00:06:17.040So early in the morning on Monday, September 12th, I was scrolling my Instagram and I came across one of those Instagram blogs.
00:06:27.980blogs and they posted something about a new beef that Nicki Minaj appeared to be and she was saying
00:06:37.660something on some new app and other young women rappers were responding and it was just a new
00:06:46.020thing brewing and I went to my timeline on Twitter as I'm want to do and I tweeted out something
00:06:56.140about it and went to sleep. I mean, it was three or four o'clock in the morning. I'm barely awake
00:07:03.620and I wake up the next morning because I'm super excited to go to my niece's school and bring them
00:07:12.280lunch. They were having a kind of friends and family day and they had invited me to go and I
00:07:17.960was so excited because I'm obsessed with being the best aunt in the world. And I remember picking
00:07:25.000out my outfit that morning and doing my hair. And my niece had even warned me, yeah, dress like a
00:07:32.080mom, Kim. Don't dress like a young person. Dress like a mom. No prop tops, no short shorts. And so0.52
00:07:39.240I'm trying to pick out my best cool aunt outfit. And all of a sudden, my phone starts that very
00:07:47.440classic iPhone, that tone. And I'm hearing it. I'm like, who was texting? What? And then I keep
00:07:55.980hearing it, keep hearing it. And then I hear the FaceTime tone and I'm like, whoa, something is
00:08:02.380happening. And I pick up my phone, of course, my, my lock screen and all on my lock screen,
00:08:09.920there were six or seven messages. And I don't know what's happening, but I see the word Nikki
00:08:17.560on one of those messages on the lock screen. And I knew exactly what it was. It was like I was in
00:08:23.180a movie. I'd heard about this. I'd seen it happen. I never paid that much attention to it when it
00:08:31.080was happening, but I'd been vaguely aware, but I knew exactly what was happening. And so I'm trying
00:08:38.320to, I still have to go to my niece's school. I have to bring them lunch. I promised them.
00:08:44.560And so I'm trying to simultaneously focus on getting myself together, getting out of the
00:08:49.980house, being on time and deal with all of this stuff that's coming in. And initially
00:08:57.960I saw the word Nikki and I thought, okay, whatever. I mean, did I think, I mean, I thought,
00:09:06.500okay I can deal with this I can deal with this like let's focus and then I remember looking at0.99
00:09:13.880the phone and it was violent it was I'm gonna shoot you I'm gonna kill your family I'm gonna1.00
00:09:25.060murder you I'm gonna kidnap you I'm going to find where you live and you're not gonna be safe1.00
00:09:34.180and then it becomes scary. Kimberly pretty quickly realized this was not just a few people0.99
00:09:42.240giving her snarky, mean replies on Twitter. This was something else entirely. Then it gets to be,
00:09:49.480uh-oh. Because I don't know what they know. I don't know how they found my phone number at
00:09:58.920that point, but you can change your phone number. Um, but once it gets to, I know your address and
00:10:10.600multiple, multiple, um, text messages too. And even, you know, the initial phone number violation
00:10:20.480is, is like, whoa, that's where I'm like, oh, because if this was just tweets, you log off
00:10:27.780Twitter. You're close. You're like, okay, I have a life. But this is my phone number,
00:10:36.100the phone number that I've had since I was 17, 18 years old. I'm 33 now. I'm not giving it out
00:10:43.280willy-nilly. I don't know where they've gotten it. And if they found the phone number, what else do
00:10:47.020you have about me, about my family, that you're threatening to kidnap and mutilate and murder and0.99
00:10:54.820sexually assault. And so, yeah, there was just a lot going on. I do have to show up for my nieces.0.98
00:11:02.280I'm completely distracted the entire time that I'm there. Afterwards, I get in my car. I call
00:11:07.520the police. The police say, you can't come in. We can't accept anything over the phone.
00:11:14.680You have to do it online. So then I have to drive the 30, 40 minutes back home and sit down and
00:11:22.280fill out that first police report, uh, which is like, that was a frustrating process. I'll say
00:11:30.160that I won't go too much into that. Um, and yeah, it just, it just continued. And, um, and then I
00:11:38.520saw the screenshots of where things were coming from. Um, you know, people circulating my phone
00:11:46.280number, these Nicki Minaj fans, Barb's, right? Because if I haven't made it clear, the Nicki
00:11:54.440is Nicki Minaj. And I realized that this is a coordinated campaign of harassment via the
00:12:01.800quote unquote Barb community. And people are sending me screenshots of this person shared
00:12:09.220your number and they shared it over here and here and here. And I see some of these Twitter
00:12:16.780accounts have thousands of followers. I saw one Twitter account that had almost 16,000 followers
00:12:24.680of let's text her and show her and you're not going to get away with this and she'll know better
00:12:31.740next time. And then I see them circulating a screenshot of my phone number and what is
00:12:40.420fortunately my previous home address. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's scary. That's scary not
00:12:47.700only for me now, but it's scary for the person who currently lives there.
00:12:52.140Amidst all of this, the threats, the harassment, the slurs, Kimberly's first instinct was physical
00:12:59.180safety. She needed to make sure that her, her family, and the people living in her building
00:13:05.240were all okay. And so, yeah, that happens. And my first thoughts were, I have to make sure
00:13:18.920I'm safe. They are telling me they know where I live. So I also had to contact my building.
00:13:25.120As soon as I got back home, I went to the building manager's office and explained to her. And she was like, you know, because people who aren't extremely online are like, what's happening? What? And then I have to, you know, email her exactly, you know, what's in my phone. And she's like, oh, like, you know, and they have a responsibility to protect the hundreds of other people who live here.
00:13:47.940um you know the police stuff and then of course people send me um screenshots of
00:13:55.560someone tweeting i'm gonna find the kids school i'm looking up the kids school address right now
00:14:05.160and that of course anybody who knows me knows that how much i love my nieces and would literally
00:14:14.120die to protect them and jump in front of a moving train um I alerted the FBI about that stuff I mean
00:14:23.100it was just overwhelming in the truest sense of the word yeah and so but I you know I was like
00:14:31.740okay you have to keep this together I'm trying to publicly document this because um I felt like
00:14:40.200that is, that was my only hope. I felt like, I'll say this, in the last couple of weeks,
00:14:50.240I've gotten so many messages from people about this kind of stuff happening to them
00:14:55.160from that particular Stan community. And the recurring theme is, when it happened to me,
00:15:04.420people's nude photos have been leaked. Their phone numbers have been leaked. In fact,
00:15:10.720on that Monday, I wasn't the only person who the Barb's doxxed. And they said, I didn't do
00:15:20.240anything about it because I couldn't. Nobody was going to listen to me. I didn't have money to
00:15:24.720afford a lawyer. I only have a couple hundred followers. I don't have a platform. And my first
00:15:32.160instinct was they always get away with this and they're just not going to do it this time.
00:15:37.800And so that really motivated my desire to really lay this out and make sure that I was going to
00:15:46.220pursue it via whatever avenues were available to me.
00:15:54.260I have to say, I talked to a lot of people, usually Black women who are at the center of0.99
00:16:00.080this kind of coordinated harassment and online abuse. And they all say that. Either A, it was
00:16:07.960so difficult to describe what was happening to people who were not extremely online, and that
00:16:13.160was incredibly isolating. The people that I would go to for help didn't really understand what I was
00:16:17.500talking about, so I wasn't able to get that help. I didn't have money, support, access to fight back,
00:16:23.160and so I just had to deal with it. And I think why I'm so interested in what you're doing is
00:16:29.100because I think it sets a clear precedent that this is not acceptable.
00:16:32.680This is not acceptable online discourse.
00:16:35.080This is not acceptable online behavior.
00:16:36.680And people, it should not just be the cost of, for you, Kimberly,
00:16:41.240really doing your job as a cultural critic.
00:16:44.020Like, this is what you're supposed to be doing.
00:16:45.560This is what you, this is why I follow you.
00:16:47.760This is like what, like, this is your job.
00:16:56.760And another misconception that I've seen online a lot is that, oh, Kimberly's a public figure, you know, people are allowed to push back. The kinds of things that I saw with my own eyes are violent threats. It's things like, I know the kid's school address. I saw one where someone was saying like very specific things about the building that you lived in. Like, oh, you think you are safe because you live in a secure building. Well, yada, yada, yada.
00:17:19.920This is not discourse. This is violent threats, and it's against the law. And you should not have to put up with it just because you angered the wrong, toxic stan community. 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.
00:17:41.860Yeah. 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.
00:18:11.860from account to account to account. And these are old accounts, right? And another thing people try
00:18:19.040to push back on, these are trolls. This account is from September. There's accounts years old,
00:18:24.900old, that they are using the same language. They are using the same talking points.
00:18:34.100the word unprovoked came up a lot yes you're right they said you are in public how why do you
00:18:42.140think that you get to say these things publicly and nobody gets to say anything back to you
00:18:48.200or why do you think that you get to harass Nicki Minaj and you don't deserve harassment0.94
00:18:56.580And I'm like, um, one, that makes no fucking sense. Like that's, it's nonsense. Those are0.98
00:19:05.560nonsensical arguments, but seeing it dozens of times, hundreds of times at this point over the
00:19:13.580last couple of weeks, I'm like, whoa. And maybe a week ago, a Cardi B stan account tweeted me
00:19:22.640and said, they get together in group chats
00:19:26.880and they figure out what they're going to say.
00:19:30.620And I said, oh, that makes perfect sense.
00:23:54.440You know, one thing that people might be surprised to learn is that pretty much anybody in the United States, our public information is for sale via really sketchy people finder websites.
00:24:06.300And I hate to say it, but nine times out of 10, the reason why our information is on those websites is not because we put it there. It's because our local city services, the DMV, our voter registration polls, they often bundle and sell that data to third-party sketchy websites.
00:24:27.420And so it is terrifying, but I just need to make very clear that pretty much all of our personal information is for sale if somebody wants to buy it online.
00:24:36.840And so the idea that that would mean that it's not then illegal to disseminate that information just doesn't make any sense.
00:24:48.400And the fact that I saw that untrue claim repeated so many times just lets me know how savvy folks are about disseminating, I will give them accurate sounding but not accurate information that makes them look bad, that makes them look like they haven't done anything wrong and makes you look bad.
00:25:09.800Yeah, it's mis and disinformation, because some people definitely share false information intentionally. But there's a couple of things here. Right after this happened, I immediately went to how did they get my phone number? Like, what? How did that happen? And I can totally admit now that my first instinct was to blame myself.
00:25:34.680like, where did I, I must've put it up somewhere. There's no way that people are digging and looking
00:25:40.260and searching. Like if it's gotta be, you know, I've been on the internet for a long time. It's
00:25:44.700gotta be somewhere. And I did say it's gotta be somewhere on my YouTube channel. And then I went
00:25:50.820back and I checked all of the places. I checked my social media, all of the pages that I've had for,
00:25:58.760I've been an internet person for over a decade it's not anywhere publicly accessible it's not
00:26:06.000anywhere even privately accessible and so that claim that honestly I think people are are trying
00:26:14.400to they might have heard something that I said and then they're repeating it back to me as fact
00:26:20.120it's not true it's just not true I mean I checked and double checked and went through I've had I
00:26:26.780probably had 30 Facebook pages, Twitter accounts. It's not there. It was not there. And so, yes,
00:26:34.460they had to be very intentional about seeking out that information. But also, it's not just
00:26:45.340about the finding of the information because, yes, Bridget, as you said, unfortunately,
00:26:50.060Unfortunately, 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.
00:27:07.940But seeking out that information and sharing it with the intention of harassing somebody and threatening them is 100% unequivocally illegal.
00:27:23.400The distribution of personal information with, I mean, people literally explicitly said, I'm doxing today.
00:27:36.820I mean, there's a long, we got my Dropbox with the screenshots. It's a lot. 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.
00:28:06.820a hundred percent unequivocally open and shut case. I mean, there's just, that's not even
00:28:16.740something that I feel the need to go back and forth about, but I will say this, that
00:28:22.780I have spent hundreds of dollars now to have my information scraped from the internet.
00:28:32.540People 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?
00:30:14.300You would never know it until you went to FOIA. And I'd say, in addition to utilities, we know that courts sell court records. And those usually, like, so you imagine that you get a parking ticket because I live in DC and I can never remember which side of the street is street cleaning this week. I get a parking ticket. And then there's a traffic court date if I want to go. I don't even think about it.
00:30:37.020to pay the ticket, it's like done, but there's a record, right? That has my name, my home address,
00:30:42.140the VIN number of my car, probably my date of birth, the information from my driver's license,
00:30:47.180plus my car. And so that's a court record that would get sold.
00:30:52.340We interviewed this woman, Shauna DeLillo, who runs a company called Brightlines,
00:30:56.940which specializes in scrubbing people's information off the internet when they
00:31:00.420become, you know, run for office or, you know, get targeted. And she talks about how it's not
00:31:06.700cheap. The price point is high. And it creates this situation where some people are able to
00:31:11.900take the steps necessary to protect themselves. And it creates this kind of permanent vulnerable
00:31:17.060underclass that would never have that access. And, you know, we're talking about if you've
00:31:21.940ever had a driver's license, if you've ever voted, if you've ever turned on the heat or the water in
00:31:26.620an apartment, odds are, unless you've taken great steps to prevent it, your information is available
00:31:32.620for sale that's just that's just the reality it sucks but it is what it is it should not be that
00:31:38.120way and you Kimberly should not have to incur the pretty high personal cost of doing this just to
00:31:46.700be able to do your job as a cultural critic like like we really have to take a step back and wonder
00:31:51.440what kind of world like digital landscape we want to have where some people can show up safely if
00:31:58.320they have the money and the rest of everybody else is just vulnerable that that that is who is that
00:32:03.040serving absolutely and I will say you know I feel a responsibility as somebody who has
00:32:12.160not only a platform but access to resources a great social network to do as much as I can
00:32:23.580to make a very clear statement that there are consequences, as I mentioned before,
00:32:35.360Even before this, I feel like I spent a lot of time wrestling with those privileges
00:32:40.940and trying to be of service, trying to extend myself,
00:32:47.080trying to share what I have in a, in a thoughtful way, in a responsible way. And I'm only at this
00:32:58.640point because of this, all of these gifts and access and resources and things that frankly,
00:33:08.600I did not earn coming together. And I feel really, I feel very resolute in the fact that what I am
00:33:21.500doing is the right thing to do. You know, people say, just let it go. You know, like, okay, you're
00:33:28.040on the other side of it. You have what you need to get, you know, I have two phones now. You're
00:33:36.000good. Nobody found you. Nobody found your meat. I'm like, no, I can't let it go because all of
00:33:46.160these people who had to, they didn't have any choices. So yes, I definitely feel that way.
00:33:52.940Also, not to get in my patriotic bag or anything like that, but after having so many conversations
00:34:02.780with lawyers over the past couple of weeks with constitutional scholars, right? People who have
00:34:10.160like deeply studied this stuff and had so many conversations about the First Amendment and
00:34:15.740the rights and protections that we are afforded, not only as citizens, but as somebody who does
00:34:22.040what I do for a living, which is, you know, just talk about things, hopefully in a responsible
00:34:26.800manner. And I do think I'm very responsible. But a bedrock of our constitution, a bedrock of our
00:34:35.820values as Americans is that we can speak freely. And you speak freely and you don't anticipate
00:34:46.640any illegal kind of backlash. You know, you speak freely and that does not give anybody
00:34:56.040the right to threaten you or harm you. I expect when I say whatever I want to say,
00:35:07.540people to go back and forth. I expect banter. And sometimes on Twitter, that banter can get a little
00:35:14.180feisty. That's like, okay, we're feisty. We're jousting. I love a little witty repartee.
00:35:20.880I definitely did not expect this level of an invasion of privacy or this level of trauma, and I don't accept it.
00:35:36.160It's unacceptable. And I think you're right. I think the point is the silencing effect.
00:35:43.460I think what it's trying to do is to be, is to make it clear that negative cult critique of certain people will not be tolerated. And if you do it, this is what's going to happen to you. And I think it takes a certain kind of person to say, no, I'm allowed to do my job. I'm not going to accept this.
00:36:04.380And I was talking earlier before you and I got on about how excited I was to talk to you because I think this could set an entire, a real digital precedent about how discourse works on today's internet.
00:36:19.800I think what you're doing, I think it's going to set a really interesting precedent.
00:36:24.500I think it's going to like, this feels like legacy building stuff.
00:36:28.280Like I think people will go back and be studying this in like media and digital criticism courses.
00:36:32.820Yeah, I'm trying to right-size this in my mind because we're talking about pop culture commentary is what we're really talking about here.
00:36:47.940But I agree with you, Bridget. When 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, well, if you knew that these people do that, why would you even talk about that person?
00:37:14.860And I'm like, wait, what? We're talking about a global superstar. We're talking about a person who regularly releases music.
00:37:32.520A lot of the music that I have said that I like and enjoy, a person who less than a couple of weeks before this thing happened was on the BMAs accepting the Video Vanguard Award and doing a 15 minute performance.
00:37:50.520I mean, the idea that if you know that this particular stand-up, this spanned community is rabid, why would you say anything about their person? It's just, it makes absolutely no sense.
00:38:08.140And 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.
00:38:27.180I mean, even in the United States, right, with what's happened. It's not that. I understand it's not that. But it really is an attempt to strike fear in people's hearts, right?
00:38:43.540Like it's, um, on this kind of, um, micro scale, it is about fear and intimidation and, you know, the words you mentioned silencing and just like of the pettiest shit imaginable, but also it's like really important.
00:39:02.060And it's really important also because since this has happened, I've seen other, I mean, I've witnessed this happen to another pop culture YouTuber.
00:39:16.620But also I have seen other writers and journalists and YouTubers, podcasters who have experienced similar things, not only from this fandom, definitely from this fandom.
00:39:32.060definitely from this fandom, but from others as well.
00:39:36.000And eventually we got to say enough is enough, right?
00:40:02.060I, the reason why I think what you're doing is so important is because I cannot ignore the ways that I have seen the same kind of strategy creep into our political landscape.
00:40:17.120And so, yeah, we're talking about Nicki Minaj, a pop star, a celebrity.
00:40:21.340That's, that's the meat of this conversation that we're having, you and me.
00:40:25.660But I have seen the way that the same strategy, like it reminds me a lot of how Trump used social media, right? And so the way that the same exact thing is creeping into our political discourse and becoming acceptable, I see a lot of parallels.
00:40:42.000And I think that we might be in a very different political and social situation today in 2022 if we had not established a precedent that this was a acceptable way to behave online, that if one powerful, big-voiced figure gives the right kind of wink-wink, nod-nod signal, they don't come out and say it.
00:41:02.680they never come out and say it. I'm being very clear about that. But they might give the right
00:41:06.680kind of signals. The people who are obsessively following that one figure know exactly what to do.
00:41:13.500They know exactly how to coordinate and it's very effective. That is a precedent that I feel like
00:41:17.820has become more and more acceptable in our online discourse. And I think that we would be in a very
00:41:22.220different political situation had somebody said, wait a minute, not acceptable. And so I know that
00:41:27.940It might not seem like, you know, it might seem like we're talking about celebrities and pop culture and stans, but I think it's so much deeper than that.
00:41:35.440And I think it really illustrates something else going on politically, socially and digitally in our culture.
00:41:42.600And again, this is my opinion. This is me saying that. This is what I have witnessed, just to be clear.
00:41:48.540Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. That polarization is ubiquitous. It's everywhere.
00:41:57.940And it leaves us unable to determine boundaries, you know, reasonable boundaries and where we will go and where we won't go and what we will do and what we won't do and what we should and shouldn't say.
00:42:17.960And that loss of the ability to right-size things in our minds, to assess responsible discourse, it has really, really dire consequences.
00:42:34.140I have to say, you know, jousts and jabs, you know, verbal jousts and jabs I love, I live for.
00:42:43.220I, you know, I don't have a problem, you know, going back and forth with people about why I don't like somebody's music or why I disagree with their actions and behaviors.
00:42:53.420but what this experience for me has made clear over the the past couple of weeks I've done a
00:43:03.500lot of reading and research and so many different people have brought all of these
00:43:07.140these resources to me and books and podcasts and documentaries about fanatic violence fan violence
00:43:15.740extremism. And it's so clear that even when we're just talking about something like a
00:43:25.440pop culture figure, that there is so much opportunity for this stuff to escalate in
00:43:32.260ways that are devastating, life-changing, tragic. I feel incredibly traumatized from the
00:43:45.660many days of harassment and abuse and threats that I experienced. But there is so much more
00:43:55.040than that at stake. People have been killed over fanatic violence. I mean, even somebody
00:44:01.560recently brought up, you know, John Hinckley Jr. I was born in the 80s. So I don't know,
00:44:08.420people don't know this right but uh you know the the the person who uh shot uh ronald dragan
00:44:16.640right and he was like um obsessed with jody uh jody foster right and um yes that was decades ago
00:44:26.540but there are so many examples of people literally showing up literal i mean the fact that my former
00:44:35.160address was circulating in that way caused me such cause for concern because there have been
00:44:43.420numerous cases of fans showing up at people's homes to defend the honor of the person that
00:44:51.120they stand. I had to share the threats with the FBI because I know I live in Texas months after
00:45:02.160I mean, like, this stuff is real. It's real. People die. People are traumatized forever. They're harmed. They have to move. Fortunately, I didn't have to move. But, like, that stuff, I mean, people's, when some people are telling me about their new photos getting leaked, and then they have to tell their parents or their job about these images are circulating me, about me online,
00:45:31.040And you're never going to be able to live that down. That's real. That's life changing stuff, stuff. And I wish that the people who hold this enormous influence and who recognize that they hold this enormous influence because they understand how to activate their fan base and they're really intentional about doing it for all kinds of reasons.
00:45:55.580i wish that they would be much more cognizant of the fact that yeah right now it's just0.97
00:46:02.000you ugly monkey bitch i guess you're gonna have to bleep this out you know and i also got all0.99
00:46:10.220kinds of slurs oh i'm i'm a black woman from texas i've never had seen the n-word directed1.00
00:46:17.400at me hard ER that many times. Oh, it's crazy. Right now it's, I'm going to, I know where you
00:46:27.180live. I'm going to kidnap you. I'm going to mutilate you. I'm going to put a bullet in your0.99
00:46:33.180sibling's brain, but it could easily, um, be death or disfigurement or real physical bodily harm1.00
00:46:46.020and not actively discouraging the people that you understand you have all of this influence on,
00:46:55.600not actively discouraging it strikes me as um not right i'll say it's not right
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00:47:57.940if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality welcome home
00:48:04.120This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:48:16.580I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:48:23.680I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:48:26.820From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:48:33.220It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:48:41.140Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:48:50.300Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:49:06.060How do you think fandom and stan culture got so toxic?
00:49:10.740Like, 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?
00:49:19.960Because 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.
00:49:31.420Certainly not anybody that I don't know.
00:49:33.660And so it seems like for some of us, it's probably so difficult to even imagine what you're going through.
00:50:16.740And I've learned a lot about the way that these stand communities work. And it's almost like they operate as like chosen families. You know, I don't want to misappropriate that language from the LGBTQ plus community, but it's like they support each other.
00:50:41.400I mean this is public so I can say this um I uh after I was tweeting about what happened to me
00:50:51.240I saw one of the the stand accounts tweet to somebody don't apologize to her we'll raise
00:50:57.940money for you if you need a legal defense we'll raise money for you don't apologize to her don't
00:51:02.980take it back don't delete it and I was like oh y'all are really like there's very much a feeling
00:51:09.980of we're in this together it's it's it's all of us against the world it's all of us against
00:51:17.460any attack or outsider and it just so happened that on that Monday I was the
00:51:23.140the um quote-unquote threatening force but yes that's that's how they mount up together and I
00:51:28.940just think that I'm sure that you you've seen um the the new studies the scholarship about how
00:51:37.780just generally sad people are, you know, in 2022, despite us seeming to have all of these
00:51:45.380new means of connection, despite us being online all day, every day in the surveillance state,
00:51:54.420expanding every second of every day, people just do not have that many deep, intimate relationships,
00:52:03.740those connections that really ground us and keep us mentally well.
00:52:09.820And I think that these kind of banned communities, these obsessive communities are a byproduct of our culture in the United States and honestly, globally.
00:52:22.960We're just not dealing with these technological evolutions the way that we thought we would.
00:52:32.360It's just, I have realized over the past few years, especially since the pandemic, that my IRL community, my family, the new friends that I've made, the old friends that I've had, romantic relationships, that is what sustains me.
00:52:55.300I love my job. I love the building community digitally. It saved my life in a really bad time, but I got to see people and hug them and look them in the eyes and share a meal with them. That is what brings me the most joy. And I think I realize that's an incredible privilege that I don't take for granted. And a lot of people are not privileged in that way.
00:53:23.040wow what empathy I have to I'm reminded of this Janelle Monae quote we come in peace but we mean
00:53:29.980business you're like I'm looking for justice but I have empathy like I I don't know if I would be
00:53:35.820able to be capable of the kind of empathetic assessment of what's happening emotionally with
00:53:43.680some of these people the way that you are I think that really speaks to your character oh yeah and
00:53:49.280to say um you can find that community and find joy in being able to use that community to exercise
00:54:04.680violent expressions of power right like um I think that uh the communities that we are able
00:54:13.800to build and take part in, we are empowered by them. We feel power within them. And that guides
00:54:21.980so many of our actions. And some of those actions are good positive actions. And some of them are
00:54:28.800objectively, I won't say objectively, some of them are potentially very harmful. And I think that
00:54:43.800People are using the communities that they've built for negative, negative ends. And I definitely do not. I do not have empathy for that whatsoever. I 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.
00:55:09.700And yes, Janelle Monae, 100% right. My natural orientation in the world is empathy. That guides my politics. I believe in grace. My dad died when he was 50, but before he died, he said, the only thing you can't come back from is death.
00:55:27.600and uh i believe that you make mistakes and you do bad things you hurt people
00:55:37.020and then you do whatever you can to make it right you invest yourself in repairing harm
00:55:46.240and making amends and explaining to your community why what you did was wrong and
00:55:52.740why you shouldn't do that in the future. And I think that the people who participated in this
00:55:58.480against me, this organized campaign of abuse and harassment, I don't think they have to suffer for
00:56:06.860the rest of their lives. I don't want to ruin somebody's life forever. I don't want to make
00:56:12.180sure you can never rent an apartment or that you can never buy a car or you can't get into college
00:56:18.320or that your children have to suffer, that's not my aim.
00:56:23.860But my aim is to encourage people to invest in the things that I believe in,
00:56:32.460which is you cause harm, you make it right.
00:57:19.900I did not know how, I mean, I guess I knew, but I didn't really know how expensive retaining lawyers is and investigators and, oh, I've already spent thousands of dollars.
00:57:32.180So I appreciate everybody who has given to that. You can follow me on social media. I actually am not going to be tweeting about it as much anymore since things are rolling. And my counsel has said, you gotta, you gotta reel it in. And it's like, okay, you're right. We're right. We'll set this aside for a second.
00:57:54.500But yeah, if you're if you're interested in supporting the cause, I definitely welcome anybody who, you know, can spare a couple of dollars.
00:58:03.020You don't have to support sharing the story, talking about it, advocating on behalf of other people who have experienced that.
00:58:14.560That is enough for me. I'm going to be OK.
00:58:18.540I am. I have such a great support system and I'm so grateful.
00:58:22.440I have such great networks and I could not thank them enough.