The Pests part 1 & 2 Revisited

Javier: All right. Before we start, and you've heard me say this before, but I really, really mean at this time, please don't listen to this episode at work or with kids or with anybody around. It is, it's bad. This whole series is just way in a pro. So if you don't have the stomach for it, it's pretty dark. You've been warned. All right, let's start the show. this man began his television standup debut with us 25 years ago. I didn't know that. Nobody funnier. Ladies and gentlemen. Norm MacDonald.

Speaker: (slip applause and Norm MacDonald audio underneath)

Javier: Nobody is funnier than Norm McDonald. It's a bit of a hyperbole, but you know what? I happen to agree. Norm McDonald is one of the greats, his dead pan humor gets me every time, But not everyone thinks Norm McDonald is funny. And all McDonald's become a huge hot topic. Uh, his comments about Roseanne and Louis CK and the me too movement. , but we wanted him to come and clear the air. So please welcome norm McDonald's. You know you're in trouble when you have to go on the view and apologize. Norm said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter that he was happy that the Me Too movement had slowed down a little bit. He was disappointed that cancel culture had destroyed the careers of some of his closest friends like Roseanne Barr and Louis ck. His comments, which after the dust settled were taken a little bit outta context by the Hollywood Reporter article Set Twitter on Fire. I'm gonna read you one of those angry tweets. It reads, quote, hot take. I never thought Nor McDonald was funny and was pretty sure all my comedy friends who did were either nuts or screwing with me. trust me, this is important. I'm gonna read it again. quote, hot Take. I've never thought Norm McDonald was funny and was pretty sure all my comedy friends who did were either nuts or screwing with me. Hmm. Seems pretty milk toast as far as the Internet's concerned. But little did Patrick Tomlinson know that his tweet written almost five years ago would destroy his life. Now, I'm not even exaggerating since he drafted that tweet, Patrick and his wife Nikki have received daily death threats. They've been swatted more than 40 times.

Speaker: cops: They have shotguns, they have assault rifles, they have their pistols drawn. Put your hands behind your back.

Patrick: You're still bringing assault rifle to my house. You're still traumatizing. My wife.

Niki: We get voicemails and text threats all the time, threatening to kill us, burn out our house, Skinner pets rape me, kill my family, they've physically stalked us. They've come to our house multiple times.

Pest: Saved message you don't know who I am. Uh, you don't know who any of the people fuck with you are. You don't know who any of us are. Faggot die. Message saved. all of this, because of a Norm McDonald tweet, it doesn't make sense, but it's really happening to them. Know, I just got done with the stalker case and that took me two years to investigate. I had my fill of stalker stories and I was ready to move on, but this case, wow, this case makes the previous stalker case look like child's play. In fact, this series is not about one stalker, It's about a gang of stalkers obsessed online trolls who have turned tormenting. Patrick Tomlinson and his wife Nikki into a sport, and the worst part is there's not really much that they could legally do to protect themselves. I'm Javier Lava, and this is Pretend Stories about Real People pretending to be someone else.

Javier: (new music up and under) (theme music) it's crazy that this all stems from a Norm McDonald, like the fact that you don't find Norm McDonald funny.

Speaker: That was the triggering event, but it's not really about that and, and it never was. Patrick Tomlinson is a science fiction and fantasy author, but these days, if you search his name, you'll find endless online forms dedicated to destroying his reputation. Why do these internet trolls hate him so much? Surely it can't just be because he doesn't find Norm McDonald funny. There has to be more to the story. And in order to answer that question, you first have to understand who these people are.

Patrick: starting at the beginning, you've gotta know some background on this group. this group is, they call themselves the op, op and Anthony Fan Club, or, you know, O O O A forums is their website.

Speaker: they came from the. Old, um, shock Jock Radio Show, OP Anthony, which was based outta New York, Ethiopia and Anthony Show was a Shock Jock Radio show hosted by Greg Opie Hughes and Anthony Kuya That aired from March, 1995 to July, 2014. Here's a clip where the host encourages a suicidal call to go through with it.Nikki. Let me tell you the reality of, uh, of, uh, being a listener to this show. You decide it's not for you anymore. You go away. Someone takes your plan. We couldn't be happier. Don't don't threaten us. Don't make it like, it's a threat that you're going to leave. If we don't get funnier, we don't want you leave. Now. We don't care at all. We. Don't care at all. I don't care. We've been doing this for 12 years. The only reason you're on the, on the phone is so we can beat you up a little. Maybe it's a real suicidal call. Maybe it's not. The point is that this was one of the cleaner clubs I could find. I've never personally listened to the Opie and Anthony show, but from what I can tell, it seems like the kind of programming made for regular dudes. And when I say regular dudes, I'm talking about the 18 to 34 year old white male demographic. Listen, I do think that we are a little too sensitive as a society. There's a trigger warning for everything these days. Some people can't take a joke. We've become so fragile. But where should we draw the line? There has to be a line, right? But these two guys, they really don't care. As much as I don't like cancel culture, the reality is that cancel culture is real and it's businesses who draw the line. And after being fined by the FCC for airing songs about a father raping his daughter, and another tune called Horny for little Girls and encouraging listeners to have sex in public places Like St. Patrick's Cathedral during Mass Infinity Broadcasting decided that, Hey, you know what? These guys were too much of a liability. and they pulled the plug on the Opie and Anthony Show. After two years of radio silence, the Shock Jocks returned on XM Radio. The second and final straw was in 2014. The show abruptly ended after Sirius XM fired Anthony Kuya for posting racially charged and hate-filled remarks on social media. He apparently called a black woman who assaulted him a savage. open. And Anthony are off the air, but they're fans. Well, their fans are alive and well. these fans are the people that Patrick Tomlinson says are harassing him

Patrick: But they were originally, their, their fan club, when their show was on the air, they referred to their fans as pests. And it was because they would sick their fans on, on other people that they were having, that they were having feuds with.

Javier: like Opie and Anthony rival Howard Stern fans. here's a confrontation with a stern fan. They just steal a lot of shit from Howard. I don't really like. Yeah, of course we can. Yeah. Steal a lot of shit. Like his radio stations. His radio stations. Yeah, now. Ah, now he sits there now. (slip the narration under the yelling) in this YouTube video, you can see that the Stern fan is surrounded by these pests and some of the show's producers. They take the guy down in a headlock. Oh, that did it. There you go, asshole. Have a nice one getting your ass handed to ya. You put your hands on, Ben, did you? You put your hands on Ben. You fucking faggot. How does that feel? How does that feel now? Faggot, doesn't it? How does that feel? Fucker. How does that feel like you talk now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. Yeah. You better be ass asshole. These pests were notorious for disrupting live news broadcasts. Here's a clip of two pests holding an Opie and Anthony Show sign behind the reporter in the middle of a live shot. It's costing the TA a great deal about $16 million a year, and they're trying to put a stop to it. What the fuck is your problem, man? The reporter turned around and asked the two pests live on air. What the fuck is your problem, man? He was immediately fired

Speaker: (Opie and Anthony: Assault on the Media, Howard Stern, and "The pests" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USSCqUcq1tM) they basically weaponized their. Their fan base and then used it against other people. this went on for years until finally the fan base actually turned on Anthony, In January, 2018, Anthony Kuya offered $5,000 to anyone who could shut down a Reddit message board dedicated to his own show. He claimed that the members of the forum had constantly harassed him, his friends, his family, and former guests of the radio show. (https://web.archive.org/web/20180107122742/https://twitter.com/AnthonyCumiaxyz/status/949916060995784705 Fuck this. Here’s the deal. I will give $5k cash to anyone who can shut down Reddit’s r/opieandanthony This is a toxic harassment, slander, abuse page. Invoking “free speech” here is like saying Ni@@er in a Baptist Church is free speech. It’s criminal harassment. $5k. It’s yours )

Patrick: After that, they, they were this loosely knit, Community, for lack of a better word, of weaponized stalking sociopaths, except now they didn't have any, they didn't have their, their, uh, you know, heroes on the show picking targets for them anymore. So they organized on Reddit in, in a subreddit called r slash op Anthony, and started picking their own targets. And started going after people that they decided deserved this kind of treatment for whatever reason. Um, they did it to the comedian patent Oswald. They went after him trying to create, uh, online rumors that he had killed his wife so that he could, uh, remarry the, the woman that he eventually did remarry. so then they started going after other people. They, they never stopped going after, uh, Anthony Kuia from the show. Um, they still, they still try to torment him today.

Speaker: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb7xJuQizZ0 Opie talking about how horrible their fans are)

Patrick: They went after a, she was a, she was a, uh, adult, adult film star, a tr a trans transgender woman. Her name was, uh, Sue Lightning, or at least that was her performance name. and they went after her for a long time just cause she was trans. Then there was another, there's another one before me. Uh, his name was Logan Lynn and he's a singer songwriter out out of Portland, Oregon. and he's openly and proudly gay, and so that was enough for them to hate him. So they started going after him and did for over a year. In fact, his, his ordeal with this same group, uh, landed an article in People Magazine a few years ago. (https://loganlynnmusic.com/2019/03/logan-lynn-opens-online-abuse-harassment-people-magazine-week/)

Speaker: Patrick:

Patrick: and then they found me because of that. Norm McDonald Tweet. Now again, these people are not Norm McDonald fans. They don't give a shit about Norm McDonald. It's, he's not important to them at the time. Back in 2018, norm McDonald was in hot water because he was coming out in, uh, in support of Louis CK and Roseanne Barr against their, uh, careers getting, getting derailed. (Norm's response to Louis CK https://youtu.be/ox89Q0rbKTs?t=80 .and 2:49 "A person can do a bad thing and feel bad for a person who did a wrong thing. ) Norm came out, you know, to support them because they were his friends and colleagues, you know, and I thought it was a dad move. I thought it was an own headed move, but whatever. and so it wasn't norm that these people were supporting. It was, it was racism and misogyny that these people were supporting. You know, all of a sudden Norm had a whole bunch of alt-right fucking Incel fans that came out of the woodwork. The coming to defend him. And that's what these people are, you know, they, they don't, they don't care about comedy, they don't care about Norm. It wasn't, it was never about that. It was just about finding their next target. And they found me, in September of 2018. And the first thing that they did was they took my 30 some thousand, uh, follower Twitter account and, and made a mass false reportings to get it suspended. And so I was permanently suspended from Twitter for almost a year.

Speaker: (tweet https://twitter.com/stealthygeek/status/1039606525940166661?s=20)

Javier: So it's not like you stepped into their crossfire. It's like you just, they just happen to stumble upon your tweet,

Patrick: Correct. And then they brought

Javier: Twitter that, that Twitter vile shit that happens all the time where, you know, people just gang up on people, except this is like magnified by, uh, a headless organization of just angry, like an angry mob basically. Right.

Patrick: they're not angry. That's the funniest part of it. Well, it's not funny, but they're, they're not angry. They're not angry at me. They don't. They don't, I mean, some of 'em do hate me, but, um,

Javier: I was, I was just a new target. I was just something someone new to, to, to hurt.

Patrick: They care only about inflicting pain and suffering. They get off on it. That's what, that's what this group is about. It's a group of anonymous cyberstalking, sociopaths. That's their, their whole thing. Is just about inflicting pain and suffering on, on random, innocent people through anonymity and doing as much damage as they can because that's funny to them.

Speaker: but Patrick Tomlinson doesn't help matters if you ask me. He's the type of guy who debates people on Twitter. What's the point of debating people on Twitter? I never understood that. In fact, his responses to people disagreeing with him are quite combative and dismissive. But that doesn't mean that he deserves the level of torture that he and his wife have been receiving

Javier: This is Nikki Patrick's wife

Niki: It's basically this performative cruelty, right? So in the days before the internet, you wouldn't have the abil, you know, sociopaths would not have the ability to gather in groups. They were usually out ostracized and kicked out of their communities. So essentially, the internet, for better or for worse, exists. And now we have, you know, people who can. Collect, collectively gather to destroy other people. Because the thing is, is they don't have any camaraderie. They're essentially this anti community. Like they, I mean, they eat their own. If any of them are, um, identified or whatever, they go after each other. I mean, there's no loyalty. It's not like an actual community that you would typically

Patrick: think as a community. They're, they're not, they're not friends with each other. They don't, they don't form friendships. there's no trust, there's no loyalty. They don't, they don't even particularly like each other, but they do like hurting people. That's it. That's the whole, like, that's, that's the hardest part for people who haven't been exposed to this, to wrap their heads around

Speaker: WHY HIM?

Patrick: Well-meaning people always come into the comments and like, but why you, like, why are they doing this to you? What did you do to them? It's like nothing. There, there is no why. We don't have, like, we, we don't have a beef with these people. They don't have reasons for doing this other than it gets them off. That's it.

Javier: How, how did you get banned again?

Patrick: Uh, I was, I was permanently suspended because these, these people took my norm tweet back to their, back, to their layer. and then they organized a mass false reporting attack where, You know, dozens or hundreds of them would come in and report the same tweet over and over and over again until Twitter's algorithms and for, you know, Twitter's moderation algorithms would be tricked into thinking there was a problem when there wasn't one. it was, it was a com, it was a totally innocuous tweet that ended up getting me suspended. Um, and I was off Twitter for almost a year. In fact, we had to go out and hire lawyers to. so that a real person would actually look at my account and look at the tweet and go, oh, yeah, this doesn't actually violate terms of service in any way, and we never should have suspended you. And so, you know, $5,000 later we, I did get my Twitter back. And my, you know, my Twitter is my, like, I'm an author. But, you know, five years ago Twitter was my main way of building my audience, my main way of promoting my work. Um, and also it helped me get bigger contracts out of, out of publishers because, you know, an author with tens of thousands of followers is. Easier to market and ease an easier sell for my agent to, uh, to go and, and get bigger advances. So, you know, we spent money to get my Twitter back because it had an enormous, it had enormous value for me. Okay. So, so yeah. Um, you know, I, we, we managed to get my Twitter account uns suspended, and I was able to keep all my followers and after 11 months I was, I was back in business. Um, but in the meantime, they had absolutely exploded, um, going after us in a million different ways. They were in, they started going after my Facebook, my Instagram, my YouTube channel. They, um, they doxed us repeatedly all over the place. Got our private information started, um, started harassing us by voicemail, email, text, which they still do a dozen or more times every single day for the last five years. they started, they doxed most of our family members and started harassing our family members.

Niki: They make like pornography of me and send it to my family. They've put me up on websites like I'm looking for sex and I mean, some of it had been extreme, like, you know, I, I wanna rape fantasy kind of thing. Um, and then give

Speaker: our

Patrick: address so that people would come over and try to forcibly rape my wife.

Speaker: harrass family

Niki: Yeah. Um, they also, you know, harass, like I said, my family, my mother is harassed like all the time. Um, and they, one of their favorite tactics is to basically go onto somebody's website, fill out their contact form on their website, because you can put anybody's name or email address in there, put in our email, address our name, and then say something horrible, racist, transphobic, whatever. and then, you know, these people then come after us because they think that we're out there saying all this terrible thing. Terrible thing.

Speaker: why not just ignore it?

Javier: they don't understand. I mean, we get told, you know, don't feed the trolls. It's like, okay, listen,

Speaker: you

Niki: twits these. Yeah, well, and they say like, don't, well why, why haven't you changed your email address? It's like, cuz they'll find the new one and use it. Do you want me to change my name? Like what? Like what are you talking about? Like, we can't move every five minutes either. You know,

Patrick: just like, yeah. People have, you know, people they say like, change your, you know, just change your phone door. We're like, these people literally found my social security number.

Javier: I gave Patrick and Nikki some tips on how to disappear from the internet. First, they have to remove their names from public databases. then they should put their house on a trust and their car under an llc. That way no one could find them. I gave her all the tricks and Michael Basil the cybersecurity expert gave me, but Patrick and Nikki didn't seem to go for it.

Speaker: It seems that they are way past this point.

Niki: Yeah, we're not disappearing though, as the thing, and that's the thing is we're refusing to do any of these things that are recommended because it's already as bad as it can possibly get. If we move, they will figure it out. They, they figure shit out. They figured out my mom was in the hospital. We didn't tell anybody that. Uh, I mean, it's. They figure stuff out. Uh, it's, it's beyond just like being able to get away from it. And plus, we're unwilling. I run a business, he's an author. We have every right to be public people and have people be able to reach us and, and all of that. So

Patrick: driving us out of driving us off the internet and silencing us is their goal. Yeah. That's what they want. They, they want us to stop talking about them. They want us to stop talking, period. And if they have to kill us, they're, they're willing to do that. I mean, they have publicly, publicly and proudly stated many times that their ultimate goal is to destroy our lives and our careers and our marriage, and drive me in particular to kill myself. They're very, lots of the, they're very upfront

Niki: about that. Lots of the threats that come to me are like, we'll leave you alone. If you just get divorced, we'll leave you alone. If Patrick deletes his Twitter, which of course it, it, none of those things would matter. They won't leave me alone. They won't. And I mean, I wouldn't, anyway, that's, I'm not gonna listen to some random stranger to tell me to dissolve my

Javier: And that's not gonna, like what kind of guarantee do you have? And like you said, you know, yeah, you could run from it and disappear, but that comes at a cost, right? Like that comes, it, it, it's like admitting defeat and, and running away. And like you said, you're, you're an author, right?

Patrick: The cost.

Niki: Yeah. We've built lives, I've built my company. I mean, I've spent 20 years building my company. He's spent however long building his career. I mean, what are we supposed to Do

Speaker: No,

Patrick: they, they don't get to take, they don't take our lives from us. they don't

Speaker: HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE WE TALKIN ABOUT? 👨

Javier: do you get the sense that it's like one person, five people, 20 people, a hundred people,

Patrick: There are the, their, their websites, their, the forums that they coordinate all this harassment on has several hundred users. Um, but most of them are, Hangers on, most of 'em are lurkers. They're just there to la they're just there to watch the car wreck and laugh. The people who are actively actually committing these crimes against us is limited to, we believe no more than a handful of people, maybe half a dozen.

Niki: So the ones doing the worst things are, we think. Yeah. Like three to five people. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: We're gonna discuss the possible suspects in a future episode, but for now, let's just focus on the harassment

Patrick: while my, while my Twitter was suspended for those 11 months back in 2018 and 2019, their subreddit are opening and Anthony um, turned into nothing but harassing me. And, and my family obviously, but it's just, it, it became an a 24 7 attack, Patrick Tomlins, in any way possible place. And so we started, uh, submitting D M C A claims

Speaker: A D M C A takedown notice is a complaint if someone suspects a website of copyright infringement.

Patrick: Whenever they would like post photoshopped, uh, images of, of or for of us, or post one of my pictures from my, Instagram or, uh, oftentimes they would take, uh, they would take covers of my books, which of course are copyrighted. and so we would, we, and we submitted hundreds and hundreds of these things to get, to get all these images taken down. It was

Niki: only, it was basically the only effective way we could com combat anything they were doing and get anything taken down. And eventually, sorry.

Speaker: I don't know. I've been poking around these message boards and there are tons of pictures of Patrick Photoshopped and various gay pornographic images. They make fun of his weight. They call him names. It's really, it is kind of disturbing actually. And at first, the harassment started on Reddit. Anytime someone would make one of these posts, Patrick and Nikki would report it,

Patrick: And eventually the actual, the a admin, the administrators of Reddit, for the first time ever changed their harassment policies, specifically because of what was happening to us and changed their harassment policies, sitewide, um, specifically so that they could ban this group. And so they ended up banning the, the opening Anthony thread or uh, uh, subreddits and. A couple thousand of their accounts all got, all, got nuked.

Speaker: and when their subreddit would be taken down, a new one would just pop back up

Patrick: the administrators really, they, they just had, they'd seen enough and they'd had enough. I mean, for, for many, for many years, like they were the most hated subreddits on all of the, all of the site. And they were voted the worst subreddit, but like two years running. And they were very proud of that. I mean, just being, being the worst type of people is something that they, they relish in, they, they love being hated. And so when they lost their subreddit and then all the subsequent ones that they used tried to use to replace it, they, they lost their minds because they lost their most effective platform. I mean, they had something like 30,000 subscribers on that subreddit, which, you know, isn't huge. So once they got kicked off of Reddit, they kind of floated around the internet. They, they created, uh, you know, a handful of the survivors started creating their own forums. And that's where the, the current website came from. After three or four different iterations.

Speaker: the pest. Have a new fairy loosely moderated form. the new Opie and Anthony Forum. It's a place where you can freely use the N-word without any judgment. The site has four main forums. one is labeled literary criticism. Innocent enough, right? A bunch of bookworms just chatting it up wrong. The first post I pulled up was a court document with Nikki and Patrick's address on it, a username. One user posted. I want Nikki to get fucked, especially hard. The next four threads I clicked on were all devoted to mocking Patrick and Nikki. Not exactly literary criticism. There's also a ton of content about Patrick and Nikki on Kiwi Farms, and for those of you, fortunate enough not to know what the hell I'm talking about. Kiwi Farms is an online forum devoted to gang stocking and harassment. users pre users prey on transgender, disabled, black heck, anyone they want to.

Patrick: (new.onaforums.net)

Niki: a lot of content about it on Kiwi Farms, though.

Patrick: There is, yeah, there's, there's definitely overlap in the user base between these two groups, between these two horrible,

Javier: Okay.

Patrick: horrible groups. Uh, and they're, Kiwi Farms has the, I mean, the last time I looked at Kiwi Farms, my, the thread about me and us had 1500 pages, you know, tens of thousands of comments. It's been four and a half, almost five

Javier: Oh my gosh.

Patrick: every day, no days off

Speaker: destroy our family

Javier: I know that their goal is to destroy you both, like, uh, the, not only individually, but destroy the, the couple, like your marriage. H I can't believe it hasn't, you know what I mean? Like,

Niki: well, honestly, I think that if either of us were going through this alone, we might be dead by now because I think that first of all, Kiwi Farms is directly responsible for at least three or four suicides that we know of. I mean, people who go through this kill themselves and, and they don't have a voice.

Speaker: (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/02/kiwi-farms-die-drop-cloudflare-chandler-trolls/) They're In 2016, Julie Terryberry took her own life after being targeted by the users on, after being targeted by users on the site. Two years later, Chloe Segal lit herself on fire at a public park. All this because of her harassment on Kiwi Farms. When Segal posted about her suicidal thoughts, Kiwi Farm users sent private messages to her, urging her to kill herself In June, 2021, an American video game developer based in Japan, named David Guder, took their life after relentlessly being tormented for being non-binary. One thread was more than two dozen pages long. Here's what David wrote in their suicide letter. I've been bullied, ridiculed, and humiliated my entire life. I could only just tolerate it with heavy depression when it was four chan, but Kiwi Farms has made the harassment orders a magnitude worse. One user wrote bru. I hope he streams his suicide sick.

Niki: (“They were systematically trying to cause suicides,” Yonah Gerber, an archivist in the video game industry who has spent the better part of a decade advocating for Kiwi Farms to be shut down, told me. “I was almost another—because I tried to kill myself twice.”) honest to God, it's, we share an insane amount of empathy and understanding about this. If I, if we didn't have that immediately between us, it would be difficult. I mean, it, it's difficult to exist as, it's, it's difficult to exist in the world, like having this happen to you

Javier: by yourself.

Niki: Yeah. By yourself. And most people have

Speaker: to deal with this type of harassment by themselves Next time on pretend it's actually gonna get worse because the stalkers next time on pretend it's actually gonna get worse for Patrick and Nikki because these pests have moved on to a new, nasty little corner of the internet, and this time they are completely unhinged. That's next time on pretend.