Hidden True Crime - PART 2: The Price of Truth: We Speak Out After 9-Hr Live | Lauren & Dr. John Matthias Break Down the Fallout

Episode Date: October 29, 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

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Start your free trial today at Aura.com slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. This is part two of our episode on stalking and harassment. something our family has been enduring for months. If you haven't yet, we recommend going back and listening to Part 1 first. It provides important context for what you are about to hear. 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 stalking 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 Rorschach test for the internet. People saw in it 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.

Let's start defining stalking. So one of my favorite definitions actually comes out of the UK. So in the UK, there's some local police agencies and social workers and people that kind of deal with stalking that often refer to what they call the big four. When I say the big four, I mean four as in capital F, capital O, capital U, capital R. And so, and I know this is the UK and not here, but the big four stands for F. Yeah, what was that one? Fixated.

Fixated. F means fixated. Fxated. So let's go through this. Is there fixation here? So yes, there is. There are social media accounts that specifically target you. That's part of the definition of stocking is there has to be some type of individual target. Guess what? Every one of these social media accounts is fixated on you.

Fixation, yes. Oh, the O stands for obsessed. Is there obsession here? There's 50 plus or more, way more, if you count all the social media accounts. 100. There's over 100 posts that showed no signs of stopping or abating all about you. Is that obsessive? Absolutely. And Lindsay did admit on the stand during that hearing that they never heard from me. She admitted it was about you. She admitted it was about me. You were the target.

So we have fixated, obsessed. The you stands for unwanted. You in an email and in a text, you said, I feel threatened. Please leave me alone. In both the text done in email. Email. Did that stop it? Nope.

actually it escalated from there. Everything that was being sent to you, you said, please don't do this and the person continued. Not only continued, but escalated. The R stands for repeated. I think that's obviously a no-brainer. Was this behavior repeated? Obviously, over and over and over.

So the definition of stalking, the most simplistic, simplistic criteria for stalking are fixated, obsessed, unwanted, repeated. Yep. Check, check, check, check. Here's how I'm one of the websites that talks about the big four to find stalking. Stocking, and this is stalking,

this is physical or cyber, this is both, right? Quote, this is from a website in the UK. Stalking is a pattern of unwanted, repeated behavior that can lead you feeling scared or distressed. You don't have to be threatened with violence to be a victim of stalking, any kind of persistent, unwanted contact that causes distress is stalking.

Do you fit that definition? Yes. Let's talk about, again, this is from the same UK website. I'm also pointing out that this is not just the definition of stalking and cyberstalking we're talking about, this is all over the world. This doesn't just apply here. This is in Australia. This is in the UK, right?

To identify stalking, they talk about this, what they call the S-L-I-I-S-L-I strategy. To identify stalking, professionals often use the SL-Double-I strategy. What's the first S? Surveillance. Stalkers often engage in surveillance, closely watching and tracking the victim's movements. routines and social interactions. This includes monitoring their social media. The goal is to gather personal information

and maintain a sense of control over the victim. And let's talk about recording when at trials or crime con, interestingly enough, one of the people who wrote a declaration for the stalker, Janice, admitted to filming us, multiple times and then even showed in evidence her filming both my producer Grayson and myself even at CrimeCon after the Stocking Adjunction was was put out and actually put those videos that she unknowingly took of me into evidence. But there's other ways that you're being the surveillance applies here.

Correct. They're following your Patreon. They're following when you did a Mormon story. She lets you know that she's watching that. She's following everything you're posting, everything you're doing, every social media post. She's recording you without your consent. She is, she's clearly,

and she's doing this to gather personal information to harm you. She even admits I'm looking for their LinkedIn because I want to see who they're linked to. Isn't it strange they don't have it? I'm going to call UNLV. I did call UNLV. We know other people that they have contacted. Thank you to those who have reached out.

So surveillance. Number two, life invasion. The tactic involves invading the victim's personal life or space. It can be as subtle as sending frequent unsolicited messages, including on social media. Are you receiving frequent unsolicited messages? Absolutely. The third one is the eye part. Intimidation.

Stalkers often use intimidation. who is still fair. How about showing up at CrimeCon when the stalking injunction said she couldn't and then showing up in the bar, 10 feet from you, taunting people, taunting the police who had issued this injunction within an hour showing up at the bar, basically saying to you, I don't care, I'm in control, I'm going to intimidate, I don't care about this injunction, I own you, right? it's intimidation. The nature of intimidation is threatening messages, aggressive behavior, or implying harm.

Implying harm. So it can be something as simple as implying harm. Is there implicit threats and implicit harm throughout this? Absolutely. How about ruining your kingdom, burning your kingdom to the ground? Is that harm? Yeah. It also can include reputational harm.

The final one is interference. The stalker is involved in deliberately interfering with the victim's life. Examples include damaging someone's reputation or trying to sabotage their personal or professional relationships. The goal is to isolate the victim and make them feel powerless or dependent. That happened. Right, exactly. You meet all those criteria. I'm going to read.

I'm going to read. Let's talk specifically about cyberstalking now. This is from the textbook. This is my favorite textbook on criminal psychology, by the way. Criminal behavior, a psychological prose, 12th tradition. It's by Kurt Bartol and Ann Bartol. Page 521. Their definition of cyberstalking is using the internet or other forms of electronic communication

to threaten or engage and unconstitutional. unwanted advances towards another. Pretty simple, right? Were you threatened? Yes. Was it unwanted advances? Absolutely. Let's talk about cyberbullying. This is how they define cyberbullying.

Quote, cyberbullying is defined as sending or posting harmful or cruel text or images using the Internet or other digital communication devices. was saying that you engaged in non-consensual, that you desired to engage in non-consensual relations with your brother to obtain his sperm? Was that a cruel message? Yeah. That's cyberbullying.

I'm just going to say quickly what this is also, ultimately, this is what Barton Bartol say about cyberstalking, quote, ultimately, much cyberstalking is designed to control the victim, usually through threats and harassment. So a large part of this is about control. Here's another definition of cyberbullying. This is from a research article. Quote, building upon the definition of traditional bullying,

the authors have defined cyberbullying as, quote, an aggressive, intentional act carried up by a great, group or individual using electronic forms of contact repeatedly and overtime against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself. Some might argue that you could defend yourself, except you can't, really, you couldn't. Right? The reason you couldn't defend yourself is because our brand is not to engage in these types of petty arguments or conflicts with other creators.

Like we're not going to do what he said, she said, or tit for tat. That's not our brand. We couldn't defend ourselves without looking like absolute fools. We couldn't defend ourselves because people have the perception that because we're a bigger channel that somehow we would be bullying her. We didn't want to defend ourselves because we didn't want to go public with this. We didn't want to defend ourselves because we thought we could ignore it long enough that it would go away. But after months and months and months of continuing multiple posts and escalating, we realized to the point, where law and crime was getting involved.

Yeah. We realized this got to the point where the risk were increasing and we just, we, we weren't willing to deal with this forever. And that is why we, in the end, we decided to get a stalking injunction. Well, what I meant about law and crime is even after that, it still got bigger. It's, you know, how did they find out about it? And long crime got involved. And then I decided to draw my, yeah, night and I were like.

let's talk about the definition, the legal definition of stalking in Nevada. So I think is it fair to say that, I mean, I guess our haters are going to disagree, but I think any reasonable person would, the criteria I just read, would agree, I would hope, or think that they would see that as stalking, or at least cyberstocking. This is cyberstalking in Nevada. You put up, by the way, people can find the definition of cyberstalking and stalking in Utah. You put it up.

I don't want to reread that because we already have it. Maybe we can put it up for people to see. Sure. But let's talk about Nevada. I don't believe that a reasonable court would think that stalking is nothing more than a catfight or two mean girls going at it. In Nevada, cyberstalking is considered a category of see felon. carrying a prison sentence of one to five years and a fine of up to $10,000. The following requirements must be met in Nevada for a cyber-stalking.

The accused person must intentionally cause harm to the victim, even if it's just trying to scare them or make them afraid. So intentional harm, that's a big part of it. Obviously, there's a targeted social media account, only about multiple targeted social media accounts, only about you. did that induce a certain amount of fear in you? Yes.

Could you explain? Well, physical, well, multiple, I mean, the song lyrics that she was posting were very frightening, crying about what I lose, what am I going to lose, burning my fucking kingdom to the ground, her accomplices, constantly aging her on and incite. this saying yes burn that kingdom to the ground calling workplaces other people coming forward and saying I'm getting strange calls from this person saying you're bad not to work with you admitting to trying to find our LinkedIn's months later being suspicious posting and sharing that they're following everything I say putting eye emojis on podcast that I'm doing saying I'm watching you

doing things besides saying please stop, I'm feeling threatened, posting that I'm feeling threatened, continually, you know, breaking a stocking injunction. Yeah. And by the way, to all of those that egged her on, there was peer pressure in this. One of those podcasters just claimed yesterday that they would have advised her against ever doing this yet on her Instagram months ago put you go, girl. So maybe all of you should be considering how you played a part in this, too. Keep in mind, keep in mind that several of the definitions I just read about cyberstock and include groups. Let's continue. Criteria two, Nevada for a category C felony for cyberstocking in Nevada.

Category two, the accused person must have electronic device, must have used electronic devices such as a computer or phone to transmit information that puts the victim at risk of violence. or harm. Yep. Stocky must happen online or through some other electronic means. Criteria three. Criteria four. The victim must feel fearful because of the accused person's actions. We just covered that. The final criteria in Nevada is what's called the reasonable person standard. The conduct must be such that a reasonable person in the same situation would also be afraid. That, of course, is not up to, that would not be up to us to determine. and that would be up to try the triers of fact, which would be a judge or a jury. Let's talk about, this is from probably the best known textbook on stalking,

the most well-read and respected textbook on stalking. It's called Stalkers and Their Victims. It's by Mullen, Pfe, and Purcell. It's the second edition from 2009. It's published by Cambridge University of Press. stalkers and their victims. Page 153. The following behaviors characterize cyberstalking.

Number one, sending repeated unwanted messages. Yeah. Yeah, via a public platform. Right. So obviously. Through email, through text, and I'm feeling threatened, and then through a public social media platform. Through social media.

Another criteria. publishing private information of a potentially damaging or embarrassing nature. Again, I mentioned that publishing private information is illegal, but that too, is cyber-stalking. So anybody in this group who has published private information about you publicly that's potentially damaging to your reputation is part of the smear campaign. And they're engaging in cyber-stalking. The next criteria? spreading false information. How many rumors,

how much gossip has been spread about you, that you damage, you hurt creators, that you don't care about victims, right? Like, no matter what you say or do, that rumor persists endlessly. And then in the smear campaign, you get, wait for the receipts, wait for the receipts, that too is a form of harassment.

That too is a threat. When you wake up every day to a social media campaign of multiple people constantly saying they're going to take you down. And writing, again, my professional contact saying, oh, just wait for the receipts. Just wait. They're coming. So spreading false information. That's another criteria. Here's another criteria.

Gathering information about a victim online. That's called doxing. Did we get doxed? Oh, we got doxed. We got so doxed. They were mad they had to work a little bit harder because we didn't have a LinkedIn, which is supersauce. It's like saying you don't have a face.

You don't have a Facebook. You know, is anything we're saying true. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it. usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers.

It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. ORA actively removes your data from broker's sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But ORA goes beyond data protection.

With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a VPN. ORA gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at ORA.com slash remove.

Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. ORA actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off.

They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But ORA goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring, or just a VPN. ORA gives you all of it, together,

at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove. So doxing, by the way, that's classic harassment. In fact, doxing is defined as harassment. Were we doxed? Yes, I was doxed. You were doxed.

You know, I guess there was some good news that came out of it because she said, the TikToker said that she believed there was so little information on us because we curated our accounts. We have curated. Curated our Google search results. We've curated nothing. We haven't curated a dang thing.

I don't even know how I would cure. I don't know how to curate. I mean, maybe we should get something to do that. And here is the way. last cyber stalking behavior that's that's that defines cyber stalking ready for this one encouraging others to harass the victim there's a lot of that and a lot of that publicly exactly do we fit these criteria do we fit these definitions all right so I'm going to stay with I'm going to stay with the textbook stalkers and their victim second edition

I'm going to use some of their definitions. Page two, defining stalking. And again, this isn't cyberstalking. This is, I'm defining stalking here, broadly speaking. Or they don't even call it stalking. They call it obsessional following. This is how they define obsessional following, right? Quote, an abnormal or long-term pattern of threat or harassment

directed towards a specific individual. Yep. Here, the authors, here's how the authors define it. Stalking is, quote, a constellation of behaviors in which one individual inflicts on another repeated, unwanted intrusions and communications. Yep. So I've read a lot of definitions of stalking. I've led definitions of cyberstalking. Do they fit?

Yes. Yet, of course, there's plenty of people apparently out there who argue that this wasn't stalking, this was cat fighting, this was real housewife stuff, whatever, there was no harm involved. I would urge them to go look at the legal and academic definitions, as I just defined, of stalking. because stalking, one of the interesting things out there in terms of listening to some of this debate about what stalking is, is that almost all the people who would disagree with the academic criteria that I'm reading and the legal criteria, they see stalking as like a 1930s phenomenon where you follow someone around in your old Ford, I don't know, 1930s cars, your whatever, your old Ford jalopy with a gun, right? They think stalking is physically following someone around with a gun, right?

Guess what? It's not. We live in 2025. Stocking is fixated, obsessional behavior that's unwanted and repeated that causes distress in the victim. That's precisely what's going on with you. So this idea that there's a team Lauren and a team, I mean, people can believe whatever they want. But like this idea of teams is absurd.

If you look at the criteria for stalking, how it's defined legally and academically. There's two teams. There's team Lauren, who fits all the criteria of stalking and cyberstalking, every one of them. And then there's the stalking team who doesn't fit the,

who meets all the criteria of someone who's stalking. I don't know. I mean, have we litigated that in court yet? Nope. But I feel very confident that if and when we do, if we re-up this case

and litigate it in another state that's not Provo, Utah, that we're going to show quite clearly that you meet the criteria for stocking and that you need protection. And to the media who thinks that filming civil stocking injunctions is okay. By the way, I hope that you can reconsider that position and wonder if this is maybe why people that are being abused can't escape their abusers or that it might be used as an abuser's way of coercive control

if they're encouraging media to cover a civil stalking injunction. Well, and on that point, by the way, we fought vigorously for privacy. We did. Vigorously. The same county, by the way, where Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I might add, by someone who was incited by online rhetoric and violence, the same county where someone lost their lives because of online. rhetoric.

You said lives to Charlie Clerk or could have lost their life. Okay, there you go. Yeah. On that note, when you talk about privacy, let's remind everybody that you guys could have gone public four months ago. Yeah. We could have sent masses to this woman's account four months ago. And why didn't we? Because we said, it's okay. We'll handle it.

let's just be private about it. We don't want anybody to know. Nobody knew about it for months because we continue to just try and be quiet. And so we felt like we had no other option. So Grayson is over here saying, let's remind people that we could have gone forward in public four months ago

and taken this into our hands and send everybody over to her account and taking care of this four months ago. But we didn't because we wanted this to remain private. And we didn't want people going over to her account to harass her or attack her. We could have gone forward, come forward four months ago, is what you're saying. Yeah.

And I'll say somebody reached out to me who knows this person. And they just wanted to let me know that they had been contacted. And I told them, I find myself having a lot of empathy for her right now, regardless of what she's done. because I see the hate that she's getting, and I would never want somebody to feel that way. I would never want somebody to consider maybe doing something to themselves or maybe, you know, like, I actually don't believe. I don't think that the way you get somebody to have remorse

and to change their behavior is by screaming at them. I actually feel like that incites anger, and that makes them more vengeful. And so I find myself having a lot of... Yeah, it can hurt people. It can hurt people. It can insight, look at the death threat we got online with somebody loading a gun and quite literally shooting it saying, if you come to my state, guess what I'm going to do? But so I don't believe in that.

And I was telling this person who reached out who had a relationship with this person. The TikToker. And just wanted to give me some information. I said, thank you for the information. And I literally sent back a message. she said, I find myself having a lot of empathy. And although I'm really struggling right now, it's no secret I am. I've been public about it, haven't been public about the specifics.

I find myself having a lot of empathy because I wonder if she's maybe in a similar boat that I've been in for the last, quite the last while. And I never want somebody to feel that way. And again, I don't think that going to her account and screaming at her and telling her she's wrong. If you want someone to change, that's not the way to get them to change. That actually makes them worse. The best way you can appeal to somebody's empathy and the appeal to their conscience, really, if they have one, is by having one yourself and trying to do it reasonably. Now, is this person reasonable? I wouldn't necessarily say so, but I would say that like,

again, just going crazy on her on social media is not going to do anything. Well, yeah, and to the people that egged her on. That's my point, too, the peer pressure. To every one of those commenters egging her on and continuing to tell her to do this, you also, you know, hold some responsibility. That's mobbing. It's group bullying. And you didn't help her either.

So I've gone through the criteria for stalking, both the least. legal and academic definitions. To me, it seems pretty clear cut that you meet those criteria. Let's move on to different types of stalkers. So I'm going to refer to the same textbook, stalkers in the victim's second edition, published in 2009. There are two different typologies. There's actually multiple typologies.

There's like four typologies of stalkers that they identify four or five. but I only want to focus on the ones that apply here. So they actually lump them together because there's a lot of overlap, but they refer to this type of stalking as the rejected stalker and the resentful stalker. So what is the rejected stalker? The rejected stalker is the rejected stalker occurs as a consequence of the breakdown of a close relationship. So in other words, with you, you had a friendship with the person, or perceived friendship.

For you, it was much of a paris, more of a parissocial relationship rather than a close relationship, but that's not how she perceived it. You have the breakdown of a relationship. You have the desire to exact revenge for the rejection. And then you're ready for this? The stalking substitutes for the lost intimacy of the friendship by creating the semblance of closeness that's now gone. I'm just going to read a little bit from the text about rejected stalkers because they're going to explain it better than me.

Page 69 in the rejected stalker in the Mullen textbook, quote, The rejected can be among the most persistent and intruses of the stalkers. Once established, their pattern of harassment is very difficult to alter. It's not always immediately obvious by these men and women continue so tenaciously. to pursue their erstwhile victim. Further down the page, quote, for those stalkers who cannot abandon the hope

of restoring the relationship, the harassment at least provides some semblance of connectedness to the lost friend. For the rejected stalker who is predominantly angry and vengeful, the stalking seems aimed, in part, a continuing relationship

in which, for all their raging, raging, they remain enmeshed. The stalking, in a sense, is a continuation of a relationship, the loss of which is too threatening, or which they remain bound by unresolved emotions and desires, made all the more compelling by their ambivalent nature. So in other words, for the rejected stalker, a part of the stalking is to maintain the sense of connection and closeness with the victim you. Let's talk about some of the psychopathology behind rejected stalkers.

According to the research, quote, this type, the rejected, this type of stalker had high rates of personality problems with antisocial and narcissistic traits being particularly prominent. There was also a small but significant cluster with market dependency traits. So those are rejected stalkers. Let's move on to what they call the resentful stalker. So the rejected stalker part of this is the rejection of your friendship. Okay. Let's talk about the resentful stalker. Okay.

The resentful stalker emerged, quote, emerges where the stalker feels that they have been exposed to an injustice or humiliation. That was you calling her annoying in a private text. Yeah. So she is both a rejected and a resentful stalker. The victim of the resentful stalker is someone who has attracted the stalker's enmity. by their own actions or by seeing as representative of an oppressing group. The desire is for revenge, sometimes of a surreptitious nature. The sustaining motivation of the resentful stalker

is satisfying the sense of power and control that comes from harassing the victim. The resentful stalker almost invariably feels justified in their actions, that's the moral part, and presents themselves as a victim fighting back against a more powerful oppressor. That, by the way, is a narrative that many people have picked up on. Because you're the big creator, she must be the victim. Right.

Right. That's a common theme that seems to be out there that somehow you're harassing her because by doing this because she's the poor victim, right? That's what's resentful. She's not a creator. She's just a person that is a tourist. of trials and I, I'm the big podcaster. Let's let's talk, let's dig a little bit deeper into the resentful stalker.

Here's some clinical features of the resentful stalker. Again, I'm reading from the textbook, stalkers and their victims, second edition. This is page 76, quote, a context of conflict in which one party experiences themselves as a victim of injustice can give rise to stalking. This type of stalking is initially motivated by the desire for retribution. The stalking is designed to frighten and distress the victim. The stalking becomes persistent because of the satisfactions the stalker obtains from the sense of power and control over someone who is in most cases has been previously regarded as being in a stronger and more privileged position. In keeping with the stalker's perception of their victim as being more powerful,

the more extended episodes of resentful stalking will often be pursued anonymously, at least initially. When this type of stalker is interviewed, they almost invariably present themselves not as an inventor, but as a victim, who in the process of defending themselves is striking back at the oppressor. So in other words, it's a moral crusade. And she does this. She'll say, I'm just here, this isn't gossip. I'm just... I'm just trying to deal with the big bag wolf that's...

Yeah, I'm just trying to present patterns she's had for so long. Let's talk about psychopathology of the resentful stalker. Page 77, quote, The pattern which emerged from personality testing suggested self-centered, immature individuals who are hostile, demanding, and argumentative. They overestimate themselves and they derogate others. That means they put others down. Yeah. Defensiveness and denial is rampant in this group.

They tend to have poor frustration tolerance with high suppressed anger. Check, check, check, check. Yeah. Well, let me say on that issue. Like, I don't know, you know, do I know for sure that she, that she fits this category? No, I don't. Like, just looking at her behaviors, it seems like she fits some of this. but I'm not diagnosing here, right?

I'm just reading from a textbook. Research. I'm citing the research, right? I'm not saying necessarily that she fits this. I think people can make that decision on their own. Let's go on. Page 77, next paragraph, quote, resentful stalkers as a group showed a marked tendency

to consciously attend to present themselves in a socially desirable light. Perhaps fitting with our view that these people attempt to project themselves as good victims battling the forces of evil. Let me repeat that because it fits everything we talked about earlier. Resentful stalkers fit the, they fit with the view that they attempt to project themselves as good victims battling the forces of evil. that's exactly how this is framed. That's exactly how most smear campaigns are framed. The results of MMPI studies in 24 resentful stalkers

supported the notion that these people regard themselves as misunderstood, mistreated with low frustration tolerance and difficulty with authority figures. Difficulty with authority figures. So taunting police, doing mic drops outside of course, courthouses, violating stalking injunctions within hours after they're served by police, telling the stalker you cannot go within 500 feet of your victim, no matter what. Those are some of the definitions.

So I've talked about the definitions of stalking. I've talked about the types of stalking. Now let's talk about victim impact. Actually, before I get to victim impact, let me talk a little bit about let's talk more about actually qualities of cyber bullies. So specifically about cyber bullies. There isn't a lot of research on adult cyber bullies, by the way, but there's enough. There's some interesting research.

This is from a research article entitled, systematic review of empirical studies on cyberbullying and adults. What we know and what we should investigate. This is by Gennaro et al in the journal, Aggression and Violent Behavior. This is 2018, so reasonably recent, volume 28. This is on page 118. Here are some of the qualities of cyber bullies. Quote, in a cyberbullying situation, not only the victims are affected, several studies found that cyber bullies exhibit more psychological symptoms, including depression.

So that's interesting, right? They could be more depressed. Yeah. So they experienced depression. They have more unemotional, impulsive, and psychopathic traits. They're high sensation seekers, and they sometimes engage in violent and drug crimes. The most interesting part of this to me is the depression, that they're unemotional, they're impulsive, and lo and behold, cyber bullies tend to have psychopathic traits,

which means that they defy or oppose authority figures. Quote, they also scored high on internet use, showed a lack of social skills, problematic alcohol use, and, not surprisingly, low empathy towards their cyberbullying victims. So cyber bullies are unemotional, they lack empathy, They're impulsive. They have psychopathic traits. They may have some depression.

Let's talk about impact. How does cyberbullying impact its victims? This is an extraordinary. This is an extraordinary study. I just have to say for all those people saying, bring the receipts, Dr. John's bringing the research receipts. I'm bringing the research receipts, right?

You brought the actual receipts. I'm bringing the research receipts. This is from a well-known article in the American psychologist. The American psychologist, by the way, is one of the premier journals for psychologists. It's from 2017, volume 72. It's Underwood and Aaron Reich. It's called The Power and Pain of Adolescence's Digital Communications, Cyber Victimizations, and the Pearls of Larking. Okay.

Admittedly, I'm going to frame this by saying, admittedly, this is pertaining to adolescents. Okay, but I'm sure this has application to adults. Sure it does. Relying on surveys about the frequency of cyberstalking may keep us from understanding that although cyber aggression may be an extremely low base rate event, so even among adolescence, cyberstalking and cyber aggression is fairly low. That's good news, right? Okay.

Let me keep, let me, let me, since I stopped in the middle of that, I'll go again. And although cyber aggression may be an extremely low base event, it hurts terribly even if it only happens once. This is according to their survey. The impact of even a single episode is potentially extremely serious because the behavior is immediately viewed by hundreds of friends and followers and is preserved forever in digital form. I can't tell you how much that impacted you, and they're proving it.

One reason we chose to not say this person's name and to blur her and the TikToks, which we didn't need to do, we didn't, was because of that understanding. We're not going to do that. Correct. But this research. She appeared publicly. She wanted everyone to find her. She was working on algorithm.

She admits that on the TikTok. come join me, send the word, spread the word. Here we are. And we still didn't do that because we understand what that means. We didn't want to do that. We went through it. We went through it. But I mean, like, this is extraordinary.

Because when people mock you about whether this is cyberbullying, when people say, team, you know, team Lawrence and Joe, I don't know what they're saying. I don't care. But the point, like, this data. this research that shows, I'm going to read it again because it's so, the impact of even a single episode is potentially extremely serious because the behavior is immediately viewed by hundreds of friends and followers and is preserved forever in digital form.

Not to mention which, the internet is open 24-7. Yeah. So any threats or any posts on social media can happen at any time of the day or night. There were times when you would wake up at three in the morning and go, Is there a post? Is there a post? What does she say now? Is she threatening me now?

But this explains why even a single episode of cyberbullying can be traumatic. Yeah. Because the fear is that it's going to be filled by thousands, hundreds or thousands of people, and it's never going to be erased. It's going to exist forever. This is exceptionally important. Let's be honest. buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy, or low quality.

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prevalence, and protective factors. It's by Kowalski et al. It's in Aggression and Violent Behavior, 2019, Volume 45. This is on page 22. Outcomes of cyberbullying. Quote, researchers have consistently found that cyberbullying is associated with a variety of negative consequences for both victims and perpetrators. Among the negative consequences experienced by victims are higher levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, greater suicidal ideation, lower levels of self-esteem and poor academic performance.

Have you noticed that? Yeah. Yep, I've noticed all of that. Every one of those applies to you. I'm going to go back to here. I'm going to return to the textbook criminal behavior. I'm going to give their runner summary of psychological effects of stalking, specifically cyberstalking.

Page 523 of criminal. behavior by Bartle and Barto, quote, not only does the cyber attack cause psychological damage to the self-esteem and self-image of the victim, but the message may be immediately viewed and forwarded by friends and other peers repeatedly over time. That's the point about how one incident can be so damaging. I think it's important to understand that if you bully someone at school, if you taunt them at school, it may be captured by other people on cell phones, but for the most part, it's a one-time

thing and it goes away. And I'm not minimizing that. That's horrible. But cyberstalking goes on over and over and over again. You can't escape it. Can't escape it. Research studies often report that the overall effects of cyberbullying on the victim include anxiety disorders, sleep problems, loneliness, depression, substance abuse, poor academic achievement, low life satisfaction, and extreme cases, suicide attempts. Check, check, check, and check. So I've covered the definitions and criteria of stalking. I've covered the types of stalking.

I've covered victim impact. I've covered some of the psychological characteristics of the stalkers, specially presentful and rejected stalkers. Let's move on to what I think is really critically important in understanding stalking, and that's the psychology of stalking. We're just getting started, guys. I'm looking at this, and you told me about this part. and this is important.

I told you this is going to take a long time. Yeah. And you guys were making fun of my nine hour live. Dr. John is ready. He's like, hold my Coca-Cola. Here we go. I don't drink Coke. Hold my iced tea.

So I put up a diagram from a book called the Psychology of Stocking, clinical and forensic perspectives. It's edited by Jay Reed-Malloy. This happens to be from his chapter in the book, from the chapter by Jay Reid-Molloy. Jay Reid-Malloy is one of my psychologist heroes. He's brilliant. He's done a tremendous amount of research on psychopaths, early research on psychopaths. He's done a lot of research on the psychology of stalking.

He's a brilliant guy. I'm going to, if you look at the schematic I put up, I'm going to talk about his theory, borne out by research and evidence of stalking. So for Malloy, stalking begins with what he calls a narcissistic linking fantasy. This is so interesting to me. Okay. She was explaining this to me and I was like, oh, okay. You're like, oh, crap.

Okay, here we go. A narcissistic linking, a narcissistic linking. linking fantasy. You'll see on the schematic that under the narcissists, it says narcissistic linking fantasy and some of the typical narcissistic linking fantasies are they're listed by Malloy, special, loved, idealized, admired by, superior to, destined to be with the object. So what does he mean by a narcissistic linking fantasy? What he means essentially is that someone with narcissistic features that's very self-absorbed,

creates a fantasy that links them to the stocked object. The stopped object in most cases is a person. The narcissistic linking fantasy. So there's a link. There's a link between the personality, often with narcissistic features. That's how people become so obsessed because they're narcissistic. Right. They're obsessed and they're narcissistic. They create a link to this fantasy of the object. Those those fantasies revolve around feelings. I'll read it. Yeah. Page 18 from the psychology of stalking by Jay Reid-Malloy. Quote, the general dynamic begins with the individual forming in her mind a narcissistic linking fantasy to a particular object. Such fantasies are characterized by conscious thoughts of being loved by or loving.

admired by or admiring, in parentheses, idealizing, being exactly like, in parentheses, mirroring, or complimenting in parentheses, twinship, or sharing a destiny with a particular object or person, in parentheses merger. So I'm going to read this again without the parentheses. Such fantasies, narcissistic linking fantasies to a particular, particular objects,

fuch fantasies are characterized by conscious thoughts of being loved by or loving, admired by or admiring being exactly like or complimenting or sharing a destiny with a particular object or person. So you begin with a narcissistic linking fantasy. So I'm going to start with that, okay, because that's the basis of stalking. But let's, I'm going to, I'm going to move, I'm going to switch lanes a little bit here because I'm going to come back to this,

but I'm going to switch lanes. So I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to swerve a little bit here and I'm going to talk about an Eminem song from 2000 called Stan. A Stan is basically a combination of a fan and a stalker. And the song is specifically about a fan who becomes a stalker because presumably Eminem or a celebrity won't respond to this person's emails. The reason I bring this up is because two of the detectives in Colorado that were responsible for executing the stalking order, they talked to you and Grayson afterwards, and they both refer to the TikToker as a fan girl.

In fact, I wrote it down because Grayson told me what they said. One of the detectives said, I think this is a fan girl who rode your court, yours. I think this is a fan girl who rode your court coattails for a bit and then fell off, and now she's very angry about it. So this is important because although I don't, I don't really see you or us as celebrities, like in our little niche, in our little true kind niche, people know us, right? So it doesn't really matter whether we're not Brad Pitt, we're not Angelina Jolie, right?

Like obviously, we're not famous. But in our little niche people know us. And that, by the way, is sufficient. That's sufficient to have someone fan girl you or me, I guess, to some degree. By the way, you get recognized all the time in public. Yesterday, last week was the first time somebody recognized. I was at a Trader Joe's. they were like, is your wife the one that did that crazy nine-hour life?

No, that was before. I was wearing a mask. I was wearing a mask in Trader Joe's because I thought nobody would recognize me. And I don't want to get sick because Trader Joe's is kind of a tight space. But somebody came up to me and they're like, are you, Dr. John with hidden true crime? And I'm like, I was like, maybe. Who's asking? I don't know.

I want to say it's good. I got to go. Anyway. You were very flattered. I was flattered. She was very kind. I just thanked her for watching us. I told her I was very appreciative that she recognized me and watched us.

But it doesn't happen a lot. It doesn't happen a lot. It happened once with me. My point is, though, that although you're not a celebrity at a major level, you're a celebrity enough to the, TikTok or the detectives are applying this label fan girl.

So that brings me to I talked earlier about psychological essentialism as a category psychological essentialism. Now I'm going to talk about something called life force essentialism. Life force essentialism is

different than category essentialism in the sense that I can't find my notes. Oh, there it is. I got his notes down, guys, they're all spread out. I'm like, there you go.

Life force essentialism, boom. I'm doing a good job of managing them, so. You are. You're doing great. Life force essentialism is different than category essentialism in the sense that with life force essentialism, people see things and objects

as having an underlying essence. and oftentimes that underlying essence might be seen as having special properties. So like an example of that would be, let's say that Otani, who plays for the Dodgers, hits the game-winning home run in the World Series that's coming up. The baseball that he hits, hypothetically, right? I don't, because the World Series doesn't play. The baseball that he hits, let's say the baseball, he hits, let's say the baseball, gets to win the World Series in 2025 is caught by a fan, right?

Let's say it's caught by a kid. That baseball now has a lot of value. That's a baseball that if you just bought it off the shelf would be like $5, right? But because Otani hit it, it now acquires what's called life force essentialism. It requires a special property, this almost magical property of having been hit. by Otani to win the World Series, right? It requires this life force quality that people want and they're willing to pay for. It's a baseball.

It's a baseball. It's a baseball. It's just a baseball. Right. But it's, but it's now worth millions of dollars because people attribute these magical properties to or these special properties to it. Right. The same thing is true of celebrities.

So. When I was a teen, I saved the pen that a scene. or signed with backstage. Right, because you thought it had special qualities. And so this is one of the reasons why people want to associate with celebrities. So, for example, you know, I remember years ago there was some celebrity auction where I think George Clooney was like auctioning it off one of the sweaters or something. And so somebody paid like $250,000 for that.

The sweater by itself was probably worth $100. $150. I don't know. Maybe it's George Clooney. Yeah. $500, right? But because George Clooney wore it,

people perceived that it had special properties and they bought it for $250,000. And guess what? The person who bought it said, I will never wash this sweater. Because the idea somehow is that even though it's the same damn sweater. George Clooney might have sweating it now.

Right. Because George Clooney's DNA is on this thing, the person is never going to wash it because they feel like they have some connection to George Clooney, right? So if they wear that sweater, they're like, hey, I'm George Clooney, right? Or whatever. So, but that's called life force essentialism.

The reason I mention that is because when we think about this idea of a narcissistic linking fantasy, this idea of life force essentialism is part of that fantasy. The fantasy is that if you're, if you're, as the detective said, if you're, if someone is fan girling someone they're trying to get some of that essence so i think i think there's the part of this narcissistic linking fantasy for the ticotker here has to do with this idea of being a let's call it a pseudo stan or a semi stand right it has to do with the fact that all the detectives in colorado that that talked to you about the situation they saw the ticotker as a fan girl that's how they defined her, right? And so it's interesting that there's this fantasy here about whatever the special

quality you have, it's going to rub off on her. And that's part of this. That's part of this idea of not wanting to lose that connection to you. As long as I'm talking about stands, I want to talk about something called the Halo Effect, which is really relevant to the current discussion. The halo effect is essentially a cognitive bias that takes one particular attribute of a person, say their physical appearance or their smile, something very simple oftentimes. And then that attribute or that characteristic then spills over to someone's overall impressions of the person. So in other words, there's a lot of similarity there to our discussion of psychological essentialism, category psychological essentialism, and that the idea is you're taking a single characteristic,

a single trait, and then that characteristic is influencing the overall opinions and perceptions of someone. We see this a lot with celebrities, where someone or oftentimes fans will put a halo, that's what's called a halo effect, they'll put a halo on a celebrity, and then they'll expect this flawless, perfect behavior. And that's one of the reasons why celebrities often fall from grace because they simply can't live up to wearing that halo.

There's also something called the horns effect, which is as you might expect, it's the opposite of the halo effect. So the halo effect typically involves positive behaviors or positive impressions that get generalized to describe

the entire person. The horn's effect on the other hand is about negative impressions or negative attributes. So maybe something that someone said or did that was negative, maybe one thing that someone said or did that was negative, then that particular characteristic, that negative characteristic gets, it spills over to impact the overall perceptions of someone's personality or of someone's identity. And so the halo effect and the horns effect are basically variations on the same theme. And oftentimes they apply to celebrities who don't live up to our expectations, who are in some cases idealized.

And then they're put on a pedestal. And then they're taken off that pedestal. They're idealized. And then they're denigrated when they don't meet expectations or when the halo doesn't seem to affect. So it's not uncommon for a celebrity to wear the halo. and then when they make a single mistake, then they all of a sudden they're wearing the horns or the horns come up and they become the devil.

So I think those, those, this bias is particularly relevant for our current discussion. And having said that, I think it's, if we're going to talk about the psychology of stalking, there's some elements here that there's been some research on stands that we need to talk about. So some of the elements that they found that create stands that engage in this type of celebrity worship or even fan girl people at a lower level like you, they found that an insecure parent-child attachment is typically common in stands.

They found that parental absence, so not even abuse, not neglect, not childhood trauma, just parental absence. So one parent, one or the other of both parents can be absent more than usual. The presumption here is obviously that if a parent is absent or not giving a child enough attention, it could be that you grow up in a really big family and maybe one of the parents isn't is available. The presumption is that the reason you stalk celebrities or you fan girl pseudo-celebrities or semi-celebrities is because you're trying to make up for that parental absence. You're trying to engage with a parental figure or a special figure that somehow, is going to give you something you didn't have when you were a child.

There's another, it was a study in Hong Kong that looked at adolescents who engaged in celebrity worship. And what they found was a couple of things that the subject in the study who did not have any particular preference for celebrities tended to have fairly high confidence and fairly high self-esteem. the kids who went after celebrities and engaged the stands who engaged in more celebrity worship they had a weaker sense of self and lower self-confidence the absorption of diction model says that stands or fan girls or fanboys whatever stands pursue parasocial relationships so in other words

not real significant, not relationships where you know someone, stands pursue parasocial relationships to make up for shortages in their real lives. And in that pursuit, they end up losing themselves. That's called the absorption addiction model. And I think we see elements of that here that I think in some ways that, you know, a lot of people have said online, get a life, grow up, right? That's saying the same thing. That's saying whatever's going on in this person, this TikTokers' life,

it's somehow deficient. When it comes to media law, I think that I would define myself a limited public figure. Anyway, keep going. People can disagree with that, but legally speaking. But it's the same dynamic. The point is it's the same dynamic that families, Angerling anyone is this attempt to make up for deficits in someone's life. Sure. Yeah.

There's a woman, her name is Amanda Montel. She wrote a book called The Age of Magical Omerthinking. This is going to be a quote from her book, page 24. She's talking about celebrity worship. This doesn't refer to you. This just refers to her thoughts in general. In general. Quote, Montel, quote, page 24.

in both the public and private spheres, worship is dehumanizing. To be deified is not so flattering. The dynamic risks annihilating a person's room for complexity and blunders, and this sets everyone up for suffering. Wow. It's really fascinating. Worship is dehumanizing. You're looking at the book, can I just see the book?

Yeah. I want to hold it up. Keep reading. Keep reading. So some of the dehumanization in this smear campaign is the fact that you're portrayed as evil, right? Like you've been labeled psychological essentialism. They've taken certain texts or whatever and private texts, and they've labeled the evil. And then there's this moral crusade.

But there's other ways you can dehumanize. And one of them is by portraying. someone is something they're not, not giving them the room to, as she says, not giving them the room to be complex and to make blunders. If you don't give someone the room to be complex and to make blunders, you, according to her, I agree, you set everyone up for suffering. Because you're not defining it as a real relationship. You're defining it as a cliched, right, rigid, narrow relationship. And if you do that, so if you're fangirling someone and the relationship turns out to be not what you expected, there's a lot of room in there for disappointment. There's a lot of room in there for anger.

There's a lot of room to turn against someone because that relationship is turning out not to be what you wanted. And so now that I'm thinking about this, I'm actually going to read, I'm going to read another quote from Amanda's book, Act Like I Know Her. It's really interesting. You did not talk to you about this. Act like I know or I don't know. It's a very interesting book. That's true. I see celebrities dehumanized all the time, real celebrities.

Here's what she says. It's just a sentence. It's simple, but I think it's totally relevant to our discussion. Quote, page 21, quote, nearly every Stan worshipped A-lister has seen their flocks mania pervert overnight from devotion to disdain. Some of the people she talks about, Beyonce. It was exceptionally private.

There's so many. Charlie X, X, X.X. There's so many, right? Like, if you're an A-list, if you're a stand-worship A-lister, loved by your flock, loved by your group, you can literally go overnight from devotion to disdain based upon one mistake, right? And I think you're not an A-List.

celebrity, right? But the point is, like, part of this campaign is to try to flip that script. Part of this campaign is to try to get your flock to go from devotion to disdain by dehumanizing you, by not giving you any room for complexity, not giving you any room for vulnerability, not giving you any room for blunder, as she puts it. Yeah. And fortunately, our viewers are, fortunately, our viewers are astute, and they see through that. But that's part of this. Yeah.

Your gems, not minions. Yeah. Our gems, not minions. Yeah, I know. Right. Let's go back. Now, let's return. So I talked about this idea of stands and what creates a stand and this really important idea of life force essentialism in terms of,

Right? You want to buy the celebrity's sweater so that you can feel like you're getting some of that special quality, right? Yeah, yeah. Which I don't know how someone can afford a sweater for $250,000, but. But hey. Someone did and they love it. Okay. Let's go back to our diagram.

So it begins with a narcissistic linking fantasy or life force essentialism. and then you have you go to what he calls acute or chronic rejection. So you have the fantasy, you have rejection. The rejection leads to feelings of shame or ameliation, which is then defended against with rage, which then leads to behavioral pursuit. That's the stalking. It fuels behavioral pursuit.

The behavioral pursuit is intended to hurt, to control, to damage, or destroy. Only after the target, you is hurt, controlled, damaged, or destroyed, is the narcissistic linking fantasy restored. Wow. And this gets back to the idea that we've been talking about all along, that the goal of a cyberstalker or any stalker, a physical stalker, it doesn't matter. The goal is to ruin and damage the person beyond repair or to have them end up death. that's how stuff like this, that's how this stuff ends. And the reason according to Malloy is because that's the only way for the stalker to restore the narcissistic linking fantasy.

Okay, now let's, we've talked about so much. Yeah. But we talked about recently the psychology stalking. We've talked about the research on that. We've talked about Malloy's chart, types of stalkers, stalking criteria, definitions. One of the big issues out there, in addition to all that, one of the big issues out there is one of the arguments for the TikToker, for the stalker, is that it's free speech. Right? This is probably the biggest argument.

Well, it's free speech. This is just mean girls. Free speech, mean girls. Who cares? Mean girls are mean girls. That doesn't mean you should get a stalking injunction. Don't weaponize the legal system. Ah, stupid.

Cat fight. Cat fight. That's how John talks when he's not on camera. Lauren, what's up? No, excuse. One thing that philosophers do, that, you know, since I was majored in philosophy as an undergrad, one of the things I always loved about philosophy,

even back when I was an undergrad, which... Getting his undergrad at Princeton, might I add, winning the thesis award. I know that you always underplay, and at this moment, now that people are trying to mock your education, I'm going to own it.

He's brilliant. Scholarship. Valdictorian. Go ahead. There's this argument about free speech, and as a matter of fact, in the in the the the tick tockers attorney's objection that was the heart of it yeah this is free speech who cares if she says that you want to have non-consexual relations with your brother right who cares if she's threatening to harm your business who cares if she's reaching out to everyone

your business context and trying to ruin you and damage you none of that matters because this is free speech so you know one of the things philosophers like to do is like we like to think about thought experiments. And I thought, I came up with one. Okay, a thought experiment. Okay. Here's all of us, here's all of us at home, including me, I'm at home, a thought experiment with Dr. John Mathis. A thought experiment. PhD. All right. And the reason we, we present thought experiments is because the reason philosophers do thought experiments is because they're trying to figure out kind of the boundaries around an issue, right? And whether by going through a thought experiment, you can ask questions about whether this is free speech, whether it's not, right?

I'm presenting a hypothetical, but I think one person, you could see this easily as being real. So in my thought experiment, there's a woman, Sylvia. And Sylvia has a daughter named Becky. Okay. And Becky's best friend is someone in school. They're adolescents. Okay. They're both 16 years old.

Becky's best friend is Victoria. Okay. Becky and Victoria. Yeah. And Victoria happens to be the captain. of the volleyball team. She's very well liked. She's considered to be one of the most more attractive girls in her class,

which is, I think, sophomore or junior years in high school. But Becky and Victoria have a falling out. And Becky's very angry at Victoria because Becky wanted Victoria to help her join the in crowd. And Victoria was kind of on the fence. She didn't really know how to do it, but she was happy to help her. But Becky thought it wasn't enough. Okay. Becky felt like she was being shunned by Victoria in certain areas

and that Victoria could have helped her more to become more popular. Okay. So Becky goes home to her mother, Sylvia, and Becky says, Mom, I'm really hurt. I just got shunned. I just got rejected by my best friend, Victoria. and I don't know what to do and I don't want to deal with her anymore

and I'm done with it. And Sylvia says, you know what? I love true crime. There's this raging debate online now about a stalking situation and everyone says it's free speech and I agree it's free speech.

And you know what you should do, Becky? You should open a TikTok account and you should target Victoria. And what you should do, do with your account is you should try to harm her and ruin her life as much as you can because that's perfectly acceptable under free speech. And what I recommend you start with is that you start with a post that you want to come back to, by the way, you want to repeatedly come back to this post, but you start with the post

about how Victoria engaged in non-consensual contact. with several of her younger siblings. And Becky says, oh, that's great. That sounds great. I hate Victoria. I want to start this TikTok. I want to really hurt her.

So she posts the, she posts the first TikTok in a video of Victoria, engaging in non-consensual relations with her younger siblings. It goes viral. Victoria is really hurt. People believe it. People start shining Victoria. People start avoiding her.

None of it's true, by the way. But Victoria becomes a bit of a laughing stock. People are talking endlessly behind her back about the supposed non-consensual contact that Victoria had with her younger siblings. Victoria is so upset by this and she's receiving so much mockery at school that she has to, within a year, she has to leave the volleyball team and she leaves school to be homeschooled by her mother. Becky continues because Sylvia, her mother, says, you know what?

You should post as much as you can, post every day. Go back to the post about non-concessions. contact about Victoria being an abuser. Go back to that regularly, but post other stuff. But now post her dropping out of school to be homeschooled and how only losers do that. Now post that she wasn't strong enough to stay in school, that she wasn't strong enough to stay on the volleyball team. I want you to just mock her because free speech. They graduate from high school. Victoria does it obviously not in the actual school. She does it from home.

And when she graduates, Becky posts that homeschool doesn't really count, that even though she passed all the accreditation exams and did what she needed to do, that Victoria is a loser because she had to be homeschooled and she couldn't stand the fact that she couldn't deal with the truth that she was in fact an abuser. But of course, Becky's posting all kinds of other things. Like she's saying, she says, I'm going to burn your flipping kingdom to the ground.

She's saying she's going to expose her that because she was her best friend, she has all these private text messages and emails that she's going to put out there to harm her. She continues posting every day. Years pass. Still posting. Victoria gets married. She sees that Becky sees that Victoria's posted photos of her marriage. So she mocks her marriage.

She mocks her husband. She talks about how ugly he is, what a loser he is, how he has no future, what a loser she is. She continues to say that whatever Victoria has in her life, she's going to take it away and she's going to burn her kingdom to the ground. Victoria finally has kids. When her first child is born, Becky. posts that she believes Victoria is now going to abuse her child. She posts that her children are losers.

She posts that CPS should become involved because of course she's an abuser and the child are going to be taken away. So why doesn't CPS jump in now? And she can do all this because of course free speech. She can say whatever she damn well pleases, right? Free speech. Victoria has another child. A couple years later.

Same thing. She has another towel. Same thing. Becky keeps posting that her children are going to be sexually abused. She keeps posting that Victoria is an abuser, that CBS should get involved, take her kids. She won't stop with that theme. Victoria is struggling. This is taking a toll on her.

It's taking an immense toll on her. So finally, Victoria and her husband decide that they're going to pursue a stalking injunction with the court. the initial injunction is granted, but they go to court and basically the judge says this is just a cat fight between two now adult females, but this is a cat fight

between adult females and of course, free speech because you know what, you know what, Victoria, I don't think Becky should be silenced. I don't think anyone should be silenced. So just basically take, take it. And even though, you know, Becky's a little bit of a mean girl, maybe she's cyberbullying

you a little bit. I think that stalking is just showing up at someone's home with a gun. And she hasn't done that. She hasn't approached you in your car. She hasn't approached you. They live in the same town. She hasn't approached you at the grocery store. She hasn't approached you anywhere. She hasn't physically harmed you. So the judge actually goes on record and says, you know what, this stalking injunction is dismissed because, quote, this reminds me of the real housewives of Salt Lake City. So guess what? Go back to your life. Just grin and bear it and carry on. Victoria has been supported by her husband for most of her life, but she finally decides, after having three children,

all of whom are targeted by the stalker by Becky, she decides to get a job. She goes back to school. She gets certified as a teacher. She starts a job. And what happens? Becky starts posting again about how Victoria is an abuser and then she's going to harm the children in her class

because she's teaching in elementary school. And then she needs to lose her job. Victoria does lose her job because of these posts. Their posts are persistent. They're repeated. Victoria has told Becky numerous times, please stop. Please leave me alone. I feel threatened.

I feel harassed. But the court will not protect her. She's forced out of her job. She's forced to resign because of all the rumors and gossip about her being an abuser. So what does she do? she finds another job this time she goes to the local community center she loves working with kids she's got three kids that's her passion but guess what becky's persistent Becky takes back to social media and tells the community center you are an abuser you should not be working at this community

center you're putting all these kids at risk lo and behold Victoria loses her position once again Because Victoria doesn't know what to do, because she still loves kids, she starts a YouTube channel. And the YouTube channel is, it pertains to children's education. She reads books, children's books. She's just doing anything she can to help kids. But guess what? Becky thinks that's absurd because there's no proof of this whatsoever. but Becky decides, of course, that she shouldn't have her YouTube channel or any way to make a living because she's an abuser.

So she starts posting relentlessly on her TikTok again about Victoria and her abuse, an online mob flocks to her channel, which is starting to get some momentum finally, and she's canceled. Not only is she canceled, but her friends, her coworkers or colleagues in the community, the people at the schooler, which she taught, they all turn against her. So finally, after all these losses and all this trauma and this rumor

that she can't dispel, even though she said repeatedly, I did not do that. Even her siblings have said, she did not do that. It doesn't matter. She's continued with this lie over and over again. It's called the sleeper effect.

If you tell a lie enough, over and over again, people believe it. People start to believe it, which is actually what's happened. That's what's happening with you. People are telling a lie lies over and over, and people are believing it. So finally, after years. And by the way, so Becky meets with her mother for lunch, and she tells her mom, Sylvia, she said, Mom, that was, great. You know, you, you, you allowed me to see quite clearly that because of free speech,

I have a lifetime pass. I have a lifetime ticket to just ridicule and threaten and harass this friend of mine who didn't do enough for me and who rejected me. And she so she thanks for mom and says, wow, this has just been great. Free speech is so great. I love it. And oddly enough, Sylvia says at this lunch, Sylvia says, you know, I've been watching this and, you know, maybe it's too much. Maybe you've gone too far. Maybe you should really rein this in a little bit. But Becky says, no, mom, you taught me free speech.

Like, I can do any damn. I can say any damn thing I want. I'm not stalking her. I haven't showed up at her home with a gun. I haven't followed her in a car. I haven't followed her at the, at the, at the mall. I haven't followed her in a restaurant. I've done nothing wrong. I can say whatever I want.

Free speech. So, the way this ends, and I don't know with the final ending, but the way this story ends, the way this thought experiment ends, is that Victoria's, she wakes up one morning in her bed, distraught, and she tells her husband that she can't keep doing it.

Okay, let's take this on. The way this ends is, Victoria is in her bed crying. She wakes her husband up and she tells him that she can't keep doing it. She's decided that she can't go any further. And she's thinking about herself. What happens after that? I don't know.

That's the end of the thought experiment. I don't know what she did. But she wakes up at that point because she really, realize, she realizes that Becky's not going to stop until she's completely ruined her life or she's deceased. Because Becky understands that by hiding behind this argument of free speech, that she has a lifetime ticket to target and arrest any person she wants over anything without any repercussions because of free speech. because of free speech. When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing.

So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything. So people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing.

The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. So my challenge to people with this thought experience, my challenge to anyone is to say to them, if you're a mother of someone, a daughter or a son, if you're a mother, would you recommend that one of your sons or daughters engages in this type of behavior? And if you do, I guess that's your choice, right?

Free speech. But I'm curious, you know, I'm curious. Is that a reasonable, is that a reasonable course of action for a parent to say to their child or for an adult to say to themselves, I have an issue with this person? I'm going to set up a targeted social media account. to harm them. And I will spend the rest of my life engaged in this campaign of harm until I ruin this human being.

And even if you argue that that's free speech, that doesn't even consider, because this is a philosophical thought experiment, you have to consider the ethical and moral implications of that behavior. We're not even addressing that. Are there ethical and moral implications to letting your child set up such an account under the auspices of free speech to harm someone else? That's my question. I do want to return to a part of that thought experiment, by the way.

And it has to do with the part about going into court and being told essentially that this is just nothing but mean girl stuff. even though Victoria in this thought experiment Victoria has never responded online she's never said anything about Becky she's never fought back right I'm gonna go back to the textbook stalkers and their victims second edition let's consider this whole idea of a cat fight here's what Mullen they have a chapter Chapter 11, it's on female stalkers. Here's what Mullen et al say about female stalking. Victimization studies, quote, this is on page 136.

Victimization studies indicate that females are seldom prosecuted for stalking offenses with criminal justice intervention most likely to proceed in those cases involving a male accused of stalking a woman. So this is persistent. that many people, including some law enforcement, judges, you name it, they don't see stalking as stalking unless it involves a male. Females are just not prosecuted as much. And that speaks to this issue of the mean girl catfight thing, right?

The stereotype that stalking is chasing someone with a gun and specifically you better be a male, otherwise you're not going to be prosecuted because if you're a female doing it, it's not serious. Yeah. It's a cat fight, right? I'll go on. Quote, put simply, stalking by females is yet to be afforded the same degree of seriousness attached to males who harass. This despite empirical evidence that females are no less intrusive or persistent in their stalking and that they are no less a threat to their victims.

I just want to say on that issue that when it comes to stalking, and this is consistent with the research I just read, there's clearly a sexist bias. Males are prosecuted. Females aren't. When females engage in this type of behavior, even though they're equally dangerous, the research shows this that they're dismissed.

And you know what's interesting about your situation? I really appreciate the fact that certain, men like Colby Ryan reached out to you and said, thank you for that vulnerability. Thank you for that type of raw emotion. But you know what? There's a lot of people that are going to really struggle with that type of raw emotion. There's a lot of people that are going to struggle with that type of vulnerability. There's a lot of people that are very uncomfortable. And they're because of that, they're labelling you things like histrionic. right they're dismissing you because you're a female expressing emotion this is where the sexist

bias comes in they're dismissing you as not serious as untrustworthy right they're dismissing you as dismissing you as frivolous, as silly, as being engaged in a catfight, as a dispute between mean girls, because you're female. Because the stalker wasn't following you with the gun, it doesn't matter. People can't handle the type of vulnerability and emotion that you expressed on that lie for hours. What's the response? It's to call you histrionic. It's to call you a liar. It's to say you're faking. It's to say you're doing it for clicks. You're doing it for attention, right? That's because. And by the way, one of the people saying this because of this was on our show years ago. And I will say this, one of the worst moments I've ever had in five years,

one of the moments that pissed me off to no end, unlike other other moment on any show I've ever been on, this person was on the show and somebody a viewer asked a question of me that was extremely emotional and i was pondering the question you could see i was getting emotional i was going to give one of the best responses i've ever given and you know what happened because this person couldn't handle the fact that i was getting emotional they cut me off they absolutely cut me off refused to let me answer because they couldn't handle that emotion in a mail, especially in a mail, that raw emotion that I was about to express and I was so angry. If this person wonders why she's not on our channel, you might want to look at yourself. You might want to look at the fact that you cut me off in one of

the most critical moments on one of our shows that I've ever had. You might want to look at the fact that people didn't like you. You might want to look at the fact that you spoke over Lauren and myself. You might want to look at the fact that you thought you owned this channel when you didn't. You might want to look at the fact

that there was a groundswell of people who despised you. So this idea of female stalkers being frivolous and silly and hysterical and overly emotional most of the people saying that are males because they can't handle that type of emotion. They can't handle that vulnerability.

So the easy response to that is to point the finger at you and say, you're a line, you're faking. The goal is not only to fall into this stereotype of the only males are stalkers. Only mouths can be violent. That's bullshit. get. The goal is to disempower you. The goal is to disempower all females that are stalked by other females. The goal is to make you look irrational. The goal is to make you look weak and

stupid and irrational. It's to call you a liar to discredit you. And you know what it's about? It's about the fact that these people cannot handle vulnerability. It's about the fact that Years ago, when that person cut me off, she could not handle my vulnerability and my raw emotion. And I'm still pissed. Years later, I'm pissed that somebody cut me off when I was going to answer my question and probably the most vulnerable way I could ever answer a question because it was about my son. And it was about JJ. So I say to all the haters who are claiming that you're lying and that this can't be stalking,

I say to them, I challenge them to look again and to check their own emotions and to check themselves and their own inability to be vulnerable. Because what they're doing is despicable. And I want to make a comment too. I want to go back to this idea of psychological essentialism where we started that all people at some level want to see themselves as good people and that people often take small traits and amplify them, generalize from those traits to define another human being. Remember we talked about, remember Gabriel, the herder? Gabriel, the four-year-old herter. there's a lot of people out there that are mocking your looks that are making fun of your appearance and i just want to say on that i mean people can you know you're laughing about some of it it's

funny right like some of it's roasting you but but let's look a little deeper right like that's psychological essentialism if you want to disempower a female the easiest way to do it is to make to mock her looks and then to say, look, she looks stupid. She must be stupid, right? It's to do the very thing that the four-year-old was doing to Gabriel, which was to take a particular element, a particular atchement of you, your looks, whatever, your eyebrows, right? And it was to say that because of that, you're a clown, because of the way you look,

that you're silly and you can't be taking seriously and therefore you must be a liar. And you know what? That's fucking bullshit. And it pisses me off because it is so sexist and it is so demeaning and it is so disempowering of women.

And you get it all the time. Unfairly. You get it from women. But it's a classic case of psychological essentialism in the sense. that you're taking one attribute, your looks, or any female's looks, I'm sure a lot of females out there who have gone through this, it's taking one aspect, one attribute of you,

and generalizing to your personality and defining you in terms of that. Yeah. And if that's not sexist, then, you know, then I don't know what the hell is. But, you know, but in today's world, it doesn't really matter, right? It doesn't matter in the sense that,

and it's not, by the way, you're so used to it, it's not going to harm you. Right. But I think what I want to say is I want to people to be aware of what, let's call this what it is. When you mock someone's looks, do you really believe that that's defining their personality? Do you really believe that that is a valid perspective on who that person is, that that's a valid insight into who that person is, it's obviously not. So I'm not trying to change anybody's mind.

I know that cognitive, you know, I talked about it earlier. I know that confirmation bias and the cognitive response principle mean that no matter what information you give someone, they're not going to change their mind. They're just going to come up with reasons why they're right. I know from confirmation bias that whatever I say here, They already have an opinion. They're going to believe that no matter what.

So I'm just putting this out there because I'm trying to compliment your nine-hour live with my lesser version of that, my research-based live that analyzes the situation. Because you know what? That's what our viewers expect. That's what our viewers like. This is what we do. At hidden true crime. At hidden true crime.

And for those of you that didn't know, because I think a lot of people that are talking about the epic nine hour live haven't even watched us before, this is what we do here at Hidden True Crime. This is what we do. I do want to get back to the free speech issue. There's a couple of things I want to talk about at the end here, and then we're going to be done soon. You read this on your live? This is the memorandum. Yes. By our attorney, Dastin.

This is his reply. This is his reply to their free speech argument. The reply memorandum in support of requests for civil stocking and petitioners pre-trial brief. I'm going to read some of this because I think it's important and it's going to reiterate some of the issues we've talked about, especially about free speech. This is from the introduction. Quote, respondents' opposition fundamentally mischaracterizes both the law and the facts of this case by advancing two legally unsupported defenses. Number one, the petitioner's social media presence somehow diminishes her protection from stalking. Think about that.

She's arguing, she argued, her attorneys argued, that her social media presence, that your social media presence diminished your protection from. stalking. Tell that to Taylor Swift. So somehow because you're a limited public figure and you have a social media presence, never once did you respond to her, by the way, but that diminishes your protection from stalking. And two, that creating multiple social media accounts dedicated to attacking petitioner's character constituted, protected quote, public discourse.

Both arguments fail as a matter of law. The evidence before this court, including sworn declarations from multiple witnesses and documented exhibits, demonstrates a calculated campaign of harassment that has caused petitioner you to experience suicidal ideation for the first time in her life. As petitioner testified up until 2025, I have never questioned that before. This has felt like a complete nightmare I can't wake up from, unquote. The dangerous precedent respondents seeks would eviscerate stalking, protections for anyone with an online presence and would transform social media into a free fire zone for personal vendettas. The court should reject respondents' attempt to weaponize the First Amendment as a shield for targeted harassment.

The First Amendment protects robust public debate and criticism, but it does not protect courses of conduct intended to cause fear or emotional distress, targeted harassment campaigns, true threats, and stalking behavior. This is from Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S., counterman versus Colorado, 600 U.S. Quote, the First Amendment permits restrictions on speech that threaten unlawful violence or consist of targeted harassment. The most compelling evidence that respondents conduct constituted stalking, Rather than protected speech is that the singular purpose of her social media is the singular purpose of their social media accounts. Respondent has created at least two separate social media accounts dedicated exclusively to disparaging petitioner under the thin veil of discussing, quote, an ex-friend.

This is not a case where Respondent maintains general social media accounts that occasionally referenced petitioner while discussing various topics. These accounts were created for one purpose only to conduct a sustained campaign attacking the petitioner's moral character. When 100% of accounts content targets a single individual, it cannot be characterized as public discourse. It is a harassment campaign. My attorney is destined to doubt, by the way, many people ask. They thought this was really well done. Thank you, Dustin. The Supreme Court has long distinguished between speech on matters of public concern and purely private disputes.

See Snyder v. Phelps. Personal grievances between former friends do not constitute matters of public concern that warrant First Amendment protection when used as weapons for harassment. This is revenge masquerading as free speech. I'm skipping around, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I read the whole thing on my nine-hour live. You're making your point. The clear intent is to damage the petitioner's reputation and cause emotional distress.

Each account creation, each post, and each attempt to expand the audience for these attacks constitutes a separate act in the stalking pattern. The use of multiple platforms demonstrates escalation and obsession of behavior, not legitimate commentary. Here, the numbers speak for themselves, 50 plus posts and videos about you, petitioner, over a six-month period across multiple platforms. This far exceeds the statutory minimum of, quote, two or more acts required by Utah law. Each of these 50-plus posts represents a deliberate choice

to continue the harassment campaign. This is not a case of one or two ill-considered posts and a moment of anger. This is a sustained, deliberate campaign spanning half a year. The sheer volume and duration demonstrate the obsessive nature of respondents' conduct and her understanding, intent to cause ongoing distress. The Ragsdale Court emphasized examining the cumulative effect of conduct.

A social media harassment campaign creates unique cumulative harm. We talked about this in the research. Permanent digital footpenter of attacks. Viral potential of expanding the audience. 24-7 accessibility to harassing content and recruitment of others to participate in the harassment, which she did. Also, on-grisement. nature, the ongoing nature

creates the fear of escalation. Respondent's opposition states it is simply not reasonable that Matthias would expect to continually engage in public discussion without encountering speech he disagrees with. This fundamentally misunderstands

the reasonable person analysis under Utah called 7-6, I mean, 776-5 106.5. The proper inquiry is whether a reasonable person in partitioned circumstances would experience fear or emotional distress from the specific conduct alleged, not whether public figures should generally expect criticism.

The Supreme Court in Counterman v. Colorado recently reaffirmed that states may constitutionally prohibit true threats and stalking conduct, requiring only a showing of recklessness regarding the threatening nature of communications. There's a compelling government interest that includes protecting citizens from fear, targeted harassment, and stalking of a compelling nature. The requested injunction seeks only to prevent stalking conduct, not legitimate criticism or protected speech. It is narrowly towered to serve the government's interest in protecting petitioner from targeted harassment online. The evidence establishes that respondent created a system. systematic harassment campaign across multiple

platforms producing 53 plus documented videos and 33 plus Instagram posts dedicated exclusively to targeting the petitioner, which is confirmed by one of the witnesses. This unprecedented volume of content combined with witness testimony established the clear

intent to harass rather than to engage in protected speech. Respondent published a video with caption without his consent, falsely insolently, and insinuating the sexual assault of the petitioner's dying brother who just passed away in March of 2025. The psychological cruelty of this course cannot be overstated, attacking a grieving sister with false sexual assault allegations about her deceased brother. The respondent posted recordings of petitioner's voice comparing her murderer to murderer Jody areas, garnering 33,000 plus views. The events in Boise, Iowa also demonstrate how the respondents' online campaign translated into real-world stalking involving multiple accomplices.

He lists those. I'm not going to go over those. You've covered all these. I'm just covering the main points. Patricia Griffith said it was really good. It mentioned her. It is good. I'm just going to finish with this.

And then we're going to, I'm going to finish up with some final thoughts. Each post, each confrontation, each violation represents a separate act, far exceeding the statutory minimum, which is two incidents. That's all you needed. Right, just two. But more than that, let me just reiterate, her violating the stocking injunction at CrimeCon, that should have been an automatic grounds for enforcement.

Yeah. And the judge wouldn't even hear it. Respondent's opposition rests on two fundamental legal errors. Number one, the belief that public visibility diminishes one's right to be free from stalking. And two, the claim that social media accounts dedicated into attacking an ex-friend constitute protected public discourse. Both positions find no support in Utah law and would create dangerous precedents. I agree with that, by the way. That if this was dismissed, if we didn't drop this, the precedent here would have been unbelievable.

think about that. A small court in Provo, Utah setting a precedent for all kids and adults to engage in unrestricted stalking under the guise of free speech for the rest of their lives. The statutory language is clear and dispositive. Utah Code 76-5-106.5 explicitly prohibits communications, quote, to or about an individual. The legislature did not limit. limit the statute to direct contact.

It's deliberate included or about to capture indirect harassment campaigns. To or about. She doesn't need to speak to you. She just needs to speak about you. Her attorney is actually specifically left out about. Yeah. On purpose, I'm sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Grayson needed it. And then so did our attorney. Yeah. Her attorneys left out some of the case law. Right. That was convenient. just leave out the case law. Respondents' creation of multiple social media accounts posting 50-plus

times about petitioner over six months fall squarely within the statutory prohibition. Each of these 50-plus posts represents a deliberate choice to continue communicating about petitioner to third parties, far exceeding the statutory minimum of two acts required for a course of conduct. Utah's civil stocking statute protects all persons equally, regardless of their public profile or social media presence. The statute's inclusion of communication about individuals demonstrates the legislature's clear intent to prevent exactly what respondent has done here. Conduct an indirect harassment campaign through social media. To hold otherwise would eviscerate stalking protections in the modern digital age and create an untenable legal president whereby anyone with an online presence

forfeits basic personal safety protection. The evidence clearly establishes that respondent has engaged in a sustained campaign of harassment through multiple social media platforms. This is not protected public discourse. It is targeted harassment using an ex-friend as a thin veil for a personal vendetta. The First Amendment prohibits, the First Amendment protects robust public debate. It does not protect weaponizing social media platforms to conduct harassment campaigns about individuals, to dozens of posts over months. The evidence before this court paints a disturbing picture

of calculated sustained harassment that has driven a professional journalist and mother to contemplate respondents' creation of accounts solely to expose her, quote, ex-friend, her recruitment of others to join this campaign, her physical stalking across state lines, her brazen violation of this court's injunction,

demonstrate conduct that no reasonable interpret of law would protect, except Provo Courts. Well, we don't know. We dropped. Patricia Griffith summarized it best, quote, criticism of someone's work is one thing. But setting out to destroy a person to incite fear and to threaten their livelihood is reprehensible, harmful, and flat out wrong.

Thank you, Trisha Griffith. Thank you, Trisha. The court must reject the respondent's attempt to weaponize the First Amendment as a shield for what multiple witnesses, including a forensic psychologist, have identified as dangerous stalking behavior with, quote, clear antisocial traits that significantly increased the risk of harmful behavior in the future. We talked about that earlier in this show. Those are the main points.

So for those on the side of free speech at any cost, that's what our attorney said. I want to end. with my book I don't know you got a lot of books which book it's over here now it's not is it this book under here no it's the oh here it is I got it

all right here we are how long has this been going on not nine hours what how many four hours four hours all right I thought it would be around three but we far exceeded that four hours so think about that I'm less than half of your epic marathon.

Yeah. I want to go back to this idea of a moral crusade and how important that was for this campaign. And I want to talk a little bit about, so one of the things I've been doing is revisiting the Salem Witch Trials, the historical record, and also Arthur Noah's interpretation in the crucible. Okay. I think there's no doubt that the Salem Witch trials were a moral crusade,

because they were obviously the community was engaged in a smear campaign against specific individuals that they deemed to be witches. Of course, there were no such thing as witches. It was a moral crusade because it was based in the puritanical, religious, and spiritual worldview of the community. So the basic idea was that if you find witches that don't exist, that you purge them, you eliminate them, right? And that's the same thing we saw on Davell, by the way. Yeah. A group of people that calls themselves the, they call themselves.

Dart. Oh, the seven gatherers? Seven gatherers, right. Which not ironically, is the same label that this group uses to describe themselves. Similar dynamics. But in the book, this is the penguin, this is the penguin classics version of the crucible. There's an introduction by a literary critic. His name is Christopher Bigsby. Biggsby does a brilliant job of summarizing the critical motivations in the crucible, also a moral crusade.

19 witches were hanged. Two dogs were killed. And one person was crushed to death during the Salem witch trials in 1692. I'm going to read this line from the critic because

I think it's absolutely relevant to this discussion. And I think it's a good way to end in thinking about all the motivations that this smear campaign involved, all the people that believe they have the moral authority to vilify you and dehumanize you, right? Just like they did in Salam, Massachusetts, like, has the world really changed in 350 years? Has the world really changed that much?

I don't know. I'm going to read this. In his hands, meaning Arthur M. Miller's hands, quote, this is from the introduction, quote, in Arthur Miller's hands, the ghost of those who died have proved real enough. Even if the witches they were presumed to be were little more than fantasies conjured by a mixture of fear, ambition, frustration, jealousy, and perverted pride. That's exactly, I couldn't say it better. Those are exactly the motivations that fueled this smear campaign.

Those are the motivations that fueled vilifying you, dehumanizing you. Let me read it again. The witches were presumed to be little more than fantasies conjured by a mixture of fear, ambition, frustration, jealousy, and perverted pride. Why fear? Why fear? Because I think you post threats to people's identities.

You post threats to their self-esteem. You may have posed threats to their businesses. Not from anything you did. I'll say I didn't. Not from anything you did. Just from running our channel, from producing good art and good content, by getting good interviews,

by being a quality journalist, by being an ethical journalist, you created fear. Ambition, because all of these people were competitors. Their ambition. Their ambition to see you as a witch. Frustration. This group was frustrated because they couldn't control you. This group couldn't get you to conform.

Jealousy. Jealousy over the quality of your work. nothing more jealousy over the fact that you were growing so rapidly perverted pride that's the pride to control the world the pride to dominate the world the pride to control other people the pride to harass other people to control them to intimidate them and most importantly I'm going to add with this final thought the pride to engage in a self-righteous moral crusade against you for no reason other than pure fantasy. That's it.

That's all you got? I don't have a watch on. Thank you. It wasn't nine hours. You were pretty good. It's a lot. Yeah, it was a lot. You didn't have to take a bathroom break. I did. That's true. No, I took one. Okay. You did. I'll sort of bye. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers.

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