I have no idea who @kept_simple is and I’ve got nothing to do with him getting doxed

So, pursuant to this:

I have no idea who that guy is. I have never had any idea who he is. I have never made any attempts to find out who he is. I have never written about him on my blog. I have never suggested to anyone, publicly or privately, that he be doxxed. I have never written a blog post about him. I have never written about him on Facebook. I have not tweeted in weeks, other than when my Wordpress automatically tweets my links. I stopped tweeting in part because I was tired of getting into arguments, including arguments with him, who I liked before he kept melting down and blaming me for things that had nothing to do with me. Like this. At no time have I ever known his identity, nor have I attempted to figure it out, nor have I or anyone remotely connected to me known his identity, shared his identity, or made it public in any way. That is a fact. The last time I attempted to interact with him in any way was to send an email telling him that I didn’t know who he was, didn’t care, and wouldn’t doxx him if I did. He ignored it.

I am posting this to Medium because I can’t post it to my website, which was hacked last night and injected with malware, which will probably kill it, presumably as retaliation for this thing that I didn’t do.

I’m sorry that he’s been doxxed but I had nothing to do with it. I am an asshole, but I am a certain kind of asshole. Trust me: my particular brand of inflated self-regard keeps me from underhanded stuff. Have I not earned the right, at this point, to a reputation as someone who takes the direct route? When do I ever do anything other than immediately and publicly argue with someone who I didn’t like? Over the past 9 years of being online?

I don’t know what he means by my “followers.” I do not have followers. I have a low-traffic blog and a minor career as a freelancer. I have never had a large community. I barely communicate with my readership beyond what I write. I get hate mail that I don’t respond to and I get sweet fan mail that I say thanks to. I don’t have a particularly active comments section. I have no cadre of soldiers to send after somebody. I never have.

I think he’s mad because we got in an argument and I can get people reliably mad. And I think some asshole doxxed him because the internet is full of assholes. And I’m very sorry for that. But I had nothing to do with it, and it’s really gross and unfair for him to go around hinting to people that I did. Because I didn’t. And I’ll sign an affidavit and take a lie detector and whatever else you want. Now I have to try and get back to the real career I have been trying hard to just do. That’s what I’ve wanted, to just fade into the background and be an academic and occasionally leave a blog post for my little readership. That’s it. If Twitter hates me so much, I’m not sure why they wouldn’t just let me do that.

Edit: Yes, I dumbly — very, very dumbly — made a very dumb joke about doxing him, in a reply tweet to him, in December. The joke was an attempt to re-inject a little levity into what had been a friendly relationship with him. The idea behind the joke was that, since I have no idea who he is — he has referred to himself by his first name, publicly, many times — that the “threat” would be seen as a clear joke. I regret it and I’m sorry for it. The whole thing is regrettable. But I didn’t doxx anybody. I didn’t tell anyone to doxx anybody. I didn’t say doxxing is OK. That’s all for now.

Edit 2: To make this more explicit and more honest: while I honest to god intended the doxxing threat to be a moment of levity — a very hamhanded attempt to reestablish a little playful fighting in a Twitter engagement that once saw a lot of it — I recognize that doxxing threats are serious even if in jest. I did not say, and have never said, that he or anyone else sshould be doxxed, but I deeply regret that tweet, it was dumb, and I apologize about it. I have been off Twitter, permanently, because it’s not a good forum for me, and this is another good example of why.