CG - Cyber Harassment: Stop the silence, save lives

All right. So, I'm LJ. Uh, this is uh the second version of the cyber harassment talk I started back in the day. Um, one of the individuals that actually helped me start this is sitting right there. That would be noobs. He is wearing the masturbation racing shirt that we'll get to later. So, with that, um, so who am I? I am just a human like everybody else. I am semihug enabled. I love animals. If you've got cat pictures, please send them to me. I love to see them. Dogs are welcome as well. And uh maybe some drop bears. So, I have also been the lucky winner of manifesto emails that could literally be put into

a coffee book or maybe just a really great novel of someone trying to take every ounce of my life and blast it to the entire world. Um, and after giving this talk the first couple times, it's been really interesting how many times I've gotten a cease and desist from random people who think this talk is about them. So, just for reference, if you ever think this talk is about you and you need to send me a cease and desist, you might want to look internally and figure out whether or not it is a you problem. Uh, so as far as uh who I am and who I'm not. So, not a lawyer, hired one. Uh,

one of the reasons this talk was born is it cost me $46,000 to get a protection order. I am not kidding. That is the normal average cost of obtaining one when it comes to cyber harassment. Um, I'm also not a therapist. I hired a seller one. Uh, it's something I highly suggest anybody who's going through this or a child who's going through this. Um, it's astronomically important for people to have somebody to talk to. And so I would lean instantly on a therapist versus a friend because sometimes you don't know what your friend's triggers are and you may actually cause them more harm by talking to them about things and it will end up not helpful.

So the definition of harassment in general is very interesting. So I wanted to actually make this version of this talk much more um audience involvement. So anybody here want to tell me what you would feel like was a cyber harassment to yourself? I will give you my 2004 black hat bag if you tell me what you feel like would be a considered a justifiable protection order of harassment. Anybody wanting to do it? Come on, Art. Do it. Love you. So, it is very interesting, right? If you feel unsafe, if you genuinely feel unsafe about something that someone is saying to you, you have every right to then tell that person to stop doing that. You have every right to

say I am not, you know, comfortable with what you're saying. In the same sense, if you have a friend who is posting things online or sending out emails or discord or however many thousands of ways you can send people messages now, if you find that to be uncomfortable, you have every right to tell them, "Hey, what you're doing I feel is toxic and I think you should stop." What people don't understand though is to then turn that into a court and a protection order, you do need a proponance of evidence that that is doing that. And that could be a lot of different things. And what's very interesting is it depends on who the judge is. So my case

was obviously very different than other people's cases. I also don't know if the judge that I had happened to have that happen in their life and that's why they were much more, you know, listening and reading over my case where someone else may say this isn't a big deal. So, as far as defining harassment, you need to find that for yourself and then decide what you're willing to fight for and stand up for. And that comes to yourself as well as what your people around you are doing. The thing I have heard the most throughout both of the cases that I assisted with as well as my own is that they think it is complete freedom of

speech to go online and to absolutely blast somebody. That is not true. Like if you were to walk into a crowded movie theater or where you're sitting right now and one of you were to yell fire and someone gets trampled on the way out, it absolutely is the person who yelled fire's fault. So, people need to pay attention to what that actually means as far as who got injured from the words that were coming out of your mouth or on text. So, this one's been a little bit interesting and it's changed um throughout from the first time that I gave this to now. So, from the first time that I gave this, one of the big

things is when this slide was created by me, I wanted to ensure I did not go into any details of how you would do this because I'm now just weaponizing anyone who's watching this. One of the things that I never expected coming out of this is that what if it is someone who actually set up your network for your business or your home and then you guys get in some sort of a weird argument. Maybe you say no about something, you set a boundary, and now they have all of your information. It is damn near impossible to prove that at that point. So, if I had a time machine, I 100% would go back to the ass hat that, sorry

for the whoever's listening, if you're children, um said that words are not a big deal and that, you know, the sticks and stones may break your bones. That at this point is not the way it works. Um, I know I meet with kids on a regular basis now throughout schools and scouts and all sorts of different events that words are they would rather get punched in the face by somebody than have someone dogpile them online. So, that is not a statement that should be made anymore if we've far outgrown that. So, this one is a new situation that came up um with me that was interesting. And um now that I know you guys don't

want to participate, we'll just So, imagine my surprise as I'm sitting at my house and I get served with a non-legal piece of paper that was super funny and it might as well have been in comic sands. Um, and that person was now claiming that I'm the harasser. Even though I was assisting somebody with a case, they are claiming I am the harasser. So now they're going out and they are spoofing my phone number. They're creating emails that are just my name. And they are going around and telling the entire info community that it is me that is doing it. The problem with that is once that lands you in a courtroom, it is now

costing you an exuberant amount of money to prove that you're not even the one that did that in the first place. And it is a endless battle that unfortunately as we get further down this line that is what absolutely creates that helpless mentality and soul crushes people. So that's the part where this community absolutely needs to start leaning on each other of the rule of if it's domestic we don't get involved has kind of gone out the window. When you are 100% aware that one of your friends or someone you work with is doing this type of thing and you don't open your mouth. you are just as much at fault as the people who are

doing it in my opinion because you are now not setting that line and that boundary and you are basically brushing under the rug where you can you don't necessarily have to cause a big drama llama over it but you can now turn around maybe to the person instead of having them spending their entire life savings in their 401k and assist them in getting them the help that they need to be able to get the case to where it needs to be. So these are snippets from the emails that I was receiving and my lawyer at the time was receiving. So you can tell from the bottom one it was somebody in our community. There is not a day in the

world that I will tell you who it is during the slide deck for many many reasons. One of which is I hope they get help and they come back. Um they were actually really a good person um in the beginning. So this is a situation where you're receiving these emails and what do you do with that? What do you do with this information when you no longer feel safe in any way, shape, or form because you are 100% aware that if your cell phone number is on your business card and your bill goes to your house, now everything is out there. So, you're looking at these little tidbits of information and realizing that these quotes may seem like just words to some

people. These quotes are what a judge looked at and was able to issue a lifetime protection order for not only me but also my if I have a future spouse and children and not minor children, my children in general. So during the entire process of when I was gathering up all of those quotes, all of the emails, when I was trying to talk myself out of making a coffee book by just actually, you know, redacting some things and submitting it to an editor, I was looking at this going, "What do I do?" Um, there's many, many, many people in this community that had absolutely no idea I was going through it. Um, and one of the reasons was I

didn't think anybody would believe me. I also didn't think that the words mattered or the large amount of stress mattered that was happening. I didn't think that what was going on with my child was really something that people would care about. Um, so I just kind of sat in idol and I stored everything I possibly could into a folder that I did not look at again. It wasn't until I had a lawyer take a look at it who stated to me that I absolutely had every right to get a protection order. So during that process though, that's where your money starts acrewing. And once that individual found out that I was looking to get a

protection order, they were then filing, I kid you not, around 20page emails to that attorney costing me around $350 an hour to read these manifestos. So that's where everything started mattering. I can say if I didn't have a child, I probably would have just stepped aside. But the fact that my son was also receiving letters, my son was also receiving um text messages on Steam, it became a I don't care what this takes, I'm going to continue to fight this and whatever credit card debt I have to go into, I'm going to ensure that he's safe for the rest of his existence. One of the biggest things you have to be careful about when you get this

protection order is the wording that's in it. My original protection order was worded minor children. So at any point my son would have had to go back and fight that fight again as he turned 18. So I made sure that it just says my child in that or children in general. I can tell you when this court transcript hit my inbox, I reread this over and over again just to be able to sleep at night because it was the first time I felt like someone actually understood what I was going through. And it was a complete stranger that was standing there like literally judging what I was doing. During this process, when I presented all the evidence at court, he

actually turned around, pulled out 8 to 10 books, laid them out on the table, and had to find where the quotes and the threats and the harassment matched the laws at that time. I got extremely lucky that judge was willing to do it. He took a lot of time to sit there and really figure out what matched where. Not everyone has that luxury. Not everyone's going to have that happen. So, the fun fact where I said he might as well have served me with comic sands. So, the top part is what is an actual protection order. If you ever have a friend or a family member that is trying to obtain a legal document to have

somebody actually stay away from them, it needs to look like the top piece of paper. The bottom piece of paper. And since I have moved, I will say where I used to live is what the grand wonderful Aone County of South Carolina will issue for $15. And they will claim that that is a no contact order. Fun fact, I was given one by someone who actually tries to drive me crazy. And when I laughed with the police officer on the phone, I said, "This is an illegal document." He goes, "I know." He goes, "It's hilarious that my tax dollars are used to serve people with that." So, what I did was I asked him, I

said, "How does one obtain one of these non-legal no contact orders?" And it was go down to the county clerk's office, you spend $15, and for the lovely tax money that we all pay, a police officer will kindly go to their house and serve them with that. So, the reason my signature is on that is I just served it right back to them because I thought it was funny. So, now we both have one. Merry Christmas. So, I'm the one who laughed cuz that top one is something that again, it took me an exuberant amount of money and time and evidence and getting it actually not forensically sound, but provable that it was from that individual. One of the things you

need to look at if you're being harassed and you really want to have that is you have to have already established that that's that individual's email. You have to already establish that that is that individual's account. And then you have to on top of that make sure your lawyer is willing to fight and prove that they were actually accessing it at that time. So it is extremely difficult to prove a harassment case. That is exactly why for infosc community to if you know somebody's doing it, you've got to reach out. You've got to do something from a non-legal sense because not everyone has the money to throw down to do this. So with that, this is a no funding and

lost hope case that I was helping someone with last year. This one was a very interesting situation when it came from I joked around calling it spy versus spy for a while. So it was a situation where someone was a business owner on a small main street. There's literally a hundred people in my town, give or take old town. And this person who owned the business every night would go home and would come back and every morning every single device that attached to her network that day would be blocked. So she's a very non-technical person. She didn't understand what was going on. She's hotspotting off of things. She finally calls me and says, "I know you

don't want to get involved because I happen to know the individual that she was pretty sure was doing it." She said, "I she was like at her wits end." And so I go up and I look and I log in and all the MAC addresses are blocked. So I go in, I change every password. I do all the things that they teach us to do. You know, mine is turn it off and turn it back on again because I guarantee you that was not going to fix the problem. So I go through and I do everything we're taught from a base level. I go home that night. I come back. Same thing. The next day I'm up there and I'm

actually working with her from my laptop because she was literally scared of what was going on. And this person was coming back and forth from her work front and back, front and back all day, war driving. And again, 100 people in this town, I promise you weren't getting any unique IDs going back and forth here. But every time that they were about 5 minutes out, 50 ft out or so, it was really funny cuz her entire internet would drop and as they would walk past it would be dropped and then as they would continue on, suddenly it would come back. There is not a single police officer in a small town who has no tech at all

background that is going to understand what's going on. And there is no world that I can stand there and even try to explain it to them because they now think that I am just crazy. So she's going through this and back and forth. She's taking photographs. She has emails. She has texts. She has everything that I would have assumed that I had. She goes into court. She has no lawyer. she can't afford one. He crowdsourced the infosc community. He was able to afford a lawyer. That lawyer said that every single piece of her evidence had to be forensically sound as if it was a dang murder charge. She tried she tried to get the notorized

letters. Her and I worked on it. Short of somebody out of a movie, you know, running up behind him while he's on his laptop next door changing things on her network, I'm not going to be able to catch this person. nor am I probably going to be able to do that. So, she sent that email to the court saying she was done. She absolutely was done. She could not take it anymore. Um, it was I actually got her permission to say this, but she did at that point need to seek help for an extended period of time somewhere else. She could not even be in her home because of the amount that she was fearful for taking her own life and

the amount her depression had gotten because she couldn't function just at a normal day-to-day basis. So, she sent this saying like, "I am done. I am out. Once she did that, she thought that's it. It would get dropped. They would stop. However, that person asked for that charge to be dropped, but only with prejudice, which means she can never charge that individual again with harassment. So, after that, it got far worse. She can never take him back to court. She actually shut down her business and moved her entire house, her husband, and her children to get away from it because she couldn't take it anymore. Then during my research of what was going on with my own case is when I came

upon this case. So this is where I really started having a big outreach on going out with children and talking to parents and finding out that my case as an adult already put me into a state of depression that my hair was falling out. Like there was multiple times that I couldn't really get out of bed in the morning but I had to cuz I had kids. And I find multiple cases of children ranging from the ages of 8 to 16 who have taken their own lives over cyber harassment. So as far as her case, it was a complete catfishing situation of a she was a little girl who had never had a boyfriend and there she was getting an

online boyfriend who absolutely was her world and she thought everything was fantastic. I highly suggest going in when I share the link in the next slide. Look at this person's what the mother has done because of what happened. She has created such a foundation where you can go through and actually get their assistance to go out and have these same type of talks with the schools and PTAs and other kids functions and honestly even with your adult friends. The fact that no one would ever think that a teenager would hang themselves over having an online relationship is something that maybe from the 50s to the 80s we thought this is fine like this is just words. What is going on now with

the kids is that they're getting harassed in school. They normally would come home and that would be a break for them. That would be a mental break. They hopefully have a good family or they have good friends or they can take a moment of silence to themselves. that's no longer a thing when you have a laptop and a tablet and Steam and various other things. My own son does not have Facebook for many, many reasons. He's a very sensitive soul and I just don't think that I need him to be dogpiled on that. He is on Discord. He is a gamer. The things that come out of his mouth on games I'm not very proud of. But like

we have had discussions actually about when they're all talking like about each other in a horrible way. Ensure that your friends do think it's funny. I'm probably one of the most sarcastic you will ever meet. But I do make sure that my friends like are not in a state when I say it. And if I do feel I've crossed a line, I make sure I check in with them. So I do give him that lesson of it's fine to be online and it's fine to do that with games, but you have to actually know who you're talking to and your friends and what type of influence you have on these people. So this is the foundation that she has

and the facts of what is going on. This was one of the best things that I found during my harassment case because it actually gave me a situation where I felt like I wasn't the only one who's had this go on and I also wasn't the only one who had the feelings about what happened. So, it's one of those things where you are in this state, you're going through something and you say to yourself, I'm done with this and you think you're the only one in the world that felt that way. when you f stumble upon this and I ended up talking to the mother and I talked to other parents in the cases and some of them didn't want

to be named for obvious reasons but one of them said it was fine to discuss it but it was an 8-year-old out of the Minnesota area that committed suicide over cyber harassment. They literally felt as a 8-year-old child they had no other option because they felt like their entire life had been dogpiled online. So that brings you to these are the statistics of what is actually going on out there not only with adults but with kids and we need to get ahead of it. We need to find some sort of laws that can wrap around this or some sort of groups that can assist. somebody can go out and take what this mother has already

started and take her to the finish line of you know creating more support groups of saying if you are seeking some sort of basic you want someone to get charged for harassment. They may not get charged for the suicide unfortunately but they could still get charged for the harassment. That is something that we could reach out as an infosc community and be able to start helping people do. There are things that are changing. I don't know if many people remember the case, but there was a case where a woman was constantly texting a man to kill himself. He drove off a bridge. She did get charged. So, it is coming around. But it's people who then speak out of it

and find out about it and they're willing to fight for it. And I promise you, it is ridiculously hard. I get called multiple times per month on different people's cases and I sit there and I listen and it's extremely triggering. But if I'm the only person that they have been able to speak to, I would never turn off the phone for that. So it may not be something that you think you have time for in your life, but make the time. The suicide rate for the kids, the fact that it is two times higher is something that a lot of people don't want to hear. They don't want to wrap their head around it. And so that's one

of the things that find a way when you're going in to talk to your own kids, maybe friends of kids, adults. I was there. Like I literally remember the final email that I got with that was the pushover for me. And the only reason I'm standing here today is because there happened to be a friend standing next to me who watched me fall apart while reading an email. I cannot tell you what would have happened if they were not physically present when they watched my face go from a normal happy person to white as a ghost.

So when the feeling helpless part catalog that evidence don't read it again I can tell you one of the hardest things about giving this talk because every time I do it I have to go back through mine. I have to go back through mine. I have to go back and look. I have to look at what was said or what was done. How much I'm willing to actually stand up here and say um I've had multiple threats that the entire manifestos will get released if I ever give this talk. Those manifestos have a wide range of falsified information in them, ranging from that I am an extreme drug addict to I abort multiple children. There are massive amounts of

false information in this that could be released. But I'm still standing here. And I'm standing here because of the fact that I know that that person standing next to me, that person who watched my face turn white, that person who is willing to fight for me at that moment, I want to be that person for someone else. I want to pay that forward and I want to make sure that other people feel comfortable enough to pay that forward as well. One of the other things that a big big thing when you're sitting in court that was very hard for me, anyone who knows me, I am a lot of a human being. I have feelings as the days are long and one of

the things I had to do in court is you have to sit there and be completely emotionless and all factual. What I learned later after that is that if I needed people to actually hear what was going on with me or what was going on with cases that I was working is I also had to be that way with other people. If I was crying, you would be appalled by the amount of people that wouldn't even listen to me and wrote me off as just being dramatic. So, I had to actually become this like extremely cold person if I'm working on this to be able to get this information out there. One of the other things that I did for

myself during this process that a lot of people were unaware even exists is FMLA can be used for your own mental health. I thought it was just for babies. Like I had absolutely no clue that if you were going through something in your life that you could take FMLA. Your work should be saying it but they don't. You have to research it yourself. You have to have somebody who tell you that. It is something that CEOs of companies should put out. They should absolutely tell someone if they are at a breaking point in their life, it is perfectly acceptable to take FMLA, take the time off that you need and to come back. I'm very fortunate that I have been

surrounded by amazing companies that I have worked for that that was available to me without a fight at all. Nor should it ever be a fight, but people do obviously have, you know, oh, you're taking three months off or what is it for? You also don't have to tell them what it's for. The other part is the turning to someone supportive. There are a crud ton of people in this room right now that I have turned to during this that have really helped me out. There are other people that actually saw me in a certain state and turn their backs on me and it put me in an extremely different situation. So I learned very very

carefully who are the people I can go and talk to, who are the people that I can feel supported by and who are the people that genuinely have no bandwidth to listen to what's going on. And that is okay too. That is one thing that I have learned that I have had to do for myself. It is okay to tell someone, I don't have the bandwidth to talk to you about this right now. I'm not going to be the best person for you. I'm not going to be the one who's going to help you through this, but let me get you to where you need to go. It's okay to not be able to be that person for someone. What's not

okay is to make them feel they're just being an overdramatic crier in the corner and leave them there. So the keeping yourself safe part is what is very difficult. So when I say that the justice system can work for you sometimes, yes it can if you have money. That's the problem, right? What do we do with that? Do I find a way to start a foundation for these cases? Do I, you know, start educating more people on how do we help each other so that the bankroll is not that high? I'm honestly standing up here telling you I don't know yet. That is not something that I have been able to figure out over the

years. The protective orders, I do highly suggest getting them if you have what they call, and I butcher this word every time, a preponderance of evidence. You can obtain a protective order. It might only be for 3 months. Your first round of protection orders you go into, it is temporary. If you can get a permanent one, you do need to sit there with a large amount of evidence that is forensically sound to a degree of that judge. What all of us sitting here considers forensically sound is going to be wildly different depending on the judge that's there and the lawyer that's there. So hire an attorney that has a cyber background or has cyber training

so that they can understand what you're looking for. As I've said before, definitely look into getting that FMLA. Take a break. It's okay. It's okay to take that break. Your job will still be there with that FMLA. And if it's not, probably shouldn't have worked for that company in the first place. They're not there to support you. The ones that's the hardest thing to keep yourself safe is do not block that person. Find a way to send those emails somewhere else. Find a way to maybe have a friend of yours buffer that account. Like when it came to the woman that came to me for her case with her network issues, I was kind of funny about it. I just

went ahead and bought her all new network equipment, kept the old one standing, and let him keep hitting that one all day long. It was great. I added so many different devices to that. He was so busy trying to figure out what to block. It was really fun for me, but she had a whole another network that apparently he didn't realize was there. So, you can find some joy in the spy versus spy sometimes. So, this is the biggest part of I redo the statistics at the bottom here because I really do want people to understand that this is not something that's happening to a few people. This is happening to a lot of people around

us every day. And everyone's going to handle it extremely differently. One kid being called overweight may take that extremely differently than someone who comes to me and says it or someone comes to my son and says it because my son will constantly throw the joke of something along the lines of I'm built for or I'm built for comfort not for speed. So like there's there's some kids that can take it, there's some kids that can't. So really paying attention to that cyber bullying and what any human being who's having it happen no matter their age range. And the biggest thing I have to drive home is speak up if you see someone doing something toxic online.

It is amazing to me on how many times I have had people tell me, "Hey, I saw something about you. I didn't want to tell you cuz I was afraid I was going to be the next fake Facebook post of them." And I always say to them like, "Well, did you tell them to stop?" public what what happened and they would say oh I don't I don't want to get involved I don't want to get involved in that and that's everything ranging from somebody stating where I work somebody stating where I live uh I've had somebody uh lovely call me a rapist online trying to get under my skin that's uh also been sent to my hacker families um I have had

that spread around town so that people come up to me and tell me that I can rape them any time like it has been endless for me on the harassment but The amount of people that I have had to help me and support me through it are my saving grace and why I'm standing here. And I promise you, you have friends in your group that are going through a similar thing in one way or another. They're just not probably speaking up about it because they don't want to cause drama. But these statistics are extremely real and they're going on all the time. One of the biggest things I did wrong was like the case with the foundation.

I continuously read and kept going back over and kept looking at the information. The girl that, you know, chose to end her life had kept going back to that account, had kept reading it. The parents didn't think, you know, at the time that that was really a case that was going to happen with her and they allowed her back onto that MySpace account, which then allowed her to see other things that she was rereading over and over again. I am standing here telling you without a doubt, it was not that parent's fault at all. You never know how someone's going to react to something. You don't know what's going to happen. So, we just do the best we

can with the cards we're dealt and the information that we have. For me, I went into a complete ball where I should have leaned on people that I knew could help me versus putting myself in a complete state of shutting myself off from everyone. I didn't attend conferences. I didn't talk to my friends. I just shut down. The other part that was hard was telling the wrong people. And then it's like you've got a double backlash coming at you. And my defense mechanism that my therapist took about 12 months to beat out of me was typically when someone would come at me. My defense was I would just tell them that it's absolutely correct. I am that person to try to get

them to stop and back off. What I didn't realize is the more I kept saying that I was correct. They are correct. That is me. It must be me. I was then creating that in my head that that absolutely was me.

So, the things I did right, one of the funniest things in my uh divorce was that I was told that I was obnoxiously happy and that was a problem. Apparently, they don't make pills to make you sadder. So, here I stand, the obnoxiously happy person that I am. I had to take that back. It was something that was completely gone. I don't even remember laughing or smiling during those times. I completely resonate with why these kids end up in the state they're at. If their brains are not even fully developed to make decisions, how are they supposed to now wrap their heads around the fact that this dog piling online and all of this stuff that

they're getting, the text, the pictures, all the things, how do they wrap their heads around that it will stop at some point or if it doesn't, it's okay, too. You can find other avenues of your life to bring that happiness back. I stopped apologizing for my actions and it was hilarious how many people called me a raging after. Like no one tells you when you set boundaries that like the boundary part's really easy. The maintaining the boundaries part is not easy. That needs to be taught to all people. And the best reply that you can have when you are getting harassed, as much as you want to stick up for yourself, my drill sergeant back in 2009 told me you

can't fix stupid. That is true. Do not argue with crazy. That is also true. just don't reply at all. However, I will never fault a human being for sticking up for yourself. If you have reached a breaking point where that is what is going to make you feel better when you feel like every ounce of your blood has boiled and you just need to scream, do it. That's acceptable as well. But understand that everything that you fire back is going to be used as evidence on both sides. So, make sure you don't accidentally become the harasser as well. I personally say start with a message that says stop sending me these so that you have it documented that you did ask

somebody to stop doing that. I don't ask people to use my you know government tax dollars to serve me with a comic sands piece of paper that says to not page them that is also in that paper. So the things that I wish I still knew is when are these laws going to catch up and how do we make that happen? The amount of people sitting in this room that probably know someone in law enforcement is probably high. Can we talk to them about it? Can we ask them? Can we see what happens there? The other part is is be careful with the lawyers that you hire and understand that they're also going to get triggered

by this. If you ever have talked to a divorce lawyer, I guarantee you they get a death threat on a regular basis. It is absolutely asinine, the lawyer that I am friends with and have used for this case. You're late, Steve. way to show up. So late, you have to sit in the front now. Why? So, one of the things with the lawyer, he actually showed me some of his. It was absolutely insane. I mean, he was being told how much of a ratcheted human being was, a soulless prick, uh, that he should die and burn in a fire. So, when you are looking at these harassment cases and you're talking to these lawyers, understand that they have a

heart in this, too. So, make sure you do tread carefully and you are not kind of putting them in a position where they also don't feel heard. Like, let them know, hey, I know you get these messages. Like, what could we do to really tie this together and get people help? So, this is kind of the worst thing I've ever had to say to multiple people. This is a long fight. If someone starts harassing you online, I guarantee you it's going to be a while. I hate to say that, but it really is because you've got to find their endgame. And most people don't have one. The endgame is trying to get me not to stand up here by

serving me with crazy pieces of paper. The endgame is calling me ridiculous accusations to try to get me to not stand up here. It's not going to end. I know that. Every time I get up here, it also backlashes online. I'm okay with that. But understand, if someone is doing this to you online, it's not a short thing. So, definitely find the help. Definitely find that support. The other part is if you know someone is crossing that line, if you see somebody put something in a Discord chat, say something. You're not being a drama queen by saying something. You're not being a drama queen by standing up for the values of the community. The other part that Noobs is wearing a

wonderful shirt for, I knew I was going to get to. See? So if you can't find peace with what's going on, if you can't take that step back, if you can't say I know who I am, I know I did not do that. I know that that is not my past. What this person is doing is I'm going to set it aside and you find peace with it and you walk away. One of the things that was said to me during my process was at some point you have to be able to accept an apology that you're never going to receive. And that's how you can find peace with it. If you're me and you're the queen of

sarcasm and you have somebody start spreading around a conference that you do masturbation racing and one of your friends calls you and yells at you because they say that they were involved in said race and now they're part of the rumor. You buy them this shirt. Stand up noobs. You buy them this shirt and you make them wear it to a conference cuz they yelled at you for a rumor that was not true. [Laughter] I have I did not cheap out on the cotton for that shirt. So, you can find jokes in it. You can find a way to get through it. It will, like I said, it will not stop right away. It will not stop for these kids

right away. And what are you going to do? Take away a 16-year-old cell phone so that they, you know, go back. I would love it. I would totally take my kids and live off-rid. And like, seriously. Although, as a when I first had children, I thought about teaching my son that green is red and red is yellow just to mess with them. I don't recommend that. So, this is one of my favorite quotes ever. And hold on to it. Like, I seriously have those moments in my life where I am so angry at someone and I want to say that I hate them. But I'm telling you right now, my internal hippie just won't let me do it. Like,

that is a quote that you can live by end over end. I promise you that hating someone is not going to help you. But it is okay for that moment to live in it. If you really are hurting that bad, live in that moment. Just don't have that take over your entire life. So with that, does anybody have any questions? I'll bring the microphone to you. So first of all, I'm I'm terribly sorry that you had to go through this and I thank you for giving for having the courage and and the fortitude to stand up and give this presentation. so that more people learn about it. You mentioned that it to paraphrase, if you

see something, say something. I get that. If I want to be an ally, if I want to help the people who are being hurt, like the businesswoman that you mentioned who has limited technical skills, if and I hope I'm I'm not intending to be derogatory. I'm just, you know, I think that's accurate based on what you said. How can I contribute? How can I help the people that are being hurt? How can I be a better ally? Honestly, I think what I would have really wanted initially when I was going through my situation is for someone just to ask me, "What do you need?" Like people forget that all the time. They give unsolicit advice right out the gate

or they give like this is what I would do. This is what would you know? And in reality, what a lot of people need to hear is what do you need or what do you need from me to help you do what you need to do? That's where I would start of what can I do, you know, to help you. And you can obviously offer something like in that case, yes, she's actually a beautiful artist. So, no, she has she is not technical, but she is extremely great at art, right? So saying to that person that that type of brain the way that she works I knew to say to her like what do you need from me

and what she needed for me is for me I work remote. I had worked remote from her store for a month. She needed somebody to be there. She needed somebody to help you know fix her network but at the base level she just needed someone to be there and then she was able to figure out what steps to take from there. But if someone is in a state where they are so manic, yes, it's not unsolicited advice if you show them the options. Hey, this is available to you. Did you know this is available to you? Those are where I would start with someone of making sure they knew what options they had that you

were there for them and that you can ask them what they need and give them a chance to tell you that. Cuz there's been times in my life where I have had a complete breakdown and all I needed was for someone to sit next to me completely silent and that helped. So, I would start there to follow up. You were late. You get no questions. It's not a question. I was going to say though to follow up on that what he just asked. I would say when you find yourself in a situation where you got friends going through this, one of the biggest things you could do is a don't participate in gossip, but b be there to

vent, somebody to listen to them, whatever. Something like that. I've been in this situation several times. So that's all I had to say. Was that a question? The slide says questions. It was a followup. It says it says questions, Steve. Questions. Well, I can ask you a question. What's your favorite color? Anybody else? Okay. I just want to mention one thing. There are a lot I mean I knew know some lawyers myself. There's a lot of good lawyer. But I think the legal profession in helping people have fallen down.

whether Democrats or uh Republicans and uh and I never hear a word virtually never a word from the American Bar Association or the California Bar Association maybe because they don't want to lose members but I I I think that's pretty bad and Washington DC itself has out of every 10,000 people about 7.8% 8% are lawyers. That's 780. In San Francisco, out of every 10,000 the same number, only about 65 about little over half% 65 are lawyers. So what's wrong with that situation? Do you see what I mean? Same number of people and you got over about 12 times as many lawyers in DC as here. So uh so that that concerns me. Be careful who you

get. That's why again as a lawyer because there there's a lot of ambulance chasers out there and a lot of lawyers should not even be they should be disbarred but they're being protected and that's why I concerned. Anyway, that's uh why I wanted to mention about lawyers. It's a bad situation for our country right now.