Continued Effects of Shannon Stoy’s Libel

Yesterday an elderly woman wandered into my work, clearly confused and somewhat agitated. She left and I followed her a bit, watching. When she continued wandering back my way I asked more questions and probed a bit. She let me look in her purse and I found a calendar with names and phone numbers written on the inside cover.

After calling the numbers, I reached a family friend who was very concerned. The woman has Alzheimers and had obviously gotten lost out in the world. I stayed with her until her friend came to pick her up.

Last night when I was brushing my teeth, I looked at my phone and saw a news article for an alert that the police had issued earlier in the day for a Missing Vulnerable Adult that had been resolved. It was the woman I’d helped earlier in the day. Turns out, she had wandered away from a medical center a couple of miles from my work, and she was being searched for by police and her family members. I hadn’t known any of this, I had simply seen a woman who was out of place and lost, and helped her out.

How does Shannon Stoy (Blink) come into any of this? Seeing the news article of an event involving police, myself, and a person in distress immediately elicited a response inside of me, due to the experience I had with Shannon Stoy and her website. It was an immediate reminder that a person can do a good thing in the world for people in need, and self centered attention seekers won’t hesitate to drag their name through the mud with made up information. I immediately felt the worry that my name would some how be connected with the story, and I would potentionally endure a backlash created by an internet nut job trying to drive traffic to her scandalous website.

It’s been a while since I’ve written on this blog, but continously in life, I am reminded that a woman pounced on a terrible event to boost her own ego and popularity, to the detriment of all involved. The things that were said about me online continue on her website to this day, and the experience of being attacked for trying to find a missing child continues to impact my life in countless ways.

Blinkoncrime.net and Shannon Stoy

http://blinkoncrime.net/Word_of_Mouth.html

Someone Knows Something

I just finished listening to season 5 of the podcast “Someone Knows Something”, and I really enjoyed it. The podcast is a done by David Ridgen, a fairly well known Canadian documentary filmmaker and podcaster. Ridgen revives cold cases and investigates them fresh.

The contrast between someone like Ridgen and Shannon Stoy (Blink) is glaring. Ridgen travels all around Canada, interviewing people involved, digging up old records, viewing the scenes he is investigating, and generally being hands on in his investigation. As well, he does a good job of avoiding sensationalism in exploring the various subjects, and retains an objective outlook on the case throughout the season.

In comparison, Shannon Stoy has touted herself as an investigator of various cases, seemingly all from behind her computer screen. In my particular case (when she accused me of being involved in the kidnapping of a child and posting lies about me over the internet) she made basic mistakes of geography and location, and published witness accounts that weren’t true.

In the course of defending myself against Shannon Stoy and her followers, I had the advantage of being willing to leave my house and doing a bit of actual leg work. Also I had the advantage of caring about actually being right, instead of caring about attention over truth (which is the hallmark of Blinkoncrime). Stoy misquoted a witness mentioned in documents, who immediately rebuffed the words she put in his mouth when I interviewed him. Stoy posted a map of the area, without ever being there, and made basic mistakes about streets and locations. She made several mistakes about locations that would have easily been avoided had she simply been in the area.

Ridgen never would have printed or released something like the drivel that came out of the now inactive Blink website, because he actually did the the legwork. The comparison between an actual investigative journalist and a loudmouth who sits behind a computer screen and cast accusations at strangers over the internet is stark.

A Complicated Morass of Uncontrolled Speculation

As is my way, I scanned the latest drivel on Blinkoncrime.com recently. The website is a ghost town for the most part, with one thread being updated by posters every so often.

The most recent posting has a link to this article in The New Yorker : https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/true-crime-addict-and-the-problem-of-internet-sleuths?verso=true

The article is a review of a book, James Renner’s “True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray”, written by a self described internet crime investigator who the article author describes as a “hanger(s)-on”.

I feel like the critical reading skills of the Blink audience, and Blink herself, are likely challenged by the article. At first glance it appears to be a good thing for the book and the author. Upon reading the article, it clearly is not. Shannon Stoy seems to proudly mention on her website that she knows Renner personally, which is just the kind of thing that she likes to do to impress her scant collection of readers. Comically, the author and book that she aligns herself with is described by The New Yorker article as the “embodie(ment of) every problem that arises when online obsessives are infected with delusions of detective grandeur.”

There were some striking parallels between Blink and the description of Renner and the online sleuthing community. The phrase “delusions of detective grandeur” is particularly fitting when describing Shannon Christina Moser Stoy, or whatever alias she’s going by these days.

The New Yorker article accurately described sites like Blinkoncrime.com as “a complicated morass of uncontrolled speculation. It certainly isn’t justice, not for Murray or for her family.”

In my case, Shannon Moser’s ridiculously flawed internet investigating was not justice for my kidnapped neighbor, for her family, for me, or for anyone. It was just a prime example of the delusions of detective grandeur of a hanger on named Shannon Moser.

Look in the mirror, Shannon Stoy

Every once in a while something happens in my daily life that reminds me of the period in my life when a reckless moron on the internet callously tried to ruin my life. When these reminders come up, sometimes I go to blinkoncrime.com and check in on my libelous friend, Shannon Christina Moser Stoy.

In her most recent comment, she drops this nugget, “Unfortunately many times in public forums that also allow anonymity to a degree, people just say any old thing- and it has become more of an investment in being right in one’s conclusion than the importance of the truth”.

 

 

Oh man, that is unbelievably rich.

Shannon, you hapless twit.

Look in the mirror.

Well said, and painfully unaware

“Her followers are motivated by rumors, suspicions and half truths just like the people committing these deadly shootings and sending pipe bombs. Any day one of the crazies…. could pick up a gun or mail a pipe bomb and perhaps end someones life…”

That was posted in the comments section of Blinkoncrime.com the other day. Those comments are critical of a Facebook page that the poster takes issue with.

What is amazing about those comments, is that they perfectly describe Shannon Stoy’s website. Shannon Stoy published my address, name, license plate number, etc. in connection with a child abduction (which has been solved), based on half truths and complete fabrications. The exact type of scenario described in the above post is the kind of scenario that Shannon Stoy created all the time on her website. Creating an atmosphere of “rumors, suspicions, and half truths”.

Blink : The heartless idiot

A brush up on history before I begin.

Shannon Stoy, Christina Stoy, Blink…whatever she is calling herself now, published ill informed insinuations and accusations against me when my neighbor was abducted. I called her on it, and she refused to retract or delete her blog posts.

So I began a campaign to expose her as the horrible person that she is, which was fairly easy, given her documented track record of trying and failing to be a sensationalist on the internet. Blink’s website hasn’t been updated in a very long time, and it appears that it is now a chat thread for three or four people, rehashing the same stuff day in and day out. It’s mostly just wild speculation about various criminal cases and pandering to the ego of Christina Stoy.

That’s a quick recap of my relationship with Blink. She wrote a bunch of verifiably untrue things about me, so I fought back.

 

This last week, there were indictments in the case of my neighbor, and it turns out of course I had nothing to do with it. I’m just a guy who tried to help find a little girl, and was dragged through the mud on the internet by a heartless fool because of it.

Reading an article in my local paper today, I was reminded of Blink. Her accusations have continued to follow me these last few years, and it’s nice to know that beyond a horrible person being removed from the streets and meeting justice for his crimes, the discussion regarding me an my neighbor can be closed.

That discussion can also be closed regarding my neighbors, as they are vindicated of involvement. The local paper ran a front page article essentially saying : Sorry. It’s commendable that in light of recent discovery, journalists offer apology based on the discovery.

Blink would never do that, because her greatest flaw isn’t that she made a mistake. We all make mistakes. In fact, I don’t believe she made a mistake. She knew what she was doing, which was twisting things to paint a picture that she thought would get her publicity and attention. That’s a mean a thing to do at the expense of another human being, and it’s a window into her greatest flaw : she is heartless and doesn’t care.

She would of course counter that she cares about victims and children. To which I reply : How does sundering my name, making things up about me, and spreading disinformation regarding a criminal case that have followed me for years help anyone?

It doesn’t. All it does is hurt. Everyone involved. Except for Blink. For her, it’s good attention. It feeds her ego and her need to be the one in the know, the one who has the dish, the gossip who pretends to be a journalist.

If anything, I like to think that I had a hand in removing her as an active presence on the internet. Her site is a ghost town. Maybe she just has other things going on, or maybe I exposed her so broadly that she shrunk away.

Which would be terrific. Because for once in her careless, harmful, reckless mudslinging blogging career, the hurt she causes bounced back.

You’d expect a person who accused someone of involvement in a horrible crime would apologize when the truth is revealed.

A decent person would do that. But we’re talking about Shannon Stoy, so….I’m not holding my breath.

 

 

 

 

Blink on Crime : Fake News

I haven’t written or posted much on Shannon Stoy and her swindling blog in quite a while. My purpose all along was to make sure than any one who read the maligning, deceitful things she had written about me would have easy access to the truth. An unintended, bonus result seems to have been that Shannon/Christina/Blink Moser/Stoy seems to have largely stopped shelling out her exploitative, pandering drivel. This is understandable, as the musings of a fool are only entertained so long as people don’t know she’s a fool. It’s not that I’ve exposed Stoy as a lying fool, as it appears to have been well known within the community for a long time. But I’ve certainly made her history of foolishness easier to brush up on.

The recent hub bub in the elections about fake news prompted me to write again about Blinkoncrime.com. My Facebook feed is littered with discussion of fake news, as our president appears to be making policy based on it, and disseminates it himself. What I’ve come to see is exactly what I had done with Blink; it’s difficult to stop the spread, so rather combat misinformation with the truth. My conflict with Blinkoncrime.com has always been a conflict with fake news and disinformation, and I saw that same conflict play out on a national level as of late.

It’s hard to conceptualize, but it appears that critical reading is lacking among much of our population. Fake news articles, such as the ones on Blinkoncrime, are often easy to identify, though their perpetuation seems inevitable. In light of the fact that there will always be lying charlatans willing to spread fake news, like Christina Stoy, it seems the best tactic is to combat their efforts with the truth. That’s exactly what my campaign has been in my blog. And I’m glad to see it’s paid off.

Other People

Every so often, someone contacts me about Blinkoncrime and Shannon Stoy. Another person dragged through the mud.

It’s always the same thing. Someone sharing their experience, and thanking me for the information and posting I’ve done.

It’s bad enough that horrible things happen to people. Even worse, in a time of darkness, it’s very upsetting to find yourself assailed by crazy people on the internet. Questioning the things you say, digging into your personal life, coming at you and writing things about you as though they are half brained arm chair detectives with nothing better to do than spend their days harassing strangers via the internet.

Although you tell yourself that this is the case, that these people are ill informed, lonely, irrational and thoughtless, it’s still upsetting to read the things they write about you. The mountain of inane idiocy simply compounds the trauma you’ve been through.

I’m glad that, in the middle of that, I can be a slight solace to people. It’s a piece of comfort to start looking around and find out that you aren’t alone, that others have been through the same thing, with the same person. It’s truly not you, it’s her.

The latest story I heard was of Shannon Stoy harassing someone via social media, and disseminating misinformation. An upsetting and common story. One I hear regularly.

When I first read the moronic things that she’d made up about me, I was primarily angry that a reporter had written an article about me without contacting me first for my side of the story. Then, as I dug, I discovered that Shannon Stoy is far from a reporter, and that talking about people without considering anything other than her own sensational and ill informed narrative, is her forte.

So I compiled that information and made it easier to find for people.

It’s nice to get that feedback, to know that it has been effective.

Errors in Online Journalism and Blink on Crime

I’ve done alot of websurfing regarding Blink on Crime and Shannon Stoy. Having someone try to connect you to a child abduction via misinformation and lies is a pretty personal thing. She inserted herself violently into my life, and because her pseudo journalism is on the internet, she has her unscrupulous words hang over my reputation daily.

Something I found while searching for her gave me a laugh.

Making Mistakes in Online Journalism Report

Blink is not a subject in that article, but a picture from her website is credited. That in and of itself is comical. I doubt that Shannon Stoy took that picture of Joe Paterno, but somehow she needs to be credited for it.

What is really comical to me is that the article is about errors in online reporting and the need to issue clear and transparent corrections. How hilarious that Shannon Stoy is credited for anything in an article about correcting mistakes.

Shannon Stoy was willing to fuel insinuation and indictment against me in her comments section, all based on her fabrications. But when I actually itemized her mistakes, suddenly she stopped posting my comments.

When faced with her mistakes, Stoy not only refused to correct them in a way that is considered commonplace for media outlets, she censored them in her comments section.

“These corrections should be transparent and accessible, regardless of how short a time the error appeared on the website, according to New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane. Rosenberg, of MediaBugs.org, suggests any correction of substance be mentioned in a note that appears at the top or bottom of the article.[25]

“Errors must be acknowledged”, said Silverman. “You can’t just go back and fix something, thinking that no one saw it. Someone always sees it.”[26]

Rosenberg said that for sites that publish correction notices as separate items of content, each correction notice should link to the article that was corrected, and each corrected article should link to the correction notice.[27]

Transparency is the key. Building and keeping the trust of readers in the digital world demands that online news sources be as transparent as possible. This showing of accountability will also give more credibility to the news site in the eyes of its users.”