Hidden True Crime - PART 1: The Price of Truth: We Speak Out After 9-Hr Live | Lauren & Dr. John Matthias Break Down the Fallout

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

On October 15th, Lauren did a 9 hour live going through the most painful details of their families lives in the last several months. Now, John is here to follow up on the psychology of smear campaigns, mob mentalities, cyber stalking and physical stalking. About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lately, I've been trying to be more intentional about what I wear, intentional about everything, just choosing pieces that feel effortless, still put together, timeless, but also not overthinking it every morning. It's why I keep going back to quince. Their pieces just make getting dressed easier and I feel so classy. I feel elevated. The fits are flattering. The fabric is really high quality. Everything is wearable day to day. I actually got this really, really, beautiful yellow V-neck midi dress from them, and I paired it with some Italian leather sandals. It's one of those outfits that just works. It feels polished but still comfortable. It's exactly what I've been looking for. What surprises me, though, is the quality for the price. Quince uses

premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, but they cut out the middleman. So everything is priced way lower than you'd expect. Refresh. your every day with luxury you can actually use. Head to quince.com slash hidden true crime for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince, quince, q-u-in-c-com slash hidden true crime for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash hidden true crime. This is part one of an episode on stalking and harassment, something our family has been enduring for months. On Wednesday, September 15th, 2025, I went live on YouTube for exactly nine hours and nine minutes. Yes, you heard that right, nine hours and nine minutes. That live stream, which I never intended to do, was raw, emotional,

and deeply personal. It was my attempt to reclaim my voice after months of being silenced, targeted and misrepresented. Over the past several months, I have become the focus of a relentless smear campaign and the victim of persistent stalking, both online and in person. So out of concern for my safety and for the safety of my husband, John, and our child, I filed for a civil stalking injunction and was granted a temporary stalking injunction. And then something unexpected happened. It always does, right? And this unexpected something was that law and crime requested to broadcast my evidentiary hearing where I hoped to make my temporary stocking injunction permanent. This was a proceeding that would have exposed the most private details of our lives,

including those involving our young child and sensitive mental health matters. And look, as a journalist, I understand the importance of transparency. I do. But I also know that some hearings are not meant for public broadcast, child custody cases, for instance, or civil stocking injunctions. And why? because they carry real risks for victims. When such cases are aired to the world, the victims themselves can become targets all over again.

Allowing law and crime to stream that hearing would have set a dangerous precedent, one that could silence other survivors out of fear that seeking protection means surrendering privacy forever. So I made the difficult choice. I withdrew my case. And instead of letting strangers or law and crime narrate my story, I chose to bravely tell it myself. 24 hours after dismissing my case, sitting in a hotel room, I pressed, go live. And for nine hours, I spoke my truth.

It was vulnerable. It was unfiltered. It was human. And that live stream, it sparked compassion and connection, but it also sparked criticism, discomfort, and debate. It became a roar shock test for the internet. people saw in at what they were ready or not ready to see. And in its aftermath, thousands of hours of reaction videos, commentary, and analysis have been created about our lives.

But through it all, I stand by my story because it is mine. And in this episode, Dr. John Matthias joins me to break down the psychology of it all. From the motives behind stalking and online mob behavior to the emotional toll, this kind of harassment has taken on our family. as well as the kind of toll it would take on any family. We'll talk about what drives people to harass, why the internet can magnify cruelty, and how we're learning to heal through understanding rather than fear. Hello, everybody.

Hello. We're back. I know that a few of you, the hashtag Free John is going around a little bit. You okay? He's here. He's okay. Yeah, you had to unlock the cage in the garage to let me out. So I'm here. Yeah, I thank you for giving me some breakfast this morning, too,

after letting me out of the cage. Don't worry, you don't have to free me. I'm good. Yeah, yeah, we're here. And we have a lot to talk about. Remember when I said that last live and it went nine hours? I don't think this one will be nine hours. It's going to probably be a few hours, though.

It's going to be long. We've got a lot to say. Grab your beverages, grab your popcorn. grab something, right. Whatever it is, you grab your tea. I actually have some coffee this morning. I've got a bit of everything here laid out. So we've got a lot to talk about.

Yeah, which I'm sure all of you know. And when I say we, John actually is going to have the most to talk about. Yeah. Because I actually, you know, went live for nine hours, as many of you have pointed out. Right. Nine hours and nine minutes. Yeah. So you're going to give me the floor.

I'm going to give you the floor. You're going to give me the floor today. And I want to, I want to talk about what happened, but I want to do it more philosophically and more psychologically. So we're going to get into things like the psychology of stalking. We're going to get into the nature of this conflict, the nature of why people, the different conversations people are having since you've released your live. whether you're lying, whether, you know, whether you're telling the truth, right?

Like, whether you were stalked? Is that just free speech? Right? We're going to cover all of that. And we're going to cover that from mainly a psychological perspective because I am a psychologist. But since you have your Ph.D. in psychology. Right. Not philosophy.

Just to clarify a PhD is by definition a doctor of philosophy. Don't worry. I covered that in my life. Yeah. So, correct. I am a licensed psychologist. I am a clinical and forensic psychologist. And so we're going to approach this largely from a psychological perspective.

And before we begin, I do want to say thank you to everyone for your support. We've actually received thousands of emails and messages from. people giving us support and we just want to say thank you too. Before we begin, or I, yeah. And just so kind, so much kindness, so much love. Thank you very much. We were able to get through this a lot easier because of the support from our community and our gems

and you guys are amazing and we can't thank you enough. So yeah, all right. So yeah, so let's dive into this analysis. I'm going to start in a fairly peculiar, unexpected place. Okay. And I'm going to start with talking about Brad Pitt, the actor. That is peculiar. That is.

It is a little peculiar, right? So the reason I want to talk about Brad Pitt is because he's an actor in my generation. He's an actor I've followed very closely over the years. He's an actor I really appreciated. And I've really kind of watched him, and develop and grow and and that's been somewhat inspirational to me so you do like him he talks about brad pitt so let me just say so i'm going to do a little bit of my own fan girl here i guess but let me say that the reason i got to know brad pitt was because in 1992 he was in a movie called

a river runs through it a river runs through it is one of my favorite movies it's one of my favorite books it's a book by norman mclean who was a professor of english literature at the University of Chicago for many years. He wrote this novella about his childhood growing up in Montana and off fly fishing basically saved his life. It's a brilliant book. It's a brilliant movie. Brad Pitt was in the movie.

He actually played the somewhat delinquent brother. It was an interesting role that, you know, that Brad Pitt would kind of reprise many times in his career, but he was very good. And I didn't know who he was. at that time. And so I was interested. I'm like, who is this guy, right? When I watch a movie and there's actors, I don't know, I'm always interested to kind of figure out who they are, where they came from. So I found that Brad Pitt actually was born and raised in a small town in Oklahoma. He was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. And I also learned that at least some of his early

career. He began in 1987. I didn't know any of his earlier movies. He did a few movies. And then he did work for a soap opera. So the evolution of his career really begins with soap operas. And you know, when I learned that, I thought, oh, this is interesting, right? Like, you don't see a lot of soap opera actors go on to become mega stars. I mean, I guess some of them have, but I don't, I'm not aware of a lot, right? And so, so You've got this guy in this major movie. It's produced by Robert Redford. Robert Redford, by the way, in 1992, clearly saw talent in this young actor. Because Robert Redford has produced some extraordinary movies over the years.

He's been in extraordinary movies. He knows the industry. He knows talent. And he picked out Brad Pitt. So shortly after that, Brad Pitt in 1995 was in a movie called Seven. And he was one of the detectives. and great job. So now my appreciation of this guy is only increasing.

In 1996, he did a movie called 12 Monkeys. Many people probably don't know this movie, but I do, because it has to do with mental health. And it gets into everything I love. It's a post-apocalyptic novel. It's got kind of sci-fi. It's about mental health issues. Is he psychotic?

Is he not? There's all kinds of philosophical issues raised in this. movie but I don't think a lot of people saw this movie yeah I haven't seen it but you love Brad Pitt too but but I watch this movie and and now like he is he's extraordinary in this movie now my appreciation of this guy is continue to expand 1999 he does the fight club which is a very controversial movie gets a lot of attention but again I kind of see this guy's journey towards mastery right 2004 he does Troy I'm skipping a lot of movies he's done by the way.

He does the movie Troy, which is about the Iliad. Homer's the I love Homer's the Iliad. It's one of my favorite books. It's a brilliant book about war. He does this. That's a risk. It's not particularly a stretch for him in this movie,

but he's good. In 2008, he does Benjamin Button. He's nominated for Best Actor. He's nominated for Best Actor by the Academy. In 2011, he does Moneyball. Brilliant. He's brilliant in this movie. right he's also nominated for best actor 2014 Fury again he's exceptional in this this role um

2015 he does the big short every one of these roles he I mean he he he sort of has a particular type in these movies but but you also like for me I'm also seeing him expanding his repertoire a little bit, taking some risks, like with Troy, growing as an actor, right? So what's fascinating to me is you got this guy from Oklahoma that you never think would become a megastar. He's really committed to his craft. He's really growing, right? And then, after the big short, there's a bombshell in 2016.

And this bombshell is that Angelina Jolie accuses him of abuse. Yeah. On a plane specifically, but essentially there's this war between himself and Angelina Jolie. Two megastars. Two megastars. There's this issue over custody, right? There's all kinds of issues here. There's, I believe.

It's a bitter divorce. It's a bitter divorce. I believe there's all kinds of accusations being levied. And before this, by the way, I should point out, like the paparazzi are all over Brad Pitt, wherever he goes. There's... Married to Jennifer Aniston. Marries to Jennifer Aniston before.

Cheating scandal. Right. There's issues about fidelity, right? Like, anything the tablet can get their hands on. Any salacious story about Brad Pitt, they're publishing that, right? I see this stuff, but I don't really pay much attention to it because I don't really care. I want to go to his movies. I'm invested in this guy as an actor and watching him grow and change and master his craft, right?

You're interested in his craft, his art. Right. So it's interesting because in 2016, and I could be wrong about this, but so these allegations are levied by someone who has tremendous power in Hollywood. And I believe that because of this, there's certainly an attempt to tarnish his reputation, to maybe cancel him, right? Like there's this whole debate about should Brad Pitt be doing movies,

I'm sure people have mixed feelings about this. He was never formally charged with anything. He was never criminally charged. But after 2016, it does appear that a lot of his roles are lesser roles. It appears that he's doing movies that aren't quite, as they don't quite have the heft and the reach of movies he's done before. So the reason I read that. list of movies prior to is because

I don't know exactly what was going behind the scenes. I don't know if the impact of accusations was affecting his ability to get better films. Like, I just don't know.

And so, I'm going to leave, I'm going to leave us here for a minute. I'm going to leave us with the accusations, the trajectory of his career that apparently seems to stall around 2016, right? And I'm going to dive into something else, which is something that's called psychological essentialism. And psychological essentialism, and there's different types of, there's different kinds of psychological essentialism,

but fundamentally psychological essentialism is about the idea that things or people have an underlying reality. So there's something called category. essentialism, which is that you might take an attribute or something of a person, and you're going to, you're going to generalize from that and make assumptions about who that person is. So in other words, you want to categorize someone. So psychological essentialism is about trying to find some underlying category, reality about a person or a thing. typically in psychological essentialism, you might take an attribute or a behavior, even one, just one.

And you'll generalize from that to categorize the person in question. So one of the authors that one of the psychologists, his name is Paul Bloom, he teaches at Yale, he does research. He wrote a book called How Pleasure Works, where he has some interesting chapters on psychological essentialism. The reason, by the way, he talks about it in terms of pleasure is because he argues strongly that psychological essentialism underlies a lot of our experience of pleasure in the sense that there are certain things that essentialism helps us with in terms of developing certain desires or motivations for something. So there's another type of psychological essentialism called life force essentialism, which I don't, I don't want to get into that now.

We'll talk about it later. But for now, I want to talk about psychological essentialism. And I'm actually going to, I'm going to read, I'm going to read, this was Paul Bloom in his book called How Pleasure Works. Why We Like What We Like, I like the subtitle. So I'm going to throw that out there. he talks about there's a subject in one of his studies. It's a four-year-old. And he talks about it.

He gives an example of psychological essentialism. And here's what he said. So they interviewed this four-year-old. And he was describing what he perceived to be a violent playmate. So here's what he says, the four-year-old. Gabe, quote, Gabriel didn't just hurt me. He heard other kids, too. He's a herder.

Right, Mom? He's a herder. the child, here's bloom, the child is presumably stressing that this sort of behavior reflects a deeper aspect of Gabriel's nature. Before I switched to wealth front, my APY was probably 0.1. Once I switched, chiching. With a wealth front cash account, earn up to 4.2% APY on your cash. I can trust. Wellfront is taking care of me.

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Direct deposit $1,000 a month and fund an investing account for a 0.25% increase. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member FINRA SIPC, not a bank. These and eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features of the cash account. So what Bloom is saying that's of interest here is that if a child is on the playground, and let's say we don't know the context, right? Let's say that that child is having a really bad day. Let's say his father yelled at him that morning. Let's say his father maybe even pushed him, right?

This kid Gabriel comes to school and he acts out. He hits another child. Maybe he pushes another child. And this four-year-old sees it. And his conclusion is that Gabriel is essentially a herder. He's a bad kid and you need to stay away from him. Without knowing anything about Gabriel, without knowing Gabriel's story, right?

So you're going from this one particular behavior and you're generalizing. And the important point here is that kids as young as two and three and four, this is what they do. They start labeling and categorizing behaviors. Okay. And putting them into categories. Putting them in categories, trying to make it,

trying to oversimplify it, right? So you're essentially seeing, like this four-year-old, you're seeing one particular behavior, which is this kid Gabriel hitting another kid, apparently. We don't know why, right? We don't know the context. We don't know what you think about it's home like. And then a four-year-old is drawing the conclusion that that's a bad kid. In general terms.

In broad terms, correct. It's oversimplifying. Oversimplified. So what's important here is not only does this happen at a young age, but it solidifies over the course of our lifespan. So in other words, adults are still looking to categorize people. The same way, they're looking for a specific instance or behavior to say, that's a herder. So here's an example.

Let's say someone writes some private tax messages that aren't meant with the expectation of privacy. And let's say those messages are part of a group where the group, the culture of, of that group is to roast other people. That culture of that group is to make fun of other people and to just blow off steam to vent, right? And let's say that one of those private messages, just one or maybe some, a few, they're released publicly. Not to mention the ethical and moral issues

about betraying someone's privacy and their friendship and trust. That's a different issue. That's more of a ethical issue, right? So let's just say that somebody releases a private message or series of private messages and they get out to certain people. So an example of psychological essentialism is you take one of those messages out of context. Out of context. Meant to be private. You take one of those messages and then you develop a sticky label that you apply to the person.

that wrote that private or those private messages, right? So let's say that some of those messages were snarky, or let's say that some of those messages were edgy. Let's say they were a little biotines. Maybe they were sarcastic, right? But they were in the context of a group where that wasn't to be shared. Psychological essentialism suggests that certain people will take those messages

that weren't meant to be shared, and they will develop categories, They will label people bad. They will label people as being immoral because of that type of behavior without looking at the context, without considering that person's history, without considering that person's life, right? Like that's what, so it's the four-year-old watching one particular behavior and coming to the conclusion that Gabriel is a herter, right? And that's a moral judgment, by the way, which is going to take us to the next step of this process. So one of the things, one of the interesting things about psychological essentialism is that human beings, this is true across all cultures.

This research is invariant. This research is as universal as you can get in our field, in the field of psychology. The finding is that human beings, because of psychological essentialism, they believe that we all have more or less what's called a true so. So we have this core self, this true self. Human beings also believe that not only do we have this true self, but this true self is morally virtuous. So this is another part of the finding. So you have a true self that's essential, that that self, most people believe that that self and themselves and others is morally virtuous. And then we get to another piece of this puzzle.

So not only is, do people see a true self that's morally virtuous, but they believe, because of this, they believe human beings across all cultures believe that there's an intrinsic goodness to them. And they also believe there's an intrinsic goodness in the groups that they participate in or involved in. So I'm going to read from a book here. I'm going to read the psychologist Keith Payne, who summarizes point. What's this book? It's called Good, Reasonable People. Keith Payne is a psychologist at the University of North Carolina. He's done a lot of research on social psychology.

Keith Payne calls these assumptions, quote, the psychological bottom line. The psychological bottom line. What that means is pain is saying that universally across all cultures, human beings always come back to the psychological bottom line. I'm going to read what he says. This is on page 41. The first non-negotiable principle is that I am a good and reasonable person.

The second principle is that, quote, my groups are good and reasonable people. It goes on. When the psychological immune system, that means defense mechanisms. That's what researchers call it. Okay, defense mechanism. When the psychological immune system, protects us from threats, it does it by finding a way to make everything else add up to the

psychological bottom line. In other words, human beings, we think that there's a true self, that it's moral and it's good, and we will do everything in our power to make sure that people perceive us as good or to ostracize those people that we don't see as good. So in other words, It's fundamentally human beings. This idea of morality is fundamentally human beings. It's a part of our makeup. It's how people see other human beings, right? I'm going to read, this is from an article by Julian DeFritas.

Julian DeFritas teaches at Harvard. He's done a huge amount of, he's a psychologist at Harvard. He's done a huge amount of research on this idea of what he calls the good true self. This is from cognitive science. Cognitive science. Multidisciplinary journal. I'm just reading from the abstract. Here's how he summarizes it.

Quote, people sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous. That is, that deep inside every person, is motivated to behave in morally good ways. So I'm trying to establish the fact here that human beings see themselves as moral creatures. We operate on moral ground typically,

and that's how we evaluate other people, right? That's how we kind of live our lives. I'm going to go further with this idea. So there's been some interesting research by Strominger and Nichols. This is from an article called Neurodegeneration and Identity. It is 2015 from psychological science. What they did in this study is they looked at a bunch of people that had traumatic brain injuries or brain injuries or dementia.

And they were trying to evaluate that when somebody is basically losing their identity because of dementia, when they're losing their memory, do other human beings evaluate them in terms of memory loss or some other way? And incredibly, this is incredibly what they found, what they discovered is that as long as the person perceived some type of moral foundation that still, or moral part of the person, foundation that still existed in the person, they then saw that person as still being the same. if they had no memory of who they were and there was no ability for the person with the dementia to still hold on to any type of moral principles or moral behaviors, then they didn't see that as the same person.

So in other words, what they found was it wasn't memory that determined whether you see someone with dementia or brain injury in the same way. It was morality. It was morals. That's how strong. That's how strong this is.

Right. That's how we are judging. So let's go back. We're assessing. I'm going to just quote from this article, Neurodegeneration and Identity. Quote, this is from page 1477. Quote, the current results support the essential moral self-hypothesis.

As long as core moral capabilities are preserved, perceived identity remains largely intact. So in other words, as long as one's core moral capabilities are preserved, even if you have brain injury, memory loss, dementia, right, any type of dementia, as long as people perceive you have moral capabilities, they still believe it's you. They still believe it's your identity. Let's go a step further with this idea. There's a fascinating study from Hock Steadler et al from 2009.

The title of this article is, That's Not Who I Am, How offenders commit violent acts and reject authentically violent selves. I think the title speaks for itself. The finding of the story is that even the most hardened violent criminals go to extreme lengths to see themselves as good, reasonable people. It goes back to Payne's fundamental psychological principle. Yeah. I'm going to read here. I'm going to read a little bit from the study just to make this

point, page 510, quote, the assessment of a nonviolent character is a foundation or core belief upon which inmates' rationalizations were constructed. With it, violence is framed as transient and situational and thus could not be accurately viewed as a trait or defect of the offender. By relying on a variety of situational justifications for their violence, offenders resisted internal and external labels of being violent, at least as they defined it. They engaged in violence, but distanced themselves from it by pointing to situations or circumstances that caused their actions. So what does this mean? Yeah.

Tell us what it. It means that there's this deep propensity for human beings to see others as moral, to judge them as moral, and to see themselves as good, and to judge others as either good or bad. Right. In other words, I guess the way to put this is the fundamental theater in which human beings operate, which is the world, let's call it the theater, I guess, because we all have different roles, is a morality play.

We live, most of us, because we put so much emphasis on morality, we essentially live in a morality play in our reality lives all the time. And this has to do with, you see this everywhere, right? People judging others, people gossiping, people spreading rumors. Sounds like Chad Daybill's light or dark scale. I'm going to be honest. Well, that's part of this. That's right. That's part of this.

You're either good or you're bad. At my bank, I was literally getting pennies using wealth fronts. Chiching, there's this much that I'm getting an interest and I didn't have to do anything. Clients like Angela earn up to 4.2% APY on their cash with the Wealthfront cash account. Get started at Wealthfront.com. Client was paid $1,000 for their testimonial, creating a conflict of interest. Outcomes vary. 3.3%.

Base API as of January 30th, 2026, as representative variable and earned on funds swept to program banks. 0.65% new client boosts for three months on up to $150,000. Direct deposit $1,000 a month and fund an investing account for a 0.25% increase. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA SIPC, not a bank. Before I switched to Wealthfront, my APY was probably 0.1. Once I switched to chiching, with the Wealthfront cash account, earn up to 4.2% APY on your cash. I can trust. Wellfront is taking care of me. Make your money earn more. Get started at Wealthfront.com.

Clients were paid $1,000 for their testimonials, creating a conflict of interest. Outcomes vary. 3.3%. As of January 30th, 20th, 2026 is representative variable and earned on funds swept to program banks. 0.65% new client boost for three months on up to $150,000. Direct deposit $1,000 a month and fund an investing account for a 0.25% increase. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA, SIPC, not a bank. So let's get back to Brad Pitt.

So now that I've talked about these ideas of what's called the essential moral self, let's get back to Brad Pitt. Okay. So Brad Pitt has this allegation. I think Brad's cute. But. Yeah, that's fine. And I think he's a great actor.

That's fine. Yeah. But I haven't assessed him the way you have. I know you've always loved Brad Pitt. And his crap. Let's go back to Brad Pitt. So, and I don't want to minimize what happened, right? Like, if in fact he did abuse or, right, that's appalling.

I'm obviously never going to. We don't know what happened. We don't know. I'm never going to support that, right? But, but the point is back in 2016 when this happened, what you get in these types of situations is you get this. this large kind of morality plate. The best way I can describe it is that people become involved in what I would call a moral crusade.

And the moral crusade is, I think the moral crusade exists mainly because humans are very prone to making moral judgments. And as I just said, and when they perceive someone as bad or when someone is labeled as bad, the goal ultimately is to ostracize them from the group or groups, right? And so that in a sense, that is in essence is an attempt to cancel someone. You label someone bad, you get them ostracized from groups, you ruin their reputation, right? Part of that was going on with Brad Pitt. And you might say, okay, what, so who cares? Let's say this is a moral crusade that people are trying to paint Brad Pitt as evil,

so he never works again in Hollywood. They're trying to get him canceled, right? To punish him for his so-called moral. Moral. Shortfalling. Right. Moral shortcomings. Shortcomings.

And I think there's something really interesting here that we need to consider that applies to our situation. And this is where this is important. The problem Angelina Jolie had in trying to make this a moral crusade, was that Brad Pitt has this body of work, which is indisputably good, right? He's got this body of work, and he's becoming an actor that's mastering his craft. That's why I'm interested in the guy. Like, I love watching people master craft.

You always say make good art. Right. I love excellence, right? And so I strive for that myself. Says the valedictorian. You got accepted to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Columbia. and, you know, said no to most of them. I'm going to brag.

But he's not a real psychologist, guys. Just pretend. I love people. I love people that strive for excellence. I see Brad Pitt is fitting that mold, right? And so when she shifts this debate into it makes it a moral crusade, there's a big problem. And that problem is that Brad Pitt's body of work and the quality of his work, are indisputably good.

I mean, you know what? Some critics may disagree with me. I'm sure there's critics that hate Brad Pitt. They think he's a hacked actor. But I'm not one of those, right? And so if the goal is to cancel Brad Pitt, and you're a fan of Brad Pitt like I am, my response to that was, okay, you know,

maybe he's got some problems in his personal life. You know, maybe he, whatever, I'm not excusing it. Maybe he feels overwhelmed by having all, these kids, a massive career, be one of the biggest stars in the world. Like, you and I. I think he's admitted to alcoholism. He's struggling with addiction. Right.

He's certainly not perfect. He's got some issues. You and I are... His life is messy. You and I are such, whatever the celebrity scale is, you and I are like a pittance compared to Brad Pitt, right? I can't even imagine. Yeah, we're not a thing.

I can't even imagine the stress and expectations and criticism this guy has to deal with, right? Like, I don't think any of us can imagine that. I can't imagine that for Taylor Swift. Like, some of the biggest stars in the world, the rock. I don't know how they handle all this stuff. I don't either. I really don't, right? So, like.

YouTube's enough for me. So my thing is, so this is happening. You know, there's stuff before about affairs. and I'm just like, the guy does good work. I love the fact that this guy is trying to master his craft, right? What I care about is the quality of his work. His art, his craft. The quality of his work.

And so I think it's interesting that in our current, it's interesting that like Brad Pitt, being accused of abuse in 2016, that the situation you're in, this whole smear campaign from the start that every bit of this is about a moral referendum on you and your character. Every bit of this is become a moral crusade.

Right. And what I find fascinating about that is that this debate is not happening in the realm, in the realm of, oh, what's the quality of Lauren's work? What's the quality of hidden true crimes work? Right? Like, I could argue with Brad Pitt, for example, that this attempt to shift the debate to this moral crusade,

to this moral issue, but it's certainly an attempt to shift the debate away from his work as an artist and an actor to something else, to something about his character. There's something about his morals and his, right? And the question is, and by the way, with you, you weren't acute, you've never done anything like that ever. Like, you've never done anything wrong. Well, my eyebrows are a sin.

Right. Yeah, you may have to shave those. You know, we've received. And I love myself some Botox. We've received some emails, I think. There's, there's, I want to point. I want to read. a comment we received by

Penaata Samurai. I love that name, by the way. Thanks Penaata Samurai. This is a comment. This is a comment that I love that summarizes this whole thing up. We received a brilliant text from in comments,

or I'm sorry, a brilliant message in comments from one of our viewers. And here's what Penaata Samurai said. Love the name. I know. Penauna Samurai. It's so great. Next time I go to a pinata party with our son, I'm going to call myself Penaata

Samurai. Quote, even if you were the devil himself, I'd still watch you. You're brilliant at what you do. You and your husband both. Right. And so the reason that's relevant, I'm not the devil. The reason that's relevant, I know, you're not the devil. I know, you're not the devil.

It's making a point, obviously. You're not the devil, only when you lock me in my cage in the garage. The reason why that's brilliant is because I think it really gets to the core of this debate, just like Brad Pitt, right? Why isn't anybody debating this on the terrain of our work? Why is this being litigated as a moral referendum? Right. And there's another question in here. if you're going to engage in a moral crusade,

which is what all the people in this smear campaign have done, if you're going to do that, you're going to have to have some moral authority, right? The other part of engaging in a moral crusade is you're going to have, you need probably some bank account, some credits, some moral credits to bolster your position, right? And think about that with your situation, right? Like, does someone who was kicked out of the day,

trial for violating a number of court regulations multiple times. Does that person have moral authority to comment on your character? I'm not going to say. How about this? How about this? Somebody who took your phone without your consent and went through your phone and the financials that were in your phone. This person knew. This person knew that they were never to access our financials. That's our business. that person gets in your phone, looks at your financial, looks at your financials without your consent. Does that person have the moral authority to engage in a moral crusade to ruin you? Or how about this?

Someone who makes comments on a TikTok about your brother in a coma and how you want to non-consensually try to obtain your brother's spirit. Does that person have the moral authority to engage in a crusade, a moral crusade to ruin your character? Or how about this? Somebody who follows you around the courthouse videotaping you, video recording you, constantly getting in your face. And because of that type of behavior is not allowed to attend the memorial service that you put on. helped. I participated in helping organize.

My dear friend actually does that person have the moral authority to engage in this moral crusade against you? Right. So my point is that if you're going to engage in a moral crusade, you better be squeaky clean. And like my point is that we all have flaws. We're getting to the parable in the Bible. Whoever hasn't sin cast the first stone. It's a good one. We all have flaws.

We all have imperfections. And so people make mistakes. You've made some mistakes here. You've acknowledged that. The question is that if you're going to engage in this type of moral crusade, that at some level you're going to need some moral authority to do that. And what does that even mean? I mean, I could talk for the next five hours about what,

moral authority means we can talk about morality. I won't. I'll just say this. Morality to everyone is different, right? What is moral and what isn't? I'll just say this. That moral authority is derived from a couple of places. It's derived from your behavior and it's derived from the community in which that behavior occurs, right?

You get moral authority because the community confers it on you for either good or bad behavior, let's say. Right. And so it's interesting that everyone involved in the smear campaign is claiming this moral high ground. And they're claiming this moral authority to engage in this reference to engage in this smear campaign and bullying and stalking against you because they're morally correct, right? because they're right. They're going to show, they're desperately trying to show that you've done something wrong,

that you're a bad person, and you should be canceled. Yeah, well, and how about also this, someone is either all good or all bad? I mean, that's what you were saying at the beginning of this.

That gets, that kids into psychological essentialism. Exactly. So it's like the fourth grader. It's like the fourth grader. Or the four-year-old. I mean, I'm sorry, I meant the four.

Yeah, even worse. It's like the four-year-old, watching a little child punch another kid. Maybe, again, maybe the Gabriel had a bad day. And then coming to the conclusion, that's a herder. This is a version of that. And by the way, part of that, part of the reason that's important is because there is a tremendous amount of

immaturity here. Right. Like, these smear people are engaged. We've seen so many comments about this, that how childish this is, how middle schoolish this is. Right? And it's almost like you're taking that four-year-old and you're showing the four-year-old one text that may have been a little snarky.

And the four-year-old's coming to the conclusion, oh, that's a herder, that's a herder, right? It's a similar dynamic. Yeah. So I think there's a couple of issues here that are worth talking about. One is that there's a deliberate attempt here, I think, to shift this debate away. from your work, our work, the quality of our work.

Like, technically, Brad Pitt, with Brad Pitt, I don't really care what's going on in his personal life. I'm just interested in his mastery of acting and his journey towards mastery. And I've been invested in that for a long time. As a matter of fact, I have a quote from a critic. This is recently. So Brad Pitt did a recent movie called F1, which I love, by the way.

I thought he was great. I mean, it wasn't much of a stretch for him. It was probably a very easy role, but he was fantastic. I love the movie. It was exciting. Anyway, there's a critic. Her name is Angelica Bastien. She apparently does some movie reviews for The Vulture.

And I guess I don't, I guess part of the debate that was going on with F1 was around this idea of, well, he's, What if he's an abuser? Should we give any credence to this movie or to Brad Pitt as an actor? Like, shouldn't we do? It was about canceling him, essentially. And here's what she said. She's like, quote, it isn't that people don't believe what happened to Jolie on that plane.

It's just that they don't care. And why is that important? Because what this critic is saying is, that people understand that if you're, the humans make mistakes. Humans are imperfect. And if you want to make this into a moral crusade, then in many ways you're really negating the important point,

which is that Brad Pitt is an artist who creates art. He's an actor who acts. Maybe that's the realm where he should be evaluated. Maybe that's what the critics saying, maybe we should pay attention to his role in this movie and whether the movie is good and how well he's acting, how well he acted in it. rather than litigating something from 2016,

which, although potentially horrible, it doesn't affect his acting. I mean, it may have. It probably affected him psychologically. I'm sure he was hurt by it, maybe. I don't know, I presume. And so here, with you, with us, this whole smear campaign has been a referendum on your character.

It's been a referendum. It's been a moral referendum on you. and who you are rather than a critique or analysis of your work. Yeah. And so I'm fascinated by that because it's hard not to say that the reason that that debate, the reason why this has nothing to do with your work, although I will say we have gotten a lot of emails from people that are very praiseworthy of our work and that see this for what they see that you've

nothing wrong. And even if you made a few mistakes, they're willing to forgive you because, as Penaata Samurai said, she loves your work. Right? Here's, I'm going to read a message we just got today. I'm not going to say the name because I don't know if I'm authorized, but she says, quote, hello, I want to tell you how much, how much I appreciate the quality, credibility, and positive nature of your work. You don't deserve the abuse you're experiencing. I love that because it's the same thing that Penaata Samurai is saying, it's the same thing that Brad Pitt's movie critic is saying, it's,

if you reframe this as a moral crusade and not about the quality of your work, it's easier to win, to them, to the smear people, it's easier to win that argument because human beings are drawn to that moral crusade. they're drawn into that morality play. For me, I'm less interested in his biography, and I'm more interested in his actual art. Yeah. And I want to evaluate him on that terrain.

Fair. Rather than in terms of morality, right? But it shows that human beings have this knee-jerk reaction to go after moral issues. Yeah. In fact, like this whole idea of cancel culture, this whole idea of harming people on the internet is based on this more, this idea of humans being moral creatures on moral crusades,

trying to assert their moral superiority. Yeah. With or without often, most often without moral authority, but a moral authority is a tricky issue. So I don't want to get into that too much. I mean, because, you know, ironically, I think some of the people on the smear campaign would say that their moral authority comes from God. And so I think, I think that in this smear campaign, I think there's a religious component, right?

So if you have God on your side and you're right, so being right in this case means that they're more illly superior and they're right because they're trying to show that you are immoral and that you have poor character and therefore you should be canceled. And they're trying to show that with evidence that's flimsy at best or with evidence that, you know, with evidence that you've seen and apologized for. I mean, but I just think, I think that's problematic. So let's take it a step further. So people are going to say, oh, what, so what? All right.

So people engage in this moral crusade. And people are, people. see themselves as good fundamentally and moral, blah, blah, blah. Who cares, right? So, okay, so Brad Pitt, you know, may have done this abusive thing. Maybe some people think they should cancel him for that. Maybe they don't care about his work, right? Like, so people are saying maybe, all right, so they're going after you for being a moral or whatever.

People are trying to cancel you. Why should we care? And I want to point out, like, you know, I've canceled businesses because their values don't adhere to mine. I mean, that's fair. Right? Like, yeah, I mean, right. If people are canceled, not like gone on and tried to start a smear campaign, but learned maybe a business isn't one I want to support. I'm not suggesting.

And if people feel that about us, I get it. I'm not suggesting that I'm not saying I'm just, I'm pointing out the disparity between folks. focusing almost exclusively on moral issues versus ignoring the work. Right. That if you see someone is deeply immoral and there's evidence of that, not preconceived notions of it, then yeah, I think, I think, you know, sure, people have the right to judge things as being immoral and not consistent with their values and then not paying attention to someone's work.

That makes perfect sense. Yeah. But on the other hand, there's certain people like me. There might be moral questions around Brad Pitt, but it doesn't really affect me. I'm not really interested in his personal life. For you, it's about his work. Right. Now, there might be some people that say, oh, my gosh, I'm never going to see another movie by him.

That's their choice. Yeah, that's fine. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. There's some businesses I thought, oh, I don't want to, you know, support that business because maybe I found out their founder isn't someone who holds my, you know, same beliefs. And then I'll end up actually supporting them

because they make a good chicken sandwich. So happens. So the next step in this is, the next step in this is if humans are essentially moral creatures and that's how we see the world and value with them, we all want to be good. The question is, one of the questions that arises from that is how do we maintain that?

So when there's threats to our moral character, how do we maintain that perspective? How do we see ourselves as good? And the answer is there's something called the cognitive response principle. Okay. The cognitive response principle basically says that any information you get is only going to confirm whatever beliefs or perspectives you have. So in other words, you can get information that contradicts your identity or your view of the world and you're going to disregard it. You don't care, right? Because what you're going to do, the cognitive response principle basically says that all persuasion is self-persuasion, meaning you're going to get that information.

You're going to come up with a lot of reasons why it's wrong, even though it's correct. Somebody gives you evidence of something. You're going to come up with a lot of reasons about why that's wrong and why you're still a good person. There's also something we talk about all the time, which is confirmation bias. confirmation biases, you take evidence or information, you find the parts that confirm your view, you disregard the parts that don't, and all of a sudden, you still believe the same thing. So part of this is that if you're that four-year-old kid who thinks that Gabriel's a herter, and let's say that kid grows up with Gabriel, let's say he lives in the same neighborhood,

that kid at four thinks Gabriel's a herder. Every bit of information that four-year-old gets, from there on out until they're adults, he could use to either confirm that view or he could get information that Gabriel, in fact, is a really good kid. He's in the Boy Scouts. But you might take, let's say, but he would take that information and disregard it

and tell you why Gabriel is still such a bad kid. Because you could also say, oh, he's in the Boy Scouts, not good. Depending on how you see the boys' guests or how you want to see Gabriel. I'm using that. I'm using that. Yeah, that's true. That was actually a great example.

Depending on how you want to see this, good or bad, is how you'll connect the dots to confirm your bias to Gabriel or to create a new view. Right. And this is important because if people are engaged in a smear campaign and they get information that contradicts their belief, they're going to ignore it. Correct.

They're going to stand their moral ground. They're going to stay with their moral superiority. They're going to remain in their self-righteous perspective because they have a moral authority. They'll twist the evidence. They'll edit the evidence. They'll edit it. They'll twist it. They're going to show you.

They'll call the evidence out of context. Right. They're going to show you whatever they want to show you because of confirmation bias and the cognitive response principle. So no matter what information you give them, it's not going to move the needle. It's not going to impact their perspective. that you're a bad person and you're immoral. And they have to fight that battle on that moral terrain. Because more than likely it's going to be much more difficult to fight it on the terrain of content and the quality of content.

Yeah. But let's move on. So that's important to know because this is why when evidence comes out to the contrary. Like you and I have gotten a lot of, we've gotten a lot of feedback from people that's been very positive about creators we've helped, about victims we've helped. They've reached, all these people have reached out to us, right? That contradicts their narrative. Right.

And so therefore, that's information. That's evidence that contradicts their narrative about how immoral you are. Therefore, they're going to use confirmation bias and they're going to use cognitive response principle to negate or deny or minimize or delete all of that information that could change their perspective, right? That's how you continue on a smear campaign. You put it on moral terrain. You disengage from any contrary evidence, and that's how you keep going.

In fact, that's how you escalate. But let's take the next step in this analysis. And this is a step I love. There's something called the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error is probably one of the fundamental principles of psychology. It's been, it's been proven over and over again by research. Okay. It's, if there, if there's such thing as a law in the field of psychology, this would be close to that.

Okay. Another law, there's, there's a psychologist recently deceased. Mahali Shikshin Mihai is his name. He used to teach at the University of Chicago. He taught flow. He wrote about flow. He's the kind of the father of that. He believed that Lord Acton's law was also. also a similar law. Lord Acton's law. I'm just throwing this out there to give you an example of another law and psychology. Lord Acton's law says the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolutely power corrupts absolutely. So Shix Mihali, Shiks and Miha, I believe that was a law. This is another, what I would consider to be close to a law of human behavior. Fundamental

attribution error. So what is the fundamental, the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution says that human beings overestimate the importance of personality and explaining behavior as opposed to the situation. So let me repeat that. That human beings, whenever something occurs, human beings prefer to explain events in terms of personality rather than the situation. So the evidence for the fundamental attribution error, for example, would be the the famous Milgram experiments where you shock people because the experimenter is in the position of an authority figure wearing a lab coat.

And he says, basically shock this person until they're screaming in pain. And subjects do it. They do it because of the situation, not because they're bad people. Yeah. There's the Stanford prison experiments where people are put in the context of a prison and they start acting out like abuse of prison guards, not because they're bad people, but because the prison guards are given too much authority, right? There's the ash experiments that I've talked about on our Patreon where groups are shown lines

of different magnitudes. They're given a reference line and they're shown three lines that different magnitudes. And members in the group are Confederates. And they're told, hey, look, this is clear cut. there's one line that matches the three. But we want the Confederates to say that this line is actually the wrong line. In other words, to say that this longer line is a shorter one. And to get people in that group to believe it.

And you know what? 75% of the time, one of the group members believes that the wrong line is the right line simply because of group peer pressure. Those are all examples of where the situation, It's not because these people have defective personalities. No. Group peer pressure. Group peer pressure.

So here's where the fundamental attribution error is really important in terms of this smear campaign. Okay. I can't stress this enough. That almost every person involved in this smear campaign talked about you positively. Yeah. They all talk. talked about you in a positive light. That's true.

Before you rejected them. Before there was a change. Some of them rejected me, too. Yeah. But the point is that you were essentially positive and then certain circumstances changed it and all of a sudden you became evil, right? How is that relevant?

because they saw your personality as good. They saw you as kind. We have messages from people proving this. Yeah. Until their friendship with you or their relationship with you changed. And then all of a sudden, they became haters. You became bad, right? It's the fundamental attribution error.

Do you just go? Do you just go from saying, oh, you know what? This person is so nice. One of these people that is no longer with us, she said, oh, John and Lauren are angels. All right? One of these people said, oh, Lauren is so kind. Someone just sent us. We've been getting a lot of messages, by the way, from people.

There's no people. And thank you. Someone else sent us a message from somebody that said they are just as nice as in person as they are on their podcast. And now. And now you're evil. So the issue is this explains it. This fundamental, this law of psychology, the fundamental attributionary explains it.

Is it because you have a defective personality and you're evil and immoral? No. It's the fact that the situation changed. How did it change? because you either change their employment, you changed your relationship with them, maybe you had a falling out in your friendship. It wasn't that your personality changed,

it's that their status with you changed. And because that status changed, they hate you. So why is this important? Because all the evidence here suggests that these people all saw you, as good and moral and virtuous until something happened. They either rejected you, you rejected them, the friendship changed, right? The situation changed. The situation changed. And so in that sense, it's really no different than the Milgram experiments in the sense that the situation is being

guided by an authority figure. That's how you get the subjects to shock people, right? It's not that the people performing the shock treatments change their personalities. It's that the situation changed. And so the most compelling evidence and most compelling argument here is you didn't change. Thank you. I know you didn't change. Someone actually tried to tell me that I changed. Thank you.

You didn't change at all. The situation changed. Their status and relationship with you changed. That's it. You're the same person. Thanks. Still drive you crazy. I can still be annoying.

Yeah, right. You can be annoying. But you know what? I'm an adult. I can handle being called annoying or having people saying they're annoying. Like that's what mature adults do. They can handle being called annoying. You can call me annoying too.

You do all the time. So that's what grownups do. That's what mature people do. They can handle being labeled something. Yeah. So, recovering a lot of terrain here. Fundamental attribution error is proof that you're not the one who changed. The relationship changed.

You're the same person. That doesn't mean you're without flaws. Doesn't mean that you're imperfect. I'm not. I'm not perfect. Right. Perfect. So let's stay with this idea.

of morality though. So with you, the fundamental, what the fundamental attributionary basically says that you went from being a good, virtuous moral person, and then your relationship with these people changed, and all of a sudden you're immoral, right? Your defective character. That's the argument. It's ridiculous because every single one of these people had a change in relationship status with you, and every single one of them turned against you because of it. Not because you changed. And so obviously what does that suggest? That's envy. That's envy. We'll talk about that more later. But before we do, people still might be saying, all right, whatever, whatever, John, like, people are moral creatures, they want to think they're good, they don't change their perspective

of themselves, fundamental attribution error. Okay, so what? This is the part I think that's important, because now we're going to get into why there are risks here and why this is a real problem. A lot of people, maybe not a lot, I'm sorry, there's some chatter out there that this is just like a big cat fight, right? This is just like a bunch of mean girls going at it. There's no victimization. There's no risk of violence, right? This is just all overblown. I'm going to show you now why that's not true.

There's something I'm going to read from a book here. In other words, you're saying that I don't have a stalker and that I did a nine hour live crying about a cat fight. You were faking the whole thing and you were crying about a cat fight. We're dramatic. We'll get to that in a little bit. There's a couple of psychologists, Alan Fisk and Tage Rye. They wrote a book called Virtuous Violence. They've done a lot of research on this, by the way.

So there's empirical support for this theory. Okay. But I'm going to read, I'm going to read a little bit from their book and start explaining why this moral crusade and this desire for certain party, this self-righteous moral, you know, referendum on you, is important. So here we go. Most violence, this is according to the theory by Fisk and Ray, most violence is morally motivated. People do not simply justify or excuse their violent actions after the fact.

At the moment they act, people intend to cause harm or death to someone they feel should suffer or die. That is, people are impelled to violence when they feel that like, when they feel that to regulate, certain social relationships. Impose suffering or death is not imposing suffering or death is necessary, natural, legitimate, desirable, condoned, admired, and ethically gratifying. In short, most violence is the exercise of moral rights and obligations. Working within the framework of a relational models theory, our thesis is that people are morally motivated, to do violence to create, conduct, protect, redress, terminate, or mourn social relationships with the victim or with others. We call our theory virtuous violence theory.

So why is this important? It's important because there's a lot of evidence suggesting, I'm going to read a line in here that I think is really critical. In short, most violence is the exercise of moral rights and obligations, right? The reason this is important is because virtuous violence theory completely applies to your situation in the sense that the people engaging in the smear campaign feel morally justified. They feel like their moral rights were violated and they want retribution. One of them reposted on her TikTok that we should bring back public shaming. That's kind of what you're... Exactly.

Which is the Salem Witch trials too. I mean, I guess a lot of people feel that way, yeah, clearly. But the larger point here is that there's research supporting this and that if you engage in kind of this extreme moral crusade, against someone. The natural and logical conclusion to that is harm or death. And if you think about the smear campaign, so the stalker who began the TikTok, she says quite clearly that her goal is to burn the kingdom down, right? It's clear that her goal is not only harm, reputational harm, emotional harm, psychological harm.

But the harm that she really wants to affect is to ruin you and ruin your life and burn the whole kingdom down. Right? The goal. So what that's implying is that she won't stop until that harm is executed and incomplete.

So if she burns the kingdom down, then she feels morally vindicated, or if there's a death. If someone harms themselves or someone harms you, then the game's over. She's morally vindicated. Here's the problem. Here's the risk.

This is why this is so risky and so important. Because these people, these self-righteous, morally superior people, they want moral vindication. and they're not going to stop until they get moral vindication. And the way they get moral vindication, the way this game ends is either you're dead

or you're completely ruined. That's it. And that, by the way, is malicious intent. One of the things about stalking, and we're going to talk about the definition of stalking in a little bit, there has to be malicious intent. There has to be some intent to cause harm. You have it in spades here.

when someone says that they want to burn your kingdom down, when they want to expose you, when they want to harm you, they feel justified in doing it. They feel, as virtuous violence theory would predict, they feel like they, in short, most violence is the exercise of moral rights and obligations. That's exactly what this is. they're exercising in their mind, their moral rights and obligations because you harm them, because you're immoral, because you're a bad person, and they will not stop until their goal is met, which is to ruin you or have you end up dead.

That's the goal. Let me continue with another, I'm going to read another part of this book that's so important. Same book, Virtuous Violence, same authors. this is page 17. Quote, virtuous violence theory proposes that the perpetrator intends to harm or kill

in order to constitute a social relationship to make it correspond with a prescriptive model of what the relationship ought to be, what it must be made to be. In other words, people engage in virtuous violence to get people to conform

and they want them to conform to their perception of a prescriptive model or an ideal of what they think the relationship should be. That's conformity. That's all over this. That's all over this situation. They're evaluating you. And again, this gets to the question of moral authority.

they're evaluating you against an ideal of loyalty and conformity and acquiescence and fitting in above all else. What they're not doing is they're not evaluating against, they're not evaluating it against the criteria of quality work. Right. Right. We talked about they're not evaluating you against the criteria of creativity. They're not evaluating you against the criteria of complexity because they're not allowing you to be. complex? No, I need to conform. You need to conform, right? If you reject them, you're not conforming. You're not loyal. Like one of the themes that you see throughout this entire TikTok is, oh, she's a bad

friend. I'm going to punish her for being a bad friend. She doesn't know what a friendship is. That's the ideal. That's the reason why there's a real risk of violence here is because number one, this can escalate so easily. And number two, you don't fit that ideal. You never did. You're not conforming. to this very narrow, rigid perspective that they want you to fit into. Of what a friend is and their friend and, yeah. That makes this, by the way, that, you know, I mentioned a moral crusade. That makes this an ideological battle in the sense that the fight here is, and to them, the fight here is good versus evil or good versus bad.

They're good, your evil. And because of that, the only part. possible way out of this is total ruination of you or death. I'm going to read a quick quote here making this point. This is from a book called Human Destructiveness

by Anthony Storr. Anthony Stor. What? Humans Destructive? Anthony Stor is a brilliant British psychiatrist. He's written a lot on a lot of topics. He's writing here about

obviously human aggression and destructive this. Here's Anthony Storr. Page 142. My dogma is, quote, my dogma is that all dogma is suspect. And it seems to me that most of the harm in the world is done by those who are dogmatically certain that they are right. For being absolutely right means that those who disagree are absolutely wrong. Those who are absolutely wrong are, of course, dangerous to society and must be restrained or eliminated. That is the beginning of the road to the torture chamber and the gas oven. That's what we're talking about. So when people say, oh, gee, this is just mean girls.

This is just a stupid cat fight. They don't understand what's, they don't understand the stakes here. They don't understand what's going on. They don't understand that to the people in the smear campaign, this is a moral crusade that is reducing you to some, or something that's subhuman that needs to be destroyed. This is an ideological war against you. And by the way, many of the people in the smear campaign that we have not named are continuing.

They have continued. Just so you know, I'm not going to talk about it more than that. Let's talk about some other risks. We will get into defining and stalking in a minute and we'll get into the psychology of stalking in a minute. but as long as we're talking about risks, I want to bring up some real risks here. People say, oh, my gosh, why would she get a restraining order

if this is just a catfight among mean girls? Nothing's going to happen. This is nothing, right? No, virtuous violence theory suggests otherwise. And if you do, as I've done, if you do some of the stocking risk assessments, the risks are considerable. And this is what he does is he assesses

and evaluates, offenders. So this is what you do with your philosophy. We know. Just kidding. Psychology. There's so many examples of when you engage with people on a moral crusade and your goal is to dehumanize them and you see it as a moral issue, it will escalate. And that was a concern you and I had. If people say, oh, my God, this stocking order is so frivolous.

The stock. No, it's not. And this is why. Because you and I were trying to prevent someone landing at our door with a gun. We did not want to get to that point. And somebody has now threatened us with that online. Yes. We received our first official death threat the other day.

Which again. Not our first official, actually. Yeah, that's true. We've had others. That's true. But it was very chilling. It was chilling and it shows you the extent to which when you start framing things in terms of this moral crusade, this is what you get. What are some of the other risks?

And we're going to define stalking in a second. But let's talk about some of the other risks involved here and why this is why this is not just mean girl behavior. Number one, the obsessive nature of the posts. Everyone who we talk about this all this time. The number of criminals engaged in murder or very violent acts, almost all of them have some type of obsessive qualities. They ruminate about the victim. They can't stop thinking about the victim. They obsess over the victim, right?

That creates an attachment to the victim. Here you have that type of obsession. Another risk here. Months and months and months of. posts despite not communicating. Well, despite you saying you feel threatened. Yeah, starting it with I feel threatened. Then the social media, the Instagram to Instagram and TikTok, and there's a YouTube.

I didn't know actually until after this in months and months and months and months of it without any response from me. Escalating. Obsessive. There's also this inordinate rage and hatred towards you. and that's a risk because when people when people develop this intense rage towards another human being and I think by the way

with the TikToker I think a lot of that is repressed but you see it the way you see that rage is by ignoring a stalking injunction right the way you see that rage come out is by being oppositional it's after our first hearing

it's going outside on the courtroom steps and doing a mic drop. That's taunting you. The stalker did that. On the day of our hearing in September, she went outside, she filmed herself doing a mic drop. That's harassment. It was supposed to be our evidentiary hearing, and the judge changed it to a later date.

The judge continued it. And lessened the stalking injunction, and she went out and did a mic drop. Against Utah Code, by the way. Utah Code specifies quite clearly that you can't modify a stalking injunction without hearing evidence from the petitioner. And that's what happened.

And the injunction was modified without hearing from me. Without hearing a shred of evidence from us. Also, just so people know this, our lawyer tried to get the stalking injunction enforced. My lawyer who's not my brother, P.S., go ahead. Our lawyer, Dastin, not her brother. Our lawyer who... One of four.

Yeah, one of four. We have other lawyers, too. None of them are my brother. Yeah, so whatever. Let the rumor mill. Our lawyer tried to argue correctly that because there were multiple violations of a stalking injunction, which is a felony,

that the stocking injunction should get automatically enforced. Guess what? And that is Utah Code. That is, if you violate it twice. Our lawyer made the point that that hearing never should have even occurred. It shouldn't have even been an issue. It's black and white. Someone violated a stocking injunction.

It gets enforced. It should have been enforced. End of story. Let's move on. You and I have our privacy intact. That's all we wanted. We wanted this to be private. We wanted to move on with our lives without someone harassing us all the time, bullying us, stalking us.

Calling. We'll get into that later. Calling people, contacting people. That's all we wanted. This argument that somehow we wanted views from long crime or that we set this up, that's so ridiculous. Lauren, I'm not going to read it again. And Lauren read a motion that our lawyer wrote to protect our privacy. Almost no civil stalking cases reveal or disclose the information.

Well, and the reason many people have asked that fairly. And you know what? Let's not even get into it. I don't want to talk about it. Let the rumor mill continue. Yeah, that's fine. You guys decide what you think about what I did. That's your right to discuss.

Go ahead. So you have this obsessive behavior, that increases risk. You have this inordinate amount of anger and rage towards you, which shows up in those TikToks and those social media. And another thing that people pointed out that I totally agree with is several people that have looked at the TikTok have written and said, one person wrote, that's the most menacing, those are the most menacing TikToks I've ever seen.

Somebody else wrote, it seems like she's taking pleasure in those. right that suggests that there's if that's true that suggests that suggests that there's a sadistic quality that this is someone taking pleasure in harming you taking pleasure in hurting you taking pleasure and trying to ruin your character and your reputation and your livelihood and your life right that's a risk factor anyone who has sadistic qualities is going to be a higher risk another risk factor here is this very oppositional, let's call it, antisocial quality, which is violating a stalking injunction in the first several hours after it's issued. That's basically saying, I don't care. If you see the picture of her in the bar with you, the message she's sending is, I don't, not only do I

care about the stocking injunction, but I'm going to intimidate you. That is a pure message of power and control and dominance and intimidation. She's saying, I'm here. I don't care about this injunction. I am going to continue to intimidate and control you no matter what. Try and stop me. That's concerning. The mic drop moment I just mentioned. Recording the police officer. Recording the police officer. Calling after somebody that was called by police implicated her. And so he decided to call her too and that she called him back to record it.

Right. Recording the police officer, posting it online and essentially not taking the police officer seriously. That's extremely oppositional. That's very antisocial. That's a very antisocial feature. posting that I feel threatened in a message to her and then posting that online. And all of this, all of this, by the way, so we're talking about risk factors. Yeah, let's just talk.

We're talking risk factors, right? All of these are risk factors, but they all lead to one thing, and that is dehumanization. What they're doing here is they're portraying you as evil, as the devil, even though Penaata samurai doesn't mind if you're the devil, by the way. Thank you, Penaura, for acknowledging that apparently even the devil does really good work. The devil does do good work, but I will do my best to not be like the devil. All of this leads to dehumanization. And you and I know every crime we've ever covered involves some level of dehumanization.

Absolutely. That is crime. Dehumanization. And all of this is about dehumanizing you. Even the people that are mocking you, the memes, it's all dehumanizing, right? but they don't care, right? So, which is fine. Which is fine. I've been giving people some good content. Nine hour live would do that.

So I think we've come to the end of this segment. Okay. I've covered why I think this is a risk. I've covered why it shouldn't be dismissed and taken seriously. It's virtuous violence. It's a moral crusade. I've covered some of the risk factors. But let's back up a little bit and talk about both the definition of stalking and the psychology of stalking.

Because I think those are going to help us go a little deeper here. Okay. But before I do, I just want to make the final point that the reason why human beings like to engage in moral crusades is because it really simplifies the world. And it also fosters conformity. So for those of you out there who know a little bit about philosophy, if any of you read Nietzsche on good and evil, you understand the importance of Nietzsche's idea that all morality is essentially an attempt

to foster and maintain social norms and social moral systems because the prevailing ruling classes do not want challenges or change. And by enforcing an existing system of morality, you're also making the world fit into a very narrow box, right? And so that's one of the problems of a moral crusade is that if you don't fit within that box, then you're going to be vilified, right? And so you became vilified.

As we talked about on our Patreon, in one of the declarations, the TikToker made it very clear that conformity was a big part of this issue. Yeah. Yeah. That was actually in their declaration and sort of the little joke that I made on our Patreon. exclusive episode, which is no longer Patreon exclusive.

Thanks to those who picked it apart and shared it. But yeah, in their declaration, their angst against me or one of the things that upset me was that I talked about how I don't like to conform. And then I jokingly said, thanks for being a Patreon supporter because that particular episode was behind a paywall, which meant that they were, someone was paying and sending that on to them. But it was ironic because you have always talked about the fact that one reason this type of thing happens is because they're upset that I'm not conforming. I talked about the classic example of the Salam Witch trials from 1692 where obviously witches are seen as an abomination.

they're seen as demonic, right? They're seen as separate from the community, not conforming to the community's morals, right? So in many ways, the Salem witch trials were exactly, or they showed similarities to a moral crusade. And we'll talk about that a little later. We won't get into that too much. But so I want to make that point before we move on

because I want people to understand the purpose of a moral crusade and what it does, how it fosters conformity or attempts to, and how it really oversimplifies the world. So that people that, the people that they don't have to grasp with the, you know, they don't have to grapple with the complexity of someone who's maybe a little more complex, somebody who can say some off-color things in private messages,

someone who has a sarcastic sense of humor, you do. I do. Obviously it got you in a little bit of trouble on Patreon, but you didn't do anything wrong. Like, part of our brand is to bring in levity. You can't clip a part of that segment and say, oh my God, she's not serious about stalking. Duping Delight or Dupers Delight. So stupid. So stupid. If you don't laugh, you cry sometimes. So, yeah. Thank you. Everybody in this, everybody that deals with true crime and law enforcement.

investigators, they know how difficult it is. They know the importance of humor. Part of our brand is to be humorous. So let's talk about the definition of stalking. Part of my survival depends on being humorous. It's how I cope. Right. But hey, you know, let's vilify you for that.

Let's continue the Moral Crusade train and just keep piling on because you showed a little bit of humor.