Answer: I had thought Linus had ghosted me after a brief exchange post-Shenzhen. After his show, I looked and found the emails I'd thought I'd sent stuck in my Drafts folder, he never got them so could hardly respond. That part was 100% my fault, I’ve apologized on Twitter and apologies to him and his wife again here. It was perfectly reasonable for him to present those emails showing as much, and any backlash over that is on me. Again- this part was not a “misunderstanding”, I don’t waffle or weasel- it was a mistake, and that mistake was mine and mine alone.
I saw that broken email chain in the context of my extremely uncomfortable interactions with Linus in Shenzhen, which was unfortunate.
On his show, Linus showed the emails with his wife CC'ed- before and after that night- as he should have. But for his own reasons, he did not show the chat logs from that night with the actual hotel invitation, and our conversation where I expressed how uncomfortable I was with what he was asking me to do. I’m going to respect that choice for the sake of not escalating the situation further. The chat that evening did not include his wife, and her sudden exclusion from the conversation was a huge red flag even with someone I had every reason in the world to trust. It was almost 10pm, there were places open within a few meters of his hotel front door, he was very, very insistent. It sounded at the time like if I didn’t do this for him, I would not get access to Floatplane.
At the time I didn't have anyone I could ask to chaperone me available and every alarm bell in my head was going off warning me not to do this, and every other alarm making me worried about what it would cost me if I didn't, if I would ever get my channel back up and running again. It was exactly like some Cosby/Weinstein business from start to finish- this hotel play was their exact MO. I'm not timid or paranoid, I know a lot of guys in tech YouTube, and anything like this would basically be unthinkable, I could never- ever imagine Hacksmith or Allen Pan or Joel Telling asking something like this- I’d sooner believe they’d grow wings and fly. Although lesbian, I generally have good experiences and interactions with men and while I exercise some caution due to the confusion my appearance can cause, I’m hardly paranoid about ordinary interactions- but this went well beyond that.
I’ll admit it did eat at me quite a bit, the feeling that I missed out because I would not comply with that demand, something like that puts a question mark next to all future interactions. What would have happened if I’d gone? I’ll never know. When I brought it up later, his response was to attack me- sure ok…maybe just defensive, but those attacks- blaming me for voicing my discomfort, were periodically repeated by his fans- culminating in the [4chan post](
https://boards.4channel.org/g/thread/88067924/linus-trovalds-tried-to-rape-naomi-wu).
Admittedly, people talking about it being ok to rape me- I didn't take it very well. I’m a person, not a persona- there’s some heavy stuff there and I’m not made out of stone, being blamed for what happened in Shenzhen, and Linus sitting it out so I could take the blame- that was a bit much, and this was not someone who expressed the slightest bit of empathy that his intentions may have been misunderstood while his fans came at me. Which again, discrediting and blackballing the people who did not comply or went public is part of that same Cosby/Weinstein playbook. People in power do this- this is how the game works, they aren’t above it or too busy or special for it. Other people who follow similar patterns of behavior are not blameless. It’s not tough, no matter how pure your intentions, don’t mirror the behavior of sleeze bags if you don’t want people thinking you’re a sleaze bag.
I think Linus and I agree on the facts of what occurred- just disagree on what was intended or whether it was ok to create a situation like that. From my perspective, post-Cosby/Weinstein, late-night hotel meetings have gone the way of stewardesses in hot pants, and office parties at stripclubs- you might want it, it might be more convenient for you, but if you have a legal/HR/PR department, they’ll scream at you not to have a meeting unless you can do so under appropriate circumstances.
If you choose to go ahead anyway, and the optics are shit- managing your reputation and the accompanying fallout is no one's job but yours. I look after my safety and my reputation- and if anything had happened at that hotel- all the same people insisting it’s a totally normal way to do business would now be laughing and saying of course I expected sex or I would not have gone to his hotel at night. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t- and no, I don’t owe him secrecy if he puts me in that position.
If you sympathize with Linus because you can imagine the same thing happening to you, that's unfortunate. Better to imagine being the sort of man with the integrity never to put someone in that position, who would find the idea of using a power imbalance to intimidate a person in a vulnerable position repulsive- not an elite privilege to covet and defend.It's very simple. If you can’t offer a meeting at an appropriate time and location- just apologize and say you "won’t be able to have that meeting, let’s Zoom instead". There’s no reason to do otherwise these days. No one needs to risk either their safety or their reputation, and it’s unprofessional to put it forward. If you disagree, remember what happened here, and remember no one owes you their silence.
For now, I’m going to respect Linus’s wishes to leave it at that- he has a family, I’ll be damned if I’d want my kids Googling something like this one day so his decision to stream it versus sort it out over email was…a choice. No matter what Linus actually intended that night- that’s not on his wife and kids, who this will inevitably impact. The more I respond, he said/she said, the more people will claim it's about chasing clout, so I’ve made my Twitter private for the time being so as not to benefit from the engagement and attention and won’t be hitting back with a teary dramatic YouTube video showing receipts or anything like that. Whatever happened between Linus and I, it won't be resolved via entertaining you with ongoing public drama.
As I initially said, the choice I was forced to make that night made me very, very uncomfortable and gave me a lot of doubts. And- my own serious mistakes acknowledged, it still does.
