Nicki Minaj stans doxxed a cultural critic online. Now, she’s fighting back against doxxing and online abuse!

two thousand songs of the same name. Stand tells the story of an obsessive Eminem fan. In the song stands, obsession drives him to express his fandom through violent behavior. So fast forward to today, where we've kind of dropped the fact that stands love of Eminem is not a healthy one. Today, a stand is more of a garden variety super fan, masking the terms dark origins. So I started out this episode wondering when did fandom get so toxic? But maybe the truth is that it's always been there.

But what happens when obsessive fans express their love of a particular celebrity in ways that are dangerous or even illegal. Last week, cultural critic Kimberly Foster found out So you may remember Kimberly Foster from an earlier episode of their No Girls on the Internet we did about Jana Jackson. Kimberly is a cultural critic. It's her job to put opinions and critiques about popular culture into the world via

the Internet, and she's been doing it for decades. But when she tweeted about rapper Nicki Minaj, Kimberly found herself at the heart of a targeted carassment campaign waged by obsessive Nicki Minaj fans collectively known as the Barbs. Now, I'm not talking about cash Will fans or even huge fans. The barbs are something else, entirely people who make their entire online identity a shrine to Nicki Minaj. Their Twitter bios include details like retweeted by Nikki in April fourteen

or Nicky follows. So when Kimberly tweeted critically about Nicki Minaj, her personal information was posted online known as dosing, and worse, she and her family got violent threats, and for a lot of us, the story might end there, But Kimberly is pursuing legal action, So you might be thinking, who cares? Isn't this just stupid celebrity drama. But in taking a legal stand, Kimberly may very well be setting a precedent

that shapes online discourse for years to come. My name is Kimberly Nicole Foster, and I'm a culture critic and YouTuber. So first I just have to start by asking, with everything going on, how is Kimberly? How are you? I am surviving? I'm okay. I mean, I've definitely been better, but I've also definitely been worse. So that helps me maintain perspective, but not the highlight, not the pinnacle, the zenith of my life for sure right now. So tell

us what happened on September twelve. Yeah, so early in the morning on Monday September twelve, I was scrolling my Instagram and I came across one of those Instagram blogs and they posted something about a new beef that Nicki Minaj appeared to be and she was saying something on some new app and other young women rappers were responding and it was just a new thing brewing. And I went to my timeline on Twitter as I want to do, and I tweeted out something about it and went to sleep.

I mean it was three or four o'clock in the morning. I'm barely awake, and I wake up the next morning because I'm super excited to go to my nieces school and bring them lunch. They were having a kind of friends and family day and they had invited me to go, and I was so excited because I'm obsessed with being the best aunt in the world. And I remember picking out my outfit that morning and doing my hair, and my niece had even warned me, yeah, dressed like a mom, Kim,

don't just like a young person. Dressed like a mom, you know, no prop tops, no short shorts. And so I'm trying to pick out my best cool aunt outfit and all of a sudden, my phone starts that, you know, very classic iPhone that tone, and I'm hearing it. I'm like, who was texting? What? And that I keep hearing it, keep hearing it, and then I hear the face time tone, and I'm like, WHOA, something is happening, and I pick

up my phone. Of course, my my lock screen, and all on my lock screen there are six or seven messages, and I don't know what's happening, but I see the word nikki on one of those messages on the lock screen, and I knew exactly what it was. It was like I was in a movie I had. I had heard about this, I'd seen it happen. I never paid that much attention to it when it was happening, but I've been vaguely aware. But I know exactly what was happening. And so I'm trying to I still have to go

to my visa school. I have to bring them lunch. I promised them, and so I'm trying to simultaneously focus on getting myself together, getting out of the house, being on time, and deal with all of this stuff that's coming in. And initially I saw the word nikki and I thought, okay, whatever um I mean? Did I think? I mean? I thought, okay, I can deal with this. I can deal with this, like, let's focus. And then I remember looking at the phone and it was violent.

It was I'm gonna shoot you, I'm gonna kill your family, I'm gonna murder you, I'm gonna kidnap you. I'm going to find where you live and you're not going to be safe, and then it becomes scary. Kimberly pretty quickly realized this was not just a few people giving her snarky, mean replies on Twitter, this was something else entirely. Then it gets to be oh, umm, because I don't know what they know. I don't know how they found my phone number at that point. But you can change your

phone number, um. But once it gets to I know your address and multiple multiple um text messages too, and even you know the initial phone number violation is is like quoa. That's where I'm like, oh, because if this was just tweets you log off Twitter, you're close to like, Okay, I have a lie, but um, this is my phone number, the phone number that I've had since I was eighteen years old. I'm thirty three now, I'm not giving it out willy nilly. I don't know where they've gotten it.

And if they found the phone number, what else do you have about me? About my family that you're threatening to had nap and mutilate and murder and sexually assault and so yeah, there was just a lot going on. I do have to show up for my nieces. I'm completely distracted the entire time that I'm there. Afterwards, I get in my car. I called the police. The police say, you can't come in. We can't accept anything over the phone,

you have to do it online. So then I have to drive the thirty forty minutes back home and sit down and fill out that first police report, which is like, there was a frustrating process. I'll say that I won't go too much into that. Um, and yeah, it just it just continued. And and then I saw the screenshots where things were coming from, Um, you know, people circulating my phone number, these Nicki minajh fans barbs right, because if I haven't made it clear, um, the Nikki is

Nicki Minaj. And I realized that this is a coordinated campaign of harassment via the quote unquote barbed community. And people are sending me screenshots of this person shared your number, and and they shared it over here and here and here, and I see some of these some of these Twitter accounts have thousands of followers. Um, I saw one Twitter account that had almost sixteen thousand followers. Of let's text her and show her and you're not going to get

away with this and she'll know better next time. And then I see them circulating a screenshot of my phone number and what is fortunately my previous home address, and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's scary. That's scary not only for me now, but it's scary for the person who currently lives there. Amidst all of this, the threats, the harassment, the slurs, Kimberly's first instinct with physical safety. She needed to make sure that her, her family, and the people

living in her building were all okay. And so yeah, that happens in My first thought were my first thoughts were, I have to make sure I'm safe. They are telling me they know where I lived. So I also had to contact my building. As soon as I got back home, I went to the building manager's office and explained to her, and she was like, you know, because people who aren't

extremely online are like, what's happening? What? And then I have to you know, email her exactly you know what's in my phone and she's like, oh my, like you know, um, and they have a responsibility to protect the hundreds of other people who live here, um, you know, the police stuff. And then of course people send me um screenshots of

someone tweeting I'm gonna find the kids school. I'm looking at the kids school address right now, and that of course, anybody who knows me knows that how much I love my nieces and would literally die to protect them and jump in front of a moving train. UM. I alerted the FBI about that stuff. I mean, it was just overwhelming in the truest sense of the word. Yeah, and so but I, you know, I was like, Okay, you

have to keep this together. I'm trying to publicly document this because UM, I felt like that is that was my only hope. I felt like, UM, I'll say this, UM. In the last couple of weeks, I've gotten so many messages from people about this kind of stuff happening to them from that particular stand community, and the recurring fame is when it happened to me. People's new photos have been leaked, their phone numbers have been leaked. In fact, on that Monday, I wasn't the only person who the

barbs docked. UM. And they said I didn't do anything about it because I couldn't. Nobody was going to listen to me. I didn't have money to afford a lawyer. I only have a couple of hundred followers, I don't have a platform. And my first instinct was they always get away with this, and they're just not going to do it this time. And so that really motivated my desire to really lay this out and make sure that I was going to um pursue it via whatever avenues

were available to me. Mm hmm. I have to say I talked to a lot of people, usually black women, who are at the center of this kind of coordinated harassment and online abuse, and they all say that, like, nobody either A. It was so difficult to describe what was happening to people who were not extremely online, and that was incredibly isolating. The people that I would go to for help didn't really understand what I was talking about,

so I wasn't able to get that help. I didn't have money, support, access to fight back, and so I just had to deal with it. And I think why I'm so interested in what you're doing is because I think it sets a clear precedent that this is not acceptable. This is not acceptable online discourse, This is not acceptable online behavior and people. It should not just be the cost of for you, Kimberly, really doing your job as a cultural critic, Like this is what you're supposed to

be doing. This is what you That's why I follow you. This is like what like, this is your job? Is how you make money? That should not just be the cost of Kimberly doing her job having these kinds of threats. And another misconception that I've seen online a lot is that, oh, Kimberly is a public figure. You know, people are allowed to have push back. The kinds of things that I saw with my own eyes are violent threats. It's things

like I know the kids school address. I saw one where someone was saying like very specific things about the building that you lived in, like, oh, you think you are safe because you live in a secure building. Well, YadA, YadA, YadA like these This is not discourse. This is violent

threats and it's against the law. And even like you should not have to put up with it just because you angered the wrong toxic stand community, like that's that's I'm just in all that you are trying to set this new precedent that just draws a line in the

sand for what is it is not acceptable online. Yeah, I have to say, though I have I was rather impressed by how coordinated not only the dissemination the distribution of my phone number and previous address work, but also the messaging that they used around doxing me and harassing me and sending me these terroristic threats from account to account to account. And these are old accounts, right, And another thing people try to push back on, these are trolls.

This account is from September. There's accounts years old old. Um that they are using the same language, They are using the same talking points. The word unprovoked came up a lot. Yes, you're right, they said you are in public. How why do you think that you get to say these things publicly and nobody gets to say anything back to you? Or why do you think that you get to harass Nicki Minaje and you don't deserve harassment? Like, um, one,

that makes no fucking sense, Like that's it's nonsense. Those are nonsensical arguments. But seeing it dozens of times, hundreds of times at this point over the last couple of weeks, I'm like whoa. And maybe a week ago a Cardi b stand account tweeted me and said they get together in group chats and they they figure out what they're

gonna say. I said, Oh, that makes perfect sense. It's like, oh, that is why I'm seeing the exact same language from these well established stand accounts with thousands of followers and created in twenty fifteen. They're all coming to get there to descend are these details and say the exact same things. It's so well organized, imagined if you put this worked in effort and intentionality into something that's not illegal. But but yeah that UM, I say my opinions in public.

I don't say things that are false or defamatory. I don't say things that are untrue. I talk about my feelings, I analyze things. I'm very very careful. I'm really really good at my job. And no, that does not mean that I deserved to be doct That does not mean that my family deserves to feel whatever they feel. Right now, I'll tell you something else. The the day that I had to email my niece's principle and vice principle and say, these are my two nieces are in this grade. This

is what's happened to me. Here are screenshots of what I received. This is what I sent to the police. This is the police report number. This is what I sent to the FBI. See seeing my sister on that it wasn't a good day. It wasn't and they didn't deserve that, And I didn't deserve that. Absolutely fucking not. Uh, absolutely not. Let's take a quick break at her back.

It's so interesting that you talk about the coordination, because, like I said, like, I feel like I watched this happen, like I watched it unfold, and I watched it get like, you know, blow up, and I so one of the talking points that I saw repeated quite a bit was that Kimberly put her age US and phone number on the internet herself. If you do that willingly, that means it can't be doxing. And I saw that so many times repeated that I almost was like, well, maybe that's true.

Then I took a step back and I was like, wait a minute, I actually know quite a bit about doxing. That's not correct. You know, one thing that people might be surprised to learn is that pretty much anybody in the United States are public information is for sale via really sketchy people find your websites. And I hate to say it, but nine times out of ten, the reason why our information is on those websites is not because

we put it there. It's because our local city services, you know the d m V, you know, our our vote, our registration, our polls. They often sell bundle and sell that data to third party sketchy websites, and so it is terrifying. But I just need to make very clear that pretty much all of our personal information is for sale if somebody wants to buy it online, and so that the idea that that would mean that it's not them illegal to disseminate that information just doesn't just doesn't

make any sense, Like that's that's absolutely not true. And the fact that I saw that repeat, that untrue claim repeated so many times just lets me know how savvy folks are abow disseminating. I will give them accurate sounding, but not accurate information that makes them look bad, that makes them look look like they haven't done anything wrong, and makes you look bad. Yeah, it's miss and disinformation because some people definitely shared false information intentionally. But there's

a couple of things here. Right after this happened, I immediately went to how did they get my phone number? Like? What? How did that happen? And I can totally admit that now. I can totally admit now that my first instinct was to blame myself, like where did I I must have put it up somewhere. There's no way that people are digging and looking and searching like it. It's gotta be you know, I've been on the Internet for a long time. It's got to be somewhere, and I just say it's

it's got to be somewhere on my YouTube channel. And then I went back and I checked all of the places. I checked my social media, all of the pages that I've had for I've been an Internet person for over a decade. It's not anywhere publicly accessible. It's not anywhere even privately accessible. And so that claimed that. Honestly, I think people are are trying to they might have heard something that I said and then they're repeating it back to me as fact. It's not true. It's just not true.

I mean, I checked and double checked and went through I've had I'd probably have thirty Facebook pages, Twitter accounts. It's not there. It was not there. And so yes, they very they had to be very intentional about seeking

out that information. But also it's not just about the finding of the information, because yes, Bridget, as you said, unfortunately millions of people don't know that it's pretty easy to find out your phone number, UM and your and your home address, at least the last phone address that's on any public work. I mean your home address, at least the last home address that's on any public record.

But seeking out that information and sharing it with the intention of harassing somebody and threatening them is unequivocally illegal. The distribution of personal information with I mean people literally explicitly said, I'm doxing today, give me give me Kim's number. I got something I want to say to her. I mean, there's a long we got my my dropbox with the strange shops, right, it's it's it's a lot, it's a lot. Right.

And so when you m set out to create this, as I said, like almost militaristic, so careful organized, I'll call it a campaign of abuse. Unequivocally open and shut case. I mean, there's just that's not even something that I can feel the need to go back and forth about. But I will say this that, um, I have spent hundreds of dollars now to have my information scraped from the the Internet. People should not have to a hundreds of dollars to make sure that they are not susceptible

or vulnerable to what happened to me on September fifteen, sixteen. Right, that should not be the case. The Barbs falsely maintained that Kimberly must have put her own information online voluntarily herself at some point or another. Otherwise how would they have gotten it to spread. So it can't really be doxing if she put her own personal information out there,

right wrong. Look, the scary reality is that pretty much all of our personal information is for sale in the United States, whether you put it out there yourself or not. We spoke to Sean and De la Vu, CEO of the anti docking service bright Lines, and here's what she had to say. It is state agencies, whether they're d m vs, that's pretty well documented. Um, if their utilities, if their law enforced databases that are getting sold to data brokers who are then selling them back to us.

If it's like ICE or some other federal agency, but they're also selling them to data brokers. Just to make sure I understand, So state agencies, the d m V, my utilities company, my pepco, whatever, there might be the ones who are selling this data and making money off of it that it's putting people at risk. They are the ones that are doing. Wow, this is shocking information to me. You're probably like, oh, yeah, buckle up, Nick, it's worth but I think that would be shocking information

to most people. Right, you would never know it until you went to FOYA. And I'd say, in addition to utilities, we know that courts sell court records, and those usually like so you imagine that you get a parking ticket because I live in d C. And I can never remember which side of the street is street cleaning this week, I get a parking ticket, and then there's a traffic court data if I want to go, I don't even

think about it to ticket, it's like done. But there's a record, right that has my name, my home address, the then number of my car, probably my date of birth, the information from my driver's license, plus my car, and so that's a court record that would get sold. We interviewed um, this woman shot On Dililo, who runs a company called bright Lines, which specializes in scrubbing people's information off the Internet when they become you know, run for office,

or you know, get targeted. And she talks about how it's not cheap, the price point is high, and it creates the situation where some people are able to take the steps necessary to protect themselves, and it creates this kind of permanent vulnerable under class that would never have that access. And you know we're talking about if you've ever had a driver's license, if you've ever voted, if you've ever turned on the heat or the water in an apartment, odds are, unless you have taken great steps

to prevent it, your information is available for sale. That's just so, that's just the reality, it thoughts. But what

it is, what it is. It should not be that way, and you, kimberally should not have to incur the pretty high personal cost of doing this just to be able to do your job as a cultural critic, like like, we really have to take a step back and wonder what kind of world like digital landscape we want to have where some people can show up safely if they have the money, and the rest of everybody else is just vulnerable. That that that is who is that serving?

Absolutely And I will say, you know, I feel a responsibility as somebody who has not only a platform, but access to resources a great social network, to do as much as I can to make a very clear statement that there are consequences, as I mentioned before, and I am incredibly privileged. Even before this, I feel I have I spent a lot of time wrestling with those privileges and trying to be of service, trying to extend myself, trying to share what I have, um in a in

a thoughtful way, in a responsible way. And I'm only at this point because of this, all of these gifts and access and resources and things that frankly I did not earn coming together and I feel really, um, I feel very resolute in the fact that what I am doing is the right thing to do. You know, people say, just let it go, you know, like, Okay, you're you're on the other side of it. You have what you

need to get. You know, I have two phones. Now, Uh, you're good, You're they nobody found you, just you nobody found your meat, Like, and I'm like, no, I can't. I can't let it go because all of these people who have had to be you know, home, they didn't have any choices. So yes, um, I definitely feel that way. It also, you know, not so wave the you know, not to get in my patriotic bag or anything like that.

But after having so many conversations with lawyers over the past couple of weeks, with uh constitutional scholars, right, people who have like deeply studied this stuff and had so many conversations about the First Amendment and the rights and protections that we are afforded, not only as citizens, but as somebody who does what I do for a living, which is, you know, just talk about things, hopefully in a responsible manner. And I do think I'm very responsible.

But a bedrock of our constitution, a bedrock of our values as Americans, it's that we can speak freely. And you speak freely and you don't anticipate, uh, any illegal kind of backlash. You know, you speak freely and that does not give anybody the right to threaten you or harm you. I expect when I say whatever I want to say, people to go back and forth. I expect banter, and sometimes on Twitter that banter can get a little feisty. That's like, okay, we're feisty, we're justing. I love a

little witty repartee. I definitely did not expect this level of an invasion of privacy or this level of trauma, and I don't accept it. So it's unacceptable, and I think you're right. I think the point is the silencing effect. I think what what it's trying to do is to be is to make it clear that negative cult critique of certain people will not be tolerated. And if you do it, this is what's going to happen to you.

And I think it takes a certain kind of person to say, uh no, I'm allowed to do my job. I'm not going to accept this. And I was talking earlier before you and I got on about how excited I was to talk to you because I think this could set an entire a real digital precedent about how discourse works on today's Internet. I think what you're doing, I think it's gonna set a really interesting precedent. I

think it's going to like this. This feels like legacy building stuff, Like I think people will go back and be studying this in like media and digital criticism courses. Yeah, I'm trying to its size this in my mind because we're talking about select pop culture commentary is what we're really talking about here. But I agree with you, Bridget.

When I have talked about what happened and the dock singe and the threats of murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, more than a few people, honestly, a surprising number of people who I thought were relatively reasonable, said well, if you knew that these people do that, why would you even talk about that person? I wait, wait, what we're talking about a global superstar. We're talking about a person who regularly releases music, a lot of the music that I

have said that I like and enjoy. A person who less than a couple of weeks before this thing happened was on the v M A is accepting the Video Vanguard Award and doing a fifteen minute performed. I mean, the idea that if you know that this particular stand um, this spanned community is rapid, why would you say anything about their person. It's just it makes absolutely no sense. And yes, the idea that forever and ever nobody and

you know, again we're not. I'm very aware of things that are happening, like globally right people's I mean literal lives are at risk and their rights are being stripped. To me, even in the United States right with what's happened. It's not that I understand, it's not that, but it really is an attempt to strike fear in people's hearts right like it's um on this kind of um micro scale.

It is about fear and intimidation and you know the words you mentioned, silencing and just like the pettiest shit imaginable.

But also it's like really important. It's really important also because, um, since this has happened, I've seen other I mean, if Witnessed has happened to another pop culture YouTuber, but also I have seen other writers and journalists and YouTubers, podcasters who have experienced similar things, not only from this fandom, definitely from this fandom, definitely from this fandom, but from

others as well. And eventually we got to say, enough is enough, Right, somebody's gotta not necessarily punishment, because that's not my orientation in the world. But I am certainly about justice, and sometimes justice means consequences. I'm with you, and I I want to be clear, this is me saying this. This is my opinion and my take. I the reason why I think what you're doing is so important is because I cannot ignore the ways that I have seen the same kind of strategy creep into our

political landscape. And so, yeah, we're talking about Nicki Minaj, a pop star, a celebrity. That's that's the meat of

this conversation that we're having, you and me. But I have seen the way that the same strategy, like it's it reminds me a lot of how Trump, you Trump used social media, right, and so the way that the same exact thing is creeping into our political discourse and becoming acceptable, I see a lot of parallels, and I think that we might be in a very different political and social situation today in two if we had not established a precedent that this was a acceptable way to

behave online. That if one powerful, big voiced figure gives the right kind of wink wink, nod nod signal, they don't come out and say it. They never come out and say it. I'm being very clear about that, but they might give the right kind of signals. The people who are obsessively following that one figure know exactly what to do, they know exactly how to coordinate, and it's very effective. That is a precedent that I feel like has become more and more acceptable in our online discourse.

And I think that we would be in a very different political situation had somebody said, wait a minute, not acceptable. And so I know that it might not seem like, you know, it might seem like we're talking about celebrities and pop culture and stands, but I think it's so much deeper than that, and I think it really really illustrate something else going on politically, socially, and digitally in our culture. And again this is my opinion, This is

me saying that this is what I have witnessed. Um. Just to be clear, Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. That polarization is ubiquitous, It's everywhere, and it leaves us unable to determine boundaries, you know, reasonable boundaries, and where we will go and where we won't go, and what we will do and what we won't do, and what we should and shouldn't say. And that loss of the ability to right size things in our minds, to to

assess responsible discourse. It has really really dire consequences. I have to say, you know, justus and jobs, you know, verbal jousts and jobs I love, I live for. Um. I you know, I don't have a problem, you know, going back and forth with people about why I don't like somebody's music or why I disagree with their actions and behaviors. But what this experience for me has made clear.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've done a lot of reading and research, and so many different people have brought all of these these resources to me, and books and podcasts and documentaries about fanatic violence, fan violence, um extremism, and it's so clear that even when we're just talking about something like a pop culture figure, that there is so much opportunity for this stuff to escalate in ways

that are death stating, life changing, tragic. I feel incredibly traumatized from the many days of harassment and abuse and threats that I experienced, but there is so much more than that at stake. People have been killed over a fanatic violence. I mean, even somebody recently brought up you know, John Hinckley Jr. I was born in the eighties, so

I don't know. People don't know this, right, but you know the the person who shot uh Ronald Drake in right, and he was like obsessed with Jody Jody Foster right. And yes, that was decades ago, but there are so many examples of people literally showing up literally, I mean, the fact that my former address was carculating in that way caused me such cause for concern, because there have been numerous cases of fans showing up at people's homes

to defend the honor of the person that they stand. Um. The fact I had to to share the threats with the FBI because I know I live in Texas. Months after you've all the I mean, like, this stuff is real. It's real. People die, people are traumatized. Forever they're harmed,

they have to move. Fortunately I didn't have to move, But like that stuff, I mean, people when some people are telling me about their new photos getting leaked and then they have to tell their parents or their job about these images are circulating me on about me online, and you're never gonna be able to live that down.

That's real. That's life changing stuff stuff. And um, I wish that the people who hold this enormous influence, and who recognize that they hold this enormous influence because they understand how to activate their fan base and they're really intentional about doing it for all kinds of reasons. I wish that they would be much more cognizant of the fact that, yeah, right now, it's just you ugly monkey bitch. I guess you're gonna have to leap this out, you know.

And I also got all kinds of slurs. Oh, I'm I'm a black woman from Texas. I've never had seen the in word directed in me hard e r that many times. Oh it's crazy. Um, right now, it's I'm going to I know where you live. I'm gonna kidnap you, I'm gonna mutilate you, I'm gonna pull put a bullet in your siblings brain. But it could easily um be death or disfigurement or real physical bodily harm. And not actively discouraging the people that you understand you have all

of this influence on. Not actively discouraging it strikes me as um, not right. I'll say it's not right more. After a quick break, let's get right back into it. How do you think fandom and stam culture got so toxic? Like? What do you think happened that got us here where someone out of a love of a musician or a public figure who they do not know would behave in

this way? Because for me, and I think for most people, there is not a person on this earth who is not a blood relative to me that I would have this kind of reaction about, certainly not anybody that I don't know. And so it seems like for some of us is probably so difficult to even imagine what you're going through. What do you think god us here? Like, how did we how do we get here? I think

people are incredibly isolated. People are lonely. They're looking for a community, and the way that you express your fidelity to this particular community is by behaving in very extreme ways. I think the pandemic exacerbated this, but obviously existed before that. You just brought up the Donald Trump example. But I've learned a lot about the way that these STAND community is work, and it's almost like they operate as like

chosen families, you know. I I don't want to misappropriate that language from the the lgbt Q plus community, but it's like they support each other. I mean, this is public, so I can say this. Um. I. After I was tweeting about what happened to me, I saw one of the STAND accounts tweet to somebody, don't apologize to her. We'll raise money for you if you need a legal defense, will raise money for you. Don't apologize to her, don't

take it back, don't delete it. And I was like, Oh, y'all are really like there's very much a feeling of we're in this together. It's it's it's all of us against the world. It's all of us against any attack or outside and it just so happened that on that Monday was the the quote unquote threatening force. But yes,

that's that's how they mount up together. And I just think that I'm sure that you've you've seen the new studies, the scholarship about how just generally sad people are, you know, despite us seeming to have all of these new means of connection, despite us being online all day every day and the surveillance state expanding um every second of every day, people just do not have that many deep intimate relationships, those connections that really ground us and keep us mentally well.

And I think that these kind of banned communities, these obsessive communities, are a byproduct of our culture in the United States and honestly globe late. We're just we're just not dealing with these these technological evolutions the way that we thought we would. It's just, um, I have realized over the past few years, especially since the pandemic, that my I r L community, my my family, the new friends that I've made, the old friends that I've had,

romantic relationships, that is what sustains me. I love my job, I love the building community. Digitally, it saved my life in a really bad time. But I got to see people and hug them and looked them in the eyes and share a meal with them. That is what brings me the most joy. And I think, Um, I realized that's an incredible privilege that I don't take for granted,

and a lot of people are not privileged in that way. Wow, what empathy I have to I'm reminded of this genelle Monate quote, we come in peace, but we mean business. You're like, I'm looking for justice, but I have empathy. Like I, I don't know if I would be able to be capable of the kind of empathetic assessment of what's happening emotionally with some of these people the way that you are. I think that really speaks to your character.

Oh yeah, And I'll say, um, you can find that community and find joy in being able to use that community to exercise violent expressions of right. Like um, I think that the communities that we are able to build and take part in, we are empowered by them. We feel power within them, and that guide so many of our actions. And some of those actions are good, positive actions, and some of them are objectively I len't say objectively,

some of them are potentially very harmful. And um, I think that people are using the communities that they've built for um negative, negative ends, and I definitely do not. I do not have empathy for that whatsoever. I I can empathize with what draws you to a community, but UM, I do not empathize or understand at all the desire to rally around abuse and threats and harassment. And yes, Janelle Moune right, my natural orientation in the world is empathy.

That that guides my politics. I believe in grace. My dad died when he was fifty, but before he died, he said, the only thing you can't come back from his death. And uh, I believe that you make mistakes and you do bad things, you hurt people, and then you do whatever you can to make it right. You invest yourself in repairing harm and making amends and explaining to your community why what you did was wrong and

why you shouldn't do that in the future. And I think that the people who participated in this against me, this organized campaign of abuse and harassment, I don't think they have to suffer for the rest of their lives. I don't want to ruin somebody's life forever I don't want to make sure you can never rent an apartment, or that you can never buy a car, or you can't get into college, or that your children have to suffer.

That's not my but my aim is too. My aim is to encourage people to invest in the things that I believe in, which is, you cause harm, you make it right words to live by. That's that is a that is a good motto. Kimberally, how can folks support you? Because there are there ways that people can support you in what you're going through right now. Yeah, I do have a go fund me, which I went back and forth a long time about, but after maybe about a dozen people asking how they could support, I did set

of the go fund me. And now I am just so incredibly grateful for there is now a hundred people who have donated to the go fund me to help pay for lawyers. Oh my goodness, I did not know how I mean, I guess I knew, but I didn't really know how expensive retaining lawyers is and investigators. And oh I've already spent thousands of dollars. So I appreciate everybody who has given to that. You can follow me

on social media. I actually am not gonna be tweeting about it as much anymore since things are rolling and uh, my counsel has that you gotta you gotta real it in It's like, okay, you're right, we're right. We'll set this aside for a second. But yeah, if you're if you're interested in supporting the cause, UM, I definitely welcome anybody who you know can spare a couple of dollars. You don't have to uh support sharing the story, talking about it, um, advocating on behalf of other people who

have experienced that that is enough for me. Um, I'm gonna be okay, I am. I have such a great support system, and I'm so grateful have such great networks, and I could not thank them enough. I would not be here if not for them. But if you see this happening to somebody else, please reach out to them, support them, help them in the ways that you know how, because most people aren't me. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi.

You can reach us at Hello at tang godi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There are no girls on the Internet. Was created by me bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michaelmato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on

Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And I have to w