I do art commissions. Sometimes I meet really awful people who are literally nothing but rude. This particular guy will probably stay in my memory forever.

It all started with a job offer that I commented on. The client offered roughly $100 for a dozen or so complicated illustrations in a very specific style, and he needed it done really fast.

I commented:

Me: “$100 is not enough to pay for such a big commission. If you want to find someone, and fast, you should offer more money.”

Other artists wrote him similarly, but he focused on me specifically.

Within an hour or two, my profile was flooded with offensive comments sent from his fake accounts. It was noticeable because each of the accounts was created just a moment before and the names were very similar to each other. He claimed to be my former clients, claimed that I had stolen money from him without giving the commission at all, and claimed that I was extremely rude to them. He even called me a psychopath.

When other artists and my actual clients started to defend me by leaving nice comments on my profile, he replied back to everyone saying it was just my spam accounts. Seriously, he thought that since he had created tons of fake accounts to slander me, I was going to do the same to fight him. He literally couldn’t believe that my satisfied customers’ accounts weren’t mine. He even claimed that all people who defended me were just “my gang”.

I started hiding his comments on my profile, but then they started popping up under all my submissions, claiming that I stole all the characters I drew for people as commissions. He didn’t even try to make it look believable. He was just switching over and over between fake accounts and writing, “Stolen,” and, “It’s stolen, too.”

At one point, his actions looked so idiotic that no one was believing him. Everyone knew that this was some kind of madman who got on with me. But when that happened, he decided he had to take revenge on me for this humiliation. He started creating new fake accounts, but the names included my nickname and various insults such as “fraud,” “psychopath,” etc.

It took about three days. Every day, he tried to slander me in new ways. He pretended to be clients who complained about my job and lied that I stole his money. He even pretended to be professional artists who came to call my work crap.

Honestly? I envy him the energy he put into it all. He had to write tons of comments and put up a lot of fake accounts just to finally humiliate himself. The funniest thing is that he insisted that I attacked him after he turned down my offer to work together because I wasn’t good enough, which never actually happened. I was the one who told him that $100 was not enough to cover the costs.

He also spread the link to his original post, claiming that that’s the one where I was attacking him. Our conversation there took literally three comments: me saying that he should raise payment a bit, him replying that I should not leave a comment If I wasn’t asked for it, and me saying bye. That was his proof of what a psycho I am.

Client: “Hey! This DVD with the commercial doesn’t work!”

Me: “What do you mean it doesn’t work?”

Client: “I put it in the computer and this menu comes up and plays four seconds of music on a loop.”

Me: “Do you see the little icon in the bottom left of the screen that is a freeze-frame of your commercial?”

Client: “Yeah.”

Me: “Click that with your mouse.”

Client: “That seems like a lot of work.”

This is at the end of a client outline for a highly detailed engineering plan that will contain electrical utilities, security camera lines, fibre optic cables, and the like.

Client: “I don’t need it urgently, by the end of the day should be fine.”

Client: “I thought you said the website was friendly.”

Me: “It is. What issues did you experience?”

Client: “I typed in my password and I got the error. “Access Denied. Wrong Password”.”

Me: “If you would like, I can give you your username and password.”

Client: “A friendly website would’ve given me my password.”

Me: “Did you click on “Forgot my Password”?”

Client: “No, I didn’t forget it.”

An hour later, I got an email from the client telling me he forgot his password. He was wondering if there was a recovery system in place.

Client: “I need that brochure today!”

Me: “I’m sorry, but your deadline is two weeks from now. I have four other projects due this weekend.”

Client: “But I’m giving you a deadline now.”

Me: “It’s not feasible to meet it, I’m sorry.”

Client: “Fine! I’m taking your paycheque to hire someone else to do it.”

Me: “Well, that’s your right.”

Client: “Do you know anyone who can? Preferably for less than you were.”