Bear With Me

Quick update after a few quiet months.

Seven-plus years of this shit has really worn me down.

There’s the fact that I was falsely accused without evidence by national media outlets and never got my “day in court” to defend myself, so to speak.

There’s the grim reality that everyone responsible has completely gotten away with it, or even been rewarded for it. All these lying media careerists never have to answer for anything. Sure, Moria Donegan had to settle out of court with Stephen Elliott (though she had an ample “legal defense fund” that supposedly neutral places like Nieman Lab openly promoted) and that’s only because the trial was going to proceed to discovery despite the many, many attempts by her camp to get the case thrown out. Rather than try to defend what she did in court, Moira simply settled to get the hell out. Cut and run, like a thief in the night. These malicious cowards are unbelievable.

There’s the compounding stress of me working two or three dead-end, hourly wage customer service and/or manual labor jobs at any given point during this period. I’ve worked too hard and accomplished too much to be consigned to this miserable life.

There’s the despair of watching former “friends” ghost me over unvetted allegations, never checking in before ditching me, and others attack me for seeking justice for the damage caused by obvious corporate propaganda. No member of my own family has ever sat with me and asked what this has been like, how I have coped with the pain. Try going through the worst episode of your life without any familial concern; it ain’t fun.

There is a wholesale lack of a cultural script for men falsely accused by women. It’s not a coincidence - hateful female chauvinists have worked for decades to ensure exactly that. It doesn’t help that, as much as those female chauvinists never shut up about the concept of “the patriarchy,” there’s very little actual solidarity among men. Hell, some of the most sadistic voices telling me to shut up about this have been cucked shitlib men. Partially, that’s the result of a capitalist culture forcing a warped idea of stoicism on men. Women are allowed to complain all day, every day (boy howdy, do they!) about their lot in life whereas men just have to shut up and get back to work. Female chauvinists liberated themselves from oppressive gender roles only to turn around and force men more firmly into their own.

Then there’s the knowledge that it’s been all on me to fight back. From the instant this piano got dropped on my head out of nowhere, I knew no one would be helping, that it was me against the world. Ideologically captured “researchers” and “experts” don’t bother to study cases like mine or tabulate stats on them; they just lie and say they never happen. It’s like the truth was sand seeping between my fingers. If I didn’t secure it, it would be gone forever. I’ve had to struggle like there’s no tomorrow to build a case for myself after being side-swiped by media violence.

And once I built my case, they couldn’t respond to it. Megan Greenwell and Drew Magary are the biggest, most rotten cowards I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing. Rest assured, if they thought the facts were on their side, they would be gleefully assailing me, dunking on me, taking victory lap after victory lap, and anyone familiar with them knows it. But they don’t. Even if they can count on their influencer allies to back them up if they did respond, they know any more light being shined on this would be awful for them, and any objective reader would see what they’ve done is cruel and underhanded. The same is true of the media establishment at large. Had Moira won in court, they would have been gloating for days, writing lengthy puff pieces in her honor. But she didn’t win in court, so a few places churned out tersely written boilerplate stories, and buried them deep in other coverge. Now they like to pretend this huge story never happened.

I know I haven’t been perfect every step of the way confronting this. I let my anger get the better of me at times. I’ve gotten used to it being me against me the world, to the point that I sometimes forget there are some on my side.

So I want to thank those who have kept up, who show kindness when they can. I can’t promise that I will get satisfaction; the most I can do is put the truth out there and hope someone with the capability to do something about it picks it up and runs with it.

I’m focused on writing more often, and not necessarily about this one subject. Thank you for understanding and doing whatever you can.