My first encounter with Shaw was in 2011, my sophomore year in college. Already late for a class, I was folding up my laptop and getting ready to leave a café when he tapped me on the shoulder. "Excuse me — I just wanted to come over to tell you that you have the most amazing eyes I've ever seen." The slender young man in front of me was impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit, and his smile was friendly and unassuming. Flattered and somewhat surprised, I thanked him and jokingly mentioned that my very narrow eyes were actually the source of much childhood taunting. My teachers would joke that I looked like I was falling asleep even when I wasn't, and immature high school boys have done the slanted-eye gesture to me. "I can't believe it. You're absolutely beautiful!" He kept showering me with compliments. We chatted for about five more minutes, with topics ranging from his studies at FIT majoring in textile design to Mr. Talented , his burgeoning bow tie business (he claimed Karl Lagerfeld was a fan). Later that day, I accepted his Facebook friend request without thinking twice. This is how you meet cool new people in the city, right? A few weeks after our Facebook connection, he sent over the first invite to chat, which made me slightly uncomfortable. It was not that the content raised a red flag per se, but more the timing and robotic quality of these chats: They would always pop up late at night, with a mention of my full name followed by a "Hi." The one time I wrote back, there was no response. This happened five times over the course of our digital "friendship." It annoyed me a little, maybe even creeped me out, but it didn't sound any alarm. Then, last year, he made a comment on my new profile picture. I had just uploaded a photo of myself looking pensively into the camera in my new apartment. Within seconds, he wrote — criticizing my expression and asking if I was too cool to crack a smile. The rude remark prompted me to block him immediately. There's no time for that kind of negativity in my life. I'd barely spoken to this man — just once. Who did he think he was? I chalked it up to common NYC douchebaggery and never looked back, until now. Now, I feel like I might have dodged a bullet. If Shaw was the man behind the attacks, he got pretty close to me.