From 2005 through 2015, I received hundreds of bizarre emails from a man named Nadeem Bitar.
Hoo boy, where do I even begin on this one?
I’m not entirely sure when I actually received my very first email from Nadeem, I consistently deleted his emails up until some point in 2008 when I decided to only delete them sporadically. I mention Nadeem in an article from 2009, “TROLLED: Typology Central“, and say that he had been emailing me for four years at that point (putting his first email at 2005), but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. While I started writing as early as 2004 (Tripod ftw), I don’t actually remember getting much email until 2006.
I’m also not entirely sure how Nadeem found me and my site. As you’ll see in a bit, most of his emails were incoherent rambling about government conspiracies. Strewn throughout some of those emails though were references to The Best Fan Page in the Universe, a Maddox fan site that I was very active on. Some of his references included drama that had been going on at the time as well as past drama, so Nadeem definitely did have some connection to the site. I don’t ever remember him posting on there though, so maybe he was just a lurker. Most of my early audience came from the various forums I posted at, so I guess it’s likely he really did find my site through TBFPITU. Also included were many references to some other forum called Arm Chair General, which I had never heard of before.
From the mid-2000’s to 2015, Nadeem Bitar sent me hundreds of insane rambling emails. Think I’m exaggerating?
Keep in mind, I didn’t start saving his emails until 2008, and even then I didn’t save everything. The actual number of emails I received from this guy was probably closer to 500, maybe even higher. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I received a thousand emails from Nadeem over those ten years.
I previously mentioned Nadeem Bitar in my February article “How to promote your brand“, calling him a “schizophrenic Muslim” and implying that he was a pissed off jihadi. Upon further research, I’ve discovered that this isn’t true. Nadeem Bitar is not a Muslim or jihadi. He is however very much schizophrenic, as this randomly selected email will show you:
This was the kind of stuff Nadeem was sending me daily, sometimes even multiple times a day. I recall one day where he sent me ten emails.
The first time I ever received one of these emails, I was confused. What the hell was this guy’s problem? What was he trying to say exactly?
Like I said, I don’t have any saved emails before 2008. I do however remember replying to his first email and attempting to seriously engage him in an argument. I don’t remember what we argued about, but I remember being very confused, and wondering if this guy was actually crazy or just a troll.
I’d continue to ask myself that very same question through the years. If Nadeem Bitar was a troll, he was a very clever and dedicated one, considering he emailed me relentlessly all the way up to 2015.
In May of 2009, I had enough of Nadeem’s bullshit and decided to try to track him down. I mistakenly confused him with a computer programmer in San Francisco who shared the same name, and emailed the programmer’s boss:
After some back and forth with the programmer, I established that it wasn’t the same guy.
My actions here were completely out of line, and I don’t defend them. In an act of caffeine-induced impulsivity, I almost ruined some random guy’s life over the ramblings of a schizophrenic. If the other Nadeem Bitar is reading this, I want to sincerely apologize for emailing your employer and incorrectly implicating you in this with absolutely no proof other than a shared name. I was wrong, and my behavior was uncouth and unwarranted. I hope I didn’t ruin your life with my stupidity.
I discovered that Nadeem was also CC’ing Maddox in some of the emails:
Nadeem’s insanity was so strong that Maddox himself even responded to the emails a few times (this was back when it was uncommon to actually get a reply from Maddox), culminating in Maddox blocking Nadeem:
From 2010 to 2015, Nadeem either stopped emailing me, or his emails became so infrequent that I deleted them. I don’t have any saved emails from that time period, but I reference receiving emails in some of my replies, so I’m not sure what actually happened. I was very fucked up for a good portion of that time.
When Nadeem resumed emailing me again in February of 2015, I was perpetually drunk and/or high, as my replies to him will show:
In my fucked up state, I decided it was finally time to give Nadeem Bitar a taste of his own medicine by sending him my own brand of drug and alcohol induced insanity. I flooded him with crazy drunk emails. This is how you know I was fucked up, even the schizophrenic guy realized how bad I was, and actually gave me a pep talk, encouraging me to get my shit together:
I was so crazy that I actually caused Nadeem to have a moment of lucidity, which he used to express concern for my health and send me some words of encouragement. Believe it or not, this exchange was a deciding factor in my decision to calm down. When someone like Nadeem Bitar is telling you you’re out of control, that’s a call to reevaluate yourself and turn things around. I still drink on occasion, but I’m nothing like I was during those years.
Not long after that exchange, Nadeem stopped emailing me altogether (at least, I have no more emails after that point). I’m not sure why, maybe it was because I stopped writing for the site as much and attempted to focus on streaming. It could also be because Nadeem was working on his own project, “Space City Speed Gospel“. Space City Speed Gospel also has its own YouTube channel, to which Nadeem posts videos to every few months, in addition to comments containing the same kind of stuff he was emailing me.
I did reach out to Nadeem again back in December, after finding his YouTube channel. We had a nice little… chat:
He sent me a few more emails after that asking why I stopped replying (I had gotten legitimately busy and didn’t have the time), then stopped emailing me when he realized I probably wasn’t going to reply.
So concludes the Nadeem Bitar Email Saga. While it’s obvious that Nadeem isn’t “all there”, I don’t think he’s a bad guy. At worst he’s just annoying. His crazy behavior doesn’t seem like it comes from a place of malice, even if some of those emails seemed like he was angry at me.
In the future I’d like to actually do an interview with Nadeem and talk about the past, as well as his Space City Speed Gospel and his thoughts on current events. The guy obviously has a lot to say, so I’d like to give him the platform to say it right here at AJnet.