Speaker 1: Just a quick heads up. Today's episode talks about pretty
Speaker 1: intense harassment. My first instinct was they always get away
Speaker 1: with this, and they're just not going to do it
Speaker 1: this time. There Are No Girls on the Internet. As
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radio and Unboss Creative, I'm
Speaker 1: Bridget Tod and this is there are No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet. If you're on the Internet, then you probably
Speaker 1: are familiar with the term stand, originally popularized and Eminem's
Speaker 1: two thousand songs of the same name. Stand tells the
Speaker 1: story of an obsessive Eminem fan. In the song stands,
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 stands love of Eminem is not a
Speaker 1: healthy one. Today, a stand is more of a garden
Speaker 1: variety super fan, masking the terms dark origins. So I
Speaker 1: started 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 carassment campaign waged by
Speaker 1: obsessive Nicki Minaj fans collectively known as the Barbs. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about cash Will fans or even huge fans.
Speaker 1: The barbs are something else, entirely people who make their
Speaker 1: entire online identity a shrine to Nicki Minaj. Their Twitter
Speaker 1: bios include details like retweeted by Nikki in April fourteen
Speaker 1: or Nicky follows. So when Kimberly tweeted critically about Nicki Minaj,
Speaker 1: her personal information was posted online known as dosing, and worse,
Speaker 1: she and her family got violent threats, and for a
Speaker 1: lot of us, the story might end there, But Kimberly
Speaker 1: is 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. My name
Speaker 1: is Kimberly Nicole Foster, and I'm a culture critic and YouTuber.
Speaker 1: So first I just have to start by asking, with
Speaker 1: everything going on, how is Kimberly? How are you? I
Speaker 1: am surviving? I'm okay. I mean, I've definitely been better,
Speaker 1: but I've also definitely been worse. So that helps me
Speaker 1: maintain perspective, but not the highlight, not the pinnacle, the
Speaker 1: zenith of my life for sure right now. So tell
Speaker 1: us what happened on September twelve. Yeah, so early in
Speaker 1: the morning on Monday September twelve, I was scrolling my
Speaker 1: Instagram and I came across one of those Instagram blogs
Speaker 1: and they posted something about a new beef that Nicki
Speaker 1: Minaj appeared to be and she was saying something on
Speaker 1: some new app and other young women rappers were responding
Speaker 1: and it was just a new thing brewing. And I
Speaker 1: went to my timeline on Twitter as I want to do,
Speaker 1: and I tweeted out something about it and went to sleep.
Speaker 1: I mean it was three or four o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: I'm barely awake, and I wake up the next morning
Speaker 1: because I'm super excited to go to my nieces school
Speaker 1: and bring them lunch. They were having a kind of
Speaker 1: friends and family day and they had invited me to go,
Speaker 1: and I was so excited because I'm obsessed with being
Speaker 1: the best aunt in the world. And I remember picking
Speaker 1: out my outfit that morning and doing my hair, and
Speaker 1: my niece had even warned me, yeah, dressed like a mom, Kim,
Speaker 1: don't just like a young person. Dressed like a mom,
Speaker 1: you know, no prop tops, no short shorts. And so
Speaker 1: I'm trying to pick out my best cool aunt outfit
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, my phone starts that, you know,
Speaker 1: very classic iPhone that tone, and I'm hearing it. I'm like,
Speaker 1: who was texting? What? And that I keep hearing it,
Speaker 1: keep hearing it, and then I hear the face time tone,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, WHOA, something is happening, and I pick
Speaker 1: up my phone. Of course, my my lock screen, and
Speaker 1: all on my lock screen there are six or seven messages,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what's happening, but I see the
Speaker 1: word nikki on one of those messages on the lock screen,
Speaker 1: and I knew exactly what it was. It was like
Speaker 1: I was in a movie I had. I had heard
Speaker 1: about this, I'd seen it happen. I never paid that
Speaker 1: much attention to it when it was happening, but I've
Speaker 1: been vaguely aware. But I know exactly what was happening.
Speaker 1: And so I'm trying to I still have to go
Speaker 1: to my visa school. I have to bring them lunch.
Speaker 1: I promised them, and so I'm trying to simultaneously focus
Speaker 1: on getting myself together, getting out of the house, being
Speaker 1: on time, and deal with all of this stuff that's
Speaker 1: coming in. And initially I saw the word nikki and
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, whatever um I mean? Did I think?
Speaker 1: I mean? I thought, okay, I can deal with this.
Speaker 1: I can deal with this, like, let's focus. And then
Speaker 1: I remember looking at the phone and it was violent.
Speaker 1: It was I'm gonna shoot you, I'm gonna kill your family,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna murder you, I'm gonna kidnap you. I'm going
Speaker 1: to find where you live and you're not going to
Speaker 1: be safe, and then it becomes scary. Kimberly pretty quickly
Speaker 1: realized this was not just a few people giving her snarky,
Speaker 1: mean replies on Twitter, this was something else entirely. Then
Speaker 1: it gets to be oh, umm, because I don't know
Speaker 1: what they know. I don't know how they found my
Speaker 1: phone number at that point. But you can change your
Speaker 1: phone number, um. But once it gets to I know
Speaker 1: your address and multiple multiple um text messages too, and
Speaker 1: even you know the initial phone number violation is is
Speaker 1: like quoa. That's where I'm like, oh, because if this
Speaker 1: was just tweets you log off Twitter, you're close to like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have a lie, but um, this is my phone number,
Speaker 1: the phone number that I've had since I was eighteen
Speaker 1: years old. I'm thirty three now, I'm not giving it
Speaker 1: out willy nilly. I don't know where they've gotten it.
Speaker 1: And if they found the phone number, what else do
Speaker 1: you have about me? About my family that you're threatening
Speaker 1: to had nap and mutilate and murder and sexually assault
Speaker 1: and so yeah, there was just a lot going on.
Speaker 1: I do have to show up for my nieces. I'm
Speaker 1: completely distracted the entire time that I'm there. Afterwards, I
Speaker 1: get in my car. I called the police. The police say,
Speaker 1: you can't come in. We can't accept anything over the phone,
Speaker 1: you have to do it online. So then I have
Speaker 1: to drive the thirty forty minutes back home and sit
Speaker 1: down and fill out that first police report, which is like,
Speaker 1: there was a frustrating process. I'll say that I won't
Speaker 1: go too much into that. Um, and yeah, it just
Speaker 1: it just continued. And and then I saw the screenshots
Speaker 1: where things were coming from, Um, you know, people circulating
Speaker 1: my phone number, these Nicki minajh fans barbs right, because
Speaker 1: if I haven't made it clear, um, the Nikki is
Speaker 1: Nicki Minaj. And I realized that this is a coordinated
Speaker 1: campaign of harassment via the quote unquote barbed community. And
Speaker 1: people are sending me screenshots of this person shared your number,
Speaker 1: and and they shared it over here and here and here,
Speaker 1: and I see some of these some of these Twitter
Speaker 1: accounts have thousands of followers. Um, I saw one Twitter
Speaker 1: account that had almost sixteen thousand followers. Of let's text
Speaker 1: her and show her and you're not going to get
Speaker 1: away with this and she'll know better next time. And
Speaker 1: then I see them circulating a screenshot of my phone
Speaker 1: number and what is fortunately my previous home address, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, yeah, that's scary. That's scary not only
Speaker 1: for me now, but it's scary for the person who
Speaker 1: currently lives there. Amidst all of this, the threats, the harassment,
Speaker 1: the slurs, Kimberly's first instinct with physical safety. She needed
Speaker 1: to make sure that her, her family, and the people
Speaker 1: living in her building were all okay. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: that happens in My first thought were my first thoughts were,
Speaker 1: I have to make sure I'm safe. They are telling
Speaker 1: me they know where I lived. So I also had
Speaker 1: to contact my building. As soon as I got back home,
Speaker 1: I went to the building manager's office and explained to her,
Speaker 1: and she was like, you know, because people who aren't
Speaker 1: extremely online are like, what's happening? What? And then I
Speaker 1: have to you know, email her exactly you know what's
Speaker 1: in my phone and she's like, oh my, like you know, um,
Speaker 1: and they have a responsibility to protect the hundreds of
Speaker 1: other people who live here, um, you know, the police stuff.
Speaker 1: And then of course people send me um screenshots of
Speaker 1: someone tweeting I'm gonna find the kids school. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the kids school address right now, and that of course,
Speaker 1: anybody who knows me knows that how much I love
Speaker 1: my nieces and would literally die to protect them and
Speaker 1: jump in front of a moving train. UM. I alerted
Speaker 1: the FBI about that stuff. I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: overwhelming in the truest sense of the word. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so but I, you know, I was like, Okay, you
Speaker 1: have to keep this together. I'm trying to publicly document
Speaker 1: this because UM, I felt like that is that was
Speaker 1: my only hope. I felt like, UM, I'll say this, UM.
Speaker 1: In the last couple of weeks, I've gotten so many
Speaker 1: messages from people about this kind of stuff happening to
Speaker 1: them from that particular stand community, and the recurring fame
Speaker 1: is when it happened to me. People's new photos have
Speaker 1: been leaked, their phone numbers have been leaked. In fact,
Speaker 1: on that Monday, I wasn't the only person who the
Speaker 1: barbs docked. UM. And they said I didn't do anything
Speaker 1: about it because I couldn't. Nobody was going to listen
Speaker 1: to me. I didn't have money to afford a lawyer.
Speaker 1: I only have a couple of hundred followers, I don't
Speaker 1: have a platform. And my first instinct was they always
Speaker 1: get away with this, and they're just not going to
Speaker 1: do it this time. And so that really motivated my
Speaker 1: desire to really lay this out and make sure that
Speaker 1: I was going to um pursue it via whatever avenues
Speaker 1: were available to me. Mm hmm. I have to say
Speaker 1: I talked to a lot of people, usually black women,
Speaker 1: who are at the center of this kind of coordinated
Speaker 1: harassment and online abuse, and they all say that, like,
Speaker 1: nobody either A. It was so difficult to describe what
Speaker 1: was happening to people who were not extremely online, and
Speaker 1: that was incredibly isolating. The people that I would go
Speaker 1: to for help didn't really understand what I was talking about,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't able to get that help. I didn't
Speaker 1: have money, support, access to fight back, and so I
Speaker 1: just had to deal with it. And I think why
Speaker 1: I'm so interested in what you're doing is because I
Speaker 1: think it sets a clear precedent that this is not acceptable.
Speaker 1: This is not acceptable online discourse, This is not acceptable
Speaker 1: online behavior and people. It should not just be the
Speaker 1: cost of for you, Kimberly, really doing your job as
Speaker 1: a cultural critic, Like this is what you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing. This is what you That's why I follow you.
Speaker 1: This is like what like, this is your job? Is
Speaker 1: how you make money? That should not just be the
Speaker 1: cost of Kimberly doing her job having these kinds of threats.
Speaker 1: And another misconception that I've seen online a lot is that, oh,
Speaker 1: Kimberly is a public figure. You know, people are allowed
Speaker 1: to have push back. The kinds of things that I
Speaker 1: saw with my own eyes are violent threats. It's things
Speaker 1: like I know the kids school address. I saw one
Speaker 1: where someone was saying like very specific things about the
Speaker 1: building that you lived in, like, oh, you think you
Speaker 1: are safe because you live in a secure building. Well, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: YadA like these This is not discourse. This is violent
Speaker 1: threats and it's against the law. And even like you
Speaker 1: should not have to put up with it just because
Speaker 1: you angered the wrong toxic stand community, like that's that's
Speaker 1: I'm just in all that you are trying to set
Speaker 1: this new precedent that just draws a line in the
Speaker 1: sand for what is it is not acceptable online. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to say, though I have I was rather
Speaker 1: impressed by how coordinated not only the dissemination the distribution
Speaker 1: of my phone number and previous address work, but also
Speaker 1: the messaging that they used around doxing me and harassing
Speaker 1: me and sending me these terroristic threats from account to
Speaker 1: account to account. And these are old accounts, right, And
Speaker 1: another thing people try to push back on, these are trolls.
Speaker 1: This account is from September. There's accounts years old old.
Speaker 1: Um that they are using the same language, They are
Speaker 1: using the same talking points. The word unprovoked came up
Speaker 1: a lot. Yes, you're right, they said you are in public.
Speaker 1: How why do you think that you get to say
Speaker 1: these things publicly and nobody gets to say anything back
Speaker 1: to you? Or why do you think that you get
Speaker 1: to harass Nicki Minaje and you don't deserve harassment? Like, um, one,
Speaker 1: that makes no fucking sense, Like that's it's nonsense. Those
Speaker 1: are nonsensical arguments. But seeing it dozens of times, hundreds
Speaker 1: of times at this point over the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: I'm like whoa. And maybe a week ago a Cardi
Speaker 1: b stand account tweeted me and said they get together
Speaker 1: in group chats and they they figure out what they're
Speaker 1: gonna say. I said, Oh, that makes perfect sense. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that is why I'm seeing the exact same language from
Speaker 1: these well established stand accounts with thousands of followers and
Speaker 1: created in twenty fifteen. They're all coming to get there
Speaker 1: to descend are these details and say the exact same things.
Speaker 1: It's so well organized, imagined if you put this worked
Speaker 1: in effort and intentionality into something that's not illegal. But
Speaker 1: but yeah that UM, I say my opinions in public.
Speaker 1: I don't say things that are false or defamatory. I
Speaker 1: don't say things that are untrue. I talk about my feelings,
Speaker 1: I analyze things. I'm very very careful. I'm really really
Speaker 1: good at my job. And no, that does not mean
Speaker 1: that I deserved to be doct That does not mean
Speaker 1: that my family deserves to feel whatever they feel. Right now,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you something else. The the day that I
Speaker 1: had to email my niece's principle and vice principle and say,
Speaker 1: these are my two nieces are in this grade. This
Speaker 1: is what's happened to me. Here are screenshots of what
Speaker 1: I received. This is what I sent to the police.
Speaker 1: This is the police report number. This is what I
Speaker 1: sent to the FBI. See seeing my sister on that
Speaker 1: it wasn't a good day. It wasn't and they didn't
Speaker 1: deserve that, And I didn't deserve that. Absolutely fucking not. Uh,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting that you talk about the coordination, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, like, 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 I so one of the
Speaker 1: talking points that I saw repeated quite a bit was
Speaker 1: that Kimberly put her age US and phone number on
Speaker 1: the internet herself. If you do that willingly, that means
Speaker 1: it can't be doxing. And I saw that so many
Speaker 1: times repeated that I almost was like, well, maybe that's true.
Speaker 1: Then I took a step back and I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I actually know quite a bit about doxing.
Speaker 1: That's not correct. You know, one thing that people might
Speaker 1: be surprised to learn is that pretty much anybody in
Speaker 1: the United States are public information is for sale via
Speaker 1: really sketchy people find your websites. And I hate to
Speaker 1: say it, but nine times out of ten, the reason
Speaker 1: why our information is on those websites is not because
Speaker 1: we put it there. It's because our local city services,
Speaker 1: you know the d m V, you know, our our vote,
Speaker 1: our registration, our polls. They often sell bundle and sell
Speaker 1: that data to third party sketchy websites, and so it
Speaker 1: is terrifying. But I just need to make very clear
Speaker 1: that pretty much all of our personal information is for
Speaker 1: sale if somebody wants to buy it online, and so
Speaker 1: that the idea that that would mean that it's not
Speaker 1: them illegal to disseminate that information just doesn't just doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense, Like that's that's absolutely not true. And
Speaker 1: the fact that I saw that repeat, that untrue claim
Speaker 1: repeated so many times just lets me know how savvy
Speaker 1: folks are abow disseminating. I will give them accurate sounding,
Speaker 1: but not accurate information that makes them look bad, that
Speaker 1: makes them look look like they haven't done anything wrong,
Speaker 1: and makes you look bad. Yeah, it's miss and disinformation
Speaker 1: because some people definitely shared false information intentionally. But there's
Speaker 1: a couple of things here. Right after this happened, I
Speaker 1: immediately went to how did they get my phone number? Like? What?
Speaker 1: How did that happen? And I can totally admit that now.
Speaker 1: I can totally admit now that my first instinct was
Speaker 1: to blame myself, like where did I I must have
Speaker 1: put it up somewhere. There's no way that people are
Speaker 1: digging and looking and searching like it. It's gotta be
Speaker 1: you know, I've been on the Internet for a long time.
Speaker 1: It's got to be somewhere, and I just say it's
Speaker 1: it's got to be somewhere on my YouTube channel. And
Speaker 1: then I went back and I checked all of the places.
Speaker 1: I checked my social media, all of the pages that
Speaker 1: I've had for I've been an Internet person for over
Speaker 1: a decade. It's not anywhere publicly accessible. It's not anywhere
Speaker 1: even privately accessible. And so that claimed that. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: think people are are trying to they might have heard
Speaker 1: something that I said and then they're repeating it back
Speaker 1: to me as fact. It's not true. It's just not true.
Speaker 1: I mean, I checked and double checked and went through
Speaker 1: I've had I'd probably have thirty Facebook pages, Twitter accounts.
Speaker 1: It's not there. It was not there. And so yes,
Speaker 1: they very they had to be very intentional about seeking
Speaker 1: out that information. But also it's not just about the
Speaker 1: finding of the information, because yes, Bridget, as you said,
Speaker 1: unfortunately millions of people don't know that it's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to find out your phone number, UM and your and
Speaker 1: your home address, at least the last phone address that's
Speaker 1: on any public work. I mean your home address, at
Speaker 1: least the last home address that's on any public record.
Speaker 1: But seeking out that information and sharing it with the
Speaker 1: intention of harassing somebody and threatening them is unequivocally illegal.
Speaker 1: The distribution of personal information with I mean people literally
Speaker 1: explicitly said, I'm doxing today, give me give me Kim's number.
Speaker 1: I got something I want to say to her. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a long we got my my dropbox with the
Speaker 1: strange shops, right, it's it's it's a lot, it's a lot. Right.
Speaker 1: And so when you m set out to create this,
Speaker 1: as I said, like almost militaristic, so careful organized, I'll
Speaker 1: call it a campaign of abuse. Unequivocally open and shut case.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's just that's not even something that I
Speaker 1: can feel the need to go back and forth about.
Speaker 1: But I will say this that, um, I have spent
Speaker 1: hundreds of dollars now to have my information scraped from
Speaker 1: the the Internet. People should not have to a hundreds
Speaker 1: of dollars to make sure that they are not susceptible
Speaker 1: or vulnerable to what happened to me on September fifteen, sixteen. Right,
Speaker 1: that should not be the case. The Barbs falsely maintained
Speaker 1: that Kimberly must have put her own information online voluntarily
Speaker 1: herself at some point or another. Otherwise how would they
Speaker 1: have gotten it to spread. So it can't really be
Speaker 1: doxing if she put her own personal information out there,
Speaker 1: right wrong. Look, the scary reality is that pretty much
Speaker 1: all of our personal information is for sale in the
Speaker 1: United States, whether you put it out there yourself or not.
Speaker 1: We spoke to Sean and De la Vu, CEO of
Speaker 1: the anti docking service bright Lines, and here's what she
Speaker 1: had to say. It is state agencies, whether they're d
Speaker 1: m vs, that's pretty well documented. Um, if their utilities,
Speaker 1: if their law enforced databases that are getting sold to
Speaker 1: data brokers who are then selling them back to us.
Speaker 1: If it's like ICE or some other federal agency, but
Speaker 1: they're also selling them to data brokers. Just to make
Speaker 1: sure I understand, So state agencies, the d m V,
Speaker 1: my utilities company, my pepco, whatever, there might be the
Speaker 1: ones who are selling this data and making money off
Speaker 1: of it that it's putting people at risk. They are
Speaker 1: the ones that are doing. Wow, this is shocking information
Speaker 1: to me. You're probably like, oh, yeah, buckle up, Nick,
Speaker 1: it's worth but I think that would be shocking information
Speaker 1: to most people. Right, you would never know it until
Speaker 1: you went to FOYA. And I'd say, in addition to utilities,
Speaker 1: we know that courts sell court records, and those usually
Speaker 1: like so you imagine that you get a parking ticket
Speaker 1: because I live in d C. And I can never
Speaker 1: remember which side of the street is street cleaning this week,
Speaker 1: I get a parking ticket, and then there's a traffic
Speaker 1: court data if I want to go, I don't even
Speaker 1: think about it to ticket, it's like done. But there's
Speaker 1: a record, right that has my name, my home address,
Speaker 1: the then number of my car, probably my date of birth,
Speaker 1: the information from my driver's license, plus my car, and
Speaker 1: so that's a court record that would get sold. We
Speaker 1: interviewed um, this woman shot On Dililo, who runs a
Speaker 1: company called bright Lines, which specializes in scrubbing people's information
Speaker 1: off 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 the 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 under class that would never have
Speaker 1: that access. And you know we're talking about if you've
Speaker 1: ever had a driver's license, if you've ever voted, if
Speaker 1: you've ever turned on the heat or the water in
Speaker 1: an apartment, odds are, unless you have taken great steps
Speaker 1: to prevent it, your information is available for sale. That's
Speaker 1: just so, that's just the reality, it thoughts. But what
Speaker 1: it is, what it is. It should not be that way,
Speaker 1: and you, kimberally should not have to incur the pretty
Speaker 1: high personal cost of doing this just to be able
Speaker 1: to do your job as a cultural critic, like like,
Speaker 1: we really have to take a step back and wonder
Speaker 1: what kind of world like digital landscape we want to
Speaker 1: have where some people can show up safely if they
Speaker 1: have the money, and the rest of everybody else is
Speaker 1: just vulnerable. That that that is who is that serving?
Speaker 1: Absolutely And I will say, you know, I feel a
Speaker 1: responsibility as somebody who has not only a platform, but
Speaker 1: access to resources a great social network, to do as
Speaker 1: much as I can to make a very clear statement
Speaker 1: that there are consequences, as I mentioned before, and I
Speaker 1: am incredibly privileged. Even before this, I feel I have
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time wrestling with those privileges
Speaker 1: and trying to be of service, trying to extend myself,
Speaker 1: trying to share what I have, um in a in
Speaker 1: a thoughtful way, in a responsible way. And I'm only
Speaker 1: at this point because of this, all of these gifts
Speaker 1: and access and resources and things that frankly I did
Speaker 1: not earn coming together and I feel really, um, I
Speaker 1: feel very resolute in the fact that what I am
Speaker 1: doing is the right thing to do. You know, people say,
Speaker 1: just let it go, you know, like, Okay, you're you're
Speaker 1: on the other side of it. You have what you
Speaker 1: need to get. You know, I have two phones. Now, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're good, You're they nobody found you, just you nobody
Speaker 1: found your meat, Like, and I'm like, no, I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't let it go because all of these people
Speaker 1: who have had to be you know, home, they didn't
Speaker 1: have any choices. So yes, um, I definitely feel that way.
Speaker 1: It also, you know, not so wave the you know,
Speaker 1: not to get in my patriotic bag or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But after having so many conversations with lawyers over the
Speaker 1: past couple of weeks, with uh constitutional scholars, right, people
Speaker 1: who have like deeply studied this stuff and had so
Speaker 1: many conversations about the First Amendment and the rights and
Speaker 1: protections that we are afforded, not only as citizens, but
Speaker 1: as somebody who does what I do for a living,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, just talk about things, hopefully in
Speaker 1: a responsible manner. And I do think I'm very responsible.
Speaker 1: But a bedrock of our constitution, a bedrock of our
Speaker 1: values as Americans, it's that we can speak freely. And
Speaker 1: you speak freely and you don't anticipate, uh, any illegal
Speaker 1: kind of backlash. You know, you speak freely and that
Speaker 1: does not give anybody the right to threaten you or
Speaker 1: harm you. I expect when I say whatever I want
Speaker 1: to say, people to go back and forth. I expect banter,
Speaker 1: and sometimes on Twitter that banter can get a little feisty.
Speaker 1: That's like, okay, we're feisty, we're justing. I love a
Speaker 1: little witty repartee. I definitely did not expect this level
Speaker 1: of an invasion of privacy or this level of trauma,
Speaker 1: and I don't accept it. So it's unacceptable, and I
Speaker 1: think you're right. I think the point is the silencing effect.
Speaker 1: I think what what it's trying to do is to
Speaker 1: be is to make it clear that negative cult critique
Speaker 1: of certain people will not be tolerated. And if you
Speaker 1: do it, this is what's going to happen to you.
Speaker 1: And I think it takes a certain kind of person
Speaker 1: to say, uh no, I'm allowed to do my job.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to accept this. And I was talking
Speaker 1: earlier before you and I got on about how excited
Speaker 1: I was to talk to you because I think this
Speaker 1: could set an entire a real digital precedent about how
Speaker 1: discourse works on today's Internet. I think what you're doing,
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna set a really interesting precedent. I
Speaker 1: think it's going to like this. This feels like legacy
Speaker 1: building stuff, Like I think people will go back and
Speaker 1: be studying this in like media and digital criticism courses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to its size this in my mind because
Speaker 1: we're talking about select pop culture commentary is what we're
Speaker 1: really talking about here. But I agree with you, Bridget.
Speaker 1: When I have talked about what happened and the dock
Speaker 1: singe and the threats of murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, more
Speaker 1: than a few people, honestly, a surprising number of people
Speaker 1: who I thought were relatively reasonable, said well, if you
Speaker 1: knew that these people do that, why would you even
Speaker 1: talk about that person? I wait, wait, what we're talking
Speaker 1: about a global superstar. We're talking about a person who
Speaker 1: regularly releases music, a lot of the music that I
Speaker 1: have said that I like and enjoy. A person who
Speaker 1: less than a couple of weeks before this thing happened
Speaker 1: was on the v M A is accepting the Video
Speaker 1: Vanguard Award and doing a fifteen minute performed. I mean,
Speaker 1: the idea that if you know that this particular stand um,
Speaker 1: this spanned community is rapid, why would you say anything
Speaker 1: about their person. It's just it makes absolutely no sense.
Speaker 1: And yes, the idea that forever and ever nobody and
Speaker 1: you know, again we're not. I'm very aware of things
Speaker 1: that are happening, like globally right people's I mean literal
Speaker 1: lives are at risk and their rights are being stripped.
Speaker 1: To me, even in the United States right with what's happened.
Speaker 1: It's not that I understand, it's not that, but it
Speaker 1: really is an attempt to strike fear in people's hearts
Speaker 1: right like it's um on this kind of um micro scale.
Speaker 1: It is about fear and intimidation and you know the
Speaker 1: words you mentioned, silencing and just like the pettiest shit imaginable.
Speaker 1: But also it's like really important. It's really important also because, um,
Speaker 1: since this has happened, I've seen other I mean, if
Speaker 1: Witnessed has happened to another pop culture YouTuber, but also
Speaker 1: I have seen other writers and journalists and YouTubers, podcasters
Speaker 1: who have experienced similar things, not only from this fandom,
Speaker 1: definitely from this fandom, definitely from this fandom, but from
Speaker 1: others as well. And eventually we got to say, enough
Speaker 1: is enough, Right, somebody's gotta not necessarily punishment, because that's
Speaker 1: not my orientation in the world. But I am certainly
Speaker 1: about justice, and sometimes justice means consequences. I'm with you,
Speaker 1: and I I want to be clear, this is me
Speaker 1: saying this. This is my opinion and my take. I
Speaker 1: the reason why I think what you're doing is so
Speaker 1: important is because I cannot ignore the ways that I
Speaker 1: have seen the same kind of strategy creep into our
Speaker 1: political landscape. And so, yeah, we're talking about Nicki Minaj,
Speaker 1: a pop star, a celebrity. That's that's the meat of
Speaker 1: this conversation that we're having, you and me. But I
Speaker 1: have seen the way that the same strategy, like it's
Speaker 1: it reminds me a lot of how Trump, you Trump
Speaker 1: used social media, right, and so the way that the
Speaker 1: same exact thing is creeping into our political discourse and
Speaker 1: becoming acceptable, I see a lot of parallels, and I
Speaker 1: think that we might be in a very different political
Speaker 1: and social situation today in 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 really
Speaker 1: illustrate something else going on politically, socially, and digitally in
Speaker 1: our culture. And again this is my opinion, This is
Speaker 1: me saying that this is what I have witnessed. Um.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying.
Speaker 1: That polarization is ubiquitous, It's everywhere, and it leaves us
Speaker 1: unable to determine boundaries, you know, reasonable boundaries, and where
Speaker 1: we will go and where we won't go, and what
Speaker 1: we will do and what we won't do, and what
Speaker 1: we should and shouldn't say. And that loss of the
Speaker 1: ability to right size things in our minds, to to
Speaker 1: assess responsible discourse. It has really really dire consequences. I
Speaker 1: have to say, you know, justus and jobs, you know,
Speaker 1: verbal jousts and jobs I love, I live for. Um.
Speaker 1: I you know, I don't have a problem, you know,
Speaker 1: going back and forth with people about why I don't
Speaker 1: like somebody's music or why I disagree with their actions
Speaker 1: and behaviors. But what this experience for me has made clear.
Speaker 1: Over the past couple of weeks, I've done a lot
Speaker 1: of reading and research, and so many different people have
Speaker 1: brought all of these these resources to me, and books
Speaker 1: and podcasts and documentaries about fanatic violence, fan violence, um extremism,
Speaker 1: and it's so clear that even when we're just talking
Speaker 1: about something like a pop culture figure, that there is
Speaker 1: so much opportunity for this stuff to escalate in ways
Speaker 1: that are death stating, life changing, tragic. I feel incredibly
Speaker 1: traumatized from the many days of harassment and abuse and
Speaker 1: threats that I experienced, but there is so much more
Speaker 1: than that at stake. People have been killed over a
Speaker 1: fanatic violence. I mean, even somebody recently brought up you know,
Speaker 1: John Hinckley Jr. I was born in the eighties, so
Speaker 1: I don't know. People don't know this, right, but you
Speaker 1: know the the person who shot uh Ronald Drake in right,
Speaker 1: and he was like obsessed with Jody Jody Foster right.
Speaker 1: And yes, that was decades ago, but there are so
Speaker 1: many examples of people literally showing up literally, I mean,
Speaker 1: the fact that my former address was carculating in that
Speaker 1: way caused me such cause for concern, because there have
Speaker 1: been numerous cases of fans showing up at people's homes
Speaker 1: to defend the honor of the person that they stand. Um.
Speaker 1: The fact I had to to share the threats with
Speaker 1: the FBI because I know I live in Texas. Months
Speaker 1: after you've all the I mean, like, this stuff is real.
Speaker 1: It's real. People die, people are traumatized. Forever they're harmed,
Speaker 1: they have to move. Fortunately I didn't have to move,
Speaker 1: But like that stuff, I mean, people when some people
Speaker 1: are telling me about their new photos getting leaked and
Speaker 1: then they have to tell their parents or their job
Speaker 1: about these images are circulating me on about me online,
Speaker 1: and you're never gonna be able to live that down.
Speaker 1: That's real. That's life changing stuff stuff. And um, I
Speaker 1: wish that the people who hold this enormous influence, and
Speaker 1: who recognize that they hold this enormous influence because they
Speaker 1: understand how to activate their fan base and they're really
Speaker 1: intentional about doing it for all kinds of reasons. I
Speaker 1: wish that they would be much more cognizant of the
Speaker 1: fact that, yeah, right now, it's just you ugly monkey bitch.
Speaker 1: I guess you're gonna have to leap this out, you know.
Speaker 1: And I also got all kinds of slurs. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a black woman from Texas. I've never had seen
Speaker 1: the in word directed in me hard e r that
Speaker 1: many times. Oh it's crazy. Um, right now, it's I'm
Speaker 1: going to I know where you live. I'm gonna kidnap you,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mutilate you, I'm gonna pull put a bullet
Speaker 1: in your siblings brain. But it could easily um be
Speaker 1: death or disfigurement or real physical bodily harm. And not
Speaker 1: actively discouraging the people that you understand you have all
Speaker 1: of this influence on. Not actively discouraging it strikes me
Speaker 1: as um, not right. I'll say it's not right more.
Speaker 1: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: How do you think fandom and stam 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 is
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 us here? Like,
Speaker 1: how did we how do we get here? I think
Speaker 1: people are incredibly isolated. People are lonely. They're looking for
Speaker 1: a community, and the way that you express your fidelity
Speaker 1: to this particular community is by behaving in very extreme ways.
Speaker 1: I think the pandemic exacerbated this, but obviously existed before that.
Speaker 1: You just brought up the Donald Trump example. But I've
Speaker 1: learned a lot about the way that these STAND community
Speaker 1: is work, and it's almost like they operate as like
Speaker 1: chosen families, you know. I I don't want to misappropriate
Speaker 1: that language from the the lgbt Q plus community, but
Speaker 1: it's like they support each other. I mean, this is public,
Speaker 1: so I can say this. Um. I. After I was
Speaker 1: tweeting about what happened to me, I saw one of
Speaker 1: the STAND accounts tweet to somebody, don't apologize to her.
Speaker 1: We'll raise money for you if you need a legal defense,
Speaker 1: will raise money for you. Don't apologize to her, don't
Speaker 1: take it back, don't delete it. And I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: y'all are really like there's very much a feeling of
Speaker 1: we're in this together. It's it's it's all of us
Speaker 1: against the world. It's all of us against any attack
Speaker 1: or outside and it just so happened that on that
Speaker 1: Monday was the the quote unquote threatening force. But yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's how they mount up together. And I just
Speaker 1: think that I'm sure that you've you've seen the new studies,
Speaker 1: the scholarship about how just generally sad people are, you know,
Speaker 1: despite us seeming to have all of these new means
Speaker 1: of connection, despite us being online all day every day
Speaker 1: and the surveillance state expanding um every second of every day,
Speaker 1: people just do not have that many deep intimate relationships,
Speaker 1: those connections that really ground us and keep us mentally well.
Speaker 1: And I think that these kind of banned communities, these
Speaker 1: obsessive communities, are a byproduct of our culture in the
Speaker 1: United States and honestly globe late. We're just we're just
Speaker 1: not dealing with these these technological evolutions the way that
Speaker 1: we thought we would. It's just, um, I have realized
Speaker 1: over the past few years, especially since the pandemic, that
Speaker 1: my I r L community, my my family, the new
Speaker 1: friends that I've made, the old friends that I've had,
Speaker 1: romantic relationships, that is what sustains me. I love my job,
Speaker 1: I love the building community. Digitally, it saved my life
Speaker 1: in a really bad time. But I got to see
Speaker 1: people and hug them and looked them in the eyes
Speaker 1: and share a meal with them. That is what brings
Speaker 1: me the most joy. And I think, Um, I realized
Speaker 1: that's an incredible privilege that I don't take for granted,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people are not privileged in that way. Wow,
Speaker 1: what empathy I have to I'm reminded of this genelle
Speaker 1: Monate quote, we come in peace, but we mean business.
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm looking for justice, but I have empathy.
Speaker 1: Like I, I don't know if I would be able
Speaker 1: to be capable of the kind of empathetic assessment of
Speaker 1: what's happening emotionally with some of these people the way
Speaker 1: that you are. I think that really speaks to your character.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And I'll say, um, you can find that
Speaker 1: community and find joy in being able to use that
Speaker 1: community to exercise violent expressions of right. Like um, I
Speaker 1: think that the communities that we are able to build
Speaker 1: and take part in, we are empowered by them. We
Speaker 1: feel power within them, and that guide so many of
Speaker 1: our actions. And some of those actions are good, positive actions,
Speaker 1: and some of them are objectively I len't say objectively,
Speaker 1: some of them are potentially very harmful. And um, I
Speaker 1: think that people are using the communities that they've built
Speaker 1: for um negative, negative ends, and I definitely do not.
Speaker 1: I do not have empathy for that whatsoever. I I
Speaker 1: can empathize with what draws you to a community, but UM,
Speaker 1: I do not empathize or understand at all the desire
Speaker 1: to rally around abuse and threats and harassment. And yes,
Speaker 1: Janelle Moune right, my natural orientation in the world is empathy.
Speaker 1: That that guides my politics. I believe in grace. My
Speaker 1: dad died when he was fifty, but before he died,
Speaker 1: he said, the only thing you can't come back from
Speaker 1: his death. And uh, I believe that you make mistakes
Speaker 1: and you do bad things, you hurt people, and then
Speaker 1: you do whatever you can to make it right. You
Speaker 1: invest yourself in repairing harm and making amends and explaining
Speaker 1: to your community why what you did was wrong and
Speaker 1: why you shouldn't do that in the future. And I
Speaker 1: think that the people who participated in this against me,
Speaker 1: this organized campaign of abuse and harassment, I don't think
Speaker 1: they have to suffer for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: I don't want to ruin somebody's life forever I don't
Speaker 1: want to make sure you can never rent an apartment,
Speaker 1: or that you can never buy a car, or you
Speaker 1: can't get into college, or that your children have to suffer.
Speaker 1: That's not my but my aim is too. My aim
Speaker 1: is to encourage people to invest in the things that
Speaker 1: I believe in, which is, you cause harm, you make
Speaker 1: it right words to live by. That's that is a
Speaker 1: that is a good motto. Kimberally, how can folks support you?
Speaker 1: Because there are there ways that people can support you
Speaker 1: in what you're going through right now. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: have a go fund me, which I went back and
Speaker 1: forth a long time about, but after maybe about a
Speaker 1: dozen people asking how they could support, I did set
Speaker 1: of the go fund me. And now I am just
Speaker 1: so incredibly grateful for there is now a hundred people
Speaker 1: who have donated to the go fund me to help
Speaker 1: pay for lawyers. Oh my goodness, I did not know
Speaker 1: how I mean, I guess I knew, but I didn't
Speaker 1: really know how expensive retaining lawyers is and investigators. And
Speaker 1: oh I've already spent thousands of dollars. So I appreciate
Speaker 1: everybody who has given to that. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on social media. I actually am not gonna be tweeting
Speaker 1: about it as much anymore since things are rolling and uh,
Speaker 1: my counsel has that you gotta you gotta real it
Speaker 1: in It's like, okay, you're right, we're right. We'll set
Speaker 1: this aside for a second. But yeah, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're interested in supporting the cause, UM, I definitely welcome
Speaker 1: anybody who you know can spare a couple of dollars.
Speaker 1: You don't have to uh support sharing the story, talking
Speaker 1: about it, um, advocating on behalf of other people who
Speaker 1: have experienced that that is enough for me. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be okay, I am. I have such a great
Speaker 1: support system, and I'm so grateful have such great networks,
Speaker 1: and I could not thank them enough. I would not
Speaker 1: be here if not for them. But if you see
Speaker 1: this happening to somebody else, please reach out to them,
Speaker 1: support them, help them in the ways that you know how,
Speaker 1: because most people aren't me. Got a story about an
Speaker 1: interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi.
Speaker 1: You can reach us at Hello at tang godi dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangdi
Speaker 1: dot com. There are no girls on the Internet. Was
Speaker 1: created by me bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michaelmato is
Speaker 1: our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you
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