Playing chess with a pigeon

An email, then another and another

On Saturday night, after I’d given up on the day and taken to my PJs, an email landed in my inbox. It was from a man named Graham Bloxham - a man I’ve never met and have carefully avoided connecting with in any way. I discovered the email early the following morning, Sunday, and while it disgusted me it didn’t particularly surprise me. Bloxham has form for this kind of thing, and I’d sensed for a while something was festering.

My reaction to the email was, and is, anger. I put it on my Facebook page for reasons I’m going to explain soon. The people who read the email were as disgusted as I was. Bloxham was already known to many or most of them.

Messages of support began to flow, and I received them with gratitude. One said:

Yep. He was never going to say “Oh, I see your point of view”, “you have some valid points but I disagree with … ".

It’s like playing chess with a pigeon. It’ll knock the pieces over, shit all over the board and then strut around like it’s won anyway.

That Saturday email was only the first of a barrage that’s still going.

These are nasty, hateful times. The culture around politics, internationally and nationally, has turned rancid - and within Aotearoa, some of the worst behaviour is taking place in Wellington and its surrounding areas, including Upper Hutt, my home. This isn’t news; but what might come as a shock is just what kind of stuff is happening every day, to everyday people.

My own brush with dirty politics is mild compared to those of so many people I know, but I share it because this stuff thrives in darkness, on the shame of its victims. We get what we put up with, and I’m all out of patience - but I’m not out of hope. I know that if we only come together, we’ve got the power to make it stop.

Why me?

I’d say my first mistake was being a woman - but apparently, I don’t learn from my mistakes. I went and made everything worse by being a woman with a voice and a connection to politics.

OK, I’m being a little tongue in cheek here, because many of those who’ve complained about Bloxham’s behaviour are men. That includes Bloxham’s ex-employee who was awarded $30,000 by the Employment Relations Authority, for matters including unpaid wages. The ERA said of Pocket Media, Bloxham’s company:

There is no ambiguity that this constituted a breach of Pocket Media's duty of good faith as required under s 4 of the Act, which extend beyond obligations of trust and confidence. The financial mismanagement was deliberate and deceitful, which Pocket Media benefited from at the expense of [the ex-employee].

(Bloxham’s had many employment complaints upheld against him or his companies and documented extensively by media.)1

But there’s a special kind of discomfort as a female target. My own experience started mid-year. Wellington LIVE, a dystopian shitfest of a Facebook page owned by Bloxham, started going through and liking my historical Facebook posts. It was weird and uncomfortable, but life as a woman with a voice and connection to politics is always weird and uncomfortable, so I got on with it.

The thing that seems to have set Bloxham off needs a bit of explaining.

The Spinoff has documented how in the 2022 local body elections, the current mayor of Upper Hutt, Wayne Guppy, paid Bloxham-owned media companies almost $10,000 for ‘social media’ and ‘advertising’.2 It’s not clear what exactly this money bought Guppy, but over the last few days, Bloxham left me a comment describing how he sees his work for Guppy as follows.

The ‘lying toad’ Bloxham said he worked to ‘wipe out’ is a candidate who ran against Guppy in 2022. I’ve crossed out that person’s name because they’ve been through enough crap already and deserve more respect than this.

I don’t know how Guppy would describe the work Bloxham did for him in 2022. And Guppy denied to The Spinoff that he’s paying Bloxham this time around, for this year’s local body elections. But the two of them filmed a breathtakingly weird video, posted on Guppy’s mayoral Facebook page, where they drive randomly around the city’s more lacklustre streets, and Bloxham asks, Can Upper Hutt take any more success?3

I mean, it’s a … burning question.

Now, I’m supporting a candidate standing against Guppy. Again, I’m not going to use this person’s name, calling them ‘the candidate’ instead, because everyone who stands should be judged on their merits, not the shitty behaviour of their detractors. This candidate is experienced, articulate, hardworking, and running a great campaign. She’s also a woman.

And we can’t have that, can we?

What happened? A blow-by-blow account of a blowhard

OK, I’ll try to keep it light, but this bit is going to be unpleasant, both for me to write and for you to read. But it’s the reality, and I want you to face it with me - stare it down, imagine what it would feel like, and imagine how it might hit someone more vulnerable than me. You’re going to feel a bunch of emotions, but I want you to turn them into fuel. Like I said, we can only overcome this stuff together.

The prequel

Last Friday 19 September, the candidate alerted me and another woman that Bloxham had emailed her, mentioning myself and the other woman as part of a series of allegations. Bloxham referred to me as ‘Anna McMartian’, a brutal troll who is ‘more martian than human’, and said he’d reported me to the ‘electoral ethics officer’, which is not actually a thing.

To be fair, ‘McMartian’ is a little bit funny. I told my son, who shares my last name, and he admitted he wished he’d thought of it.

Email 1: Saturday 20 September, 10:01pm

This was the doozy I discovered the next morning - full text linked in the footnotes, although with names redacted.4 The subject line was Re: [The candidate] + Anna Mcmartin troll farm - Personal attacks, bullying, illegal behavour. Police and electoral officer alerted.

This email went to many senior figures in the media, Parliament, the electoral officer, a range of local government candidates past and present, businesses and private individuals. It claimed:

• there is ‘endless evidence’ I am a ‘vicious troll farmer’ who sets up fake profiles to bully and humiliate people
• the police cyber crimes unit, employers, professional boards and others had been alerted about my activities
• more information about me would be released within 72 hours.

It was Sunday morning, I was about to run late for gym class, and so I hit reply all and said, ‘Bugger off Graham’. The tragedy is that I’m a real writer, and yet these three words are almost certainly what I’ll be remembered for when I’m gone.

Email 2: Sunday 20 September, 8:03am

Bloxham replied to my ‘Bugger off Graham’, calling me ‘classy’. Guilty as charged.

Email 3: Sunday 20 September, 9:28am

This email was an attack on the candidate. I was copied in. So too were a large number of media and more local government people, including the mayor of Wellington, who is a recurring theme in Bloxham’s emails.

Email 3: Sunday 20 September, 10:37am

Another one from Graham to the candidate, copying in myself and others, and inexplicably featuring a link to my Facebook post, which included the now trending phrase ‘Bugger off Graham’.

Email 4: Sunday 20 September, 1:17pm

I know. It’s still Sunday, FFS. This email came to me only and simply said, 'Just when you can'. Ah, sure.

Email 5: Sunday 20 September, 5:23pm

This one was a ripper. It was actually a response to a complaint Bloxham had made to Meta about ‘impersonation’ - presumably me and my ‘troll farm’. I haven’t been able to get the complaint itself, which is troubling, because it’s almost certainly defamatory and nasty - but the response to it went to a massive group of people, including media. This implies these same people were copied into the complaint itself.

Email 6: Monday 22 September, 2:43pm

If I’d managed to shrug off what was happening, I was now struggling. This one went to the candidate, copying me in, and said a bunch of cruel and distressing and untrue things, bringing in the candidate’s family and giving the candidate an ultimatum to respond.

Email 7: tonight, Tuesday 23 September, 4:44pm

I shit you not: this came in as I was writing. It was aimed at the candidate, copying in me and a bunch of others, made accusations (including in relation to my troll farm) and demanded a response from the candidate by 7pm.

And this one reached a new level of ugly and messed-up-ness, because it was copied to a former employer of mine - obviously trying to trash my worklife, and making pretty clear why Bloxham had been snooping my LinkedIn.

The 'expose': morning of Monday 22 September

Wellington LIVE posted about ‘Dr Anna McMartin’ (I knew that PhD would come in handy eventually) and my troll farm. It mentioned my ‘hard left socialist blog’, because I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

At this point, I need to reiterate I don’t farm trolls. I’m yet to keep a pot plant alive for any length of time.

The random smatterings of shit from Sunday to Tuesday

I mentioned that I posted email 1 on my Facebook page. Bloxham took the opportunity, as I expected he might, to add to the mounting evidence of his own behaviour. Highlights include the following.

Credit where it’s due. During these shit smatterings, he called me ‘McManiac’. It was genuinely funny, and I’ll be adding it to my LinkedIn profile for the next time he snoops me.

I’m not the perfect victim, and our system’s not set up for folks like me

I’ve done the safety stuff you’re meant to do, mostly - something we’ll come back to in a minute. But I want to make what I think is a really important point.

There are legal avenues for defending yourself against harassment and harmful digital communications. But the bar for these avenues is high. There are good reasons why. Free speech is important, even though it’s become the cause of the worst humans; and if the bar were lower, and proceedings were easier to take, they would be used by unscrupulous people against their victims.

Whether my situation will reach the bar I don’t know. You could argue that I can’t really be harmed that badly or I’d be more scared - and that if I was really scared, I’d be blocking the man who’s bothering me, not screenshotting his every move, documenting it and telling you about it. But I’m doing those things because I simply don’t know how to stop this behaviour, against me, or more importantly, whoever will come next.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I suspect it doesn’t only lie with the law. Like I said, it’s about all of us who’ve had enough coming together.

I’m not helpless or alone - and if you’re going through something like this, then neither are you

I’m at an age where the level of f***s I give is decreasing in proportion to my oestrogen. I have plenty of support, for which I’m profoundly grateful, and the privilege of a white middle class person. But even I’ve had moments I’ve felt destabilised.

If you’ve got any kind of profile, especially if you’re a woman or rainbow or a person of colour, then you know the drill. You read it, whatever it is. You let yourself feel the initial thing you need to feel, whether it’s shock or fear or hurt or disgust. You take a breath. You contact your kids and remind them about personal safety. You talk to your employer and warn them you’re getting targeted, so they might too. Because you just know this is just how it goes.

It’s hard to be bullish, or at least, not 24/7. Attacks like these isolate you, because they trap you in your own head. You feel a certain shame as you tell your partner, your friends, your boss. You’re always twitching to check your phone: what has he done now? And if you block him, how will you know what he’s doing? You can’t bear to read another misspelt word - but if you don’t, how will you figure out what direction the next attack is coming from?

How will you tell if the people around you are safe?

People genuinely care and can do useful things if you ask

I hate - I hate - feeling helpless, so here’s what I’ve done.

• I talked to the police, and I have to say they were excellent. They helped me put together a harassment report which is currently being assessed by a ‘district workgroup’, and I’m told the officer in charge will be in touch soon. They also gave me personal safety advice and offered to refer me to Victim Support.
• I confirmed with the electoral officer that they’re taking no action on the complaint/rant against me.
• I contacted two other organisations Bloxham claimed to have shared his defamatory allegations with. The Chief Executive of Upper Hutt City Council made a stellar response, initiating an urgent IT check to confirm nothing about me was received. Parliament hasn’t yet responded - but in fairness, they deal with a non-stop stream of concerns involving nutty folk, and I’m in a very long queue.
• I emailed Upper Hutt mayor Wayne Guppy, explaining that I’m being targeted. I urged him to distance himself and his campaign from Bloxham and ask Bloxham to stop his behaviour towards me. I haven’t heard back.

If you give dirty politics an inch, it’ll take much more than a mile - unless we all decide to take it back

Pigeons are dicks. They’ll squawk and shit and make a mess, but they’re basically less strategic seagulls, without beady eyes or the nous to steal your chips. This is a tortured metaphor, and I’m not entirely sure where it’s going, but I do know that much of the pigeon behaviour we see, the egregious knocking stuff over and strutting like they won, serves a tactical purpose. Spend enough time wiping pigeon shit off the board, and you’ll start to forget you were ever trying to play chess.

This is a local body election year.

It’s just me and younger son at home these days. He’s not long turned 19, and the upcoming elections are the first time he’s eligible to vote. He’s studied the candidates booklet and is still carefully researching and thinking through his choices. He won’t be rushed. I asked him today, would he like me to drop his voting paper into the council? He was adamant he wanted to do it himself. He sees it as a big deal, and he’s right. I love that.

Vote. Find wherever you stowed your papers, on the coffee table or in the glove box, and tick the boxes. Don’t interact with Wellington LIVE or anything like it - you’ll only amplify the effluence. If you’re following it, unfollow. And trust your gut. If someone tries to mess with you, reach out, because you’ll take away your harasser’s ability to trap you in your own head.

This is still our election, our democracy, if we want it to be. We just need to come together to take it back.

Bullies delight in hurting. As a woman with a voice and political connections, well, I’ve come to delight a little, even grin a little, at my own intransigence in the face of bullies. I’ve learned that, earned that.

Because here I am, mister: still right bloody here.

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