The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Meltdown Monday: Does Bill Schmalfeldt Need a Brief Vacation at Spring Grove?

Posted on | August 5, 2013 | 112 Comments

Bill Schmalfeldt ranting, 2011. (Image via Thomas Anderson at Vimeo)

“The point is, the sound advice I gave Barrett Brown could apply equally to you, Mr. Schmalfeldt: ‘Spare me your lawsuit threats … you are traveling a road to destruction.’ …
“As for your own understanding (of law or anything else), sir, I am quite certain it is impaired by the fact that YOU’RE CRAZY.
“Crackers. Psycho. Loopy. Off your rocker.
“Nuttier than a Snickers bar.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, July 26

“Spring Grove Hospital Center is the oldest hospital for the mentally ill in Maryland, and the third oldest in the United States. … It was renamed the Maryland Hospital for the Insane in 1838, and moved to its present site at Catonsville in 1872. …
“With 295 inpatient beds and 62 assisted-living beds, the Center provides acute, subacute and long-term psychiatric care to adult and geriatric patients …”
— Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

It would be wrong to say that Bill Schmalfeldt “went crazy” today, because clearly he arrived at that destination long ago. Having been ordered by Carroll County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Stansfield June 14 to cease all contact with John Hoge, Schmalfeldt’s insane obsession makes it impossible for him to comply. So when for the third time Schmalfeldt “accidentally” addressed Hoge in a Twitter message (the difference between speaking about someone and speaking to someone on Twitter) what does Schmalfeldt do? He sends a crazy e-mail to the Carroll County State’s Attorney’s office:

“People contacting me now are surreptitiously adding @wjjhoge to their tweets hoping to catch me in this mistake, and they have succeeded again. . . .
“Hoge’s friends have been trying to trap me this way. . . .
“I know that I have blundered into the trap that was set for me . . .”

Exactly whom does Schmalfeldt mean to accuse of “trying to trap me”?

What is actually happening — you should read this post by Hoge — is that Bill Schmalfeldt is engaged in cyberstalking: Obsessively watching Hoge and Hoge’s friends to see what they’re talking about, and them jumping into their timelines to shout his crazy accusatory gibberish at them.

If anyone wants me to provide a court affidavit to explain how Schmalfeldt’s particular form of harassment works (in terms of tactics, strategy and purpose), I’ll be glad to do so, but I’m not going to describe it here, because I don’t endorse it, and I don’t want to accidentally offer a “How To Be a Troll” guide for copycats.

Schmalfeldt’s problem is that he has become so obsessive and/or compulsive about his cyberstalking that he lacks the rationality necessary to avoid violating the court order.

Bill can’t help himself. So when he starts ranting about “POOP FLAKES” and scrotums (trust me, you don’t want to see those Tweets), this is not merely evidence, it’s symptomatic. His Twitter timeline got so crazy, even his left-wing buddies were telling Schmalfeldt he was losing his mind and finally Hoge felt it necessary to ask police to do a welfare check to make sure Schmalfeldt had not become a danger to himself or others.

Having expended 5,000 words to explain to Bill Schmalfeldt that he’s crazy, I don’t know what more can be done. When the nice young men in white coats show up to cart him away for a psychiatric evaluation, we can expect that Schmalfeldt will blame other people for his problems.

Because that’s what crazy people always do.

UPDATE: This was predictable:

Switching your Twitter account to “protected” status is, in this kind of situation, very much like waving a white flag. Bill Schmalfeldt was the aggressor, and it’s impossible to accomplish much in terms of Twitter aggression once you switch to “protected” status.

 



 

 


Category: Bill Schmalfeldt

Comments

112 Responses to “Meltdown Monday: Does Bill Schmalfeldt Need a Brief Vacation at Spring Grove?”

  1. Thomas L. Knapp
    August 6th, 2013 @ 9:49 am

    Stacy,

    I carry no brief for Schmalfeldt or anyoone else involved in the bigger picture.

    I was simply pointing out that forbidding anyone to tweet anything to anyone else for any reason is complete bullshit.

  2. Da Tech Guy On DaRadio Blog » Blog Archive » Sontarans Schmalfeldt and Honor
    August 6th, 2013 @ 1:35 pm

    […] inter­net his­tory and his run for Mayor of NY well that’s on him. With his poten­tial legal issues on his plate that image is a poor […]

  3. Quartermaster
    August 6th, 2013 @ 1:44 pm

    Too much mass to be a pop up target.

  4. Quartermaster
    August 6th, 2013 @ 1:45 pm

    That looks like it could be an EBL UTube post.

  5. Joe Dokes
    August 6th, 2013 @ 2:28 pm

    I may be mistaken but I’m pretty sure that, in the past, people with proven bad mental hygiene have been legally forbidden from using (abusing, more correctly) telephones for purposes identical to Schmalfeldt’s use of twitter…harassment, abuse, etc. And it was the right thing to do where such cases were proved. Same principle here, it would seem.

    Unless I’ve imagined the whole thing, in which case I denounce myself and will report to the nearest re-education facility. Does thorazine come in grape? I hope so.

  6. Thomas L. Knapp
    August 6th, 2013 @ 2:38 pm

    A telephone rings in your house whether you want it to or not (unless you unplug it, in which case you can’t hear from anyone).

    A posting on the Internet is something you can look at, not look at, or even set to ignore with ease.

    The only “principle” involved in forbidding someone to use Twitter is the “principle” of censorship.

  7. Joe Dokes
    August 6th, 2013 @ 2:55 pm

    Slightly o/t but not entirely, so I’m just curious…was it a form of government censorship when the IRS held up paperwork from Tea Party type groups when identical applications from liberal groups got processed without a hitch?

  8. Thomas L. Knapp
    August 6th, 2013 @ 2:58 pm

    Absolutely (although in fact apparently some lefty groups got held up as well).

    The whole idea of political groups (or for that matter anyone at all) having to file paperwork with the IRS is disgusting.

  9. K-Bob
    August 6th, 2013 @ 5:23 pm

    I’m sure there’s an app for that.

    The original one ends with “Stop. Put your pencils down”

  10. MiddleAgedKen
    August 7th, 2013 @ 9:15 am

    Really? Which ones?

  11. Deranged Cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt: Bats, Belfry, Some Assembly Required : The Other McCain
    August 7th, 2013 @ 4:54 pm

    […] “brain-damaged troll,” his incessant barrage of Twitter gibberish had become so demonstrably crazy that there were fears for his safety. Apparently, however, the nice young men in white coats didn’t take Bill to the Funny Farm, […]

  12. Da Tech Guy On DaRadio Blog » Blog Archive » Kate Hunt and the return of the Wheel of Fish Award
    August 16th, 2013 @ 12:27 pm

    […] court con­cern­ing a vio­la­tion of an order con­cern­ing my friend W Hoge. Stacy McCain cri­tiqued his e-?mail to the court explain­ing con­tact made via twit­ter in vio­la­tion of […]