Beware of the Dark Corners
A Five-Month-Long Interaction with #FreeBritney Forcibly Exposed Me To The Decrepit Fringes of Social Media
*I’ll be referring to what is now known as X, as Twitter, throughout this article. Additionally, disturbing topics will be discussed. Please, read with caution.
What a Way To End A Summer
It was supposed to be a mundane late-summer day. Standing in my living room with two NYPD police officers who were dispatched to my residence, was something I couldn’t imagine. How did an ardent anti-police brutality activist with her own traumatic history with law enforcement get here?
A couple of months prior, I cut off contact with someone I’ve become acquainted with on Twitter — or X. We both were a part of the #FreeBritney collective. He confided that his father is a far-right Christian, who refuses to accept that he’s gay. He portrayed himself as being the most progressive-minded person in a family of bigots. He masqueraded as a humanitarian with beliefs that aligned with mine. He grossly misrepresented himself. Little by little, his mask fell off.
His impulsiveness and disregard for my boundaries overwhelmed me. Another troubling aspect that grew to levels of madness I could no longer ignore was his obsession with celebrity culture. I expressed my worries to my mother and sister. My mother found it odd I was so invested in a person I’d never seen face-to-face. She empathically stated, “Just block him”. My sister who spent her millennial teenage years on LiveJournal and in AOL chatrooms understood what I was going through. She was disappointed a seemingly positive connection soured and advised to withdraw quietly. Interact less and less, until there’s no communication.
I subtly put my sister’s advice into motion. I didn’t want to raise any suspicion. The plan went kaput after he didn’t take my boundaries into consideration. I told him my family cat was in the last stages of his cancer battle. We going to euthanize him. I was upset about it. Instead of allowing me to process what was going to happen, he sent me a tsunami of celebrity updates. Things went from zero to a hundred. I told him in a voice message that we needed to cool off. He kept going. In my final voice message, I wished him the best and blocked him on everything.
I thought that was going to be the ending of it. About a month later, newly created accounts followed me on Twitter and TikTok. I suspected it was him. More strange accounts started hurling random insults. I blocked the accounts, but it was like whack-a-mole. The time he took to create new accounts to frequently harass me, showed how mentally unstable he is. The final straw was when he distorted a situation he knew about to harass me. After I blocked him, he trolled my tweets with written abuse.
He was escalating. I didn’t tell him exactly where I lived, but the unknown terrified me. He lives in a home with multiple guns. I thought if I found out his mother’s phone number, I could talk to her about his behavior. I was frightened and desperate. I wanted to be left alone. I had his mother’s full name. I found a phone number through a Google search. A man answered the call. He identified himself as his father. He was rude and not at all concerned about what I was telling him. I told his father I was getting the police involved if he didn’t address his son’s depraved online activity. He hung up on me. I called the police department in their locality. I was told that I needed to make contact with law enforcement in my city.
I called 3–1–1 for guidance on what I should do to protect myself. As soon as I mentioned that I was being cyberstalked by someone who lives in a home with multiple guns, the call center employee immediately patched in emergency services. I requested for police officers to be dispatched to my home. Walking the police officers step-by-step on what happened was embarrassing for me. To add an extra protective measure, I was advised to deactivate my Twitter account. It’s exasperating I had to initiate a process with law enforcement over a five-month-long social media correspondence.
While in hiding, I uncovered his twisted Twitter activity that takes place on the platform’s fringes — which occurred by complete happenstance. It made me question everything about him and what he told me about himself. I felt violated that he infiltrated my life.
Land of The Lost
I mostly followed the #FreeBritney movement on the peripherals of social media. I grew up with Britney Spears. As a foster child, seeing a poor girl from Louisiana become a Pop Princess did something for me. I felt for her on a deeper level when she was abused by the Californian judicial system and had her children taken from her. What she survived had similarities to my upbringing.
I began interacting with her fanbase in late 2022. I was in a life slump. I’m currently on a medical leave of absence from Columbia University due to a traumatizing stalking ordeal. I developed agoraphobia and depression. The student who stalked me has since graduated but dealing with the psychological ramifications will take time. Perhaps, this made me susceptible to the mess I eventually found myself in.
I gained new followers. I was engaging in a Twitter thread when I received a direct message. This user wanted more information about what was said in the thread. This led to a message exchange that lasted for an hour. In the days following, the correspondence continued. This is how the cyberstalker found his way in. I told him the backstory of how I became a Britney Spears fan and my family history. He laid bare that his father has far-right ideologies, which he pushed back against. My family lineage isn’t far-right, but it’s high society spanning over generations. My mother committed class suicide because she refused to follow the unspoken norms.
There was a split within the Britney Spears fanbase. One side is convinced that she regained complete control of her life when the conservatorship was terminated. On the other side, there’s suspicion surrounding Britney Spears’ overall autonomy because of the sealed care plan.
My personal perspective mostly aligned with the latter. No, I don’t believe in the outrageous conspiracy that Britney Spears is cloned or condone people calling emergency services to conduct a wellness check on her. The cyberstalker and I laughed at the ridiculousness of the conspiracies. We often referred to her powerful testimony. If the laws were bent to put Britney Spears into a conservatorship, why is there a care plan? If the conservatorship was built on a deceptive foundation, then nothing else applies after its termination. To date, Lou Taylor or anyone from the conservatorship-era management team has never been held accountable.
I was made aware of a private Discord server that he and others were a part of. It was created because of the split within the fanbase. He revealed that he was doxed when the split first occurred. I had my own incidences with “the other side”. With one incident in particular, I expressed concern if Cade Hudson could truly serve Britney Spears’ best interest because of his previous sexual misconduct allegations. A fan called his accusers “liars” and berated me. This admonishment came at the cost of survivors who came forward.
Unexpectedly, the cyberstalker complained about users on the Discord server. He showed me problematic screenshots of transphobia and far-right conspiracies. I urged him to leave the Discord server. He claimed he was afraid they would turn on him, or dox him. I suggested we start our own Discord server that would be a safe space for marginalized groups and those who were reluctant to engage in the “Is Britney free or not?” discourse. He created the Discord server. I tweeted an invite link. That’s when everything blew up in my face.
The cyberstalker informed me that the ringleader of the problematic Discord server was alerted to the invite link and was making vitriolic, classist assumptions about me. I wanted to confront them but he instructed me not to. I told him not to show me any more of what they were saying about me if I couldn’t confront them. He proceeded to send me more screenshots of what was said about me — completely disregarded my request. For that, I blocked everyone from the Discord server on Twitter, and tweeted screenshots of what was said about me.
“I actually see why a Bronx girl who came from nothing but thinks she’s IT all because her mother came from old money”. (sic) — The Ringleader of the Discord Server
The cyberstalker sent me a barrage of direct messages demanding I delete everything. I reminded him that I asked him more than once not to send me screenshots of what they were saying about me. He used emotional blackmail by bringing up that he was previously doxed. According to him, I didn’t care about what possibly could happen. His anger toward me soared when he was banned from their Discord server. We decided to move on and focus on our new Discord server. He claimed he understood how hurtful it was to have my upbringing weaponized against me.
Over the next few days, he hitched a plan to expose everyone on the Discord server. He said how everyone conducted themselves privately was worse than I could imagine. He had to figure out who was the best person on Twitter to send the screenshots to.
People were left aghast when the screenshots circulated on Twitter. The sentiments expressed were a venomous deviation from the post-conservatorship discourse. A few defended this abhorrent revelation, but most wanted to distance themselves from the perpetrators. In hindsight, the cyberstalker didn’t leak the screenshots to avenge what was done to me or as a stance against bigotry. It was an act of retaliation. How dare they ban him from their Discord server.
Who are you, really?
Our new Discord server was small but active. I shared court documents that fans were generous enough to purchase. I wanted to cultivate a welcoming environment that wouldn’t cause further derailment to what we wanted to achieve — honoring Britney Spears’ testimony. She wanted everyone involved in the conservatorship held accountable.
The cyberstalker and I continued to message privately on Twitter and Discord. I empathized that I didn’t want to be entrenched in celebrity culture. I wanted to focus only on Britney Spears’ legal plight and important issues. He honored this boundary and asked me before sending celebrity content. We used to message each other for hours on end about human rights, a mutual hatred for misogyny, pop culture history, and fashion. I enjoyed that we had theories and perspectives on a multitude of topics.
I want to focus more on what’s around me and myself. I don’t wanna get too into the celebrity stuff. (sic) — Me to the Cyberstalker
As time went on, he disclosed how unhappy he was living with his father. Allegedly, he moved back home because of the pandemic. Growing up, his father was verbally abusive and disrespected his mother. His parents refuse to acknowledge his depression. Also, his father is obsessed with religion and far-right politicians. His vulnerability made me open up about how lost I felt since going on a medical leave of absence from Columbia University and felt like a social pariah as many Title IX survivors experience.
He messaged a screenshot of an Instagram memory about police brutality as reassurance of our aligning views. I shared some stories from my activist days and expressed how I was inspired by revolutionaries of the past, such as Fred Hampton and his Rainbow Coalition. He seemed open to learning from me. I explained the pitfalls of performative activism and empathized actually doing the work. I drove my point home in a direct message, “I rather an honest bigot than a performative white savior”. (sic)
The breakdown of our online acquaintance happened over time. The time we spent on our Discord server about Britney Spears’ legal battle waned. The cyberstalker stopped honoring my boundaries about not inundating me with celebrity gossip. One time, in particular, he expressed adoration for Jeffree Star and chalked up his racism to being something of the past. I told him I used to be a fan of Jeffree Star during his Myspace era and appreciated the honesty in reviewing make-up brands, but didn’t want to hear about him because of what came to light. This didn't stop the cyberstalker from messaging me video clips of Jeffree Star podcast interviews. I found myself in another situation putting my foot down about him sending me Clown World content because it panders to the alt-right. He claimed he was unaware — even though I told him more than once.
The cyberstalker told me that he didn’t want to live with his father anymore. His parents constantly argued. He told me his mother threw his father out of the house because a gun fell out of his backpack. I felt sorry for him. The accusations about his father made me fear for his safety. I sent him weblinks of resources and urged him to go to his local LGBT Center. He wanted to get his real estate license. I encouraged him to pursue it. He never followed through or took any steps to make his life better. But, he did always find time to flood our direct messages about celebrities. I had my own life to deal with and engaging him became draining. It was a slow boil that led to the final blow-up that made me block him on every social media platform.
He didn’t seem to care when I told him about my cat being at the end of his cancer battle and would be euthanized within days. I drew this conclusion because even after telling him I needed to focus on being there for my family, he sent his usual impulsive stream of messages about celebrities. I asserted I didn’t want to hear about Taylor Swift because of her relationship with a disturbing man who gets off on seeing Black women in pain.
Me: I’m concerned about her boyfriend. I was reading about it last night & watched TikTok videos. You even showed me what he said about Ice Spice. I rather not hear about Taylor Swift right now. (sic)
The Cyberstalker: Oh yeah I saw that. I think it’s messed up but I can’t really do nothing and I’m not gonna quit supporting her over that. (sic)
I tried to explain all he had to do was say he respected my feelings and move on. He reasserted his parasocial allegiance to invalidate a serious issue I raised. The more I tried to explain this to him, the more he put his foot in his mouth. I told him in a voice message I interact with Black women daily and have a much older biracial half-sister who raised my niece — a young Black woman. He replied, “I don’t get into all that race stuff.”
Moreover, he wasn’t fazed that his stance made me look at him differently. The mask completely fell off. I was shocked that it took me this long to figure out that this was the real him. Maybe the signs were already there and I excused him subconsciously. Bell Hooks once wrote, “Conversion empowers; judgemental assaults alienate”. I thought I could educate him on very important societal problems to help him on his journey. I found out the hard way he resorts to argument distortions when he’s uncomfortable discussing how his favorite celebrity tried to sanitize the image of a racist.
I can’t even begin to describe the madness of what he did to me after I cut him off. He knows that I’m a stalking survivor. I already survived the destructiveness of a stalker as a Columbia University student. Not knowing what the cyberstalker was going to do next kept me on edge. I was fearful he would find my family members on social media to harass them. I didn’t want my lapse in judgment to affect my loved ones.
He barged into my life like a mad cyclone and punished me because I severed our lines of communication. The fact his parents aren’t concerned that he’s doing this to me, tells me that his deranged behavior will continue to be unabated or even worse: escalate into physical violence if he feels anyone crosses him.
Where Empathy Goes to Die
I first heard about Discord when the savage murder of Bianca Devins made headlines and #RIPBianca trended on Twitter. Her murderer posted photographs of what he did on a Discord server. To this day, her mother receives photographs of the murder and memes mocking her daughter’s death from anonymous people. Such malevolent acts showcase the turpitude of social media users.
The cyberstalker revealed as a high schooler, he had over 100,000 followers on Discord. Allegedly, he fought against racism and defended users against bullying during his heyday. Being a closeted gay teenager allowed him to empathize with marginalized Discord users. He claimed that he didn’t keep in contact with most of the people he met on Discord or the Minecraft community. Who knows if any of this is even true? Before I involved myself in the online #FreeBritney movement, I wasn’t a Discord user. He taught me how to use Discord.
It’s basically standard to be racist and homophobic in that community. — The Cyberstalker on Discord’s toxic culture
I deactivated my main Twitter. I laid low on my new account. Selena Gomez was a trending topic because she released a new song. I was curious so I clicked on the topic. Shockingly, I saw a newly created Twitter account with the handle @selupusisadog — which had the same writing style as the other troll accounts the cyberstalker created — harassing Selena Gomez fans. It was viciously racist, misogynistic, and hateful. The account had five followers. One of the followers made me suspicious. After a few days of observation, the suspicious account made a reference to someone calling the police and deleted it within minutes. I knew it was him. The account has content that features gore, racism, homophobia, glorification of Nazism, Islamophobia, transphobia, and rape jokes. He’s also pretending to be a teenager.
It dawned on me that the cyberstalker made an account on Twitter to troll the toxic Discord members he exposed. I searched our Discord messages and found a screenshot with the troll account’s username. I typed in the username in the search bar. The search returned the account under a new username. This account is impersonating a woman and interacting with the members of the toxic Discord, as well as others from the Britney Spears fan collective. I looked through the followers and found a handful of accounts I suspect to be him.
I conservatively estimate he has at least fifteen accounts on Twitter with different writing styles and overall personalities. Is this a man with too much time on his hands, or a display of psychologically disturbing behavior? He also uses his accounts to engage other Twitter users in his Discord network — a sea of serial killer and pop idol profile pictures. Many Discord users are a part of the #stantwt and #edtwt collectives. I felt extremely violated such a repugnant person invaded my space. I truly had not an inkling he was this person. If I had known, I never would’ve given him my time. Perhaps, that’s why he pretended to be someone else.
A person can interact with someone over the internet for months, or even years, and still not know what the person on the other end is really like. Platforms such as 4chan and Discord allow degeneracy to go unchecked. Payton S. Gendron utilized both platforms to plan and carry out an act of domestic terrorism against a predominately Black enclave in Buffalo, New York. Parents with oppressive Christian beliefs are raising ticking time bombs. For example, Lionel Dahmer was a homophobic Evangelical Christian who neglected his son. His parenting style helped create one of the world’s most prolific serial killers.
Will the cyberstalker become the next Payton S. Gendron or Jeffrey Dahmer? Without a much-needed intervention by professionals to address his obvious psychological problems, who knows what will happen? It’s outrageous that a five-month-long social media connection led me to cross paths with a deeply disturbed man. Even dissecting what happened to me on a public forum, rattles my nerves.
Moving forward, I’m not participating in online discourse about Britney Spears’ life post-conservatorship or engaging her fanbase. It goes without saying, I don’t want this to be an indictment of Britney Spears. She’s not the reason why this happened to me. She overcame so much. I want her to come out on the other side as a winner. This stressful ordeal surprisingly gave me a chance to recalibrate. I’m no longer attached to anything that’ll prevent me from being my true self.
It’s been two weeks since any suspicious Twitter accounts harassed me. Hopefully, the universe will take pity on me and lead him away from me. If the cyberstalker reads this, I hope he views this as a wake-up call. To anyone else who reads this, take my horrible experience as a lesson. Be careful how you engage on social media, and with whom. People aren’t well.
