This is a true, and unofficial, story all about how BethAnn McLaughlin/ Sciencing_Bi/ Alepo was unmasked. It's also my story of how I became a target of the same techniques BethAnn/Alepo used against her detractors. My doubts about Alepo started Saturday morning.

At first, I was sympathetic, but I quickly noticed inconsistencies. I notified two friends early Saturday afternoon, who agreed with me after listening to my evidence and seeing the screenshots. I scrolled and screenshotted Alepo's timeline in fear it would be deleted.

Other people around this time also began having their doubts. The earliest twitter sceptic was the very polite @moustique33, who was cursed at, blocked, and spoken to very condescendingly by Alepo's dear "friends." Unfortunately, the scepticism led BA to protect Alepo's account.

Luckily, one of my friends still had access to Alepo's account, but we discovered that BA had deleted all her tweets from before April 2019. We only had a few screenshots from before that time. Later found we weren't the only ones sceptical and others had screenshots from earlier

We approached a journalist late Saturday. He seemed wary, but not outright dismissive, and agreed to at least look at our evidence. He decided to take the case on by mid-day Sunday because it had already gone viral on twitter (not due to Sciencing_Bi's friends who mourned her).

Dear reader, note that it took 7 hours of scrolling and screenshotting to go through Alepo's/ Sciencing_Bi's timeline to April 2019. She tweeted A LOT. We gave the reporter our 120+ pages of screenshots plus other valuable evidence. Note that our group was mostly POC and women...

NOT the "white" "twitter detectives" who are addicted to rubbernecking and making light of the situation that the white people duped by BA/Sci_bi accused us of being. We are concerned scholars who wanted to expose the harm that BA was inflicting before more were fooled.

While we were happy that BA was finally being exposed, one thing frustrated us: The elevation of white people--who were duped and had enabled BethAnn and Sciencing_Bi--in official news outlets, making it seem like they were the real victims even as they spoke for BIPOC.

In our systematic screenshotting we noticed over and over again how these very same people seemed to be besties with BethAnn, the MTS clique, and Sciencing_Bi at one period of time or another. Survivors of BethAnn, mostly WOC, chimed in and called them out...

Why not believe them the first time? They were still referred to as mobs by @joshfessel, who later gave a tepid apology for "poor choice of words." None of them apologised until they were called out. None of them disclosed they were in the zoom wake until reporters came knocking.

We believed the WOC the first time. Remember that news organizations are very afraid of litigation, so if something is published in a reputable news source, it means they did their due diligence. That none of them broke ties with BA after such damning press speaks volumes...

Then I noticed that some of them continued to make fun of a journalist who had experienced real bullying and spreading of lies by Sciencing_Bi and her posse. I politely left screenshots showing how @notrohe had been abusive to @moustique33. You can see in my TL how that went.

First, she hid my reply, then she blocked me 7 hours later, and most egregiously, they mass reported me. This led to a quiet "shadow-ban" of my tweets and replies, so no one could see them except me unless they looked on my timeline separately. I never received notice from twtr.

That they would abuse a twitter tool to silence critics pointing out their hypocrisy politely was exactly the kind of behavior that MTS/BA/Alepo engaged in. They accused me of calling others to harass. I only tagged 2 @moustique33 and @BrooksDSimpson because they were relevant.

I submitted a complaint to Twitter about this unjust retaliation/targeted harassment and they quietly restored my full privileges. They probably still tried to report me as a sockpuppet because I also had to verify my account 6 times yesterday, when this never occurred before.

The saga doesn't end here. Believe me, I wish it did! I have overdue writing projects and should not be dealing with these self-centering white bullies on Twitter instrumentally using the scandal to elevate their status, yet again. I had pointed out to Sherry Marts that she...

...should not be engaging in bullying of someone who had been bullied by BethAnn and Sciencing_Bi, just like Marts had been. Because I sent this tweet after I got shadow-banned, she didn't see it until the day after, and sent this rather impolite tweet before deleting it and...

...replaced it with a more polite tweet. However, she also slid into my DMs simultaneously and demanded an explanation. I was polite, gracious, and vulnerable with her. She was defensive and dismissive. She did not want any evidence I had and preferred to nurse her grudges...

All I wanted was for her to behave more professionally in public. She immediately blocked me! She can bash whomever she wants in private, but given her public stature in the #Metoo movement, she would do well not to engage in schoolyard type bullying. Over and over again...

white people have shown that they are not really interested in helping us if we can't elevate their platform in some way. I know @mbalter's critics accuse him of this, but I, and many friends, have found him to be the opposite. Yes, there are critics and I believed them at first.

I even asked him about the criticisms that pop up, and he has patiently shown me proof that they are lies or equivocations. He doesn't get defensive when asked for explanations if you don't have an agenda to impugn his motives. I also noticed that Sciencing_Bi had spread these...

narratives. In a few cases, he made mistakes, but had corrected them. Most of the criticism came from gatekeepers or misunderstandings of what investigative journalists do: verify claims with docs; that's not disbelieving the victims/survivors. Also not personal attack dogs.

Balter has convinced me of something he told us early on, that he would rather go to prison than give up the identities of his sources. Would you do the same? More so now than ever, I believe him. Ask yourself why you fell for Sciencing_Bi. It's not because you were soft-hearted.

BA/Alepo/Sciencing_Bi was extremely abusive online and offline. She never tweeted about her fields of archaeology, geology, and paleontology. She rarely if ever magnified any Latinx or Native American voices, only BethAnn's and MTS's. This was not an "elaborate" hoax. Eg, fossil:

You fell for it because she ticked the right identity box for the white gaze and affirmed your pre-existing biases. Con-artists like BethAnn exploit our preexisting biases: racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, prestige addiction, etc. We may not even be aware of these biases...

...but before you do or say something to someone, ask yourself: would I do this to a big name scholar or someone who can further my career? Your answer shows if you are a bully or an enabler of one, and if you are courageous or a coward. We are supposed to be critical thinkers.

Please do your own research independently of what your clique believes. Use critical thinking, and perhaps another BethAnn won't rise to harm our credibility and the people we profess to be allies with. Remember that evil happens when we refuse to buck what our clique believes.