It’s a funny thing, telling the truth. I do enjoy being honest. It’s just, given my past, and how many people have, at given times, wanted to kill me, or someone I love, it’s a bit difficult to justify telling the truth, online. It’s far better for me to just watch as disinformation about me, spreads. It’s an easy solution. I don’t do anything; I don’t directly lie. I just watch as my enemies start weaving entire lie worlds about who I am.
And for my part, I’ve tolerated this. For a large part of the development of what I’m about to speak of, I have both directly benefited from my enemies making up shit about me, and found it extremely amusing. I have laid more canary traps, conducted more Barium Meal tests, than probably any one man should. And I’ve done it, with one goal in mind: to protect the people that I love.
And it has been fun. It has been fun, feeding disinformation to people, in private, who were searching for me, in the real world. It was fun watching people spread the things I told them in private, so that they could confuse themselves, and one another. I have had great fun out-witting most everyone.
But it has to stop. Because, at this point, it’s turning into a legend. The reputations of other people that trolls are connecting me with, it’s beginning to turn into something where, if I stay silent, I may tarnish their reputations. So, despite it being the worst fucking idea possible, I have chosen to speak up. Why?
I don’t fucking know!
Nobody’s really smart.
After 10+ years or more of not really paying attention to the consequences of what I’ve said online, I have recently found out that all the disinformation I have spread in private, about my own identity— done solely to shield my own identity— has now coalesced into a thing both bizarre and mundane. In misleading people who were looking for me, they have put together almost every single thing I’ve told them, to piss them off, mislead them, or otherwise confound them. And it has created a glorious amalgamation of utter horse shit.
So, here’s the thing. Do you remember when I tricked someone into showing their ass? That is to say, in normie parlance, I baited them into saying something horrific, to me. This is what I’m talking about. I presented a screenshot of a low blood oxygen reading. This was a feint, meant to draw out bad comments. I was looking for people to block. I didn’t know that I would end up basically baiting someone who was my friend, into revealing that they hated me.
I have done this almost my entire life, online, in various measures.
In particular, you cannot really trust Human beings. So, online, if I’m talking to someone— or just talking, really— occasionally, I may change a little detail to an otherwise-true story. I may tell the same story multiple different ways, all to different people, most of whom I am testing. I am testing to see if I can trust them. This is called the Barium Meal test, or the canary trap. It works like this:
- I tell the person I trust, the real story. I do not tell this story to anyone else, online. Except…
- I tell two people I do not know if I can trust, specific details that I have left out of every other telling of the story.
- When the story leaks, I can tell who leaked it.
You might say that this is cruel. Or, you may believe that it’s overly paranoid.
Every single time someone has tried to fuck me over, online, it’s come down to this. It’s always been a test, where I could trace back exactly what I told them. It’s not paranoid if everyone really is after you.
Up until 2017, I was casually lying through omission. Mostly, I would tell the truth; or, I would exaggerate a single detail, for comedy purposes. This is my main variety of public disinformation.
This sort of disinformation has built up into the dumbest set of legends about my identity that I have ever seen. In part, I’m humbled. I didn’t think that any of this was going to work. I was simply doing this to keep some very weird assholes who were stalking me, from being able to actually accurately gather any information on me. But now, it’s becoming bad.
Because it’s starting to leak out and I think it will soon affect actual normal people.
Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh
It’s not particularly easy for me to see what’s been done, here. It is, of course, not a threat to my existence, that a bunch of dumb motherfucklers have decided to pretend that I am at least seven different people. For the most part, I have been incredibly amused that these people are so dumb that they’ve spread all this disinformation. Because— and this part, I should especially not say, in anything publically published— having a bunch of crazy stalkers believe wildly conflicting information about me, keeps them off my trail.
For decades upon decades, I’ve had people hunting me. I stop somebody from bullying someone else; boom. I have a self-proclaimed ‘enemy’ who follows me for the better part of their entire existence, online. Sometimes, these sorts of things turn into real-world affairs, like when I got SWATted around the end of 2014. That was fun.
Telling the truth is a luxury I have not been able to afford for some time, now. When people would come calling, in private, digging for information, I’d lay canary trap after canary trap. I would feed them so much subtle bullshit, that I could barely even remember it. I’d tell the people searching for me in real life, all sorts of things. And they bought it. They bought it all. Hook, line, and sinker.
And they spread it.
Which brings us to our problem.
The things I said in private, though designed to be detectable, if and when they got out, were never meant to become written documentation, to be shared by others. I told people shit so that they would fuck off and leave me alone; and stop trying to hound me. 8 years of bullshit and paper-thin lies, all specifically designed to tell people, yes, I know you’re looking for me. Stop doing that.
Again, it’s not a matter of public perception. I’m in a place now where the people who actually care about me, online, don’t give a shit if I lie to protect my identity. They especially don’t care if I lie to protect people I love. They’re good people. And the acquaintances I’ve made? They see the bizarre stalkers for who they are, and what they’re doing. I don’t need to hide anymore.
I’ve succeeded.
I’ve won.
And I would very much like to stop having to lie, in order to protect myself, online, thank you very much.
This is not about public perception. This is about undoing the near decade of damage that having to defend myself from others is now doing to the reputations of people that the trolls think I am.
How this all started.
Initially, when I was a little girl, my parents told me to lie to people online. They wanted me to lie, so that pedophiles online wouldn’t find me. That obviously failed. Regardless, this behavior continued throughout my childhood, and, well into my adulthood. Now, I want to end it. I don’t want to do this anymore, though, to be fair, not saying a goddamned thing would protect me into perpetuity, right now.
But it’s not fair to the people that the trolls think I am.
It is highly unethical not to write this.
I want to end the lying that I’ve had to do, because, now, my efforts to evade others have now turned into entire generations of people effectively unknowingly spreading disinformation. I saw this, today, when I was informed that a person erroneously credited me for the entire life’s work of an online artist. I can’t just sit back and watch that happen. That shit’s wrong.
I want you to know that, akin to Data’s admission that he thought about joining the Borg Queen for an infinitesimally-small amount of time, I thought about just letting this go. I could keep lying. Keep spreading disinformation, in private, to people trying to identify me. I could win. I could just let this happen.
But that would mean deceiving an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old; and a bunch of other people; and, to take credit for another artist’s work? No. I couldn’t do it. Not even through a lie of omission, meant to protect me. This had to stop, right here.
But— Gods.
It would’ve been the best fucking cover evar.
Of course, as someone who has lied before, it could be easily argued that this entire letter is nothing but an attempt to cover my tracks. If I’ve been pegged correctly, then, writing something like this might be a vain attempt to pretend that I am not that artist.
This hastily-written, heartfelt, meandering, hard-to-understand letter, could be thought to be the desperate attempt of someone who has been caught trying to change identities; and, as I’ve just been recently Verified on a platform that might take issue with someone who produced, and produces, the art that CrookedTrees has made, this could be read as an attempt to keep what foundling legitimacy I have.
It feels so good, to be hidden. To be able to fool people.
I could have fooled everyone.
Sadly, I must come clean, in honor of the people who might be affected, if I do not reveal myself to the people who are trying to hunt me down.
So, sad to say:
Nope. I’m not them.
Sorry.
No one can draw like they did.
Most of the time, I try to put my thoughts into a format that is easier to read. This, however, is a thought that needs to be read, as it exists inside my head. So, please, read the following paragraph, quite carefully:
My intent was not to create a situation where the people stalking me would eventually create a scenario in which the information they collected from me would result in their creation of a set of documentation that could later be used to misrepresent my identity. But that’s just what’s happened, amazingly. In an attempt to find me, people trying to find me have inevitably pieced together whatever meandering, unscripted bullshit I told them, over the course of many years, and it has led them to surmise, or otherwise conclude, that I am several different people. I am not.
God fucking DAMN it would’ve made the best of all possible disguises
This is such a weird thing to have to try to defuse.
My intent was to mislead the people looking for me, not the entire fucking World, nor normal people in general. I wanted to tell the people hounding me: okay, fuck off. I know you’re here. And, a lot of the times, I used the information to triangulate where they were ‘discussing’ me, in various ‘communities’. So it worked for watching people who were looking to hurt me.
But it has to stop.
Before 2017, I had absolutely no reason to stop these people from disseminating and collating whatever bullshit disinformation I gave them. As long as I could keep them from finding me, in real life, I could protect my father from whatever they might try to do to me. So, when it came to seeing all this disinformation, endlessly swirling, changing, transmogrifying, it left me quite amused. My father was safe.
My dad’s been dead for like 5 years now. I don’t have anyone left to protect, and I never liked hiding.
It has to end, right now.
The basic idea is this: if someone is looking for you— they’re trying to find you— why correct your enemy when they’re making a mistake? It was unconscionable. Plus, given that what I was giving them was paper-thin already, I figured, hey— any reasonable person would know that I was just blowing them off.
Not so. Now, my psychological defense system has been leaking into normie territory so much, and for so long, that it’s starting to make me feel guilty. People are starting to write down the lies I told random fuckers almost a decade ago, as if they’re obvious truths. I can’t just sit here and say nothing.
But then, it’s incredibly difficult to defuse said situation. If I tell you, “I’m not any of the people that the weird trolls and stalkers say that I am”, what does that mean to you? And, at what point could what I’m saying, right now, be used to protect myself, in the future? If I am any of these people, how would you even know?
Perhaps I am not responsible for the lies that other people tell people, about myself.
Still, I feel an ounce of responsibility.
Even if I did not cause these things to happen, directly, through my attempts at defending myself, these things did happen.
It is a puzzle for the ages, really.
And yet, I am amused.
My mother once had a friend. This friend was very smart. So smart, in fact, that most of her references? We never understood them. It was like talking to Dennis Miller.
I don’t wanna get off on a rant here, but this entire situation is like tryin’ t’find your way back through the Labyrinth without any thread! I’m schleppin’ through these halls, stumblin’ like Mister Magoo. Every corner I turn, I’m expectin’ to see fuckin’ Leviathan!
I think that the vast majority of what I’ve said here is going to fly completely over most people’s heads. Perhaps not because they’re not smart enough to understand it. No, I don’t think so. But I think that the issue that I’m dealing with, may very well be one that no one else has really ever had to think about.
I’ll break it down for you. If you had people stalking you online, and you thought they might find you, and you could tell them some vague bullshit to keep them off your trail, maybe keep them from doxing you, and SWATting your house, would you? Because I would. And I did. Unfortunately, the end result has been somewhat butterfly-effect-y.
A butterfly flapped its ass, and somebody thinks for real that I’m JonTron. It’s not fair, I tell’s ya.
I’ll explain yet again. Imagine that you tell a lie to a person stalking you. Ten years later, you witness as people are writing down that lie, and attributing the entire life’s work of another person, to you. And you have no fucking idea why.
That’s where I’m at. Even if I’m not responsible, I feel responsible. I want to make this right.
Even though I’m not the one who committed the wrong.
Fuck, this is confusing…