The Invisible Cyber Bully: What it's like to be watched 24/7

by Expat Scribe

Revienne, a washed-up print journo working for an eminent shrink with VIP clients, tried to revive her career by writing a novel about her life in a member country of the “Vortex of Evil.” One day, the Labor Ministry invited her to participate in an "employment survey," which would allow the Feds to place her under surveillance for six months—maybe indefinitely. It turned out to be fake.

When she repeatedly dodged the surveyors, weird things started to happen. Strangers in Superman T-shirts followed her around. The family cats disappeared…. one by one. Are they spooking her into compliance? Why don't they just arrest her for civil disobedience? Was her book that awful? Did it have something to do with her access to the mental health and addiction records of the country’s leaders? Or is something more sinister lurking in the background?

890 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 24, 2022

About the author

Expat Scribe is a Filipino-Canadian novelist, journalist, ghostwriter, and editor raised in Iran. After many years with the English-speaking press corps in the Middle East, she served as a medical assistant to a prominent Canadian-American psychiatrist. Her cache of experiences as a member of the media and medical staff in different countries formed the backdrop of her first novel, a psychological techno-thriller. Her books include:
1] The Invisible Cyber Bully: What it's like to be watched 24/7
2] My Mother, the Good Witch Doctor: How Mom helped princesses with dyslexia
3] The Anti-Bully Manual: How to fight bullies the cyber way

Her father was a planner & estimator for the US Air Force and Navy, and worked in Arab and Iranian aviation. Her Farsi-speaking mother was an advocate for women's rights in Tehran. Their family survived the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the Edsa People Power Revolution in the Philippines, and the Gulf War. Expat Scribe's parents sent her to Switzerland to prevent her from covering the Gulf War from a safer vantage point in the United Arab Emirates, but she returned in the middle of it.

This background places her in a unique position as both an insider and outsider in politically charged environments. Having grown up in one of the most enigmatic but misunderstood regions of the world, she developed a unique perspective on 21st-century blanket surveillance and cyber bullying by the authorities. She tapped into this history when she wrote her first novel. Surprisingly, the entities she writes about are not from totalitarian regimes but democratic societies.

Expat Scribe is also a member of the Solace Journal Team as an editor and writer. Visit their blog: solacejournal.com and her website: expatscribe.com

Get in touch with her here: contact.expatscribe.com

Buy her books here: linktr.ee/expatscribe

Reviews

[Angus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating: 4.5. This novel’s title and screaming orange cover called out to me while I was perusing choice reads at an international book expo. That’s just one of the many reasons I chose it for my library out of all the thrillers vying for my attention. If you want to have a good scare, grab this book. If you liked the movie, “The Net,” and identified with the main character (played by Sandra Bullock), you’ll definitely gravitate towards this book.

The author found herself in events with a cyber twist comparable to the ones the protagonist in that movie experienced, except they were totally different. Those scenarios were supposed to be fictional, but I have a sneaky feeling they really happened because the author was a journalist and she wrote about anti-establishment topics. Her nightmare began when she refused to participate in a survey forced on her by the Labor Department. She thinks they’re targeting her because she asked her neighbors if government officials visited their apartments, and all of them said no.

Not to reveal too much, but these are a few examples of the author’s strange encounters after she defied the authorities:
1. Every time she started to do something digitally, like use an ATM, make a fund transfer, or load her e-wallet, the machine or fin-tech system she was about to use either broke down or went offline.
2. Whenever she began to write or was about to go to sleep, annoying noises would barrage her.
3. An ongoing ringing in her ears plagued her after she finished a translation project for a government hospital where she had to be in a sound booth in a recording studio. What was strange was that the ringing only occurred whenever Wi-Fi or mobile communication signals were present. So when she went into open space or open water (like riding a traditional boat), the ringing would not be present. Her family doctor blamed the ringing on tinnitus, a medical condition, but audiologists (hearing experts) ruled this out after they sent her for auditory tests.
4. Her finger got slashed inside a boot while shoe-shopping. When she and the store staff looked inside the shoe, there was no sharp object that could have cut her. (I later found out that the author wrote about this in an article in which she published a book excerpt. This is the link, if you’re interested: https://www.solacejournal.com/post/__dna.

I’d like to mention the more sinister happenings in the book, but potential readers who don’t like spoilers might not appreciate this. So I leave it to you to discover them. All in all, this novel is a compelling read. Because of the unusual and impossible circumstances the protagonist kept finding herself in, the reader’s tendency would be to keep flipping the page to find out what happens next.

The publisher classified it as a thriller because, despite the ominous cover, it’s not a typical horror novel, as the monsters are not supernatural. The author writes about a more horrible antagonist because it’s real. She calls the bad guys “The Invisible Bully,” which is a collective, rather than individual term.

The message of this book: that even democratic governments are spying on their ordinary citizens—is nothing new because whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have been telling us this for some time. But the things the author warned her readers about in 2014 (when the strange stuff started tormenting her) are already happening today.

One of them is mind control technology. This was unbelievable just a few years ago, but now, companies are implanting electronic chips in humans. One is a Scandinavian company that installed chips in their employees’ arms. They’re waving their arms to open doors, decrypt office documents, and paying for lunch in the cafeteria! Another, Neuralink (started by Elon Musk), has already implanted an AI (artificial intelligence) chip in quadriplegic Noland Arbaugh’s brain so it can interact with a computer. For now, it’s connected to the computer with wires and cables. But soon, this setup could be wireless. After all, surgeons are now performing surgeries remotely! The doctors are in one country while the patient is in another! These are just some of the tech realities the author discussed in her book. This is terrifying because her experiences could happen to anyone in real life… and this includes you and me.

I found this gem of a psych thriller (the author calls it a “techno-thriller”) at an international book fair in 2023. I bought the paperback version coz what’s the point of attending a book expo in person if you’ll just go back home to buy the ebook online? Besides, it was loads cheaper than the print book being sold online.

BTW, here’s a tip for newbies planning to attend future book fairs: show up on the last day a couple of hours before closing time coz the publishers and booksellers slash the prices down to the max. It doesn’t matter what country the expo is located. It’s a common practice.

Anyway, I liked the novel so much that I subscribed to the author’s link-in bio (linktr.ee/expatscribe), vowing to write a review to show my appreciation. But life got in the way and so months later, I still hadn’t posted anything and forgot about it. But I recently got an alert from her website, which I guess is connected to Linktree? She’s announcing the promo of her new book. This reminded me to do the review. I couldn’t post it on Amazon coz I didn’t buy it there, so I’m doing it here. Since her new book is juvenile fiction and it isn’t really my genre, I decided to focus on the one I read. Hope Goodreads members get to read it too.

[Madeleine Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brilliant concept but way too long. The novel starts with a remarkable claim - that it is not fiction but a dossier about the abuses of government surveillance. The first person narrator proceeds to give a litany of examples of persecution suffered at the hands of the "Enemy" (lost cat, scratched car, noisy appliances, snoring neighbors). The "factual" accounts keep readers guessing whether the story is about a character who can't deal with the annoyances of the modern world, or sci-fi tale about sophisticated forms of psychological persecution. As the character's level of paranoia increases -- "I always had my sleep mask on anyway, so the Bully couldn't monitor my eye movements,"-- readers get an insight into the circular reasoning of people who fall for conspiracy theories. The plot builds as the "Enemy" attacks become more convincing. Who can't relate to Kafkaesque customer service calls or the frustrations of trying to resolve a glitch after a software update? However, it goes on so long the readers feel as battered as the narrator. The author ironically acknowledges the tedium, as if it was part of her strategy. "Let the Enemy waste its time, energy, and resources on my humdrum life. Hopefully it would be bored to death -- literally." The book also fails to build a consistent world; it seems to be set in the future, in countries with unrecognizable names, then drops in familiar American brands like Apple, Clinique, Oprah. The author's bio sheds some light on the backstory, and perhaps the story is more fact/or fact-based fears, than fiction. Though the author obviously poured a great deal of expertise, and perhaps personal details, into the "psychological thriller," blurring the lines has made the facts less convincing and the fiction less entertaining.

[Dan Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave it an honest go and could not finish

I read this because it caught my eye as topical, and it might make for a good suspense story in any case.

This book tells the story of someone who felt victimised by a government conspiracy.

I struggled to determine whether this book was autobiographical, autobiographical in disguise, or merely fiction. Regardless of how I visualised it as I read, I struggled to make sense of the story. It was a collection of anecdotes seeking to persuade me that the MC is being watched, stalked and bullied by a dark and malevolent government department. Whether it was an autobiography disguised as fiction or out-and-out fiction wouldn't have mattered to me if the story carried me along and the various incidents were convincing.

Instead, the plot was confusing. The supposed proofs of government surveillance and bullying were unconvincing and actually served to reduce my sympathy for the MC in their role as the victim of a conspiracy, and caused me to err on the side of wondering whether the story would turn out to be about someone with a psychiatric condition. This may be the point, but I wasn't captivated enough by the writing to find out.

The writing is coherent in a 'copy' sense (I find this is less the case in many books nowadays, so credit where credit is due). But the narrative and premises were insufficient to keep me turning the pages.

[Lee Cushing · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author warns, "It's not a story that an end because it isn't finished," and this statement holds true. The conclusion of this seems to rest in the reader's hands rather than the author's.

The substantial content requires necessary pauses when reading, as it is difficult to digest, and occasionally, some ideas are reiterated.

This book reveals the impact of constant surveillance. With insights and relatable stories, it exposes the psychological effects of continual monitoring. It challenges society and encourages contemplation about the delicate balance between security and personal freedom.

It explores significant questions about privacy ethics and the balance between security and personal freedom. It serves as a wake-up call for our digital age, making us reconsider our interconnected world and shedding light on the dark side of surveillance.

[Justin Alcala · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Invisible Cyber Bully: What it's like to be watched 24/7” by Expat Scribe is a dive into a narrator’s suspicions and evidence against government internet spying. It’s a delicate mix of story and reality which leaves the reader wondering “where are the blurred lines fiction and where are they reality?” The lengthy read isn’t for the impatient reader. It’s stretch of pages leaves the reader wondering if the story is intentionally long in order to underline psychological parts in the book where it’s mentioned that monotony and uninteresting lifestyle of those being spied on are a weapon against the cyber-spy and their machinations.

[Tom Leverett · Rating 5 out of 5]

A high-functioning, intense young woman comes to believe that "the Enemy" and "the Bully" are evil agents causing every problem that occurs to her, and uses 800 pages to prove it, thoroughly and methodically. In a sense, it reminds me of people who credit God and/or Jesus for every little coincidence that benefits them, and I think she's right that technological ability to do remote spying and surveillance is far more sophisticated than most of us are aware of, yet who can this "Enemy" and "Bully" be? I suggest that if the solution is the Lord, the problem probably was the Devil.