00:03:14.700But when she tweeted about rapper Nicki Minaj,0.97
00:03:17.880Kimberly found herself at the heart of a targeted harassment campaign0.97
00:03:22.080waged by obsessive Nicki Minaj fans, collectively known as the Barbz.
00:03:28.360Now, I'm not talking about casual fans or even huge fans.
00:03:32.580The Barbz are something else entirely.
00:03:35.540People who make their entire online identity a shrine to Nicki Minaj.
00:03:40.600Their Twitter bios include details like
00:03:43.060retweeted by Nicki on April 14th or Nicki follows.
00:03:47.060So when Kimberly tweeted critically about Nicki Minaj, her personal information was posted online, known as doxing, and worse, she and her family got violent threats.
00:03:59.860And for a lot of us, the story might end there.
00:04:03.040But Kimberly is pursuing legal action.
00:04:06.260So you might be thinking, who cares?1.00
00:04:08.140Isn't this just stupid celebrity drama?1.00
00:04:09.860But in taking a legal stand, Kimberly may very well be setting a precedent that shapes online discourse for years to come.0.99
00:04:19.300My name is Kimberly Nicole Foster, and I'm a culture critic and YouTuber.
00:04:26.180So first, I just have to start by asking with everything going on, how is Kimberly? How are you?
00:04:32.140i am surviving i'm okay i mean i've definitely been better but i've also definitely been worse
00:04:41.700so that helps me maintain perspective but not the uh highlight not the the pinnacle the zenith of
00:04:49.560my life for sure right now so tell us what happened on september 12th yeah so early in
00:04:57.040the morning on Monday, September 12th. I was scrolling my Instagram and I came across one of
00:05:05.860those Instagram blogs and they posted something about a new beef that Nicki Minaj appeared to be
00:05:15.400and she was saying something on some new app and other young women rappers were responding and it
00:05:23.720was just a new thing brewing. And I went to my timeline on Twitter as I'm want to do. And I
00:05:33.560tweeted out something about it and went to sleep. I mean, it was three or four o'clock in the
00:05:40.640morning. I'm barely awake. And I wake up the next morning because I'm super excited to go to my
00:05:49.720niece's school and bring them lunch. They were having a kind of friends and family day and they
00:05:55.340had invited me to go. And I was so excited because I'm obsessed with being the best aunt in the world.
00:06:00.680And I remember picking out my outfit that morning and doing my hair and my niece had even warned me,
00:06:09.740yeah, dress like a mom, Kim. Don't dress like a young person. Dress like a mom, you know,
00:06:15.120No prop tops, no short shorts. And so I'm trying to pick out my best cool on outfit. And all of a sudden, my phone starts that, you know, very classic iPhone, that tone. And I'm hearing it. I'm like, who was texting? What? And then I keep hearing it, keep hearing it.
00:06:36.280And then I hear the FaceTime tone, and I'm like, whoa, something is happening.
00:06:42.180And I pick up my phone, of course, my lock screen, and all on my lock screen, there are six or seven messages.
00:06:52.260And I don't know what's happening, but I see the word Nikki on one of those messages on the lock screen.
00:07:23.180And so I'm trying to simultaneously focus on getting myself together, getting out of
00:07:28.560the house, being on time and deal with all of this stuff that's coming in. And initially I saw
00:07:37.840the word Nikki and I thought, okay, whatever. I mean, did I think, I mean, I thought, okay,
00:07:46.160I can deal with this. I can deal with this. Like let's focus. And then I remember looking at the
00:07:52.800phone and it was violent. It was, I'm going to shoot you. I'm going to kill your family. I'm1.00
00:08:03.660going to murder you. I'm going to kidnap you. I'm going to find where you live and you're not going1.00
00:08:12.200to be safe. And then it becomes scary. Kimberly pretty quickly realized this was not just a few
00:08:20.560people giving her snarky mean replies on twitter this was something else entirely then it gets to
00:08:27.840be uh-oh um because i don't know what they know i don't know how they found my phone number at
00:08:37.640that point but you can change your phone number um but once it gets to i know your address and
00:08:49.320multiple, multiple, um, text messages too. And even, you know, the initial phone number violation
00:08:59.200is, is like, whoa, that's where I'm like, oh, because if this was just tweets, you log off
00:09:06.500Twitter, you're close to like, okay, I have a life. But, um, this is my phone number,
00:09:14.720the phone number that I've had since I was 17, 18 years old. I'm 33 now. I'm not giving it out
00:09:22.020willy-nilly. I don't know where they've gotten it. And if they found the phone number, what else do
00:09:25.740you have about me, about my family, that you're threatening to kidnap and mutilate and murder and0.99
00:09:33.560sexually assault? And so, yeah, there was just a lot going on. I do have to show up for my nieces.0.96
00:09:40.780I'm completely distracted the entire time that I'm there. Afterwards, I get in my car. I call the police. The police say, you can't come in. We can't accept anything over the phone. You have to do it online.
00:09:55.520So then I have to drive the 30, 40 minutes back home and sit down and fill out that first police report, which is like, that was a frustrating process. I'll say that. I won't go too much into that.
00:10:10.780Um, and yeah, it just, it just continued. And, um, and then I saw the screenshots of where things
00:10:20.140were coming from. Um, you know, people circulating my phone number, the, these Nicki Minaj fans,
00:10:28.080barbs, right. Cause if I haven't made it clear, um, the, the Nicki is Nicki Minaj. And I realized
00:10:35.920that this is a coordinated campaign of harassment via the quote-unquote Barb community. And people0.80
00:10:44.620are sending me screenshots of this person shared your number and they shared it over here and here
00:10:51.220and here. And I see some of these Twitter accounts have thousands of followers. I saw one Twitter
00:11:00.160account that had almost 16,000 followers of let's text her and show her and you're not going to get
00:11:08.580away with this and she'll know better next time. And then I see them circulating a screenshot of
00:11:16.840my phone number and what is fortunately my previous home address. And I'm like, oh yeah,
00:11:24.580that's scary. That's scary not only for me now, but it's scary for the person who currently lives
00:11:29.500there. Amidst all of this, the threats, the harassment, the slurs, Kimberly's first instinct
00:11:36.960was physical safety. She needed to make sure that her, her family, and the people living in her
00:11:43.620building were all okay. And so, yeah, that happens. And my first thought were, my first thoughts were,
00:11:53.700I have to make sure I'm safe. They are telling me they know where I live. So I also had to
00:12:02.900contact my building. As soon as I got back home, I went to the building manager's office and
00:12:09.200explained to her and she was like, you know, because people who aren't extremely online are
00:12:13.180like, what's happening? What? And then I have to, you know, email her exactly, you know, what's in
00:12:19.260my phone. And she's like, oh my, like, you know, and they have a responsibility to protect the
00:12:24.700hundreds of other people who live here. You know, the police stuff. And then of course,
00:12:31.760people send me screenshots of someone tweeting, I'm going to find the kid's school. I'm looking
00:12:41.020up the kid's school address right now. And that, of course, anybody who knows me knows that how
00:12:49.700much I love my nieces and would literally die to protect them and jump in front of a moving train.
00:12:57.800I alerted the FBI about that stuff. I mean, it was just overwhelming in the truest sense of the
00:13:06.720word. Yeah. And so, but I, you know, I was like, okay, you have to keep this together. I'm trying
00:13:13.580to publicly document this because, um, I felt like that is, that was my only hope. I felt like, um,
00:13:23.140I'll say this, um, in the last couple of weeks, I've gotten so many messages from people about
00:13:31.920this kind of stuff happening to them from that particular Stan community. And the recurring
00:13:39.880theme is when it happened to me, people's nude photos have been leaked. Their phone numbers have
00:13:48.520been leaked. In fact, on that Monday, I wasn't the only person who the Barb's doxxed. And they0.63
00:13:57.560I didn't do anything about it because I couldn't. Nobody was going to listen to me. I didn't have
00:14:02.860money to afford a lawyer. I only have a couple hundred followers. I don't have a platform.
00:14:09.940And my first instinct was they always get away with this and they're just not going to do it
00:14:15.880this time. And so that really motivated my desire to really lay this out and make sure that I was
00:14:23.960going to pursue it via whatever avenues were available to me.
00:14:33.040I have to say, I talked to a lot of people, usually Black women, who are at the center1.00
00:14:38.560of this kind of coordinated harassment and online abuse.
00:14:42.520And they all say that, like, nobody, either A, it was so difficult to describe what was
00:14:48.040happening to people who were not extremely online, and that was incredibly isolating.
00:14:52.920The people that I would go to for help didn't really understand what I was talking about, so I wasn't able to get that help.
00:14:58.300I didn't have money, support, access to fight back, and so I just had to deal with it.
00:15:04.280And I think why I'm so interested in what you're doing is because I think it sets a clear precedent that this is not acceptable.
00:15:11.560This is not acceptable online discourse.
00:15:13.800This is not acceptable online behavior.
00:15:15.240And people, it should not just be the cost of, for you, Kimberly, really doing your job as a cultural critic.
00:15:22.760Like, this is what you're supposed to be doing.
00:15:24.280This is what you, this is why I follow you.
00:15:26.480This is like what, like, this is your job.
00:15:30.440That should not just be the cost of Kimberly doing her job, having these kinds of threats.
00:15:35.580And another misconception that I've seen online a lot is that, oh, Kimberly's a public figure.
00:15:40.920You know, people are allowed to push back.
00:15:43.060the kinds of things that i saw with my own eyes are violent threats it's things like i know the
00:15:49.180kids school address i saw one where someone was saying like very specific things about the building
00:15:54.200that you lived in like oh you think you are safe because you live in a secure building well yada
00:15:58.240yada yada like these this is not discourse this is violent threats and it's against the law and0.58
00:16:03.660like you should not have to put up with it just because you angered the wrong toxic stan community
00:16:11.760Like that's, I'm just in awe that you are trying to set this new precedent that just draws a line in the sand for what is and is not acceptable online.
00:16:20.600Yeah. I have to say, though, I was rather impressed by how coordinated not only the dissemination, the distribution of my phone number and previous address were, but also the messaging that they used around doxing me and harassing me and sending me these terroristic threats.
00:16:50.600from account to account to account. And these are old accounts, right? And another thing people try
00:16:57.780to push back on, these are trolls. This account is from September. There's accounts years old,
00:17:03.640old, that they are using the same language. They are using the same talking points.
00:17:12.840the word unprovoked came up a lot. Yes, you're right. They said, you are in public. How,
00:17:20.380why do you think that you get to say these things publicly and nobody gets to say anything back to
00:17:26.600you? Or why do you think that you get to harass Nicki Minaj and you don't deserve harassment?
00:17:35.300And I'm like, um, one, that makes no fucking sense. Like that's, it's nonsense. Those are0.98
00:17:44.300nonsensical arguments, but seeing it dozens of times, hundreds of times at this point over the
00:17:52.300last couple of weeks, I'm like, whoa. And maybe a week ago, a Cardi B stan account tweeted me
00:18:01.360and said, they get together in group chats
00:18:05.600and they figure out what they're going to say.
00:18:09.360And I said, oh, that makes perfect sense.
00:18:13.600It's like, oh, that is why I'm seeing the exact same language
00:18:17.560from these well-established stan accounts
00:18:21.200with thousands of followers and created in 2015.
00:18:26.560They're all coming together to descend,
00:18:29.100share these details and say the exact same things. It's so well organized. Imagine if you put this
00:18:37.240work and effort and intentionality into something that's not illegal. But yeah, I say my opinions
00:18:48.300in public. I don't say things that are false or defamatory. I don't say things that are untrue.
00:18:57.540I talk about my feelings. I analyze things. I'm very, very careful. I'm really, really good at
00:19:05.520my job. And no, that does not mean that I deserved to be doxxed. That does not mean that my family
00:19:13.960deserves to feel whatever they feel right now. I'll tell you something else. The day that I had
00:19:21.300to email my niece's principal and vice principal and say, these are my two nieces. They're in this
00:19:30.900grade. This is what's happened to me. Here are screenshots of what I received. This is what I
00:19:37.160sent to the police. This is the police report number. This is what I sent to the FBI. Ceasing
00:19:43.500my sister on that, it wasn't a good day. It wasn't. And they didn't deserve that. And I didn't deserve
00:19:49.420that absolutely fucking not uh absolutely not let's take a quick break0.99
00:19:58.620the new red bull dragon berry and tropic berry energizers now at mcdonald's made with freeze0.98
00:20:11.500dried fruit and an electric burst of flavor the all-new red bull energizers now at mcdonald's
00:20:19.260This product may not be right for you.
00:20:47.660streaming radio and podcasting let us show you at iheartadvertising.com that's iheartadvertising.com
00:20:55.140if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality
00:20:58.940welcome home this is prose society the weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat
00:21:06.460for thought daughters pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and
00:21:10.700love island deserve the same level of discourse i'm eli rallo and every week we're connecting
00:21:15.680the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:21:20.680I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:21:24.260From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,
00:21:29.120nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:21:35.240characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives,
00:21:39.960smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much,
00:21:45.260you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever
00:21:51.740you get your podcasts see you between the pages when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held
00:21:59.140captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what
00:22:05.600should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember
00:22:11.940this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with
00:22:20.800survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt
00:22:28.100i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they
00:22:36.060are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's
00:22:41.820taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor
00:22:48.180Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:54.700and we're back it's so interesting that you talk about the coordination because
00:23:05.800like i said like i feel like i watched this happen like i watched it unfold and i watched
00:23:11.060it get like you know blow up and i so one of the talking points that i saw repeated quite a bit was
00:23:18.260that Kimberly put her address and phone number on the internet herself. If you do that willingly,
00:23:26.200that means it can't be doxing. And I saw that so many times repeated that I almost was like,
00:23:32.060well, maybe that's true. Then I took a step back and I was like, wait a minute, I actually know
00:23:35.720quite a bit about doxing. That's not correct. One thing that people might be surprised to learn is
00:23:41.980that pretty much anybody in the United States, our public information is for sale via really
00:23:48.340sketchy people finder websites. And I hate to say it, but nine times out of 10, the reason why our
00:23:54.560information is on those websites is not because we've put it there. It's because our local city
00:24:00.060services, the DMV, our voter registration polls, they often bundle and sell that data to third
00:24:10.000party, sketchy websites. And so it is terrifying, but I just need to make very clear that pretty
00:24:15.660much all of our personal information is for sale if somebody wants to buy it online. And so
00:24:21.060the idea that that would mean that it's not then illegal to disseminate that information
00:24:28.060just doesn't make any sense. That's absolutely not true. And the fact that I saw that untrue
00:24:34.600claim repeated so many times just lets me know how savvy folks are about disseminating
00:24:40.820I will give them accurate sounding but not accurate information that makes them look bad
00:24:49.860that makes them look look like they haven't done anything wrong and makes you look bad yeah it's
00:24:54.720mis and disinformation because some people definitely shared false information intentionally
00:25:01.220But there's a couple of things here. Right after this happened, I immediately went to,
00:25:07.700how did they get my phone number? Like, what? How did that happen? And I can totally admit now,
00:25:13.820I can totally admit now that my first instinct was to blame myself. Like, where did I, I must
00:25:20.240have put it up somewhere. There's no way that people are digging and looking and searching.
00:25:25.040Like, it's gotta be, you know, I've been on the internet for a long time. It's gotta be somewhere.
00:25:29.560And I did say it's got to be somewhere on my YouTube channel. And then I went back and I checked all of the places. I checked my social media, all of the pages that I've had for, I've been an internet person for over a decade. It's not anywhere publicly accessible. It's not anywhere even privately accessible.
00:25:51.840And so that claim that, honestly, I think people are trying to, they might have heard something that I said and then they're repeating it back to me as fact, it's not true. It's just not true.
00:26:06.000I mean, I checked and double-checked and went through, I probably have 30 Facebook pages, Twitter accounts. It's not there. It was not there. And so, yes, they had to be very intentional about seeking out that information.
00:26:26.760But also, it's not just about the finding of the information because, yes, Bridget, as you said, unfortunately, millions of people don't know that it's pretty easy to find out your phone number and your home address, at least the last phone address that's on any public, I mean, your home address, at least the last home address that's on any public record.
00:26:51.880But seeking out that information and sharing it with the intention of harassing somebody and threatening them is 100% unequivocally illegal.
00:27:06.780The distribution of personal information with, I mean, people literally explicitly said, I'm doxing today.
00:27:20.760I mean, there's a long, we got my Dropbox with the screenshots, right? It's a lot, right? And so when you set out to create this, as I said, like almost militaristic, so careful, organized, I'll call it a campaign of abuse.
00:27:50.760a hundred percent unequivocally open and shut case. I mean, there's just, that's not even
00:28:00.660something that I feel the need to go back and forth about. But I will say this, that
00:28:06.700I have spent hundreds of dollars now to have my information scraped from the internet.
00:28:16.480People should not have to pay hundreds of dollars to make sure that they are not susceptible or vulnerable to what happened to me on September 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, right?
00:28:55.160Look, the scary reality is that pretty much all of our personal information is for sale in the United States,
00:29:01.860whether you put it out there yourself or not.
00:29:04.760We spoke to Shana Dilavu, CEO of the anti-doxing service Brightlines, and here's what she had to say.
00:29:11.720It is state agencies, whether they're DMVs, that's pretty well documented.
00:29:17.760If they're utilities, if they're law enforcement databases that are getting sold to data brokers who are then selling them back to us, if it's like ICE or some other federal agency.
00:29:29.380But they're also selling them to data brokers.
00:29:32.280Just to make sure I understand, so state agencies, the DMV, my utilities company,
00:29:38.900my Pepco, whatever, they might be the ones who are selling this data and making money off of it
00:29:44.260that is putting people at risk. They are the ones that are doing it.
00:29:49.280Wow. This is shocking information to me. You're probably like, oh yeah, buckle up. It gets worse.
00:29:54.560But I think that would be shocking information to most people.
00:29:57.580right you would never know it until you went to foia it and i'd say in addition to utilities we
00:30:04.160know that courts sell court records and those usually like so you imagine that you get a
00:30:10.280parking ticket because i live in dc and i could never remember which side of the street is street
00:30:14.400cleaning this week i get a parking ticket and then there's a traffic court date if i want to go
00:30:19.580i don't even think about it to pay the ticket it's like done but there's a record right that has my
00:30:24.900name, my home address, the VIN number of my car, probably my date of birth, the information
00:30:29.980from my driver's license, plus my car.
00:30:33.240And so that's a court record that would get sold.
00:30:36.260We interviewed this woman, Shauna DeLillo, who runs a company called Brightlines, which
00:30:41.020specializes in scrubbing people's information off the internet when they become, you know,
00:30:45.640run for office or, you know, get targeted.
00:30:48.680And she talks about how it's not cheap.
00:30:50.940the price point is high. And it creates this situation where some people are able to take
00:30:56.040the steps necessary to protect themselves. And it creates this kind of permanent vulnerable
00:31:00.980underclass that would never have that access. And, you know, we're talking about if you've
00:31:05.860ever had a driver's license, if you've ever voted, if you've ever turned on the heat or the water in
00:31:10.540an apartment, odds are, unless you've taken great steps to prevent it, your information is available
00:31:16.560for sale that's just that's just the reality it sucks but what it is what it is it should not be
00:31:21.800that way and you kimberly should not have to incur the pretty high personal cost of doing this
00:31:30.080just to be able to do your job as a cultural critic like like we really have to take a step
00:31:34.680back and wonder what kind of world like digital landscape we want to have where some people can
00:31:41.460show up safely if they have the money and the rest of everybody else is just vulnerable that
00:31:45.460that is, who is that serving? Absolutely. And I will say, you know, I feel a responsibility
00:31:53.880as somebody who has not only a platform, but access to resources, a great social network
00:32:04.760to do as much as I can to make a very clear statement that there are consequences.
00:32:15.460as I mentioned before, and I am incredibly privileged. Even before this, I feel like I
00:32:21.180spend a lot of time wrestling with those privileges and trying to be of service,
00:32:29.300trying to extend myself, trying to share what I have in a thoughtful way, in a responsible way.
00:32:39.100And I'm only at this point because of this, all of these gifts and access and resources and things that, frankly, I did not earn coming together.
00:32:54.300And I feel really, I feel very resolute in the fact that what I am doing is the right thing to do.
00:33:08.000you know people say just let it go you know like okay you're you're on the other side of it
00:33:13.540you have what you need to get you know I have two phones now uh you're good you're they nobody
00:33:21.980found you just you nobody found your need like and I'm like no I can't I can't let it go
00:33:28.420because all of these people who had to you know they didn't have any choices so yes um I definitely
00:33:36.180feel that way. And also, you know, not to wave the, you know, not to get in my patriotic bag
00:33:43.040or anything like that. But after having so many conversations with lawyers over the past couple
00:33:48.580of weeks with constitutional scholars, right, people who have like deeply studied this stuff
00:33:56.760and had so many conversations about the First Amendment and the rights and protections that
00:34:01.180we are afforded not only as citizens, but as somebody who does what I do for a living, which
00:34:07.320is, you know, just talk about things, hopefully in a responsible manner. And I do think I'm very
00:34:13.200responsible. But a bedrock of our constitution, a bedrock of our values as Americans is that
00:34:22.740we can speak freely. And you speak freely and you don't anticipate any illegal kind of backlash.
00:34:37.140You know, you speak freely and that does not give anybody the right to threaten you or harm you.
00:34:45.000I expect when I say whatever I want to say people to go back and forth I expect banter
00:34:54.020and sometimes on Twitter that banter can get a little feisty that's like okay we're feisty
00:35:02.000we're jousting I love a little witty repartee I definitely did not expect
00:35:09.360this level of an invasion of privacy or this level of trauma and i don't accept it so it's
00:35:20.900unacceptable and i think you're right i think the point is the silencing effect i think what
00:35:28.440what it's trying to do is to be is to make it clear that negative cult critique of certain
00:35:35.920people will not be tolerated. And if you do it, this is what's going to happen to you.
00:35:40.340And I think it takes a certain kind of person to say, no, I'm allowed to do my job. I'm not
00:35:47.480going to accept this. And I was talking earlier before you and I got on about how excited I was
00:35:52.360to talk to you because I think this could set a real digital precedent about how discourse works
00:36:01.680on today's internet i think what you're doing i think it's going to set a really interesting
00:36:07.920precedent i think it's going to like this this feels like legacy building stuff like i think
00:36:12.520people will go back and be studying this in like media and digital criticism courses
00:36:16.920yeah i'm trying to right size this in my mind because we're talking about
00:36:25.560So pop culture commentary is what we're really talking about here.
00:36:34.520When I have talked about what happened and the doxing and the threats of murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, more than a few people, honestly, a surprising number of people who I thought were relatively reasonable said,
00:36:54.220well, if you knew that these people do that, why would you even talk about that person?
00:37:00.100I'm like, wait, what? We're talking about a global superstar. We're talking about
00:37:11.300a person who regularly releases music. A lot of the music that I have said that I like and enjoy,
00:37:21.440A person who, less than a couple of weeks before this thing happened, was on the VMAs accepting the Video Vanguard Award and doing a 15-minute performance.0.85
00:37:34.440I mean, the idea that if you know that this particular standom, this spanned community is rabid, why would you say anything about their person? It's just, it makes absolutely no sense.
00:37:52.080And yes, the idea that forever and ever, nobody, and you know, again, we're not, I'm very aware of things that are happening like globally, right? People's, I mean, literal lives are at risk and their rights are being stripped of me.
00:38:11.340even in the United States, right, with what's happened. It's not that. I understand it's not
00:38:16.380that. But it really is an attempt to strike fear in people's hearts, right? Like, it's
00:38:28.380on this kind of micro scale. It is about fear and intimidation and, you know, the words you
00:38:39.020mentioned silencing and just like of the pettiest shit imaginable, but also it's like really0.96
00:38:45.300important. It's really important also because, um, since this has happened, I've seen other,0.92
00:38:53.500I mean, I've witnessed this happen to another pop culture YouTuber, but also I have seen
00:39:02.920And other writers and journalists and YouTubers, podcasters who have experienced similar things, not only from this fandom, definitely from this fandom, definitely from this fandom, but from others as well.
00:39:19.920And eventually we got to say enough is enough, right?
00:39:22.300Look, somebody's got to, not necessarily punishment, because that's not my orientation in the world, but I am certainly about justice.
00:39:33.920And sometimes justice means consequences.
00:49:55.120How do you think fandom and stan culture got so toxic?
00:49:59.820Like, what do you think happened that got us here where someone out of a love of a musician or a public figure who they do not know would behave in this way?
00:50:09.100Because for me, and I think for most people, there is not a person on this earth who is not a blood relative to me that I would have this kind of reaction about.
00:50:20.520Certainly not anybody that I don't know.
00:50:22.340And so it seems like, for some of us, it's probably so difficult to even imagine what you're going through. What do you think got us here? Like, how did we get here?
00:50:30.840I think people are incredibly isolated. People are lonely. They're looking for community.
00:50:43.100And the way that you express your fidelity to this particular community is by behaving in very
00:50:51.960extreme ways. I think the pandemic exacerbated this, but obviously it existed before that. You
00:51:01.120just brought up the Donald Trump example. But I've learned a lot about the way that these
00:51:09.780stand communities work. And it's almost like they operate as like chosen families. I
00:51:21.000I don't want to misappropriate that language from the LGBTQ plus community, but it's like
00:51:48.100If you need a legal defense, we'll raise money for you.
00:51:50.660don't apologize to her. Don't take it back. Don't delete it. And I was like, oh, y'all are really,
00:51:57.420like, there's very much a feeling of we're in this together. It's, it's, it's all of us against
00:52:04.640the world. It's all of us against any attack or outsider. And it just so happened that on that
00:52:11.140Monday I was the, the quote unquote threatening force, but yes, that's, that's how they mount up
00:52:17.220together. And I just think that I'm sure that you've seen the new studies, the scholarship
00:52:25.740about how just generally sad people are, you know, in 2022, despite us seeming to have all of these
00:52:34.460new means of connection, despite us being online all day, every day in the surveillance state,
00:52:43.100expanding every second of every day. People just do not have that many deep, intimate relationships,
00:52:52.800those connections that really ground us and keep us mentally well. And I think that these
00:53:00.660kind of band communities, these obsessive communities are a byproduct of our culture
00:53:07.900in the United States. And honestly, globally, we're just not dealing with these technological
00:53:15.760evolutions the way that we thought we would. It's just,
00:53:22.180um, I have realized over the past few years, especially since the pandemic, that my IRL
00:53:32.120community, my family, the new friends that I've made, the old friends that I've had,
00:53:39.980romantic relationships. That is what sustains me. I love my job. I love the building community
00:53:48.560digitally. It saved my life in a really bad time, but I got to see people and hug them and look
00:53:57.380them in the eyes and share a meal with them, that is what brings me the most joy. And I think
00:54:04.280I realized that's an incredible privilege that I don't take for granted. And a lot of people
00:54:10.880are not privileged in that way. Wow. What empathy. I have to, I'm reminded of this Janelle
00:54:16.720Monet quote, we come in peace, but we mean business. You're like, I'm looking for justice,
00:54:21.640But I have empathy. Like, I don't know if I would be able to be capable of the kind of empathetic assessment of what's happening emotionally with some of these people the way that you are. I think that really speaks to your character.
00:54:36.080Oh, yeah. And I'll say, you can find that community and find joy in being able to use that community to exercise violent expressions of power.
00:54:58.300I think that the communities that we are able to build and take part in, we are empowered by them. We feel power within them. And that guides so many of our actions. And some of those actions are good positive actions. And some of them are objectively, I won't say objectively.
00:55:24.400Some of them are potentially very harmful. And I think that people are using the communities that they've built for negative ends. And I definitely do not, I do not have empathy for that whatsoever.
00:55:43.520I can empathize with what draws you to a community, but I do not empathize or understand at all the desire to rally around abuse and threats and harassment.