They Won’t Talk to Me, But They Read Everything: The Digital Haunting of Estranged Families

by Mike Portney, The American Gadfly

1. The Silent Treatment With WiFi Access

There’s a particular kind of hell reserved for those of us who’ve been cut out of the family photo but not the surveillance feed. They won’t text. They won’t call. They won’t show up to holidays or funerals unless they absolutely have to. But they’ll sure as shit reload your website like they’re checking the weather during a hurricane.

I’m talking about obsessive digital monitoring by estranged family members. Ghosts who know how to clear their browser history but not their conscience.

Over the past week alone, an IP address in Houston—107.193.135.109—has logged visit after visit to my blog. I’m talking a dozen hits in a day. Sometimes the same article, clicked multiple times. “The Scapegoat Diagnosis: When Your Entire Family Turns on You.” “Occupied: When a Parent Colonizes Their Child’s Inner World.” “Are You My Mother?” These aren’t just catchy headlines. These are open wounds. And someone in Houston keeps licking their fingers and digging deeper.

And let’s not pretend we don’t know who it is.
It’s my brother, Scott Portney.

The same brother who won’t talk to me. Won’t answer texts. Won’t return emails. Has no interest in reconciliation—but somehow has infinite interest in what I’m writing, thinking, and revealing. And here’s the kicker: even though my mother isn’t showing up in the analytics, she still knows what’s on my site. She reacts to the content. Which means Scott is forwarding her my writing.
Copy. Paste. Gossip. Repeat.

This is what happens when you try to escape a dysfunctional family and succeed:
They follow you into the dark.
Not to say hello.
To make sure you don’t tell the truth.

2. The New Age of Digital Surveillance by Family

The tools of emotional abuse have evolved. The modern family no longer needs to be in the same room to assert control. Now, they just need your domain name.

When they ghost you, they expect silence. Obedience. Regret. But when you don’t beg to be let back in—when you thrive instead, when you speak your truth in public—they panic. And they monitor. Closely. Secretly. Desperately.

We used to call this “checking in.”
Now it’s a form of covert digital colonization.

Scott doesn’t just visit the site. He visits it ritually. Always at key moments. Just after a new post. Just after a triggering conversation with our mother. Just after I speak the unspeakable. He combs the blog like he’s a handler reading field reports. He’s not just reading—he’s gathering.

And Mom? Even though she pretends not to look, she’ll mention things I wrote. Almost word for word. With a smug sort of insider info tone, like she’s got eyes in the back of her head. Because she does. His eyes. Her flying monkey. Her emotional proxy.

He won't pick up the phone to call me, but he'll transmit quotes, paraphrases, and hot takes straight to her inbox. Why? Because they're not done controlling the story. And I’m a loose end they can't tie up—so they try to keep tabs instead.

This isn’t love. This isn’t curiosity. This is psychological surveillance. It’s a one-way mirror with the lights turned off.

3. Motives Behind the Monitoring

So what’s the motivation here? Why do people who won’t speak to you feel so compelled to read everything you say?

Here’s the hard truth: they’re not reading to understand. They’re reading to contain. To keep you small. To stay ahead of the narrative. To prep for the next round of triangulation.

The goal is to find proof that you’re “crazy.” That you’re “angry.” That you’re “unwell.” They’re hoping to catch you saying something too raw, too real, too undeniable—so they can dismiss it as unstable. So they can frame it as a symptom instead of a signal.

If you cry out in pain, they’ll say you’re “lashing out.”
If you analyze the trauma, they’ll say you’re “obsessed with the past.”
If you find your voice, they’ll say you’ve “changed.”

What they’re really saying is:
“You stopped playing your role, and now you scare the hell out of us.”

Because they need you to be broken. That was your part in the family myth. You were the problem. The unstable one. The burden. The one they all got to bond over avoiding. And now, here you are—thriving in truth, building a platform, telling your story—and they can’t stand it.

So they watch. And wait. And hope you implode. Not because they want you gone, but because they want you back in your box.

4. The Role of the Scapegoat Turned Author

When you’re the family scapegoat, your job is to absorb. To catch the projections, to hold the shame, to act out the dysfunction so no one else has to. It’s a sick system of psychological outsourcing.

But when the scapegoat learns to write?

That’s revolution.

That’s when the scapegoat stops being the symptom and becomes the historian.

My blog isn’t a diary. It’s a forensic lab. It’s a megaphone for the truths I was never allowed to say at the dinner table. And the fact that Scott keeps reading it tells me everything I need to know:
He’s still tethered to the system. Still checking the thermometer to see how hot the truth has gotten.

He doesn’t have the guts to reach out and ask, “What did you mean by that?”
He doesn’t have the humility to say, “I didn’t know it hurt you this much.”
He doesn’t have the courage to admit, “I see what you’re saying now.”

But he’ll sure as hell read it.
Line by line.
Click by click.
Confession by confession.

Because he knows I’m telling the truth.
And he knows it’s reaching people.

5. What They’re Really Afraid Of

Let’s cut to the core.

It’s not the content that terrifies them—it’s the context.

They’re not scared of what I say. They’re scared that people might believe me.

Because if the outside world sees what I’ve seen, hears what I’ve experienced, and says, “Yeah, that makes sense,” then the whole damn family narrative implodes. The golden child’s halo gets a crack. The enabler gets unmasked. The martyr costume gets peeled off the mother and hung in the closet next to her illusions.

So, what do they do instead?
They treat me like I’m radioactive—but also monitor the Geiger counter.

They can’t stop watching because I’m the most honest person in the system.
The one who remembers.
The one who names things.
The one who survived without needing them anymore.

Here’s what they’re afraid of:

• That I’ll tell the truth.

• That someone else will see themselves in it.

• That their secrets won’t stay buried.

• That I don’t need their version of reality to keep functioning.

The very act of me standing in truth makes me dangerous—not because I’m attacking them, but because I’ve stopped protecting their fragile myths.

And now I write with my name attached.
I publish publicly.
And I don’t ask permission.

That’s the thing about reclaiming your voice—it’s loud. It echoes. And if you’ve spent your life being told to whisper or shut up, the sound of it terrifies the people who trained you to stay quiet.

6. Digital Haunting: A One-Way Mirror of Control

There’s a phrase for this phenomenon: digital haunting. It’s when people who have cut ties with you—or forced you to cut them—continue to linger silently in your online spaces, watching your every move, collecting data like it’s evidence for a trial they’re too cowardly to attend.

It’s creepy.
It’s violating.
And it’s cowardly as hell.

But it’s also incredibly common.

I’ve heard from dozens of people just like me. Estranged daughters, black sheep sons, queer kids, whistleblowers, and trauma survivors who all say the same thing: “They won’t speak to me, but they read everything I write.” Sometimes they even email other people about it. Sometimes they confront third parties instead of going to the source.

It’s the ultimate passive-aggressive control tactic:
Monitor without engaging. Judge without responding. Consume without contributing.

It’s emotional colonization via Google Chrome.

They want to see what you’re doing but don’t want to be seen.
They want to feel morally superior but secretly rely on your emotional output.
They need the drama to define themselves, but they won’t enter the ring.

So they watch. Silently. Furtively. Obsessively.
And in doing so, they become a caricature of the dysfunction they tried to pin on you.

7. Reclaiming the Narrative

Let me be crystal clear:
This blog exists for me, and for people like me.

It’s not for my mother. It’s not for my brother. It’s not for the family members who only know how to relate through shame and secrecy. It’s for the people clawing their way out of silence and looking for a voice that says, “Yeah, me too.”

I own my story.
I own my pain.
I own the rights to every goddamn page of this script.

And unlike them, I don’t need to hide behind burner accounts or gossip networks to say what I mean. I write under my name. With a timestamp. With context. With purpose.

What I don’t do is sanitize the past so the abusers can sleep at night.
What I don’t do is pretend the silence wasn’t violent.
What I don’t do is protect people who hurt me just because we share DNA.

I’m not hiding.
But they are.

And the sad part?
They still think I want them to come back and play nice.

But I don’t want fake reconciliation.
I want truth.
I want accountability.
And if that’s too much for them, then they’re welcome to keep watching from the shadows.

But they don’t get to control the story anymore.
Not now.
Not ever again.

8. The Final Invitation

Let me offer a final message—not a peace offering, not an olive branch, but a challenge.

If you want peace?
Talk to me like a human.
Own your part.
Say my name.
Apologize like you mean it.

But if you just want to keep lurking in my digital life like a vulture circling a voice that’s finally free?

Then stay the fuck out of my server logs. If you keep stalking me or obsessively refreshing my website I will block your IP address. It's fucking creepy dude.

This isn’t a game. This isn’t a stunt. This is my life. And you don’t get to stalk it without consequence—not anymore.

You can keep refreshing my blog like it’s a dashboard for your guilt.
You can keep handing my writing to Mom like a war report.
You can keep pretending you’re the sane one while quietly absorbing every word I say.

But here’s what you don’t get to do:

You don’t get to disappear from my life and demand a window into it.
You don’t get to call me crazy and use my words to justify your cowardice.
You don’t get to stay silent while secretly feeding off my voice.

That’s over now.

I’m not here to make you comfortable.
I’m here to tell the truth.
And the truth is: I see you. I know what you’re doing.
And you’re not haunting me.

You’re haunting yourself.

Mike Portney
The American Gadfly
MisinformationSucks.com