Dealing with ongoing public misinformation

What is cyber stalking ? You know , what do you do if someone approaches you ? Stay together , you know, because they walk to school together , keep your ph ones on, that kind of thing. To where it felt really scary . There were points when there was inferences that somebody reaching out to this man's work to defame him and say terrible things about him pretending to be somebody else, but having an IP address that just happens to be in my area and then he named my area which meant I know that he knows where I live . It was at that point when I knew that he knew where I lived that I reached out to people like I hadn't talked to anybody on substack about it because I'm like in my own head about it , about not being like a source of drama or being I don't know. Like I don't want to be, I don't want to be the only reason that I reach out to someone be because of like a personal dramatic reason or like be a burden. And so I waited too long to say something . And when I finally did say something , it was so well received by people on Substack who had been journalists for every like for decades and they were like, yes, this happens, but this is what you have to do to protect yourself. These are the steps you have to take . And so one was like, you have to go to the FBI like tonight. You have to report this tonight . And so I did it that night that he posted that I reported it . I had reached out because I had done a background check on him. I figured out because I wanted to know where he lived. I wanted to know how far away from me he is and he is thanfully very far away but contacted the police in his county and I said, I want to report this and I had, you know, I showed them everything and the feedback I got was kind of like why I hadn't said anything in the first place. It was that these are not physical threats that he's threatening you with. And even if he does threaten you physically, he has to show intent that he's going to act on those threats. And I said, You mean like he actually comes and hurts me? And they said, Yes. And I was like, cool , I'm gonna go . But in that there was at least a paper trail . I've had several people in the legal field reach out to me, which is wonderful , on substack, a lot of amaz ing lawyers who have said we want to help, we offer you free help and so I think that's where I have to go next . Uh the threats have continued , the harassment has continued. He's thankfully never come back to Substack, but it's just all on threads . I have him blocked everywhere, but you know, people obviously send me the things that he says . Yeah . So it's been building, building, building. At one point , there was some kind of a discussion, and I don't remember the wording, something like I can't wait for tomorrow and there was indication, but not clear indication, but just indication that he may be going to like the reading room in DC and it didn't feel I don't know, it felt it didn't feel like I can't wait for tomorrow. It felt a little bit more like I can't wait for tomorrow and it could just be me reading into it and how , you know , it had been going so far . But I reached out to the reading room folks because I know them and I was like, look, this guy has been threatening me and maybe this is nothing again. Again, is this just how I approach him like probably nothing. But he posted this today and I don't feel comfortable about it and I would feel bad if I didn't say anything to you. And thankfully they were like, oh no , we already saw this and we beefed up security. We have a cop out front. And so I was like, okay, that's validating, but it's not just me that's seeing this by myself alone on my computer . Somebody else sees this . So fast forward , you know, these have continued and continued and continued . I have reported everything to threads. Threads has done nothing . I wrote a piece on it because a woman who I really, really, really look up to her name's Marilyn Thompson. I really look up to her . She and her writing partner, Mitchell Black, and I were all the ones who were kind of like focused on writing the Hilton Head Survivor stories and they took the lead. I mean, they did amazing stuff at the Post and Courier , but she had texted me and was just like , out of the blue , we hadn't really talked before. She was like, I feel like you're getting harassed. And I was like, Marilyn, I am getting harassed. I was like, how did you know? Um , and we had a really good talk about it and she said, It just feels like that is building really quickly in this space . And I don't know if it's coming from the top . I don't know , I don't know. And I have this hunch of like, you know, we've all been really protected by Trump's hate for legacy media because he doesn't know we exist over here doing independent journalism, but like that's temporary and there's going to come a point when he's going to figure it out and is that what's happening ? I don't know . But we had a really lovely talk and it just it made me feel more comfortable to write about my experience because I was like, wow, if this woman who is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, which she didn't want me to say because she's extremely humble , but if she is saying that she's experiencing the same thing that I'm experiencing writing a substack , then something's going on and something feels bad . And how the hell do we protect ourselves because we don't have legal teams. We don't have that stuff that's provided to people who work in like departments at newspapers . What do we do ? I'm twenty three in the morning. Sorry so fast forward to today . This man and he is on threads. I'm not going to say his name here. I don't really want to give him attention. I'm happy to tell anybody who wants to know who he is. I will tell you in comments or DMs or whatever. I just don't want to like , I don't want to do what he's doing . I've been very careful to not engage with him. One Iota . I've never that I know of, I've never spoken with him. He may have been in the comments somewhere and I just didn't know who he was. I don't know him. Like I don't know him after the fact I've been hunting through all my like so you have DMs for substack or whatever social media platform and then you have like DM requests and you can look in those. And then you have like hidden requests and they're usually like the hidden requests are usually like all porn, you know what I mean? They're like the things that it filtered out that was pretty sure you didn't want to see and he had messages in the hidden DM requests in different platforms where I would like find these really long letters from him and I'm just like I have never talked to you. What is this like what is going on? What weird lottery did I win to become this target ? So I've been gathering all this, screenshotting it to like give to police who may or may not have an answer to that . And then today he launched two websites. One was already a website. He just launched a full page in it for me and then he launched another website, I think, I don't know . One reads like it's him keeping a police file on me and other people I don't know if you find it you can read through it. It's very I think that meme of the guide from Always Sunny in Philadelphia with like the bulletin board it just gives that vibe of just like frantic , you know , misinformation of like , I don't know. One of the things, here's one of the things that he's saying that I don't really understand where it comes from is back in January there was that big Sasha Reilly story that really blew up. It was all over social media. There was a woman who wrote it named Lisa Bolding . And originally in November, she'd reached out to me to write the story, I didn't feel comfortable writing the story because there was not any evidence that I could track down for the story, so I just didn't have enough credible evidence to write it myself, so I didn't write it, and then that was kind of the end of it. One of the things that this guy is saying is that she and I are like in cahoots and hanging out and like creating like I've never spoken to this woman again past Like one phone call in November to write the story and then I didn't write the story. So it's things like that that are just like this weird spotty manic information that is being posted and then tonight he post ed this long form piece on his website, his other website that he began like polling in other people on substack . Like he's like, if I'm taking you down, I'm taking everybody down with you. So he has screenshots of everybody's comments . You know, when I wrote the article, he's screenshotting, which he's blocked. So he somehow still has access to all my stuff , but he's like screenshotting pieces of the article . He's screenshotting your comments. He's calling you out . He's calling out my daughter who had a seizure , which is what was happening when this whole thing was instigated is she had just had a seizure, which is unfortunately our normal, but that is what it is . And he had launched into this like piece where he was trying to take me down and I just it just popped up on my radar this like just as she had a seizure and I was just like, dude back off like just back off. Focus on things that matter . I told him to do, like I told him to get into the fiber arts. I told him to get a gym membership. I was like, just do something with your life . Don't focus on me. I don't want to be your focus. If you're going to just be negative, then I don't have to hide this. I was pissed because I didn't really want to deal with that in that moment. I was dealing with my daughter. So now on his website , he starts calling out that I am somehow using my daughter's seizure to create the space to do like a woe is me I'm being threatened. I don't know. I just don't know. I don't know . It's really frustrating . And I have continued to not respond to him, I've continued to not engage with him . It's really hard though, because when you see somebody posting things that you know aren't true, right? They're pretty , I mean , like I would assume they're pretty easy to prove. Like if you have a recording of my phone on like a voicemail or something, like just show me I don't think I have any recorded new smells if I do. I would think they're very uninteresting, but maybe but it's weird seeing someone lies about you to hurt you and you can't respond . And then you get in your head about like, but if I said that you know, if I had to come forward and say, like, this is a lie, like who's belie going tove me over that guy which is complicated for me that's complicated, right? It's that idea of like being believed and you know, it's such a microcosm of like this entire , you know, time we're living in anyway . Okay , I think that's everything . I needed to brain dump . I really, really , really appreciate the encouragement you guys have given me . It's made me feel a lot better . I was saying to someone like going through like a stalking c,yber bullying wh,atever you want to call it, phase. It's almost like going through like the phases of grief . Yeah, I mean, it's different obviously, but like you go from like this phase of like depression and fear . then And you go through a phase where you're like, I really want revenge. Like, I really want to humiliate this person publicly , but I have to be the bigger person. But I will say after I wrote that piece , somebody nice called me up on the phone who knows about these things and said you have to stop being so like midwestern nice person to these people . You know, like be a little bit more New York, be a little less Montana . I'm working on that . But yeah, so that's where we are. And that's I hadn't planned to do this on a live stream. I was just gonna try to navigate. But I think tonight the things that he's saying and the things that he's saying about other people , the things that he's polling in to try to get people to fight with each other , which I'm not going to do because I know it's it's it's poor it's poor detective work on his side. Like a lot of us are really good friends and we're not going to fight with each other because he's doing this stuff. So anyway, that's where we are. I will keep you posted. Hopefully there will be nothing more to keep you updated on . I would like this to just wipe away and be done . And you know if the goal for him is to be a journalist, which is fine. That's a great goal. Like focus on stories. Don't focus on other people trying to do the same work as you, right ? I don't feel competitive with other people. That's not my mindset. I am not here to be a bigger or better writer than somebody else . I just am going to do my work and the thing that I'm focusing on unless it's my cool Wolfen. Anyway, okay, I love you guys. You should go to bed. I should go to bed . Thank you for hanging out. I can't believe two hundred eighty nine people are up this late. All right, bye guys