Last year I was "sex-torted" on Facebook but not by a ring of French criminals. Instead, it was by someone I had chatted with on the internet years ago (while we were both still teenagers)
She had recently gotten divorced and contacted me after many years away. We spoke about intimate things (I never shared intimate images, though she did) and were getting closer and closer to each other.
She eventually asked me for money to cover an expense for her daughter, but I didn't send it fearing I was being scammed. In exchange, she took screengrabs of the most intimate parts of our conversations and shared them to all of my professional contacts via LinkedIn as well as friends , colleagues and family on Facebook.
The experience haunts me to this day, I discussed consensual kinky stuff with her and she used this to paint me as a freak and deviant. The only people who understood it were those who had been in a similar situation or those who were in the "lifestyle" as well. Strangely, most of the support I received after the fact were women who have been similarly extorted. Men in my entourage just whispered and snickered.
To this day, I still feel shame in certain circles because of what is unsaid. The police have done absolutely nothing even in the face of evidence (reports filed with local police and FBI) but it's simply not a priority. Facebook won't even pull the posts because no intimate images were actually shared and it doesn't technically violate their "guidelines"
Net result: I've deleted my social profiles. Every last one of them (and feel better as a result). However, the damage is done and I'm totally still feeling PTSD as a result of the ordeal.
I consider myself very tech savvy (engineer, infosec background, on the internet since the early 90's) and able to smell a scam. However, it's really really easy to fall victim to something like this. Be careful.
This is something that could have happened to anyone. Not just because of misplaced trust in an online partner but because it's easy to create fake screenshots of conversations using Photoshop or simply Inspect Element.
I'm interested in how you mitigated the damage once the post was published. A good strategy might have been to simply discredit it as being fake/photoshopped along with a small tutorial showing how easy it is to create (most aren't tech savvy enough to understand this already).
True you'd be lying, but this is certainly not below the level of someone who's falsely accusing you.
It's shocking how easy it is to become a liar without missing a beat.
If they slipped and someone caught them lying, it would become exponentially worse. Bad idea.
But they should be proud of their sexuality. Whether it's BDSM or hotwifing or whatever strange kink, who cares? It's the same as shaming someone for being gay.
I dislike that we have to be so Victorian about sex. It's the social climate we live in, but... Why?
There are also broader implications: Whenever we discredit the truth, we're contributing to how easy it is to manufacture fake news. There's a certain piece of potentially fake news I've been dying to bring up. It had a big impact on me, and then I realized it might be fake. But in an era when the truth is so easy to distort, what should you believe?
"I dislike that we have to be so Victorian about sex. It's the social climate we live in, but... Why?"
It's religion. It teaches roughly 4 bn† people that sex is dirty, that nakedness is shameful, and that talking about it's acts and/or requisite body parts is taboo.
† According to Wikipedia 2.4 billion Christians, and 1.6 billion Muslims.
Then of course we get (big R) Religion, where humans use it as a means of power over other people. This is where we get the things we associate with religion today.
not to mention there seems to be a pattern across religions of the people in power sexually exploiting the powerless while simultaneously telling people they are wrong for having sex
If that was true, you should see significant differences between religions. And at the same time very little differences within religions.
That does not seem to hold. Looks like religions just tend to echo some sort of natural chastity. And that is hardly surprising given how recent things religions are and how old thins STDs are.
"Oh you have tingling feeling in your weewee, it's wrath of God!" and you just explained one thing away while giving more credibility to the god thing your trying to promote.
> If that was true, you should see significant differences between religions.
You do! I'm guessing (apologies if wrong) that your thinking modern mainstream religions like Christian / Islam / Judaism. Much of these are from the same roots and and naturally similar.
Look at religion over longer history in distinctly separate branches of the tree e.g Buddhism is more relaxed than afore mentioned. The Greeks, Romans and Norse (same tree) were very liberal. Shinto / Confucianism looks as sex as healthy. Among the plains indians sex could be part of a spiritual ceremony to pass power. Australian aboriginals used to share women.
And I'm not saying religion is the cause of these views. A better way to look at that would be to see how sexual views change as religion does. It does seem Christianity brought a lot of judgement around sex and other matters that were not there before during colonisation period. I dont know much about this so someone can likely add to this much better.
If that was true, you should see significant differences between religions. And at the same time very little differences within religions.
Not following you. The Decalogue exists in Judaism, Christianity and in Islam. The Decalogue, and marriage, are indeed extremely recent social constructs.
I'm not promoting religion - I despise any form of it. I merely posit religion as being the source of humanity's prudishness (something the rest of nature does not share).
"I merely posit religion as being the source of humanity's prudishness (something the rest of nature does not share)."
Nature as a whole may not, but there are species even more monogamous than we are out there. I've sort of played a game of "construct an even remotely sensible sexual strategy no species uses" and so far I've come up empty; everything you can think of, including the closest equivalent to "prudishness", is used out there.
On that note, the "missing link" for you is probably that sex and reproduction are inextricably linked for all non-humans, and for all humans up until very recently. Hangups about sex are not hangups about sex; to put it in quite atheistic terms, they are hangups about whose selfish genes get to win out over whose. Start looking at it that way and it makes a lot more sense than your current model, probably.
Our current reproductive strategies are currently in total chaos because of the extremely recent introduction of effective birth control and I see little reason to believe that we have found the best response to that in what is still effectively just one generation, nor that our current responses will be stable over the generations, because the shock is simply too recent in generational terms. (Not to mention all the near-in-generational-term shocks that may be yet to come, including but not limited to: Effective male-directed birth control, effective sex robots for males, technology to permit cloning without loss, technology to edit genes in eggs or sperm, technology to permit taking children to term out of a biological womb, and in the craziest case, technology to completely digitize people and make biology essentially irrelevant.) In particular, it does not seem particularly clear to me that the idea that "sex is 100% just sex and nobody should be ashamed about anything as long as it is consensual" is going to win out, because that crowd tends to use birth control of one form or another, and therefore, in the next several generations can be expected to be bred out. By some definitions of morality it may well be moral, but it won't be stable.
If that was true we wouldn't have politicians in UK stepping down for having once touched a woman's knee, or "scandals" about pornography found in a parliament PC.
Brits are less prude than Americans, but way more so than Europeans. Consider how topless sunbathing is ok on the mainland; is met with snickers, cat-calls and crude propositions in the UK; and downright illegal in the US.
A significant amount of people with power to negatively affect your career.
Relevant to the mention of bdsm and tech, Larry Garfield a fairly prominent person within the Drupal industry, got banished after his fetlife (or similar website maybe) account got exposed and spread around.
Ha! This is the number 1 reason why I left Facebook too. People just don't realize how much personal data is stored by FB with no way to delete it. You can only archive it.
My ex's new boyfriend shared a bunch of our FB messages with a group of friends because he was jealous.
No amount of security could have prevented that. It's a social hack.
But I've heard of many many cases where Facebook message history has been used to defame someone. They should have incognito channels like snapchat so things just go poof.
You can trust someone now but no guarantee for future trust.
The climate of judging people for private sexual morality is slowly changing in the United States… Same with marijuana smoking. In the 90s, affairs or past pot smoking were considered a big deal. Since then, we have elected Obama and Trump, who would not have passed moral snuff in the 80s.
I know plenty of people who despite really, really disliking Donald Trump were very put off by the public discussion of the "pee tape" stuff. They called it kink shaming and said that on its own it shouldn't matter if that is the kind of stuff the President is into. I tend to agree and I think a lot of other sensible people do too.
That’s a completely different situation. Assuming that such a tape exists, the issue isn’t that Trump has sexual kinks. The issue is that the President is subject to blackmail from a foreign power.
If such a tape existed for anyone else and was in the hands of a foreign government, that person would not be able to get the lowest level of security clearance in the US because the opportunity for blackmail places them at great risk.
In an ideal world Americans would be more like the French and not care about people’s personal consensual sex lives at all, in which case the tape would lose all its blackmailing power, but since the American public does care, the possibility of blackmail is real.
Interestingly, the "pee tape" as described doesn't really even depict the typical self humiliation-oriented urination kink. The allegation is that Trump hired five prostitutes to pee on a bed, not one that he was in or using but one that Obama had used years earlier.
It's unclear to me whether that even counts as a kink: if it's true, I'm not sure Trump was getting a sexual thrill out of it. My guess is that it's more of an unchecked mental illness, with Trump as Captain Ahab chasing after his great white whale.
None of the people I'm talking about misunderstand what the real point is. What they took issue with was the snickering about the content of the video and the fact that someone's sexual fetishes would be used as blackmail in the first place. Everyone understands the gravity of the President being blackmailed.
Well that's better- it at least shows the problem isn't misunderstanding the significance so much as it's letting a peripheral issue occupy attention at the expense of the more important issue.
But that's a problem because it's exactly this kind of conversational shift that makes derailment a good tactic for mitigating the impact of political scandals.
The Pee Tape is an issue because the Racist President had prostitutes pee on a bed that the Black President slept on. That is what the issue is with the Pee Tape. It is not about kink or anything else, just a racist doing racist stuff.
I think it's less about race and more about embarrassment. He seems to have deep-seated psychological issues that are being triggered by having been mocked at the correspondent's dinner. I'm not sure how he felt about Obama before, but he has become obsessed with fighting back and undoing everything Obama did just on principle -- regardless of whether he otherwise likes or agrees with the policy.
No. The dossier has neither been discredited nor substantiated. It was Republican opposition research (I don't think we know what candidate or group funded it) and then was later picked up by someone connected to Hillary Clinton after the Republican primary was over.
AFAIK, there's no more or less reason to believe it now than there was when it first came out.
The "pee tape" has been widely discredited. I'm not pro trump but using the word "racist" three times in two sentences and offering fake news as proof does not help your point, in fact it makes you look silly.
I'll break the news to you, the current President is a racist. He is not just a little casual racist, he is pretty damn racist. Let's not tap dance around the issue anymore and let's just call him what he is.
He is also dumb, but that has nothing to do with being a racist or our discussion.
Can you imagine if during Reagan's campaign someone leaked nude photos of his mother? Or Bush? Do you really think Evangelicals would have gone for that?
Muckraking is not a new phenomenon at all, even to this degree. The "nude photos" of Ann Dunham have been debunked as false. [1]
I speculate you are right, though, that less people these days would give a flip about whether one modeled for a underground fetish publication in the late 1960s, even if true.
Unfortunately, there are still a significant amount of people who would have an issue with this. But to me (and probably others), the claims made say nothing about Ann Dunham (even if they were true). But they say a heck of a lot of negative about the authors of what seems to be the primary source of this muckraking [2].
He openly admitted smoking marijuana in his youth. Bill Clinton weaseled out of it, famously claiming he "didn't inhale" and didn't like it. 16 years later, Obama didn't feel the need to fudge his history in that regard.
I presume that holds unless the only "signal" you get is your local priest and feudal lord? Especially since for most of human civilization the vast majority(95%+) couldn't read or write...
Presumably people have gossiped for about as long as they have been able to speak. However, the 'truth content' of the average communication seems very low.
Take something as simple a speed limit sign. That sign is not literally 'true', it simply refers to what the calculation for penalties will be based if you exceed the unstated actual speed limit. Reporting is at best a game of telephone, social media ends up so many hops from what actually happens to be nearly completely separated from reality.
Hmm. We do get more information, obviously, but I am not sure that means the ratio of true or correct information over false or incorrect information has changed. Formerly, there have been far more myths and lore around that are easier to falsify today, so this goes both ways.
I'm going to disagree with you there. I remember a time when everything written in print was taken as fact. You were treated like a schizophrenic if you suggested a newspaper printed something that wasn't true. Now people routinely fact check from multiple sources.
Sure there may have been more signal to noise ratio, but robber barons had much more influence. Like Bezos and WaPo but EVERY paper.
Truth and information has always been under the control of will. If someone has a "truth", there is a binary decision. The signals have always been under control of he who broadcasts them. The noise doesn't matter, apart from your ability to decide what the most likely truth is for yourself.
There's a huge difference between being ashamed of your sexual preferences and your sex life being nobody else's god damn business.
That being said, I find if laughable that the op considers himself "infosec" savvy but when it came to his sex life made such a glaringly obvious mistake. I'm not saying the woman who extorted him was in the right, but touting yourself as an infosec guy but opening yourself to the oldest trick in the blackmail book is pretty funny
The second point is very important as currently the bar for valid proof is far too low for many people nowadays, especially given the ease with which one can edit content easily to look like it came from source. The fact that too many people happily accept as proof screenshots assembled in mspaint with red arrows drawn all over astounds me, and the furvor which follows is even more flabbergasting. I know it's likely lack of knowledge as to how easy it is to use InspectElement to make the President's most recent tweet say "I fucked a pig", but that too many don't even take the time to check whether or not it actually says that is a huge issue. Data validation can be tricky, but we're talking like the basics of just check the sources. Which of course is difficult since too many dubious reports just source spam so there's no reasonable way to easily check sources.
Not sure there is a bar for valid proof - at least in the MSM - at this point. The word of the moment seems to be allocations, and that's enough to take someone down. Add in the fact that "harassment" is defined by the receiver and the accused has no recourse but to disappear.
I'm not naive. Dirty shit happens. But the current trend seems to be: guilty til proven...oh no need for proof.
Reddit's trump criticizes trump is full for fakes and they are constantly on the front page.
Same goes for "other side" who puts antifa in every shooting or crime out there, but I suspect they do it more for the lulz because media baits the Russian propaganda or not narrative, which makes these people do it even more as we all kniw if you're familiar with Chan culture.
> A good strategy might have been to simply discredit it as being fake/photoshopped along with a small tutorial showing how easy it is to create (most aren't tech savvy enough to understand this already).
He might have done that. I know if this happened to me and I denied it, I'd still be scarred for life.
The OP probably didn't think about it, but that's really a great idea/strategy. I bet the poster was just so rattled by it he didn't think about just denying it.
I can see why the police/fbi can't really do anything. It doesn't seem like there was anything criminal technically. They might be able to go after the person with a civil suit for slander? I don't know though, not a lawyer.
It would only be blackmail if she had made a threat first, but she seems to have acted out of spite. It would be a crime in the UK however; it's a malicious communication.
Really sorry to hear about your ordeal — I was once wrongly accused by a woman of something heinous and it took me a while to recover from the shock and PTSD.
In particular this part of your post bothers me: “The experience haunts me to this day..”
No - This shouldn’t be the case. You did nothing wrong. While there is no magic wand to “fix” how you feel - and esp low probability that an online post from a stranger would do anything but please consider the following strategies:
1. Try to understand shame. What is it and Why it is there? (evolutionary reasons) It might be liberating.
2. Know quite simply that the past doesn’t exist. Except In our heads.
4. Try to research into revenge porn - what happened to you is very common; in some parts of the world with serious consequences for women - understanding that you are not alone (or special) might be oddly liberating.
5. Talk to someone. Maybe even a pro.
Just some strategies that are available to you - hope you heal soon.
(I am sure you are already trying to recover - Your message just stuck a cord and I wanted to offer advice)
I think your situation is very much connected to the current wave of revelations of wrong doing against (mostly) women.
Every time one of these celebrities denies a true accusation it causes a whole new wave of damage not only to the victim but, to every person who will ever have to fend off a wrongful accusation, because it muddies the waters and creates FUD.
Yes, the data suggests the percentage of false accusations is small. However it burns me when people suggest bringing it up at all diminishes the bigger issue of assaults on women. In fact I think they enhance each other because they’re both about seeking clarity and justice.
I’ve seriously heard people debate the death penalty by arguing, that the possibility of executing an innocent person is not one of the big issues because, that probably happens small percentage of the time. Scared the crap out of me to hear it articulated by a real person.
Some media outlets have chosen to be critical of Louis CK’s response to the accusations against him. They think they are advocating for women, when actually they’re doing all of us a huge disservice.
Focusing on the quality of apologies is a red herring. Only two things matter, the crime and the truth getting out about crime. Judge his apology/non apology anyway you like, at least he ended it decisively, instead of propagating it for enternity by sowing doubt.
In some small country there was recently a very interesting story. A relatively unknown actress made a post to her Facebook feed accusing relatively famous director of sexual assault without any details given (I was sexually assaulted by X, it still haunts me, #MeMoo). On Friday evening. On monday morning, one relatively strong politician with PhD in law decided to question organisations' under their influence cooperation with said director. The stated motive was that several days of public silence under such a heavy accusations is unacceptable. Politician with PhD in law states that innocent until proven guilty is a concept from criminal law, which is orthogonal to moral code.
This scares me. With this huge stream of information (disregarding signal to noise ration) stories lose "longevity" - lifetimes of stories are getting shorter and shorter and there is less and less time to react. Collecting facts for good rebuttal takes time and for trickier cases may take so long that publishing a good rebuttal backed with facts is like beating a dead horse. People tend to react to public outcry. Everyday we see a new mass hysteria, which is just perfect place to spread fake news and propaganda.
> Judge [Louis CK’s] apology/non apology anyway you like, at least he ended it decisively, instead of propagating it for enternity by sowing doubt.
What are you talking about? It was "ended" by the NYT publishing, in this current Weinstein/Spacey climate, an article about his offences[1] and leaving him absolutely no other choice but to finally come clean.
He was publicly painting his victims as liars (which you quite rightly condemn in your second paragraph) as recently as a couple of months ago[2]:
NYT: So [the accusations are] not real?
CK: “No. They’re rumors, that’s all that is.”
Even now, not only does he not apologise, he tries to excuse his completely inexcusable behaviour by trying to pretend he thought it was even remotely acceptable.
That’s the whole point, they don’t have to ever admit it, regardless of the publicity, short of hidden camera footage.
The huge problem is, that even when it’s damning enough that 99% of people call bullshit, their denial will continue to cause great pain and make it difficult for other people to get justice in the future.
In a perfect world they wouldn’t have committed the crimes in the first place, but it’s a relative scale, and having an uncontested documented case is a bigger win over a denial, than having a good apology is over a bad/non apology.
> having an uncontested documented case is a bigger win over a denial
I agree. The mistake is crediting that to CK ("at least he...") when in the wake of an article as damning as the one in the NYT, in the current climate where the story was not going to go away, as before, he had absolutely no other option than admit it.
> That’s the whole point, they don’t have to ever admit it, regardless of the publicity, short of hidden camera footage.
I think that was true before (pre-Weinstein), and will unfortunately probably become true again, but right now there is too much attention being paid to showbiz abuse/harrassment for someone to get away with ignoring/denying truthful allegations against them.
That article said that CK emailed and apologized to many of the women years earlier. The only ones he seemingly didn’t were the two in the hotel room which, according to other sources, agreed to let CK do it. Maybe they thought he was joking but he may not have realized they weren’t okay with it.
The power dynamic is the issue. Can you truly consent to something sexual coming from someone who can end your livelihood?
I understand the rationale behind thinking "oh they should just have just gotten up and walked away" but it makes me sick to my stomach to justify sexual harassment at all PERIOD.
I am sickened by CK's actions. However I am equally as sickened that the conversation is focused on louis ck, who certainly deserves to lose his career, but in my opinion indecent exposure is no where near as traumatizing a crime as forcible rape.
It just screams limited hangout where the big wigs make the new money pervert take the fall in order to take the heat off them.
This is what I’m referring to. Your sickening, the the other media outlets critical of CKs response is lost energy that could otherwise better be used against the problem.
You assume discussions are driven by who to focus on, when they are driven by understanding and figuring out the best way forward for healing and justice weighing all variables.
It’s natual to be angry, there’s nothing wrong with it, please carry on with doing it. However I’m asking we separate that anger from discussions of any lessons, priories, strategies, conclusions we can learn from any of this if it has a chance of improving perspective in the long run.
Critical analysis is different from grieving and empathy, and very hard to mix. I’m sure I probably couldn’t separate them if I were a victim or someone close to me was.
I recall reading that something like one in ten people on death row ends up being acquitted, so the idea that only a small percentage of people are wrongly executed is factually wrong in the first place.
Wow, what a terrible situation, I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that. It never ceases to amaze me at how brutal and vindictive people can be, especially online. Does she even know how much this has hurt you? I could imagine someone with poor empathy making a move like that in an emotional flurry one day, then never giving it a second thought in the months and years to come. Meanwhile, you continue to suffer the effects, psychologically and socially. Horrible.
The people whispering and snickering are likely either horrible people who don't get victimized because they make sure they are taking advantage of other people and leaving no openings, or they have more terrible things to hide. Snickering is a form of denial of their own guilty behaviors.
If it makes you feel better if I got a bunch of similar content sent to me from some mystery contact about a friend... I'd just assume they were a scammer and disregard it.
I wonder how many people who get sent that stuff really change their opinions about their friends, family, etc?
That's not to take anything from your experience, it sounds terrible.
Another example of how everything you post online or send in an email is there forever and can come back to haunt you. I'm sorry for your experience but hope others can learn from this.
Right but climate changes and what is acceptable and not changes over time. What was empowering in the 1970s is today something different. What is suffocating today will tomorrow be different.
Mores and interpretation change over time. In other words, yesterdays actions are viewed through today's lenses.
This works if there are assets to be seized, or if you are independently wealthy enough to sustain a suit despite a lack of assets.
Lawsuits are incredibly expensive. Figure $10k before going to trial, and $50k for a relatively simple case. Few or no lawyers will take such a case on contingency (plaintiff is not sufficiently flush).
I'm not saying don't do this, but you're going to want to think through the process very carefully, and be very much aware of what the process might, or might not, produce. There are downside costs that might emerge as well, including the prospect of paying the plaintiff's legal fees, and undergoing discovery yourself.
Talk to a lawyer, or several, if you like. Be aware that they also have their own incentives, and might be quite happy to run up billable hours, so long as you're good for them.
I didn't understand if in reality if it was really your old-time-friend who actually did this, or someone who got control of her account and discovered "conversations gone cold" and tried to "revive the flame". It would be interesting to know who which of these was it.
Do we take people too literally, when they say they care about human suffering and justice? Yes you were a victim, but not a noble victim in the eyes of most people, so that’s why hardly anyone cared.
You hear people say everybody likes sex, but it’s not true. Actually everyone mostly hates sex. What they really mean is, out of one million possible sexual acts, there are 3, 6, or maybe a dozen they love, and 99.9% that they think are disgusting. The only difference between any of us is whether or not we insist that our 6 are better than everyone else’s.
Since she knew your real identity, did you know hers? Did the possibility exist that you could sue her in civil court? I don't feel like I'm the litigious type but that case seems to be begging for a legal response.
Going to court to clear your name can result in the Streisand Effect. Lots of people are very judgey about sex. Letting more people know can just compound the problem, even if you win. It also is kind of like throwing good money after bad. After this has taken so much away, you are sinking more of your life into it. It can just magnify the damage.
I wish there were more justice in the world. I wish fighting the good fight were more rewarding. But that is often not a pragmatic approach.
Going to court after such an episode is another traumatic experience where you have to relive the whole situation. That's why it's difficult for rape victims to go to the police or court because they have relive the trauma again in all detail.
Court or not, you are going to relive it. Next time an old friend contacts you, you will relive it, could even be via email or phone. Someone trying to get into a relationship could be talking and getting personal and you would panic and wonder if it's a setup. You could be watching a TV show or see someone that looks like the lady. Lots of things can trigger it. Going to court won't eliminate it, but the more often people are punished for things like these, the less people will engage in such evil acts.
I agree that going to court is a good thing but you can't compare talking about one of the most vulnerable moments of one's life with friends to having to tell all details of the story to strangers in public while possibly being challenged by an adversarial lawyer or cops who may not believe you.
I'm sorry to hear that happened to you and yet it's a great opportunity to highlight the benefits of self-deleting messages. Specifically it's elevates the cost of an attacker being able to comb through a vast ream of documents to weaponize your seemingly 'private' communications. Though self-deleting messages (such as on Signal) can't prevent the recipient from logging all communications as the come over the wire, it does prevent an attacker from weaponizing them retrospectively.
Oh, and he didn't even share it publically. He shared it with an internal group discussing these issues. It was then "leaked", and everybody piled on. And you now took part in exactly that, repeating the slander.
Yeah I'm sure the guy who was immediately itching to do an interview with all the luminaries of the alt-right was a shrinking wallflower who didn't want to draw any attention to his manifesto or himself.
does that change what I just said? you don't even acknowledge it, neither that it was gotten wrong the first time. like that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what he did, it matters what you think he wanted to happen in response, and then you can just shorten and jumble it like you want.
Complete with more abuse, victim blaming, that poor little alt-right guy who actually wanted this. He totally planned it!
HE didn't leak it. People opposed to it leaked it. He didn't go public before losing his job, did he?
So, my point still stands, and you added to it. Abusive intellectually dishonest people cheer this kind of stuff on.
Well, I suppose it's possible literally everyone who disagrees with you is "dishonest and abusive." Another possibility is that people honestly do not see it your way. I think the most likely explanation is he expected, and wanted, it to go public so he could do the media circuit and become a cause celebre. In fact, choosing all alt-right figures to do interviews first was probably, in my view, his biggest miscalculation, since it tipped his hand.
Is the party in this story lacking empathy the media? Or the guy who wrote a manifesto about how women just aren't fit for jobs as engineers, genetically?
You admit you like kinky/deviant sexual stuff so why do you care what others think?
Well the hard truth is you are trying to dishonestly maintain your sexual market value. You know they type of girl that high value men like and you don't want to limit your options. However you are not that person.
(and SJW oblivion shall commence)
Also who says "my entourage" when referring to their friends?
So would you care to share your intimate details of your sex life? How about some nude photos? And you won't mind if I share all of that with your linkedin contacts? Maybe your boss?
Last year I was "sex-torted" on Facebook but not by a ring of French criminals. Instead, it was by someone I had chatted with on the internet years ago (while we were both still teenagers)
She had recently gotten divorced and contacted me after many years away. We spoke about intimate things (I never shared intimate images, though she did) and were getting closer and closer to each other.
She eventually asked me for money to cover an expense for her daughter, but I didn't send it fearing I was being scammed. In exchange, she took screengrabs of the most intimate parts of our conversations and shared them to all of my professional contacts via LinkedIn as well as friends , colleagues and family on Facebook.
The experience haunts me to this day, I discussed consensual kinky stuff with her and she used this to paint me as a freak and deviant. The only people who understood it were those who had been in a similar situation or those who were in the "lifestyle" as well. Strangely, most of the support I received after the fact were women who have been similarly extorted. Men in my entourage just whispered and snickered.
To this day, I still feel shame in certain circles because of what is unsaid. The police have done absolutely nothing even in the face of evidence (reports filed with local police and FBI) but it's simply not a priority. Facebook won't even pull the posts because no intimate images were actually shared and it doesn't technically violate their "guidelines"
Net result: I've deleted my social profiles. Every last one of them (and feel better as a result). However, the damage is done and I'm totally still feeling PTSD as a result of the ordeal.
I consider myself very tech savvy (engineer, infosec background, on the internet since the early 90's) and able to smell a scam. However, it's really really easy to fall victim to something like this. Be careful.