TAPE 1
Disclaimer: Some sniffs and snorts have been removed for brevity.
[00:00]
P: This is Patrick, how can I help you
J: Hey Patrick, this is Josiah from Huffing Post. How are ya?
P: Yes sir, I’m well. Thanks for calling
J: Well, thanks for taking the time. Before we start, I just want to let you know this is being recorded, however, um, this recording will not be released to the public in any way.
P: Uh hum(heavy breathing)
J: We’re just going to use it as a reference
P: I understand. I’ve done a few of these now
J: Okay, well I apologize then if some of these questions are a bit repetitive, but my first
P: No, I expect I’ll be going through the story more than once (laughs0
[1:00]
J: Ok. Alright then, my first question to you is “How has this group of people on the internet, on O&A forums affected your life outside of the internet. Let’s start there.
P: Well I mean, immensely. They’ve come to my house. They’ve videotaped themselves trespassing on my property in order to intimidate us. They’ve vandalized both our home and my motorcycle in just y’know the last couple of weeks here. They’ve left graffiti around my neighborhood within places they know I walk in between, knowing that I’ll see it.
They harass local business that they know I frequent trying to harass and annoy and intimidate the owners into making it too difficult to do business with me and ban me from the premises. They’ve impersonated female members of my gym and through anonymous emails accused me of taking spy shots of women while they were working out, hoping to get my banned from gym.
[2:00]
They have gone to uh.. cos I’ve done some work for the science channel as a contributor and they have gone to discovery channel and left anonymous false reports that I’ve sexually harassed female cast members or crewmembers while I was visiting the studios, which of course never occurred because all of the stuff was done remotely and I’ve never visited the Discovery studios in LA
Uh, you know I had to have a long conversation with one of Discovery’s lawyers about y’know because she needed to clear these accusations off her to-do sheet.
[3:00]
And I had to have a conversation like the one I’m about to have with you, with her, explaining the situation. No females associated with Discovery have ever had any complaints about me because I’ve never actually met one. (laughs) You know trying to get me kicked off that recurring television gig that I’ve had for a couple of years now.
They have sent death threats to my publishers, um.. yknow and fake reports about my behavior, non-existent misbehavior at conventions trying to get publishers to drop me and cancel my book contracts, or refuse to renew new book contracts.
[4:00]
They text me harassment every single day. They email me harassment almost every single day. They have sent fake food orders defrauding local restaurants to my house almost every single day. They have twice sent the police to our house, using fake police reports, um, including one episode that I would definitely categorize as SWATTING because at 11 o clock, 11:30 at night on a Thursday during Lockdown I answered the door just in my bathrobe to two uniformed police officers of Milwaukee County, or Milwaukee City with their hands on their guns demanding that I tell them where the children are!
J: (disbelief) Oh my god
P: These are – and this is not a full account. They harass.
[5:00]
They text and leave voice mails. They leave voice mails every day. I’ve gotten two voicemails today from “Unknown Email Server”, like a Text-To-Email server thing demanding that I go “Brush my piss yellow teeth”.
My family gets getting inundated with texts. My wife’s siblings keep getting texts, saying y’know “We have photographic evidence of Patrick cheating on Nikki and she should divorce him immediately.
Or the opposite. Texting my mother-in-law saying that your daughter is a whore and she loves giving bukkake by a circle of N-words. All. The Time. Non-stop for three years. It has never let up. It has never relented
J: Okay
[6:00]
P: And that’s not the online stuff, because you asked specifically about offline. And the online stuff is just as bad in some ways. And in some cases, even more damaging
J: Right. I definitely want to get into everything you just mentioned. One of the things you said is that they don’t just go after you. They go after businesses that you frequent. They go after your friends and family. They go after female acquaintances
P: They go after my colleagues in the science fiction and fantasy publishing industry. They’ve gone after reviewers who’ve left positive reviews of my books. They go after my twitter followers who say supportive things, or make it sound like they’re in my corner with all of this. They dox people. They’ve doxxed dozens upon dozens of people
[7:00]
Um, and then proceeded to text and try and intimidate them. They have found a good friend of mine who’s pretty big in our kind of incestuous little sci-fi community. He’s a photographer, and he’s a reviewer and he’s very well liked, and he’s completely harmless. And he deals with, and he struggles with depression and suicidal ideations, and of course they text him demanding that he kill himself.
J: Has this um…
P: (interrupting)
J: I’m sorry go ahead
P: And you know that’s on top of all the death threats they send me and all the rape threats they’ve sent to my wife. All the times they demanded that I kill myself. Um yknow. This is just constant. Unending
J: Yeah. Has this strained your relationship with any of these people? Is there anybody who’s told you “Patrick, I think you’re a great person. I’d love to work with you, but I’m sorry I can’t handle it”
P: Oh Yes. Of course. And I wish them well. And I don’t want this for anyone. I’ve been blocked on twitter and other platforms by people who see it coming and just don’t want anything to do with it. I can’t confirm, but I’m pretty certain I’ve been blocked by people who have fallen for it when some of these people have impersonated me in one way or another.
These are important people in my industry. We haven’t seen each other at a convention in 18 months now, since a lot of this has been happening. I haven’t had the opportunity for them to see me in person and come to me and say “WTF are you emailing me” and I go “No, that’s not what’s going on here.”
That’s usually where we reconnect and air out all our grievances but we haven’t had that personal connection for over a year and a half now. And the first opportunity I’ll have to see if I’m right about any of these folks, that I suspect that I am, having, through no fault of their own, fallen for exactly what these people want them to fall for. It’s not until December of the next Worldcon.
[9:30]
J: So some of these people actually fall for the impersonations and that sort of thing and then other people, they know its fake. They know its trolling but they still don’t want to associate with you because it’s just not worth it. Would you say that’s an accurate characterisation?
P: Not on my end at the very least. Not in a place where these cyberstalkers are actively trying to harvest the next victims
J: Right…
P: We’d see each other at convention or a book signing or something and there’d be no issue. We’d be sitting around in a bar having a few beers. Then there’s no issue. And it’s made it difficult for me. I want to be able to show my support to up and coming authors. I want to be able to show my support to reviewers and readers, and I want to show my support for-
And that’s what you do. You help to promote each other. You help to lift each other up. And now everytime I do, there’s that little gremlin at the back of my head going “Am I going to be [inaudible] the wrath of these fucking sociopaths on this completely innocent unsuspecting person
[11:00]
J: Yeah… So you said you were Swatted by these people. Can you give a little bit more background on when this happened and what they told the police to show up at your ouse?
P: It was last June. Milwaukee was still in lockdown
J: In 2020, correct?
P: What’s that? In 2020. So yeah, June 2020. Sorry, not two months ago, but June 2020. I would have to look up the exact date cos I don’t remember it off the top of my head. I’m pretty sure it was a Thursday night, and what had happened was that one of these people went onto Milwaukee’s local Craigslist page, and created a fake ad using my real name, using my real home address, using my real telephone number, and my real email address. These are things they’ve doxxed amongst themselves for 3 years now, used in all sorts of abusive ways.
[12:00]
But they created a fake Craigslist ad pretending to me offering up free sausage and pepperoni that i had made in my basement out of the bodies of black children I had kidnapped from the neighborhood
J
disbelief) What the fuck..
P: And then..
J
disbelief) I’m sorry..
P: No you heard me correctly, heh
J: Okay, where did they get that from? Is that like um..
P: They think grinding black children up into sausage is hilarious. It’s a recurring joke with them
[Transcriber’s note: But it is hilarious]
J: Do you know why it’s a recurring joke with them
P: (serious) Because they are terrorists and sociopaths who need to be put to death. That’s why. These are the worse people on the face of the planet. They are utterly remorseless. They are utterly amoral. They are racists. They’re white supremacists. They’re transphobic. They’re homophobic. They’re antisemitic. They are fascist Nazis. Every last one of them.
[13:00]
They are insane. They’re delusional. They’re obsessed. They have no redeeming qualities of any sort.
J: So…
P: They have no mercy. They have no remorse. They think cruelty is the funniest thing in the world. They have no sense of humor. They only have a sense of inflicting pain on strangers. That’s it. That’s their entire reason for existence. They do nothing else. They think about nothing else. They talk about nothing else. This is the whole… their whole lives revolve around this. I wish I was exaggerating anything I just said.
J: So… let me just get this correct. Somebody, I imagine, Hey let me come up with the absolute worst act that I can possibly thinking of. Kidnapping African-American children
[14:00]
And then doing what you just said… grinding them into sausage and that’s pretty much how it originated? There’s no reference or anything? They just thought let me think of the worst possible thing I can think of and then go on Craigslist and accuse this person of doing that. Is that inaccurate?
P: Correct
J: Okay, and then what happened. Somebody posted that on Craigslist and then…?
P: Someone posted it on Craigslist and then one of them – I’ve never been able to figure out who. But one of them, maybe the same person who posted the fake ad. O maybe one of the other members of this cyberterrorism group working in concert with the person who placed the ad. Then anonymously sent a tip into the Milwaukee police saying “Hey my god you’ve got a serial killer over on Oakland avenue”
J: I’m sorry, so you know the person who sent the tip in was an anonymous person from this group? It wasn’t just a concerned citizen who went on Craigslist and saw this ad.
P: The ad was not up for long enough to have been anybody but them. Only they would have known about it
J: Oh wow… Ok.
P: Because of the fact that they used my email address in the creation of the account that led to.. that they used in order to make the ad. And so I got an alert the second the ad was about to go up, and once I got that alert I contacted Craigslist. The ad was up for maybe 5 minutes. In Craigslist defence they did everything right. Their moderation team was on top of it immediately and it was not up long enough for anybody to do anything about it. Only they knew about it.
[16:00]
J: Okay, realistically speaking nobody really saw this. This was a manufactured swatting thing
P: This was a way for them to get around the anti-swatting laws. In the few jurisdictions which actually have anti-swatting laws almost all of them are specific in saying that in order to be guilty of swatting you have to call and impersonate somebody who is in a hostage situation.
J: Right, that makes sense what you’re saying. You can just post something that somebody else would call the police
P: They know goddamned well that what they were doing was swatting
J: Technically yeah…
P: They knew goddamned well that what they were doing was swatting. What they were trying to do was to get the police to assassinate me on my own porch. That’s what they were trying to do. And they protected themselves against the few laws that are on the books by using this little work around
J: Right. Okay, so somebody from there calls the police. Can you tell us what happens next?
P: (sniff) As I said, at about 11:30 at night or so, two Milwaukee police department officers showed up on my porch. My wife and I had been binge watching something and going through some bourbon because it was lock down and there isn’t a helluva lot else was there to do on a Thursday night?
And so (snort) I answered the door with a buzz going not really expecting the police, not really knowing what to expect at all, to find two hot head idiot officers with their hands on their guns, shouting in my face, demanding to know where the children are. Where are the bodies? What have you done? And I’m like who the fuck are you, what the fuck are you talking about? Come back with a warrant.
[18:00]
And the confrontation escalated to the point that my wife had to step in and go “Ok, you testosterone soaked idiots aren’t listening to each other. We are being stalked. This is a fake report. And she led them away and had a more deescalated conversation with them. Because I was about to fucking punch somebody in the throat. You don’t just show up to my door and accuse me of killing children. Like what the fuck. I don’t care if you’ve got a gun on you or not.
J: I mean, that’s a sort of second-by-second life or death interaction. How are you going to quickly explain to these people that you’ve been stalked for three years, and um…?
P: Well, it had been two at that point, but there simply isn’t any way to.
[19:00]
I mean, these guys are already there jacked up, thinking they were going to get a you know, that they were going to get a huge bust.
J: Yeah
P: And so.. yeah
And then they left, um, and I immediately called dispatch, and I’m sure that call is recorded somewhere. I immediately called dispatch and I was like “WHAT. THE. FUCK. WAS THAT”.
Heh. Y’know, really demanding answers. And then um… their supervisor later that evening, actually within about half hour. I mean, he was very attentive. He called me back, and we talked for a good hour about the whole situation. And he opened a case number. He opened an investigation. But being just a local city wide police department their resources and tech abilities are quite limited. They don’t have an unlimited budget for these sorts of things.
[20:00]
And since none of these people, to be the best of our knowledge, live in Milwaukee they don’t have jurisdiction over them anyway.
J: Oh, so even if they find out who did this, if they live outside of Milwaukee you’re saying there’s nothing they can really do.
P: The Milwaukee PD would have to transfer the evidence and case to the local police departments where the people live, and it would be up to that police department whether they wanted to pursue charges.
J: Did the police indicate to you whether they were going to pursue that, or y’know
P: They attempted to but you know, you’re dealing with anonymous accounts that was created using falsified email address, falsified phone number. Or stolen email address or phone number I should say. You could subpoena Craigslist if you want but they’re hiding behind a VPN.
[21:00]
So like, how many (snort)… They’re using burner emails so you need like-.
Even if the local police are invested in doing something about it, like say I’d been killed or grievously wounded and now they have a public relations disaster on their hands and they want to actually pursue it. You still need to turn it into a federal case in order to get the kinds of resources you need to prosecute across state lines.
J: Yeah… I see what you’re saying. Do you think maybe this one incident, if its sort of like an isolated incident they might not really be willing to go forward with using too many police resources
[22:00]
What do you think that these people have to do-
P: Oh but it wasn’t isolated. There were two other incidents where the police were sent to my house because of anonymous false reports filed by these people. Last November there’s an establishment, one of the local businesses that these people have been harassing for a year and a half. It’s a pub and restaurant called Hooligans, maybe four blocks from my house. They had a house. The fire was ruled an accident – it wasn’t like arson or anything. This group because they so obsessively track everything about me, and ever facet of my life, they knew within half an hour that Hooligans had a fire. And so, they sent anonymous tips into Milwaukee police department saying that I cased the fire.
J: Unbelievable
P: That I was seen running away within moments after the fire started. And so again, at about 10 o’clock at night, police show up to my door questioning me. They were much less confrontational this time because they have it on their record that these sorts of things are occurring.
And the police have come out after death threats were filed. That was more of a wellness check sort of thing. Yeah, my publisher Tor books got an anonymous email from one of them, 18 months, 20 months ago, I’d have to look it up. Saying “Hey just so you know I’m going to be murdering one of your authors at Summerfest today”
J: Oooohhhhh
[24:00]
P: I’ve already kidnapped his lesbian wife, and so yeah, my publisher reported that to the New York police department and then the NY police department contacted the Milwaukee police department and I had a officer out on my porch to make sure I was ok and Nikki hadn’t been kidnapped
J: Wow. What would you say is the status of these… I mean, I guess it’s pretty hard to do anything. They filed a police reported, opened a case, in case one of them was dumb enough to dox themselves or something.
P: Pretty much, yeah. That’s about where its at
J: There’s really nothing else they can do is there?
P: Not the local police no, but I continue to collect the evidence. I continue to save and screenshot every time they text me, every time they email me. I’ve saved all the voicemails, and this is all available. There’s thousands and thousands of them by now
[25:00]
J: Yeah, I can imagine
P: Just thousands of thousands of them
J: I just wanted to shift gears a little bit. I know that you filed a lawsuit, a civil suit against them in January of this year. Is this correct?
P: Yes
J: This started in 2018. What made you decide to finally take legal action against these people?
P: Because nothing else was working. They weren’t letting up. They weren’t getting the hints. The police both local and federal seemed either unable, or in the case of the FBI, uninterested. We were talking to an FBI agent about this last year, and she agreed that blatant criminal activity had occurred. These people could be charged with conspiracy or cyberstalking.
[26:00]
A number of other crimes. It didn’t yet rise to the level of seriousness that the Bureau would commit resources to. Not that she was unsympathetic, but she was saying I would not be able to get approval for this. Let me know when they’ve stolen more than a quarter million dollars or somebody has been killed.
J: Wow. So wait until somebody gets killed before they
P: Yes. Wait until they kill me – then I can open a case against them.
J: Wow. Alright. Well, how did your lawyers react when you explained this to them. Had they ever seen this sort of thing before, or was this
P: Not nearly to this extent. In fact, I dare so nobody has ever seen anything like this. Not to this extent. Not that other people haven’t faced months sometimes years of cyberharassment. That happens all the time and it’s a real and growing problem
[27:00]
But the simply clinical obsession that these people have with me is not something that anybody else has really seen. There’s certainly people out there that have had “A” stalker. Like an ex or something. And some of those cases have been extreme and gone on for years, and sometimes decades. But this gang stalking, this “Hey we’re just going to form a community of like-minded cyberstalkers who will randomly pick a person with the intention of trying to destroy their life and drive them to kill themselves, which is their stated, public goal. They’ve said publicly and proudly that the purpose of all of this is to destroy my career, ruin my marriage and drive me to kill myself.
[28:00]
That’s what every thing they’ve done to me and to my family and to my friends and to my colleagues is driving towards. They want death. They want to be the cause of a random stranger’s death. That is their ultimate fantasy. And they’re not alone. There’s a website which you may be familiar with, or maybe hopefully not, called Kiwifarms, and there’s an overlap between this group and the user base of Kiwifarms.
And Kiwifarms just a slightly larger, not so hyper focused.. Like they focus on a lot of different people, not just me personally. But that’s what Kiwifarms is. It is a cyberstalking website. It is a community of cyberterrorists and cyberharassers and that’s all they do. The website exists for no purpose.
[29:00]
And they keep a kill count of the people they have driven to kill themselves and they celebrate it.
J: Wow
P: They just had another one a few weeks ago.
J: Yeah, Near?
P: Yeah, it was a really famous, the video game guy emulator guy
J: Yeah, the emulator guy
[Transcriber’s note: No matter, how many times I rewound I could not hear Patrick offer the name of this really famous guy]
P: Yeah, so that is the goal. The only goal they have.
J: Wow, that’s pretty dark to be honest withchya. Did your lawyers tell you that this would be an uphill battle or an open and closed case
P: Oh yes. No, Well, it’s an open and closed case on whether or not crimes have been committed. It’s simply true that these people are criminals.
J: But they have to find themselves first, right
P: But, finding them. Identifying them. That is the uphill battle. And that is the battle that we’re fighting right now, because a lot of the laws governing the internet are 20 years behind and they never envisioned something like this. Privacy laws make this very difficult.
“270” which has been in the news off and on the last couple of years because Trump has been saying he’s going to get rid of 270 so he can sue whoever he wanted, which actually wouldn’t work out the way he thinks it would.
[Transcribers Note: I am not an idiot. He said 270 twice, but meant 230. ]
But yeah, that usually frees platforms from any sort of liability from any content posted by their users which in this case, like in the case of twitter, or facebook. If somebody goes on and posts a video (SNORT) of say the Christchurch shooting. Well that was the individual’s decision and facebook certainly didn’t condone it or know it was going to happen, or leave it up once it was up.
But with OnaForums.net, that website exists exclusively for no other reason than to continue to organise, plan and execute, and then brag about the outcomes of their ongoing terrorist campaign against me and my family. It was created after they got kicked off of reddit, by my efforts. It was created after they’d already been kicked off other servers and other webhosts in both Ireland, sorry Iceland and Russia because those hosts would not allow them to doxx people. Because doxxing is illegal in both the Russian Federation and the EU.
[Transcribers note: Iceland is definitely not in the EU, and scores a 95/100 on Internet Freedom. Posting publicly available personal data such as phone numbers, addresses is not illegal in Russia either]
(Cough)
They had to move four times and now they’ve moved again. Onaforums.net now redirects and they’re all doing their stuff on what is it, new.onaforums.net, .com, I don’t remember I have to look it up. They keep moving as every legitimate website, and every legitimate webhost in the world stops putting up with their bullshit, because their bullshit is not only dangerous. In most cases blatantly illegal.
This is a website created by a cyberstalker specifically to continue the illegal harassment campaign of one person. And yet, their counter side lawyers are arguing they deserve 270 protections
[Transcribers note: I heard it correctly again]
That their privacy and that their anonymity should be protected from me trying to figure out who they are so they can be deposed so we can figure out who the other members who’ve been committing all these crimes are.
J: Mmmm. Now-
P: Which is insane
J: I’m sorry
[33:00]
P: Which is insane. You’re telling the person who is responsible for all this, their privacy is more important than the privacy of mine, and my friends and my family and my colleagues? That they have been violating every single day for a thousand days. It’s insanity.
J: Yeah.
P: It’s insanity that they’re being allowed to argue that in court. It’s insanity.
J: Yeah, and as I understand, they started harassing their lawyer as well. You have several lawyers. Is that correct?
P: I have several and they have harassed every one of them.
J: In what way have they harassed them. Has it been sort of the same thing? Ordering food to their house? Leaving negative reviews on their.. whatever the lawyer equivalent of whatever review site thing?
[34:00]
P: It’s all of the above and I would not, I would respect the privacy of my various lawyers before sharing any of those details, but it is that and it is much more.
J: We’re not going to publish any information about your lawyers. Just so you know that. What sort of financial toll has this legal battle taken on you.
P: (snort)(sniff)
J: As I understand it you filed this in January if I’m not mistaken and they’re making it very difficult because as you said there’s a lot of legal grounds to respect their privacy, even though they’ve completely disrespected yours. How would you
P: We’re currently fighting them in both Wisconsin and California because of the nature of the subpoenas we’ve had to send
[35:00]
And this is not information I would want published, i would like this to be off the record, but as of right now we’re closing in on $100,000 worth of legal expenses, and that’s not including the fact that the person we’re trying to identify – Quasi101, the person that administers and owns the website. He’s incurred over $17,000 worth of legal bills in order to maintain his anonymity.
Even after we offered to keep him anonymous if he would just give his identifying information for the people who we really want. He refused that and he spent $17,000 on it
[Transcribers note: Real Ass Dude]
But the reason he’s done so, is if in California you bring a civil suit or subpoena and it gets quashed, then you automatically owe legal fees for the opposing counsel.
[36:00]
So there’s a very real possibility that if this last set of judges here can’t pull their heads out of their asses and see just how big of a problem this is. If they make a decision against us we’ll owe another 17 grand to the person who’s just been terrorising us every day for the past three fucking years. It’s the most insanely broken thing I’ve ever heard of.
I mean, I’m a boring straight white man whose run-ins with the law has been limited mostly to speeding tickets and parking tickets. I’ve never really experienced the judicial system other than a particularly unwanted divorce about 10 years ago. But you know that was a civil matter. So, the experience that this last
In fact, actually the lawsuit was originally begun in October of last year and it just took until January for them to collect all the evidence that they needed , papers signed and get everything actually submitted and filed. So, I mean we’ve been going on with this for months and months , and it just keeps getting more expensive
(sniff)
And now, it looks like- I mean, I haven’t given up hope but it looks like we’re not going to get the information that we need in order to identify and prosecute these people, and get the injunctive relief that we need to legally order them to stop fucking doing this. But I’m going to have to pay him for the privilege of him running a website dedicated to trying to drive me to kill myself.
J: So there’s a chance that the courts are going to take their side and make you pay them, is what you’re saying?
[38:00]
P: Yes. A very real possibility.
J: That’s unbelievable
P: Yes it is. Certainly not something we thought was even a possibility when we began this.
J: Wow… Wow.
P: And it’s all because we have a judge who’s… Judge Pro Tem in this case who said that after reading through the motions that he went and talked to his adult son, who said “Oh that’s just internet trolling “
J: Awww
P: So you’ve got a judge who doesn’t know fucking dick about the internet. Doesn’t understand the situation at all. Doesn’t understand the severity of it. Thinking its just harmless trolling like everybody goes through, when it actually is it’s fucking cyberterrorism.
[39:00]
J: So it appears that the people who call the shots and make the decisions don’t really understand the issues at hand, is what you’re saying?
P: In this case, not in the least. And he’s not the final judge to oversee this, it’s a different one. He doesn’t actually hear the case until later this month, and we’re hoping that person whomever it maybe will be a little bit more hip to what’s actually going on. And maybe they’ll read the actual goddamned filing
J: Right.. You said, that he had to ask his son. That’s correct. He told you that? Was this during the hearing?
P: He said it right out on the public hearing. Yeah.
J: Well that seems like grounds for appeal
P: Yeah, it really does doesn’t it.
[40:00]
J: If the Judge says I don’t understand the issue, I had to ask my son. I wouldn’t give up.
P: Is your son an expert on internet culture
J: Well, even if he is… and it’s not up to the son, it’s up to the judge. I don’t know.
P: Well then the question there is do we want to appeal. Yes. Could we realistically win an appeal? Yes, we believe so. How many tens of thousands of more dollars are we going to have to spend on that appeal? How many more months of this are going to have to go on? And how many more tens of thousands of dollars is the other guy willing to spend on the appeal process, when he knows that if he wins he gets all that money back.
J: Well did you expect him.. you said he spent over, how much? You said like $17,000 dollars.
P: He is currently $17,000 in the hole, according to his most recent legal filing.
J: Did you expect any of these people to have that money on them. I figure most of these people are not exactly cream of the crop people in terms of their careers. I don’t mean to insult people who don’t have tons of money but
P: Successful people do not behave this way. I am fairly certain this guy has maxxed out a lot of credit cards or taken out some loans or borrowed money from family or something. Most people don’t just have $17,000 lying around for a rainy day in case they want to fight a subpoena. It’s not something that happens
J: Especially, you know somebody who is engaging in this kind of scumbag behavior.
P: I’m having a little difficulty hearing you
J: I’m sorry. Can you hear me now?
P: I can yes.
[42:00]
J: I was just saying, I guess this is a good question for you. If you have a sort of image in your mind, the sort of demographic of these people in terms of what they’re like. If you were to doxx any of the – how do you think they’d be described.
P: Well we’re talking about fans of a shock jock radio show that has been off the air now for 8 or 9 years, so I don’t believe these are necessary bored teenagers down in their parents basement. These are people probably in their late 20s to their mid 40s, all men. Exclusively men. Almost overwhelmingly white
[43:00]
They’re white supremacists. They’re disaffected. They’re dissatisfied. They don’t feel like they have any power or community. While there they were the most hated and feared website on the 5th largest website in the world. And they loved that power, and one of the reasons they hate me SO much is that I took that away from them, after they spent an entire year trying to fuck up my life.
J: You got them banned, is what you’re saying?
P: I got the original /r/opieandanthony as well as dozens of others that popped up permanently banned from reddit.
J: Okay, It really blows my mind that this person just has $17,000 lying around. Did you expect that? Did your lawyers expect that? I figure that most of these people probably work dead end jobs. They’re not exactly really successful people. $17,000 is a lot of money.
P: $17,000 is a ton of money for anybody other than independently wealthy people. You don’t just have that lying around usually. Not without dipping into your 401Ks or other retirement savings, if you’re lucky enough to have that. Which is why I think its very possible that he found a lawyer, and that lawyer told him “Hey, this is a nonsense lawsuit. This is a nuisance lawsuit. Whatever money spend we can take it from them”. I’m pretty sure he’s gone enormously into debt over this. Of course, I have no way of knowing that for certain, but I’m pretty sure he’s put most of this on credit cards, or taken out loans.
[45:00]
Or borrowed money from someone in order to maintain this, with the promise to either himself mentally, or to family or friends or whatever that in a couple of months I’m going to get this all back.
J: Yeah, I can’t think of any other possible explanation either. Yeah.. that’s really a shame.
P: The other possibility is that they’re getting bankrolled by somebody. That’s not outside the realm of possibility.
J: Who do you think they could be getting bankrolled by?
[46:00]
P: There are a number of alt-right websites out there. There’s a number of alt-right provocateurs out there who would be happy to see this sort of thing happening. There’s hardcore 1st Amendment [inaudible] that maybe they could be potentially tapping into. I don’t know. I don’t have any specifics. I certainly don’t have any fingers to point and I believe it’s the least likely scenario. But it is possible.
J: Yeah… I just wanted to shift gears a little bit. I don’t have the tweet in front of me, but I do remember reading that you said something how you were in contact with certain higher ups, certain influential people that might be influencing certain congressmen or congresswomen, to end or limit Section 230, in order to prevent this from happening. Has there been any movement on this happening. Can you tell us if you’ve been talking to anybody.
[47:00]
P: I have been in contact with people, a couple of them out in California, who have some experience with this, who have been around the block on this. And are in contact with , not only their local legislators, but national ones as well. And, actually President Biden as part of his campaign, and part of his platform for President had to put out a very strong statement that our justice department and our administration will be looking at ways to prosecute cyberstalking and cyberterrorism and these sort of crimes.
They’ve obviously been focused on other things since January 6th so y’know, they probably don’t rise to the level of prosecuting the insurrectionists.
[48:00]
But at some point I would like to think that they’d be able to have a conversation with someone whether it be my local Congresspeople or Senator Baldwin for example. I think its still a possibility.
J: I’m sorry, Senator Baldwin is your senator, or representative?
P: Tammy Baldwin is my senator. My other senator is Ron Johnson so he’s less useful than tits on a board.
J: Alright alright. I appreciate all your answers to these questions. I just have one more for you Patrick, and it is “If you could go all the way back to 2018 when this first started happening, and you first got on these people’s radar” what would you do differently in dealing with them?
[49:00]
P: Not a single thing. Not one tweet. Not one text. Nothing. I’d continue to go after them with everything I’ve got for as long as I can until they are done. And until some of them are in prison. And I will not rest. I have done nothing wrong. They picked me randomly.
J: You said they picked you randomly.. Hello?
P: I’m still here.
J: You said you’d done absolutely nothing wrong.
P: I said I would do nothing different whatsoever.
J: Wow
P: I have done nothing wrong at any point. They picked me randomly as a target just as they have done to a dozen other people before they found me, thinking I was just going to be an easy punching bag for a little while, and they were fucking wrong.
[50:00]
J: Mmmhmm. Yeah. Alright, well that’s all the questions I have for you Patrick and I definitely appreciate the time in answering all my questions. That’s all the questions I have. We’ll obviously show you the piece before it goes public, we’ll let you comment on it. There were definitely some things you told me that you don’t want to be publicised, and we’re definitely going to respect that.
P: The less said about the lawsuit until its resolved the better, especially as far as the figures involved. I guess I wouldn’t be so worried about letting others know how much HE has been willing to spend on keeping his identity secret. And the fact that there’s a chance that the courts may side with him and say “Yeah, this guy that runs this cyberstalking website, you owe him the equivalent of a small car”
[51:00]
J: Right, well this article is probably still more than a month out. It’s not unrealistic to think that the lawsuit either will be concluded, or y’know. I think the lawsuit will probably be concluded by the time this article comes out, and we’re definitely going to keep the figures that you mentioned completely silent. We’re not going to make any mention of that. But I appreciate the insight Patrick, and I appreciate you taking the time.
P: If I may ask, how did this all come up on your radar at Huff Po in the first place
[52:00]
J: It was actually just a few days ago, or maybe I should say about a week ago. We were going after the suicide of the emulator guy, Near? We were sort of looking into the services the owner of Kiwifarms, Joshua Moon, I’m sure you’re aware of him. And I guess one of the services he sells to monetise what he does is he offers webhosting to sites like Onaforums. So I think that one of the people on our team sort of went down the rabbit hole. It was worth making a story out of. This article is still in its very beginning stages.
P: How long would you expect it to be? I’ve published pieces for the NY Times and The Hill before, so I have some idea how this process goes.
[53:00]
J: How long in terms of how long it until its out, or how long will the article be?
P: Word count, like how long of a story would you expect it to be.
J: I couldn’t tell you that. It honestly depends on how interested my superiors are with it. We’re going to have a meeting after I get off with you, probably tomorrow morning. I’ll have to get back to you on that, but we’ll definitely keep in touch. But I’m happy to answer any questions that you have.
P: I’m good, just keep me in the loop. I’d appreciate it.
J: Absolutely. We’ll definitely keep in touch. And Patrick, I hope you have a great rest of your evening
P: Alright, thank you for your time today.
J: Alright, take care.
P: Bye now.
J: Right Bye
