internet. However, I did not expect that the internet would become so big, and such an important part of everyone's lives. These days, Facebook requires everyone to use their real names and show their faces on their accounts. Sometimes, they even ask for IDs. Now, almost everyone is on the internet. There's a sense of importance for keeping online information accurate, meaning it should be as close to reality as possible. I have difficulty with this because I have so many accounts and I have so much information.

I cannot believe neighbors and people I meet randomly know what I do on the internet. I used to consider my online life as completely separate from my real life, completely irrelevant, not applicable, and even far out. It was just like a little house I was building with popsicle sticks, I would put it away and forget everything about it as I went on with my life.

Things have gotten crazy these days. Everyone is expected to be on the internet. You go out to renew a document or open a bank account, and they tell you to go home and "set an appointment online". As things go like this, I keep thinking about the stuff I wish I had done differently to avoid complications in my relationships, both online and offline.

My bio.

When I was new to the internet, I introduced myself as just "Charlene Delfin". My original plan was to write crime. No, not crime as in illegal activities. I mean, the book genre. Crime is a genre for books that are about gangsters, policemen, etc. I just thought I would be good at it because there were plenty of those where I grew up.

I read in several magazines that being a book author is like being a celebrity: you have to have a name. They said your name should be memorable. It took me a while to come up with a pseudonym, and then I thought, "Isn't Charlene Delfin good already? It sticks." So I ended up using my real name, but treating it on the internet like a pseudonym. A brand name. A name that is not meant to represent a person, but an idea. It is pretty obvious in my writings that I have a sense of self-detachment, I tend to not write about myself like most people write about themselves. I have been in the habit of addressing "Charlene Delfin" like someone would address a company.

I noticed later on, when I went to Blogger, that people searched for me through the keywords, "Philippines" and "author". So I began placing those keywords on my accounts. My old bio was, "Charlene Delfin is an author from the Philippines".

In our lives today, my old bio could fall under misrepresentation. Because Charlene Delfin is not my full name and I was not working as an author at that time. My full name is Charlene B. Delfin, with "B" standing for Battung. It has always been my real name. I was a 19-year-old girl who was reviewing for the Philippine Educational Placement Test and wishing to become a successful novelist. That should have been my bio.

All of my posts everywhere since early 2011.

I used to use social media properly, posting what was on my mind. When I was new, most of what was on my mind were my studies and my writings. So my earliest posts were like that, the chapters I finished studying and the stories I was writing. Sometimes, I shared movie scenes from YouTube, or commentaries about some article. Then I started getting added by boys who were like "hi" and treated me like some pretty girl. I will discover years later that most people actually find this very flattering and delightful, and patiently tolerate it as just humans liking some human. But at that age, I found it very annoying. I was young. I was like Wednesday Addams from the Netflix series, "Wednesday", seeing all boys as enemies and a major threat to my very existence.

The boys were silly, and liked to disturb me in the name of flirtation. Whenever I posted I was studying, or going to study, they would not stop sending me messages. So I created a new protocol for running my accounts: I would post something I was not doing, and I would not do what I posted I would do. When it came to writing projects, I posted them only after finishing them.

Posting the opposite of what I am really doing has become a habit, and I wonder if I can ever break it. I still do it, quite uncontrollably. I will try to resume posting what is on my mind.

On the other hand, is it really wise to just post what is on your mind? Imagine this, "The cats are screaming and flying, my family is yelling, I don't know where the stench is coming from, but I wanna cry myself to death." This is what was on my mind on most days this year. Or, "I'm hungry. The neighbor's dinner smells good." The neighbor might not like such a covetous post.

About Harvard.

Ever since I finished an edX course, I had written on my accounts that I studied at Harvard University. But I never went to Harvard University. It was just an honest mistake. I did not know how to edit the education section of my accounts yet, I thought you should just mention from which school your course was.

The MOOCs I took were, indeed, from Harvard University. Also, my professor in one of the courses allowed people who took his MOOC to join the network of Harvard University on Piazza, that is why I could remove "Harvard University" from my Piazza account once I decided to remove all claims of being from Harvard in my accounts  (it has been programmed into my account). I also have almost half the Harvard faculty as LinkedIn connections. But I never really went to Harvard University, it is too expensive and too far. I didn't even know that much about the university. As a kid, the only university where I dreamed of studying was Oxford University, because it was the closest I could get to Hogwarts.

My writing.

I was bad at writing. I had bad English grammar, I did not know proper formatting, and I had basic vocabulary. Even now, my classmates at UoPeople complain about my basic vocabulary.

I identified myself as an author, a novelist, etcetera, but I was not that good at writing. However, like they say, "Fake it 'til you make it." My writing has improved through the years. Still, my vocabulary level is inadequate.

I should not have published my books, and I plan to unpublish them because they are badly written. Do not buy them, okay? Do not feast your eyes on my old stupidity.

Claims of getting hacked, stalked, and whatever.

Nothing big really happened to me. My accounts did get hacked in those big hacks like in Yahoo!, Facebook, and others, but I was not the only one. I was not specifically targeted. I often got paranoid about getting targeted, but I was usually just attacked by accident. They were looking for someone else.

I shared a story with particular people last October about a guy that I had codenamed "Hacker". I have been studying him and his people these past months, and realized they were not targeting me. They do exist, but they were not after me. I do not know who it is they are after, probably one of my friends.

Right now, I get added by scammers on Facebook, followed by people who sell porn on Ello, trolled on chat rooms, and emailed by scammers and blackmailers. However, they are copies of things that happen to many other people in my circle. These scammers, porn people, and blackmailers are targeting a group I am a part of. The blackmailers do not even know my name. They keep guessing, but they do not get it right. They never address me as Charlene Delfin. It is hard for me to figure out which group it is they are specifically targeting because, as soon as I joined the internet, I made sure I would be part of every community. (My Facebook News Feed is kinda like United Nations, posts in various languages about various cultures.)

There is someone, though, who has been using some of my emails to sign up to websites. They used my Yahoo! email last 2020 to create a Facebook account using my name. They do not use any of my pictures, but they keep adding people with the surname "Delfin" and asking if any of those people knew "Isabela". Facebook has been sending copies of their activities to my email.

I should report them and have them suspended, but I am consumed by curiosity. "Curiosity kills the cat," the saying goes. But I am really dying to know who they are and what they want. Why are they using my identity to infiltrate the Delfin family, and who is Isabela?

An FBI agent, I do not remember the name, said on a Reader's Digest article about teens who got victimized on the internet (I do not remember the title either!) said people who become victims on the internet are the ones who are naively invincible. I do feel kind of triumphant that this fake Charlene does not seem to know much, but well … maybe I do not know what I think I know.

Continuing self-promotion.

I should have stopped running most of my accounts in 2017. Because being an indie author did not work out for me, and I had begun profiting from freelancing. I was able to get well-paying jobs, I no longer needed self-promotion.

In 2023, I decided to transfer to programming. I did not have an education in technology, so I went through the path of people who did not have an education in technology. I took up free coding courses, networked with other programmers, demonstrated my coding skills by building projects live and in public, and more. However, UoPeople gave me a scholarship to study Information Technology. I no longer needed to build my reputation as a programmer piece-by-piece.

When you have a master's degree in IT, you can get a job quickly. It is not guaranteed, but the way to getting employed will definitely be smoother, particularly in a country like the Philippines. It feels greedy of me to continue self-promotion, taking chances from people who finished only high school. That is why I should just stop self-promotion.

Right now, I am thinking of recreating my accounts to promote other people. The writers, programmers, and more. The people I used to interact with when I was still starting out.

It is not out of charity or anything, I just need to find something worthwhile to do with my accounts. Because I feel bad about just deleting them, they have a sentimental value. Yet I have been doing a lot of uselessness with them since 2017, spreading memes and annoying people. I was just increasing internet garbage.

Claiming to have schizophrenia.

I told the dean of 7 Cups Academy this year that I was "diagnosed with schizophrenia". It feels like the worst lie I ever told. I said it to have an excuse not to hold an AMA (ask me anything) meeting as a mentor because I was scared of trolls.

I have a crazy fear of trolls. Not because they make me want to commit suicide or give me nightmares, but because they always succeed at provoking me to turn into a monster, making me post in all caps in chat rooms and say swear words.

I do not like turning into a monster, it scares my friends and it makes me loathe myself. But the dean asked me to hold an AMA meeting, and I got frightened of the idea that my colleagues would witness my monster mode. So I pretended to have schizophrenia. I studied the condition extensively, it was very easy to fake it.

I think the dean did not believe me. She is very smart. I think she knew I was just making up an excuse. Still, it is bad to have a record of lying to a superior, or to anyone.

Before this matter gets elsewhere, I am sorry I lied. I am just really frightened of trolls, they make me lose control.

Claiming I am severely depressed.

My life has been extremely hard, harder than average. I really have been terribly miserable. But I was never diagnosed with depression, and clinical tests I take say my depression is "mild" and does not require therapy. However, I am kind of overdramatic. I say terrible things when I am feeling upset, it makes some people think I am really dying.

Saying my mother is extremely abusive and life at home is hard.

My mother is extremely abusive in Western ideals, but in Filipino standards, she is not the worst. She is harsh on me. She is unforgiving.

I told select people about Mother's personality last year. But what I did not tell them was my contribution to the issue. It is just like the old joke from Reader's Digest. I do not remember the exact words, but it was something like this,

A boy left home for university, and lived in a dorm. His mother called him on the phone.

Mother: What are your dormmates like?

Boy: Something is wrong with my dormmates. The boy in the room to my left is always angry and keeps breaking his things. The girl in the room to my right is always lying on the floor, crying.

Mother: That is horrible! Your dormmates sound dangerous! Keep your door locked and stay indoors.

Boy: I am safe, Mommy. I just stay in my room and play my bagpipes.

I did become troublesome since 2014, getting worse by 2017. Mind you, I did not do drugs, or sleep around. I just became a grudgeful kind of daughter who had endless, exaggerated issues and liked to manipulate and annoy everyone. By 2015 and 2016, I became very, very fake and pretentious. I created a weird conspiracy that was far out, but I believed it and kept insisting that it was real. In 2017, I started picking fights, bringing up any issue just to have an issue, regardless of whether it was real or not. Then I broke into embarrassing whinings at inappropriate times, and ran out of the house in the middle of the night to sit in a garbage dump to whine some more. By 2018, I started accusing my family of being extremely cruel to me.

In recent years, my mother is endlessly worried that I would get unreasonable again. I also fear I will get unreasonable again. It is a constant worry. It is terrible. I have been wondering if I was actually psychotic.

I think this fear of being actually psychotic is the reason why, despite these episodes, I have been able to keep my job as a freelance horror writer. My situation is a constant source of inspiration for horror stories. Few stories are scarier than one where the protagonist fears that she might actually be the craziest one. However, my therapist said I was not suffering from psychosis. He said I just had a bad way of expressing my anger. He said I had held a scarily heavy amount of fury all my life, collecting it until it was starting to burst beyond control. I was made to undergo training in anger management.

My episodes are the reason why I chose to transfer to programming. Programming numbs my feelings. It does not make me happy, it just removes my emotions. It can be bad to have zero emotion, but if your primary emotion is wild fury, it is best to have no emotiom.

Now I am at the end of the list of things I wish I had done differently on the internet. I hope they fix whatever it is that feels wrong about my accounts. That is all I have to say for now.