Speaker 1: Just a quick heads up. Today's episode talks about pretty
Speaker 1: intense harassment.
Speaker 2: My first instinct was they always get away with this,
Speaker 2: and they're just not going to do it this time.
Speaker 1: There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridge Todd and this
Speaker 1: is there are No Girls on the Internet. So I
Speaker 1: have been following the way that rapper Nicki Minaj uses
Speaker 1: social media for a long time, so you probably already know.
Speaker 1: Last week was kind of a doozy. Nicki Minaj got
Speaker 1: into it with fellow rapper Meg the Stallion after Meg
Speaker 1: dropped her chart tapping single Hiss that includes the line
Speaker 1: these hose don't be mad at Megan, These hose mad
Speaker 1: at Megan's Law. Meghan's Law refers to the law that
Speaker 1: makes information available to the public regarding registered sex offenders,
Speaker 1: and while Meg never mentioned Nicki minajh directly, people thought
Speaker 1: this could be a reference to the fact that Nicki
Speaker 1: Minaj's husband, who was convicted of attempted rape in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, received a three year probation sentence after failing
Speaker 1: to register as a sex offender in twenty twenty, so
Speaker 1: Nicki took to Twitter and launched into an anti Meg
Speaker 1: the Stallion rant, I do not have time to break
Speaker 1: down everything she said here, Like Nicki was tweeting NonStop
Speaker 1: for days, but she made light of Meg being shot
Speaker 1: and even praised right wing provocateur Ben Shapiro. So one
Speaker 1: thing to know about Nicki Minaj is that her most
Speaker 1: loyal fans, the Barbs, are kind of scary, Like I'm
Speaker 1: almost afraid to be talking about them now. They have
Speaker 1: a history of online harassment and doxing people in support
Speaker 1: of their queen, Nicki Minaj, to the point where, according
Speaker 1: to The Houston Chronicle, the graveyard where Meg the Stallion's
Speaker 1: late mom is buried had to up their security out
Speaker 1: of concerns the location will be doxed and desecrated by
Speaker 1: Nicki's fans. And all of this is over showing dedication
Speaker 1: for a musical artist. This is far from the first
Speaker 1: time that Nicki's fans have done this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Last year, I spoke to Kimberley Foster, a cultural critic
Speaker 1: who found herself at the center of Nicki Minaj's most
Speaker 1: toxic fandom. If you're on the Internet, then you probably
Speaker 1: are familiar with the term Stan, originally popularized in Eminem's
Speaker 1: two Thousand Songs of the same name. Stan tells the
Speaker 1: story of an obsessive Eminem fan. In the song, Stan's
Speaker 1: obsession drives him to express his fandom through violent behavior.
Speaker 1: So fast forward to today, where we've kind of dropped
Speaker 1: the fact that Stan's love of Eminem is not a
Speaker 1: healthy one. Today, a Stan is more of a garden
Speaker 1: variety superman, masking the term's dark origins. So I started
Speaker 1: out this episode wondering when did fandom get so toxic?
Speaker 1: But maybe the truth is that it's always been there.
Speaker 1: But what happens when obsessive fans express their love of
Speaker 1: a particular celebrity in ways that are dangerous or even illegal?
Speaker 1: Last week, cultural critic Kimberly Foster found out. So you
Speaker 1: may remember Kimberly Foster from an earlier episode of their
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet we did about Jana Jackson.
Speaker 1: Kimberly is a cultural critic. It's her job to put
Speaker 1: opinions and critiques about popular culture into the world via
Speaker 1: the Internet, and she's been doing it for decades. But
Speaker 1: when she tweeted about rapper Nicki Minaj, Kimberly found herself
Speaker 1: at the heart of a targeted harassment campaign waged by
Speaker 1: obsessive Nicki Minaj fans collectively known as the Barbs. Now
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about casual fans or even huge fans.
Speaker 3: The barbs are.
Speaker 1: Something else, entirely people who make their entire online identity
Speaker 1: a shrine to Nicki Minaj. Their Twitter bios include details
Speaker 1: like tweeted by Niki on April fourteen or Nicki follows.
Speaker 1: So when Kimberly tweeted critically about Nicki Minaj, her personal
Speaker 1: information was posted online known as dosing, and worse, she
Speaker 1: and her family got violent threats, and for a lot
Speaker 1: of us, the story might end there. But Kimberly is
Speaker 1: pursuing legal action. So you might be thinking, who cares?
Speaker 1: Isn't this just stupid celebrity drama. But in taking a
Speaker 1: legal stand, Kimberly may very well be setting a precedent
Speaker 1: that shapes online discourse for years to come.
Speaker 2: My name is Kimberly Nicole Foster, and I'm a culture
Speaker 2: critic and YouTuber.
Speaker 1: So first I just have to start by asking, with
Speaker 1: everything going on, how is Kimberly?
Speaker 3: How are you?
Speaker 2: I am surviving? I'm okay, I mean, I've definitely been better,
Speaker 2: but I've also definitely been worse. So that helps me
Speaker 2: ma sane perspective, but not the highlight, not the pinnacle,
Speaker 2: the zenith of my life for sure right now.
Speaker 1: So tell us what happened on September twelfth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So early in the morning on Monday, September twelfth,
Speaker 2: I was scrolling my Instagram and I came across one
Speaker 2: of those Instagram blogs and they posted something about a
Speaker 2: new beef that Nicki Minaj appeared to be and she
Speaker 2: was saying something on some new app and other young
Speaker 2: women rappers were responding, and it was just a new
Speaker 2: thing brewing. And I went to my timeline on Twitter,
Speaker 2: as I'm want to do, and I tweeted out something
Speaker 2: about it and went to sleep. I mean it was
Speaker 2: three or four o'clock in the morning. I'm barely awake,
Speaker 2: and I wake up the next morning because I'm super
Speaker 2: excited to go to my niece's school and bring them lunch.
Speaker 2: They were having a kind of friends and family day
Speaker 2: and they had invited me to go, and I was
Speaker 2: so excited because I'm obsessed with being the best aunt
Speaker 2: in the world. And I remember picking out my outfit
Speaker 2: that morning and doing my hair, and my niece had
Speaker 2: even warned me, yeah, dressed like a mom, Kim, don't
Speaker 2: dress like a young person. Dressed like a mom, you know,
Speaker 2: no prop tops, no short shorts. And so I'm trying
Speaker 2: to pick out my best cool aunt outfit, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, my phone starts that, you know, very
Speaker 2: classic iPhone that tone.
Speaker 1: And I'm hearing it.
Speaker 4: I'm like, who was texting you?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: And then I keep hearing it, keep hearing it, and
Speaker 2: then I hear the FaceTime tone, and I'm like, WHOA,
Speaker 2: something is happening. And I pick up my phone. Of
Speaker 2: course my lock screen, and all on my lock screen
Speaker 2: there are six or seven messages, and I don't know
Speaker 2: what's happening, but I see the word NICKI on one
Speaker 2: of those messages on the lock screen, and I knew
Speaker 2: exactly what it was. It was like I was in
Speaker 2: a movie. I'd heard about this, I'd seen it happen.
Speaker 2: I never paid that much attention to it when it
Speaker 2: was happening, but I'd been vaguely aware. But I knew
Speaker 2: exactly what was happening. And so I'm trying to I
Speaker 2: still have to go to my niecea school. I have
Speaker 2: to bring them lunch, I promised them. And so I'm
Speaker 2: trying to simultaneously focus on getting myself together, getting out
Speaker 2: of the house, being on time, and deal with all
Speaker 2: of this stuff that's coming in. And initially I saw
Speaker 2: the word NICKI and I thought, okay, whatever.
Speaker 3: I mean?
Speaker 1: Did I think I mean?
Speaker 2: I thought, okay, I can deal with this. I can
Speaker 2: deal with this, like, let's focus. And then I remember
Speaker 2: looking at the phone and it was.
Speaker 1: Violent.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna shoot you, I'm going to kill your family.
Speaker 2: I'm going to murder you, I'm going to kidnap you.
Speaker 2: I'm going to find where you live, and you're not
Speaker 2: going to be safe. And then it becomes scary.
Speaker 1: Kimberly pretty quickly realized this was not just a few
Speaker 1: people giving her snarky, mean replies on Twitter. This was
Speaker 1: something else entirely.
Speaker 2: Then it gets to be uh oh, because I don't
Speaker 2: know what they know. I don't know how they found
Speaker 2: my phone number at that point. But you can change
Speaker 2: your phone number, but once it gets to I know
Speaker 2: your address and multiple multiple text messages to and even
Speaker 2: you know the initial phone number violation is like whoa
Speaker 2: That's where I'm like, oh, because if this was just tweets,
Speaker 2: you log off Twitter, you're closely like, Okay, I have
Speaker 2: a life, but this is my phone number, the phone
Speaker 2: number that I've had since I was seventeen, eighteen years old.
Speaker 2: I'm thirty three now. I'm not giving it out willy nilly.
Speaker 2: I don't know where they've gotten it. And if they
Speaker 2: found the phone number, what else do you have about me,
Speaker 2: about my family that you're threatening to kidnap and mutilate
Speaker 2: and murder and sexually assault, and so, yeah, there was
Speaker 2: just a lot going on. I do have to show
Speaker 2: up for my nieces. I'm completely distracted the entire time
Speaker 2: that I'm there. Afterwards, I get in my car, I
Speaker 2: call the police. The police say, you can't come in.
Speaker 2: We can't accept anything over the phone. You have to
Speaker 2: do it online. So then I have to drive the
Speaker 2: thirty forty minutes back home and sit down and fill
Speaker 2: out that first police report, which is like, there was.
Speaker 4: A frustrating process.
Speaker 2: I'll say that I won't go too much into that,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it just it just continued. And then I
Speaker 2: saw the screenshots of where things were coming from, you know,
Speaker 2: people circulating my phone number. These Nicki Minaj fans barbs right,
Speaker 2: because if I haven't made it clear, the Nikki is
Speaker 2: Nicki Minaj. And I realized that this is a a
Speaker 2: coordinated campaign of harassment via the quote unquote barbed community.
Speaker 2: And people are sending me screenshots of this person shared
Speaker 2: your number, and they shared it over here and here
Speaker 2: and here, and I see some of these some of
Speaker 2: these Twitter accounts have thousands of followers. I saw one
Speaker 2: Twitter account that had almost sixteen thousand followers of let's
Speaker 2: text her and show her and you're not going to
Speaker 2: get away with this and she'll know better next time.
Speaker 2: And then I see them circulating a screenshot of my
Speaker 2: phone number and what is fortunately my previous home address,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's scary. That's scary not
Speaker 2: only for me now, but it's scary for the person
Speaker 2: who currently lives there.
Speaker 1: Amidst all of this, the threats, the harassment, the slurs,
Speaker 1: Kimberly's first instinct with physical safety. She needed to make
Speaker 1: sure that her, her family, and the people living in
Speaker 1: her building we're all okay, and.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that happens in My first thoughts were my
Speaker 2: first thoughts were I have to make sure I'm safe.
Speaker 2: They are telling me they know where I live. So
Speaker 2: I also had to contact my building. As soon as
Speaker 2: I got back home, I went to the building manager's
Speaker 2: office and explained to her, and she was like, you know,
Speaker 2: because people who aren't extremely online are like, what's happening?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: And then I have to you know, email her exactly
Speaker 2: you know what's in my phone and she's like, oh my,
Speaker 2: like you know, and they have a responsibility to protect
Speaker 2: the hundreds of other people who live here, you know,
Speaker 2: the police stuff. And then of course people send me
Speaker 2: screenshots of someone tweeting I'm gonna find the kids school.
Speaker 2: I'm looking up the kids school address right now, and
Speaker 2: that of course, anybody who knows me knows that how
Speaker 2: much I loved my nieces and would literally die to
Speaker 2: protect them and jump in front of a moving train.
Speaker 2: I alerted the FBI about that stuff. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was just overwhelming in the truest sense of the word. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so but I, you know, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you have to keep this together. I'm trying to publicly
Speaker 2: document this because I felt like that is that was
Speaker 2: my only hope. I felt like, I'll say this in
Speaker 2: the last couple of weeks, I've gotten so many messages
Speaker 2: from people about this kind of stuff happening to them
Speaker 2: from that particular stand community, and the recurring theme is
Speaker 2: when it happened to me people new photos have been leaked,
Speaker 2: their phone numbers have been leaked. In fact, on that Monday,
Speaker 2: I wasn't the only person who the barbs docked.
Speaker 1: And decided.
Speaker 2: I didn't do anything about it because I couldn't. Nobody
Speaker 2: was going to listen to me. I didn't have money
Speaker 2: to afford a lawyer, I only have a couple hundred followers,
Speaker 2: I don't have a platform, and my first instinct was
Speaker 2: they always get away with this, and they're just not
Speaker 2: going to do it this time, and so that really
Speaker 2: motivated my desire to really lay this out and make
Speaker 2: sure that I was going to pursue it via whatever
Speaker 2: avenues were available to me.
Speaker 1: I have to say I talked to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: usually black women, who are at the center of this
Speaker 1: kind of coordinated harassment and online abuse, and they all
Speaker 1: say that like nobody either a it was so difficult
Speaker 1: to describe what was happening the people who were not
Speaker 1: extremely online, and that was incredibly isolating the people that
Speaker 1: I would go to for help didn't really understand what
Speaker 1: I was talking about, So I wasn't able to get
Speaker 1: that help. I didn't have money, support, access to fight back,
Speaker 1: and so I just had to deal with it. And
Speaker 1: I think why I'm so interested in what you're doing
Speaker 1: is because I think it sets a clear precedent that
Speaker 1: this is not acceptable. This is not acceptable online discourse,
Speaker 1: This is not acceptable online behavior and people. It should
Speaker 1: not just be the cost of for you, Kimberly really
Speaker 1: doing your job as a cultural critic, Like this is
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to be doing, this is what you
Speaker 1: this is why I follow you, This is like what like,
Speaker 1: this is your job, It's how you make money. That
Speaker 1: should not just be the cost of Kimberly doing her
Speaker 1: job having these kinds of threats. And another misconception that
Speaker 1: I've seen online a lot is that, oh, Kimberly is
Speaker 1: a public figure, you know, people are allowed to push back.
Speaker 1: The kind of things that I saw with my own
Speaker 1: eyes are violent threats. It's things like I know the
Speaker 1: kid's school address. I saw one where someone was saying
Speaker 1: like very specific things about the building that you lived in, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: you think you are safe because you live in a
Speaker 1: secure building. Well, YadA, YadA YadA, like these this is
Speaker 1: not discourse. This is violent threats and it's against the
Speaker 1: law and you should not have to put up with
Speaker 1: it just because you angered the wrong toxic stand community
Speaker 1: Like that's that's I'm just in all that you are
Speaker 1: trying to set this new precedent that just draws a
Speaker 1: line in the sand for what is it is not
Speaker 1: acceptable online. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I have to say though, I was rather impressed by
Speaker 2: how coordinated not only the dissemination, the distribution of my
Speaker 2: phone number and previous address work, but also the messaging
Speaker 2: that they used around boxing me and harassing me and
Speaker 2: sending me these terroristic threats from account to account to account.
Speaker 2: And these are old accounts, right, And another thing people
Speaker 2: try to push back on, these are trolls. This account
Speaker 2: is from September. There's accounts years old old that they
Speaker 2: are using the same language, they are using the same
Speaker 2: talking points. The word unprovoked came up a lot. Yes,
Speaker 2: you're right, they said you are in public. How why
Speaker 2: do you think that you get to say these things
Speaker 2: publicly and nobody gets to say anything back to you,
Speaker 2: or why do you think that you get to harass
Speaker 2: Nicki Minaje and you don't deserve harassment. One that makes
Speaker 2: no fucking sense, Like that's it's nonsense. Those are nonsensical arguments.
Speaker 2: But seeing it dozens of times, hundreds of times at
Speaker 2: this point over the last couple.
Speaker 5: Of weeks, I'm like WHOA.
Speaker 2: And maybe a week ago a Cardi B stand account
Speaker 2: tweeted me and said they get together in group chats
Speaker 2: and they they figure out what they're going to say. Said, Oh,
Speaker 2: that makes perfect sense. It's like, oh, that is why
Speaker 2: I'm seeing the exact same language from these well established
Speaker 2: stand accounts with thousands of followers and created in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: They're all coming together to descend, share these details and
Speaker 2: say the exact same things. It's so well organized, imagined
Speaker 2: if you put this work and effort and intentionality into
Speaker 2: something that's not illegal.
Speaker 1: But but yeah that.
Speaker 2: I say my opinions in public. I don't say things
Speaker 2: that are false or defamatory. I don't say things that
Speaker 2: are untrue. I talk about my feelings, I analyze things.
Speaker 2: I'm very very careful. I'm really really good at my job.
Speaker 2: And no, that does not mean that I deserved to
Speaker 2: be docsed. That does not mean that my family deserves
Speaker 2: to feel whatever they feel. Right now, I'll tell you
Speaker 2: something else. The day that I had to email my
Speaker 2: niece's principal and vice principal and say, these are my
Speaker 2: two nieces. They're in this grade, this is what's happened
Speaker 2: to me. Here are screenshots of what I received. This
Speaker 2: is what I sent to the police. This is the
Speaker 2: police report number. This is what I sent to the
Speaker 2: FBI c seing my sister on that. It wasn't a
Speaker 2: good day. It wasn't and they didn't deserve that, and
Speaker 2: I didn't deserve that.
Speaker 1: Absolutely fucking not. Uh, absolutely not.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting that you talk about the coordination, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, I feel like I watched this happen,
Speaker 1: like I watched it unfold, and I watched it get like,
Speaker 1: you know, blow up. And so one of the talking
Speaker 1: points that I saw repeated quite a bit was that
Speaker 1: Kimberly put her address and phone number on the internet herself.
Speaker 1: If you do that willingly, that means it can't be dosing.
Speaker 1: And I saw that so many times repeated that I
Speaker 1: almost was like, well, maybe that's true. Then I took
Speaker 1: a step back. I was like, wait a minute, I
Speaker 1: actually know quite a bit about doxing. That's not correct.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing that people might be surprised to
Speaker 1: learn is that pretty much anybody in the United States,
Speaker 1: our public information is for sale via really sketchy people
Speaker 1: find their websites. And I hate to say it, but
Speaker 1: nine times out of ten, the reason why our information
Speaker 1: is on those websites is not because we put it there.
Speaker 1: It's because our local city services, you know, the DMV,
Speaker 1: you know, our voter registration are polls. They often sell,
Speaker 1: bundle and sell that data to third party sketchy websites,
Speaker 1: and so it is terrifying. But I just need to
Speaker 1: make very clear that pretty much all of our personal
Speaker 1: information is for sale if somebody wants to buy it online,
Speaker 1: and so that the idea that that would mean that
Speaker 1: it's not then illegal to disseminate that information just doesn't
Speaker 1: just doesn't make any sense. Like that's that's absolutely not true.
Speaker 1: And the fact that I saw that true claim repeated
Speaker 1: so many times just lets me know how savvy folks
Speaker 1: are about disseminating. I will give them accurate sounding, but
Speaker 1: not accurate information that makes them look bad. That makes
Speaker 1: them look look like they haven't done anything wrong. It
Speaker 1: makes you look bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's mis and disinformation because some people definitely shared
Speaker 2: false information intentionally. But there's a couple of things here.
Speaker 2: Right after this happened, I immediately went to how did
Speaker 2: they give my phone number? Like?
Speaker 5: What? How did that happen?
Speaker 2: And I can totally admit now, I can totally admit
Speaker 2: now that my first instinct was to blame myself, like
Speaker 2: where did I I must have put it up somewhere.
Speaker 2: There's no way that people are digging and looking and
Speaker 2: searching like it's got to be you know, I've been
Speaker 2: on the Internet for a long time. It's got to
Speaker 2: be somewhere. And I just say it's got to be
Speaker 2: somewhere on my YouTube channel. And I went back and
Speaker 2: I checked all of the places. I checked my social media,
Speaker 2: all of the pages that I've had for I've been
Speaker 2: an Internet person for over a decade. It's not anywhere
Speaker 2: publicly accessible. It's not anywhere even privately accessible. And so
Speaker 2: that claim that, honestly, I think people are trying to
Speaker 2: they might have heard something that I said and then
Speaker 2: they're repeating it back to me. As back, It's not true.
Speaker 2: It's just not true. I mean I checked and double
Speaker 2: checked and went through had I probably have thirty Facebook pages,
Speaker 2: Twitter accounts. It's not there. It was not there. And
Speaker 2: so yes, they very they had to be very intentional
Speaker 2: about seeking out that information. But also it's not just
Speaker 2: about the finding of the information, because yes, Bridget as
Speaker 2: you said, unfortunately millions of people don't know that it's
Speaker 2: pretty easy to find out your phone number and your
Speaker 2: and your home address at least the last phone address
Speaker 2: that's on any public I mean, your home address, at
Speaker 2: least the last home address that's on any public record.
Speaker 2: But seeking out that information and sharing it with the
Speaker 2: intention of harassing somebody and threatening them is one hundred percent,
Speaker 2: unequivocally illegal. The distribution of personal information with I mean
Speaker 2: people literally explicitly said, but I'm doxing today, give me
Speaker 2: give me Kim's number. I got something I want to
Speaker 2: say to her. I mean, there's a long we got
Speaker 2: my my drop box, uh with the strange shots, right,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's a lot, it's a lot, right.
Speaker 1: And so when you.
Speaker 2: Say out to create this, as I said, like almost militaristic,
Speaker 2: so careful, organized, I'll call it a campaign of abuse,
Speaker 2: one hundred percent, unequivocally, open and shutcase. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: just that's not even something that I feel the need
Speaker 2: to go back and forth about. But I will say
Speaker 2: this that I have spent hundreds of dollars now to
Speaker 2: have my information scraped from the Internet. People should not
Speaker 2: have to pay hundreds of dollars to make sure that
Speaker 2: they are not susceptible or vulnerable to what happened to
Speaker 2: me on September.
Speaker 5: Twelfth, thirteenth, fourteen, fifteen sixteen. Right, that should not be
Speaker 5: the case.
Speaker 1: The Barbs falsely maintained that Kimberly must have put her
Speaker 1: own information online voluntarily herself at some point or another.
Speaker 1: Otherwise how would they have gotten it to spread. So
Speaker 1: it can't really be doxing if she put her own
Speaker 1: personal information out there, right wrong. Look, the scary reality
Speaker 1: is that pretty much all of our personal information is
Speaker 1: for sale in the United States, whether you put it
Speaker 1: out there yourself or not. We spoke to Sean A. Delavo,
Speaker 1: the EO of the anti doxing service bright Lines, and
Speaker 1: here's what she had to say.
Speaker 4: It is state agencies, whether they're DMVs, that's pretty well documented.
Speaker 4: If they are utilities, if they are law enforcement databases
Speaker 4: that are getting sold to data brokers who are then
Speaker 4: selling them back to us. If it's like ICE or
Speaker 4: some other federal agency, but they're also selling them to
Speaker 4: data brokers.
Speaker 1: Just to make sure I understand, so, state agencies, the DMV,
Speaker 1: my utilities company, my pepco, whatever, they might be the
Speaker 1: ones who are selling this data and making money off
Speaker 1: of it that is putting people at risk.
Speaker 4: They are the ones that are doing.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is shocking information to me. You're probably like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: buckle up, it gets worse. But I think that would
Speaker 1: be shocking information to both people.
Speaker 4: Right, you would never know it until you went to Floya,
Speaker 4: And I'd say, in addition to utilities, we know that
Speaker 4: courts sell court records, and those usually like so you
Speaker 4: imagine that you get a parking ticket because I lived
Speaker 4: in DC and I can never remember which side of
Speaker 4: the street is street cleaning this week. I get a
Speaker 4: parking ticket, and then there's a traffic court data. If
Speaker 4: I want to go, I don't even think about it
Speaker 4: and pay the ticket. It's like done. But there's a
Speaker 4: record right that has my name, my home address, the
Speaker 4: then number of my car, probably my date of birth,
Speaker 4: the information for my driver's license, plus my car, and
Speaker 4: so that's a court record that would get sold.
Speaker 1: We interviewed this woman, Sean A. Dillillo, who runs a
Speaker 1: company called Brightlines, which specializes in scrubbing people's information off
Speaker 1: the Internet when they become you know, run for office,
Speaker 1: or you know, get targeted. And she talks about how
Speaker 1: it's not cheap, the price point is high, and it
Speaker 1: creates this situation where some people are able to take
Speaker 1: the steps necessary to protect themselves, and it creates this
Speaker 1: kind of permanent, vulnerable underclass that would never have that access.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're talking about if you've ever had
Speaker 1: a driver's license, if you've ever voted, if you've ever
Speaker 1: turned on the heat or the water in an apartment,
Speaker 1: odds are, unless you have taken great steps to prevent it,
Speaker 1: your information is available for sale. That's just the reality.
Speaker 1: It sus what it is, what it is. It should
Speaker 1: not be that way, and you, Kimberly, should not have
Speaker 1: to incur the pretty high personal cost of doing this
Speaker 1: just to be able to do your job as a
Speaker 1: cultural critic, Like we really have to take a step
Speaker 1: back and wonder what kind of world like digital landscape
Speaker 1: we want to have where some people can show up
Speaker 1: safely if they have the money, and the rest of
Speaker 1: everybody else is just vulnerable. That is who is that serving?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I will say, you know, I feel a
Speaker 2: responsibility as somebody who has not only a platform, but
Speaker 2: access to resources a great social network, to do as
Speaker 2: much as I can to make a very clear statement
Speaker 2: that there are consequences, as I mentioned before, and I
Speaker 2: am incredibly privileged. Even before this, I feel like I've
Speaker 2: I spent a lot of time wrestling with those privileges
Speaker 2: and trying to be of service, trying to extend myself,
Speaker 2: trying to share what I have in a in a
Speaker 2: thoughtful way, in a responsible way. And I'm only at
Speaker 2: this point because of this, all of these gifts and
Speaker 2: access and resources and things that frankly I did not
Speaker 2: earn coming together and I feel, really, I feel very
Speaker 2: resolute in the fact that what I am doing is
Speaker 2: the right thing to do. You know, people say just
Speaker 2: let it go, you know, like, okay, you're you're on
Speaker 2: the other side of it. You have what you need
Speaker 2: to get, you know, I have two phones. Now, You're good,
Speaker 2: You're they nobody found you, just you. Nobody found your
Speaker 2: new And I'm like.
Speaker 5: No, I can't. I can't let it go because all of.
Speaker 2: These people who've had to you know, they didn't have
Speaker 2: any choices. So yes, I definitely feel that way. It also,
Speaker 2: you know, not to way the you know, not to
Speaker 2: get in my patriotic bag or anything like that. But
Speaker 2: after having so many conversations with lawyers over the past
Speaker 2: couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: With.
Speaker 2: Constitutional scholars, right, people who have like deeply studied this
Speaker 2: stuff and had so many conversations about the First Amendment
Speaker 2: and the rights and protections that we are afforded, not
Speaker 2: only as citizens, but as somebody who does what I
Speaker 2: do for a living, which is, you know, just talk
Speaker 2: about things, hopefully in a responsible manner. And I do
Speaker 2: think I'm very responsible. But a bedrock of our constitution,
Speaker 2: a bedrock of our values as Americans, it's that we
Speaker 2: can speak freely, and you speak freely and you don't
Speaker 2: anticipate any legal kind of backlash. You know, you speak
Speaker 2: freely and that does not give anybody the right to
Speaker 2: threaten you or harm you. I expect when I say
Speaker 2: whatever I want to say, people to go back and
Speaker 2: forth I expect banter, and sometimes on Twitter that banter
Speaker 2: can get a little get feisty. That's like, okay, we're feisty, we'resting.
Speaker 2: I love a little witty rep Barte. I definitely did
Speaker 2: not expect this level of an invasion of privacy or
Speaker 2: this level of trauma, and I don't accept it.
Speaker 1: So it's unacceptable, and I think you're right. I think
Speaker 1: the point is the silencing effect. I think what it's
Speaker 1: trying to do is to be is to make it
Speaker 1: clear that negative cal critique of certain people will not
Speaker 1: be tolerated. And if you do it, this is what's
Speaker 1: going to happen to you. And I think it takes
Speaker 1: a certain kind of person to say, no, I'm allowed
Speaker 1: to do my job. I'm not going to accept this.
Speaker 1: And I was talking earlier before you and I got
Speaker 1: on about how excited I was to talk to you
Speaker 1: because I think this could set an entire a real
Speaker 1: digital precedent about how discourse works on today's Internet. I
Speaker 1: think what you're doing, I think it's going to set
Speaker 1: a really interesting precedent. I think it's going to like
Speaker 1: this feels like legacy building stuff, Like I think people
Speaker 1: will go back and be studying this in like media
Speaker 1: and digital criticism courses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying to write size this in my mind
Speaker 2: because we're talking about.
Speaker 3: S.
Speaker 2: Pop culture commentary is what we're really talking about here.
Speaker 2: But I agree with you Bridget. When I have talked
Speaker 2: about what happened and the docsing and the threats of murder,
Speaker 2: sexual assault, kidnapping, more than a few people, honestly, a
Speaker 2: surprising number of people who I thought were relatively reasonable,
Speaker 2: said well, if you knew that these people do that,
Speaker 2: why would you even talk about that person?
Speaker 5: I'm like, wait, what.
Speaker 2: We're talking about a global superstar. We're talking about a
Speaker 2: person who regularly releases music, a lot of the music
Speaker 2: that I have said that I like and enjoy. A
Speaker 2: person who less than a couple of weeks before this
Speaker 2: thing happened was on the VMAs accepting the Video Vanguard
Speaker 2: Award and doing a fifteen minute perform. I mean the
Speaker 2: idea that if you know that this particular standum, this
Speaker 2: span community is rapid, why would you say anything about
Speaker 2: their person. It's just it makes absolutely no sense. And yes,
Speaker 2: the idea that forever and ever, nobody and you know, again,
Speaker 2: we're not I'm very aware of things that are happening
Speaker 2: like globally, right, people's I mean literal lives are at
Speaker 2: risk and their rights are being stripped. To me, even
Speaker 2: in the United States right with what's happened. It's not
Speaker 2: that I understand, it's not that, but it really is
Speaker 2: an attempt to strike fear in people's hearts, right, Like
Speaker 2: it's on this kind of micro scale. It is a
Speaker 2: about fear and intimidation and you know the words you mentioned,
Speaker 2: silencing and just like of the pettiest shit imaginable. But
Speaker 2: also it's like really important.
Speaker 5: It's really important also because.
Speaker 2: Since this has happened, I've seen other I mean have
Speaker 2: witnessed this happened to another pop culture YouTuber, but also
Speaker 2: I have seen other writers and journalists and YouTubers podcasters
Speaker 2: who have experienced similar things, not only from this fandom,
Speaker 2: definitely from this s fandom, definitely from this fandom, but
Speaker 2: from others as well. And eventually we got to say
Speaker 2: enough is enough, Right, somebody's got to not necessarily punishment,
Speaker 2: because that's not my orientation in the world. But I
Speaker 2: am certainly about justice, and some times justice means consequences.
Speaker 1: I'm with you, and I want to be clear, This
Speaker 1: is me saying this, This is my opinion and my take.
Speaker 1: I the reason why I think what you're doing is
Speaker 1: so important is because I cannot ignore the ways that
Speaker 1: I have seen the same kind of strategy creep into
Speaker 1: our political landscape. And so, yeah, we're talking about Nicki Minaj,
Speaker 1: a pop star, a celebrity. That's the meat of this
Speaker 1: conversation that we're having, you and me. But I have
Speaker 1: seen the way that the same strategy like it's It
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of how Trump used Trump used
Speaker 1: social media, right, and so the way that the same
Speaker 1: exact thing is creeping into our political discourse and becoming acceptable,
Speaker 1: I see a lot of parallels, and I think that
Speaker 1: we might be in a very different political and social
Speaker 1: situation today in twenty twenty two if we had not
Speaker 1: established a precedent that this was a acceptable way to
Speaker 1: behave online. That if one powerful, big voiced figure gives
Speaker 1: the right kind of wink wink, nod nod signal, they
Speaker 1: don't come out and say it. They never come out
Speaker 1: and say it. I'm being very clear about that, but
Speaker 1: they might give the right kind of signals. The people
Speaker 1: who are obsessively following that one figure know exactly what
Speaker 1: to do, they know exactly how to coordinate, and it's
Speaker 1: very effective. That is a precedent that I feel like
Speaker 1: has become more and more acceptable in our online discourse.
Speaker 1: And I think that we would be in a very
Speaker 1: different political situation had somebody said, wait a minute, not acceptable.
Speaker 1: And so I know that it might not seem like,
Speaker 1: you know, it might seem like we're talking about celebrities
Speaker 1: and pop culture and stands, but I think it's so
Speaker 1: much deeper than that, and I think it really illustrates
Speaker 1: something else going on politically, socially, and digitally in our culture.
Speaker 1: And again, this is my opinion, This is me saying
Speaker 1: that this is what I have witnessed.
Speaker 2: Just to be clear, Yeah, exactly what you're saying. That
Speaker 2: polarization is ubiquitous. It's everywhere, and it leaves us unable
Speaker 2: to determine boundaries, you know, reasonable boundaries, and where we
Speaker 2: will go and where we won't go, and what we
Speaker 2: will do and what we won't do, and what we
Speaker 2: should and shouldn't say. And that loss of the ability
Speaker 2: to right size things in our minds, to assess responsible discourse,
Speaker 2: it has really really dire consequences I have to say,
Speaker 2: you know, jousts and jobs, you know, verbal jousts and.
Speaker 5: Jobs I love, I live for.
Speaker 2: I you know, I don't have a problem, you know,
Speaker 2: going back and forth with people about why I don't
Speaker 2: like somebody's me music, or why I disagree with their
Speaker 2: actions and behaviors. But what this experience for me has
Speaker 2: made clear. Over the past couple of weeks, I've done
Speaker 2: a lot of reading and research, and so many different
Speaker 2: people have brought all of these resources to me, and
Speaker 2: books and podcasts and documentaries about fanatic violence, fan violence extremism,
Speaker 2: and it's so clear that even when we're just talking
Speaker 2: about something like a pop culture figure, that there is
Speaker 2: so much opportunity for this stuff to escalate in ways
Speaker 2: that are devastating, life changing, tragic. I feel incredibly traumatized
Speaker 2: from the many days of harassment and abuse and threats
Speaker 2: that I experienced, but there is so much more than
Speaker 2: that at stake. People have been killed over fanatic violence.
Speaker 2: I mean, even somebody recently brought up you know, John
Speaker 2: Hinckley Junior. I was born in the eighties, so I
Speaker 2: don't know people don't know this right, but you know,
Speaker 2: the person who shot Ronald Draken right, and he was
Speaker 2: like obsessed with Jody Jody Foster right. And yes, that
Speaker 2: was decades ago, but there are so many examples of
Speaker 2: people literally showing up literally, I mean, the fact that
Speaker 2: my former address was circulating in that way caused me
Speaker 2: such cause for concern because there have been numerous cases
Speaker 2: of fans showing up at people's homes to defend the
Speaker 2: honor of the person that they stand. The fact I
Speaker 2: had to to share the threats with the FBI because
Speaker 2: I know I live in Texas months after Uvaldi. I mean, like,
Speaker 2: this stuff is real.
Speaker 5: It's real.
Speaker 2: People die, people are traumatized. Forever they're harmed, they have
Speaker 2: to move. Fortunately I didn't have to move, but like
Speaker 2: that stuff, I mean, people when some people are telling
Speaker 2: me about their new photos getting leaked and then they
Speaker 2: have to tell their parents or their job about these
Speaker 2: images are circulating me about me online and you're never
Speaker 2: going to be able to live that down.
Speaker 1: That's real.
Speaker 2: That's life changing stuff stuff. And I wish that the
Speaker 2: people who hold this enormous influence and who recognize that
Speaker 2: they hold this enormous influence because they understand how to
Speaker 2: activate their fan base, and they're really intentional about doing
Speaker 2: it for all kinds of reasons. I wish that they
Speaker 2: would be much more cognizant of the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 5: It's just.
Speaker 2: You, ugly monkey bitch. I guess you're gonna have to
Speaker 2: bleep this out, you know. And I also got all
Speaker 2: kinds of slurs. Oh, I'm a black woman from Texas.
Speaker 2: I've never had seen the inWORD directed in me hard
Speaker 2: er that many times. Oh, it's crazy. Right now, it's
Speaker 2: I'm going to I know where you live. I'm going
Speaker 2: to kidnap you, I'm going to mutilate you. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: pull put a bullet in your sibling's brain. But it
Speaker 2: could easily be death or disfigurement or real physical bodily harm.
Speaker 2: And not actively discouraging the people that you understand you
Speaker 2: have all of this influence on. Not actively discouraging it
Speaker 2: strikes me as not right. I'll say it's not right more.
Speaker 3: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: How do you think fandom and stand culture got so toxic? Like,
Speaker 1: what do you think happened that got us here where
Speaker 1: someone out of a love of a musician or a
Speaker 1: public figure who they do not know, would behave in
Speaker 1: this way because for me, and I think for most people,
Speaker 1: there is not a person on this earth who was
Speaker 1: not a blood relative to me that I would have
Speaker 1: this kind of reaction about. Certainly not anybody that I
Speaker 1: don't know. And so it seems like for some of
Speaker 1: us is probably so difficult to even imagine what you're
Speaker 1: going through. What do you think God is here?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: How did we get here?
Speaker 2: I think people are incredibly isolated. People are lonely. They're
Speaker 2: looking for a community, and the way that you express
Speaker 2: your fidelity to this particular community is by behaving in
Speaker 2: very extreme ways. I think the pandemic exacerbated this, but
Speaker 2: obviously it existed before that. You just brought up the
Speaker 2: Donald Trump example. But I've learned a lot about the
Speaker 2: way that these stand communities work, and it's almost like
Speaker 2: they operate as like chosen families.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I don't want to misappropriate that language from the the
Speaker 2: LGBTQ plus community, but it's like they support each other.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is public, so I can say this.
Speaker 2: I after I was tweeting about what happened to me,
Speaker 2: I saw one of the stand accounts tweet to somebody
Speaker 2: don't apologize to her, We'll raise money for you. If
Speaker 2: you need a legal defense, We'll raise money for you.
Speaker 2: Don't apologize to her, don't take it back, don't delete it.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, y'all are really like there's
Speaker 2: very much a feeling of we're in this together.
Speaker 5: It's all of.
Speaker 2: Us against the world, it's all of us against any
Speaker 2: attack or outsider. And it just so happened that on
Speaker 2: that Monday, I was the quote unquote threatening force. But yes,
Speaker 2: that's how they mount up together. And I just think
Speaker 2: that I'm sure that you've seen the new studies scholarship
Speaker 2: about how just generally sad people are, you know, in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, despite us seeming to have all of
Speaker 2: these new means of connection, despite us being online all
Speaker 2: day every day and the surveillance state expanding every second
Speaker 2: of every day, people just do not have that many
Speaker 2: deep intimate relationships, those connections that really ground us and
Speaker 2: keep us mentally well. And I think that these kind
Speaker 2: of banned communities, these obsessive communities, are a byproduct of
Speaker 2: our culture in the United States, and honestly, globally, we're
Speaker 2: just we're just not dealing with these these technological evolutions
Speaker 2: the way.
Speaker 5: That we thought we would. It's just.
Speaker 2: I have realized over the past few years, especially since
Speaker 2: the pandemic, that my IRL community, my family, the new
Speaker 2: friends that I've made, the old friends that I've had,
Speaker 2: romantic relationships, that is what sustains me. I love my job,
Speaker 2: I love the building community. Digitally, it saved my life
Speaker 2: in a really bad time. But I got to see
Speaker 2: people and hug them and look them in the eyes
Speaker 2: and share a meal with them. That is what brings
Speaker 2: me the most joy. And I think I realize that's
Speaker 2: an incredible privilege that I don't take for granted, and
Speaker 2: a lot of people are not privileged in that way.
Speaker 1: Wow, what empathy I have to I'm reminded of this
Speaker 1: Janelle Mona quote. We come in peace, but we mean business.
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm looking for justice, but I have empathy, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would be able to to
Speaker 1: be capable of the kind of empathetic assessment of what's
Speaker 1: happening emotionally with some of these people. The way that
Speaker 1: you are, I think that really speaks to your characters.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and I'll say you can find that community
Speaker 2: and find joy in being able to use that community
Speaker 2: to exercise violent expressions of power, right Like I think
Speaker 2: that the communities that we are able to build and
Speaker 2: take part in, we are empowered by them. We feel
Speaker 2: power within them, and that guides so many of our actions.
Speaker 2: And some of those actions are good, positive actions, and
Speaker 2: some of them are objectively, I let's say, objectively, them
Speaker 2: are potentially very harmful. And I think that people are
Speaker 2: using the communities that they've built for negative, negative ends,
Speaker 2: and I definitely do not. I do not have empathy
Speaker 2: for that whatsoever. I can empathize with what draws you
Speaker 2: to a community, but I do not empathize or understand
Speaker 2: at all the desire to rally around abuse and threats
Speaker 2: and harassment. And yes, Janelle Money, one hundred percent right,
Speaker 2: My natural orientation in the world is empathy. That guides
Speaker 2: my politics. I believe in grace. My dad died when
Speaker 2: he was fifty, but before he died, he said, the
Speaker 2: only thing you can't come back from his death. And
Speaker 2: I believe that you make mistakes and you do bad things,
Speaker 2: you hurt people, and then you do whatever you can
Speaker 2: to make it right. You invest yourself in repairing harm
Speaker 2: and making amends and explaining to your community why what
Speaker 2: you did was wrong and why you shouldn't do that
Speaker 2: in the future. And I think that the people who
Speaker 2: participated in this against me, this organized campaign of abuse
Speaker 2: and harassment, I don't think they have to suffer for
Speaker 2: the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: I don't want to ruin somebody's life forever.
Speaker 2: I don't want to make sure you can never rent
Speaker 2: an apartment, or that you can never buy a car,
Speaker 2: you can't get into college, or that your children have
Speaker 2: to suffer. That's not my aim. But my aim is
Speaker 2: to My aim is to encourage people to invest in
Speaker 2: the things that I believe in, which is you cause
Speaker 2: you make it right.
Speaker 1: Words to live by. That is a good motto, Kimberly,
Speaker 1: How can folks support you?
Speaker 3: Like? Is?
Speaker 1: Are there ways that people can support you in what
Speaker 1: you're going through right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I do have a go fund Me, which I
Speaker 2: went back and forth a long time about, but after
Speaker 2: maybe about a dozen people asking how they could support,
Speaker 2: I did set up the go fund me. And now
Speaker 2: I am just so incredibly grateful for the now one
Speaker 2: hundred people who have donated to the go fund me
Speaker 2: to help pay for lawyers. Oh my goodness, I did
Speaker 2: not know.
Speaker 5: How I mean. I guess I knew, but I didn't.
Speaker 2: Really know how expensive retaining lawyers is and investigators, and
Speaker 2: oh I've already.
Speaker 5: Spent thousands of dollars, So.
Speaker 2: I appreciate everybody who was given to that. You can
Speaker 2: follow me on social media. I actually am not going
Speaker 2: to be tweeting about it as much anymore since things
Speaker 2: are rolling and uh my counsel has said, you gotta
Speaker 2: you gotta real it in and it's like, okay, you're right,
Speaker 2: we are right. We'll set this aside for a second.
Speaker 2: But yeah, if you're if you're interested in supporting the cause,
Speaker 2: I definitely welcome anybody who you know, can spare a
Speaker 2: couple of dollars. You don't have to uh support sharing
Speaker 2: the story, talking about it, advocating on behalf of other
Speaker 2: people who have experienced that. That is enough for me.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be okay, I am. I have such a
Speaker 2: great support system and I'm so grateful. I have such
Speaker 2: great networks, and I could not thank them enough. I
Speaker 2: would not be here if not for them. But if
Speaker 2: you see this happening to somebody else, please reach out
Speaker 2: to them, support them, help them in the ways that
Speaker 2: you know how Wow, because most people aren't me.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi? You can read us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative. Jonathan Stricklet
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 1: and review.
Speaker 3: Us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.