What is Eccentricity

Someone mentioned the word eccentric to me, while a man chased me around the Internet telling me to "get on my knees and pleasure him" and stalked writing the word cunt in the snow, as well as lobbing threats at me in three cities. They copied voice communications from my home at Apple, and published them in Internet games or on media locations where new accounts could be created. They sent me SMS's they manipulated my feeds I had carefully customized to see what I enjoy "technology or security in technology". They stole medical records from very high trauma periods in my life I would rather forget, and put them in Internet games. They, rendered the most extreme behavior I have seen in the form of insults over and over. Like a one way communication that is never going to listen.

I have a person, with seven of his friends, who has managed every day for nearly 8 years now to use the Internet to send people stalking physically, have someone rape on line, or have an opinion on how many times I was tricked as a child, teenager and young adult. 

They have taken advantage of anonymity to run tricks and hoaxes that hurt and damaged me and others. 

Everything he and his 7 friends have done have been psychologically horrible, and yet the city does not consider him eccentric, because he is not in their city in their mind. And yet he is. This is an entire saga unto it's own which I will not elaborate on further at this time of writing, yet it has been horrifying. One of the statements which came out of the other side was that my family was considered "eccentric".

Per Google, which has an extraordinary amount of research, it is someone with: 

• Unconventional habits: Doing things differently from how most people do them, without being harmful.

• Independent thinking: Not caring much about what society or peer pressure expects.

• Unique style: Wearing distinct clothes, decorating uniquely, or having rare hobbies.   

I think about this in terms of my mother. She spoke of the golden mean. She raised four kids. She worked, she went to school, she joined people in developing curriculum or opportunities to learn. Eccentric is definitely not a word I would have come up with for her. She was perhaps more extroverted than some because she wanted to help people have the best chance they could have at life from cradle to grave. Yet realistically our family was wrought with internal challenge due to the number of kids. Mental health issues that were heart wrenching. Peer pressures and influences that were negative. Trauma that was significant. It was not easy. I loved my mother for her effort, and accepted our imperfections as we aged.

My father, yes he had unconventional habits. He wanted to fight for justice. He wanted peace. He wanted oppressed minorities to have opportunity. He wanted executives to  share wealth, and give to their community, instead of over compensating themselves. He wanted teenagers to have a chance at life without making mistakes too young, which could be learned through education. He had enough education and background to be able to do so. He was not high wealth. He ran a bicycle company, he operated within health care advertising, these are not exactly flashy or eccentric. There is a scale to everything and on the scale he tipped above center because he was an activist, yet he was not nearly as excessive as others. He was funny. Like Tim. Funny sometimes got him into trouble.

The ballet company in our neighborhood was completely offended he had come up with some slogan for kids T-Shirts called "I hang around barres" or passed around T-shirts that said "I ghost wrote for father Guido Sarducci".... because Saturday Night Live which bucked the system was funny. These things got him into trouble. 

He didn't write about his past, he wrote about what he wanted for people. Health care. Civic opportunity to participate. Frustration with economic change.

I have met eccentric people and I believe they tip the scales when they work for "me" only. This was instilled in us by our grandmother. My father was not a "me" person. He was a movement person who wanted to empower women, and minorities to thrive. 

His new wife would need to discuss his "work for the environment" as this was a shift I was not personally engaged with him during. It was a significant thematic shift he had not made up to 2006. It was one that would put us at odds for how it should be handled given my workplace was evolving. How could I receive enough information to educate him quickly on what they did do, what impact they were having, how the company varied in extremes from Pipeline divisions to innovation areas. I could not, I was immediately placed into incident response mode because the company was putting in monitoring without a set of guidelines for what was expected as brand ambassadors first. We were not on a speaking basis, because he moved right into topical areas that hit home in my aspirations and goals before we had a response process. Common sense said, the company does not want people who are having altercations with police force over pipelines. Less common sense and public knowledge was how long they had people crawling inside private spaces on any digital medium.

The father I knew wanted people to be integrated, to appreciate each others differences, to love one another and to help one another no matter their skin color. To have opportunity if they came from poverty. He came from another era, where the battles were primarily black and white. Now, we have the most diverse communities in the world. Black, white, brown, significant cultural differences to learn from each other on and they are not minor differences, they are very challenging. Yet he cared, and if you had a chance to speak to him about that, he would care. Sociological integration for peace mattered to him. We are in a completely different era now. One where we grew up on the Internet and tech advanced faster than can be imagined. 

There were no "guardrails" for us. We were exposed from the time we hooked up our first modem and joined a chat or a game. The elements we were exposed to were significant in terms of fraud, exploitation, and peer pressure. Digital societies moved from sincere differences, and play, to brute force offensiveness where high wealth individuals profit off of exploiting themselves. My father was only marginally a participant in this society online, which has moved to a one way avenue of self promotion or self humiliation (and now people tricking people into self humiliation). Eccentricity in this digital world was not there, although he moved with a system of aging adults to shouting at the void with rage at the end yet not sure how to be heard.

It is not too different from the physical streets I grew up on, except it is now amplified in mass. A kid who taught others to throw rocks at cars and hide, or another kid who fed alka seltzer to seagulls. Recruiters who exploited people for their own profit into a variety of sordid activities. Marketers who insert themselves in your email with unwanted content. A wave of people who want dignity and pride despite their own bodies or sexual preference existed for decades and is also now amplified online. People who want their religion observed are amplifying too -yet heard less often because of the magnitude of noise and profit exploitation provides.

People do not know his pain, he did not write about it, it is not popular online. Our family was wrought with grief after my mothers passing, and loss of a son to medical and psychological influences. These are not easy or eccentric topics. These are humbling, they are embarrassing, and devastating to the heart. We have been in grief for a very long time with minimal facilities and resources with help that works.

 Still thinking out loud....