FunkyJ & the psycho

I was recently asked to be a reporter for a games website - justpushstart.com

One of my first stories was going to be on Michael Atkinson and how he, after accusing the Liberals of inventing a person to criticise him in the newspapers, was doing it himself. I had grand dreams of bringing Atkinson to his knees and him resigning in disgrace.

So, for my story I did a bit of research and came up with a lead, and, as I've been properly trained to by the good folks at the University of South Australia, I followed up on that lead with a simple email inquiry.

However, it turns out I was wrong.

The person I thought was an Atkinson plant turned out to be real, and indeed wrote an article which was published. In a sense, you can say I did "an Atkinson".

And although the author of this article holds a difference of opinion to me, I find that perfectly acceptable as I am civil enough to respect peoples difference of opinion.

However, here's where things get a bit crazy.

Although I made a simple inquiry via email, the person I contacted decided rather than reply to my email like a civil, mature, and well adjusted person finding themselves in the same position would, they would visit my website, find out my gamertag, and reply to me via Xbox Live.

This is incredibly creepy.

You may say "but Funky J, you stalked this person yourself!" but you would be wrong.

I had a legitimate reasonable doubt to the authenticity of this publication, and was following a lead for a story I was planning to write. Following leads is what all good journalists do before writing a story.

You see, instead of just accusing people of being fake like Michael Atkinson did, I did my research and found a lead, which I followed. I told that lead up front why I was contacting them, what I was doing, and what my angle would be. That was to be the extent of my contact with them if they so wished it. I was wrong, so I will not pursue that story nor will I contact that individual again over this matter.

However, I feel this person responded in what I consider is the most childish fashion imaginable by stalking me and accusing me of harassment. What makes this worse is this individual holds a valuable position within society and under normal circumstances would be seen as an upstanding citizen.

So I'd just like to take this opportunity to suggest to this individual they should think about how they respond to people in the media in future. Something like this might look bad if, for example, I had good friends in the media or maybe related to their field of employment, or even a good cop friend, and had a mention of this odd behavior in their ear.

But then again I'm just a immature gamer, I couldn't possibly know anyone of any importance... Could I?