Thank you @swissclive, I appreciate that. My best guess is since I would click on links to other peoples' articles (like in comment sections) and / or sites people claimed to be helpful for success on steemit, it must have somehow happened that way :(
I edited the comments / got rid of all the links the hacker posted, so hopefully that helps. There was about 100 spammy comments from this stupid hacker, so it was super time-consuming. Yeah four different people gave me some very helpful info on steemit chat, that was awesome.
I hope no one else fell victim to this hacker :( But I'll tell you what, this gal won't be clicking on anymore links! Thanks, hope I can get my reputation back too.