THREAD

Dear Twitter friends: Many of you know that one of the reasons I have had some high levels of stress that changed my behavior in the last couple of years is that I experienced some situations in which people were threatening me and some of my most beloved people.

At the time, I decided to give those people the benefit of the doubt and write it off as a misunderstanding because I certainly hadn't done anything to deliberately antagonize anyone. In fact, I had reached to people I cared for and made friends with their friends, in respect.

Since that time, I have not pursued a grudge, and like I said I wrote an awful lot off due to probable misunderstanding. There are lots of different creative ways that artists and others can express themselves, and I didn't choose to take anything more personally than necessary

However, I am smart enough that I took precautions. I didn't say anything that would disturb a neutral ceasefire that we seemed to arrive at, & I still wouldn't. I didn't have any interest in conflict, and in fact these seem people had a lot of fascinating, admirable qualities

In fact they are people I had tried to befriend, initially, because I was so genuinely impressed by them. So I chose to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, that no real or lasting harm was intended. I took a Schrodinger's Cat approach.

By that, I meant that when you don't have confirmation or denial of something, both possibilities are equally true. I chose to take the path that I had nothing to create conflict over since I knew nothing for certain that was true. This seemed like a benevolent response .

I had very limited or no interactions with them after that except for one episode of being threatened on @Twitter last year which may or may not have been connected with the original incident. I reported it to @TwitterSupport and moved on with my life, again letting that go.

I had told my friends, family, acquaintances, employers, almost everyone I knew, that I had been threatened and so had some other people. I was vocal about this online and offline, both near my hacked devices and away from them, by snail mail, personal contact, & all means.

I did this deliberately so that if anything happened to me or the friends & loved ones I was concerned for, which I knew had been threatened also, there would be a thorough investigation. Probably there was nothing to worry about& maybe now there isn't either, but you never know

I didn't want to upset those people or create more conflict so I didn't give too many details or name names in most of my interactions, but I did give a handful of people, some in the US and some abroad, secure files on hard drives of every person I suspected and why and of what.

I password protected these hard drives to prevent people from reading them unless it was necessary, and I gave different people the passwords and instructions for who to reach out and give them to, should any sudden disappearance or violence happen to me or any of the beloveds

Once last year some random person on social media told me there was a hit out against me which is pretty disturbing, right? But I hang out here a lot and have dealt with a lot of interesting types so I didn't know how necessarily to take that, and without substantion, I let it go

But I did begin to take even more careful notes documenting every account, interaction, and person that had insinuated violence. And I took new measures for my own personal protection at home and warned my neighbors and friends etc all over again.

During the last couple of years I had ample opportunity to do my own research offline, in libraries, and so forth and kept a thorough accounting of everything I thought was related to the situation and have updated the hard drives regular, or in some cases with sealed paper docs

The reason I have done this is to create a situation in which, if anyone were to harm, murder, or disappear me or the friends and loved ones that I felt were threatened, there is no chance in hell the would not be investigated. I included names, jobs, cities, phone numbers, etc

Truly despicably, one of the people that I thought was threatened was someone suffering from dissociative trauma and other health conditions. I even felt guilty for going along with being peaceful and neutral/non reactive because this upset me so much.

However, I stand by the Schrodinger's Cat idea here, in that, if I don't really know anything, why should I assume something negative? Positive interpretations, or at least neutral ones can be plausible too. Some examples include the following:

People can be interested in dark subjects creatively or for personal expression, can have rage attacks and say nonliteral things or what they don't really mean, people can be referencing literature or artistic mediums that touch on those things, etc.

A lot of subtweets and other things can be ripe for misunderstanding on social media. So again, I chose to give the benefit of the doubt and not cause problems for people unnecessarily. I would not be saying anything about this at all today if I didn't think I needed to.

In the last year I also experienced some further hacking of my devices & that of loved ones, but in a way that was extremely masterful and difficult to prove, including the use of stolen images for video overlay techniques involving doctored images of someone I know.

This of course, could still be unrelated to the initial incidents, but by the time this happened, my guard was up. I increased my documentation and I also was anonymously approached by someone IRL who confirmed that they believed I had been threatened by this group.

Despite that, I still chose a peaceful and nonreactive stance because I was not being threatened at all, the hacking seemed not only hard to prove but possible wasn't related to them, although a couple of my phones were bricked last fall.

I have been outspoken about fascism in particular and I considered the possibility that some kind of pro-fascist bullshit has motivated the camera hacking etc Yet just in case the whole initial thing had been a misunderstanding and not related to it, I said nothing further.

I thought it seemed highly unlikely that the original group, who knew that I understood their communications to some degree, would be stupid enough to try to provoke me to report something concerning them. They seemed way too smart for that.

I met with a frank degree of skepticism from friends and family, initially, in part because the whole thing seemed so improbably strange, but over time some of them came to share my concerns, without having any of the details.

As things stand right now, if those who seemed to have been threatened remain unharmed, then there's no need for those hard drives or sealed documents to ever see the light of day, or any of the notes and documentation up until now. There just would be no need.

My perpetual first choice would be for nothing to happen at all. For those threatened loved ones to remain perfectly safe, untouched, and unharmed, even protected from harm. And for nothing to happen to me in the way of violence, foul play or an untimely disappearance.

Although I am not an investigator by trade, I believe the original threats may have happened because I had worked on a documentary film that was associated with @Frontline and have been an active citizen-user of @propublica with my free time.

The people who threatened me had no connection to the film but I thought perhaps they were frightened and thought I was she kind of threat to them because of my associations with investigative journalists. This is just a theory, but might explain why I seemed threatening.

Recently, the vulnerable person I mentioned was threatened again, and I believe I may have been too, because they did not want me to remain friends with that person I guess? Hard to know what people are thinking.

The threats made towards my friend were quite violent and unkind. Sometimes I wonder if these people are just possessed of a dark sense of humor and just threaten people with violence as a joke? Kinda lame, but that would seem like the best possible explanation.

Recently, I got the impression that a totally different emotionally-troubled young person with a big act here on @Twitter & @Insta had been influenced by them, but not sure if the person was a true protege or someone frightened& just going along for self-protection

All in all, I am not sure what to make of this. There has been no overt, crystal clear or explicit thing which makes it easy to prove or address. That could be intentionally wily. Ambiguity makes for doubt. Which is why I have always been willing to not assume the worst.

I mean what are the chances that an organized group operating across multiple social media platforms would be so blatant about threatening people with violence in plain sight? Particularly since there was no provocation from me

One part of me still wants to laugh all of this off as a kind of paranoia. I'm a much bigger believer in Pronoia, a marvelous concept I learned from @FreeWillAstro . We should assume the Universe is looking out for us and is looking on us benevolently

Like Coelho writes in The Alchemist, perhaps the universe is conspiring with us and for us. This seems like a much more wholesome and peaceful take on many things and I'm inclined towards a life outlook that is more positive. So I'm determined to not let this throw me much.

I had some friends and family go ballistic and tell me I should stop at nothing and raise the red alert, pull the fire alarm, call the @FBI, call the police department, alert the media, ring up @MMFlint and dance the funky chicken in public every day to get attention for this.

But of course it occurred to me that this might turn out to be the biggest mountain out of the biggest molehill there ever was. And I nothing happens to my beloved friends or to me, well why would I go on some kind of persecution mission of others? I see no need for that.

And that is why this thread has stayed away from naming the individuals and accounts in question by name, because that seems unfair, like doxxing someone. By the way I was told that I was hacked and my personal info was used, but I don't know if that's true.

Oh I was also told one of the threats was fire, so if my friends' houses burn down, or mine does, this needs to be taken into account. But I am inclined to still let this go and not escalate things further because the last thing I want is to encourage retaliation or more conflict

Remember, I still think there is a possibility that creative expression, dark humor and some anger mgmt issues were the root incident, and some of the recent things that have happened could have been unrelated.

I'm sure though that my dear friend was threatened with violence, although it's not clear if it was meant to be taken literally or not. Some people just like violent humor and ribald jokes and will say horrible things to each other in jest.

Nevertheless, I am saying all this publicly to make sure it's know that if anything happens to my loved ones or to me, those hard drives and documents exist listing everything, and they were updated in some cases just in the last couple of days.