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gossipgirlgasoline · 6 months

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gossip girl here, your one and only source into the ultra-rich, scandalous lives of race car drivers of formula 1.

hi loves! our first post!!!! ahhh!!!!! foremost, happy race week in australia! oscar piastri, daniel riccardo, and notably valtteri bottas’ home race, of course. its been such a hard week without racing hasn’t it?? i know it has been for me. thankfully, racing is back in melbourne for the weekend<3

before i start, if ur not into truly gossipy stuff— THIS IS NOT FOR YOU!! this will go into territory of wag gossip, silly rumours, and other cheesy stuff like that. you have been warned.

onto this weeks gossip !!!

everybody knows 18-year-old prodigy ollie bearman, who made his f1 debut with scuderia ferrari just two weeks ago in the scrupulous circuit that is the jeddah corniche circuit filling in for carlos sainz jr, sick from appendicitis. (hopefully this doesnt cause another chain of events like a certain driver whos number is 23, knock on wood) the academy driver started 11th on the grid and finished in the points, all the way to 7th, despite being such a hard circuit and also having very little experience with real formula 1 cars.

what not everybody knows about is his girlfriend, estelle— formerly silly_lettuce on all social media. truly, she is gorgeous. a picturesque couple, no?

estelle ogilvy langinier manning, (allegedly) is 21 years old law student out of london. the couple ‘hard launched’ from ollie’s instagram story a couple months ago. (picture is from his instagram) from the crumbs ive picked up from my dear friends on insta and tiktok, ollie is not the only racing driver she’s ever dated. ive been hearing through the grapevine that she dated f2 drivers zak o’sullivan since they were neighbours in the past and has also been with franco colapinto, confirmed(? texts could be fake) by herself through a message thread on instagram.

aside from racing drivers, there has been more rumors of her being with a guy from boy band, as well as a finance man.

with a simple instagram search of ‘sillylettuce,’ you will get a video credited to her old account with her alleged ‘finance boyfriend.’ this search will also get you this picture on the left, uploaded by downtown.chix in december of 2020.

left picture heaves largely compared to the right, taken from an archived picture from her now deactivated instagram account. 🫡

if we bring out search back around tiktok and do another search of silly lettuce, you’ll be met with a video from user sunnymonday on tiktok, going by the name india rawsthorn. the video is a trend from 2021 ‘rating my friends dance moves’

estelle earned herself a spot in the video, sporting a very different look than. 🤨🤨🤨🤨

this is estelle— India has many videos of estelle on her account

some people think its plastic surgery, maybe a drastic weight loss journey. whatever it might be, this isn’t the only thing that raises a couple eyebrows since thanks to the very intrigued people of the internet, we have since found out she started studying at durham uni in 2018. unless she is a young sheldon type prodigy who started college at 11, this would mean she is 24/25 now.

shortly after people started finding out, she ‘coincidentally’ got hacked. yikes!

*i can confirm this one is real— i saw it in real time😭

if you try to look her account on tiktok and instagram up now, nothing will pop up. mm.. following the discovery of her age, she immediately (allegedly) changed her information on linkedin. 🤔🤔🤔 how do you guys feel about this? i have a theory right here from one of my mutuals from twitter.

“Wooooww Estelle is really going down the road of saying that "we're obsessed"

her obsession is finding someone famous, and potentially rich to climb the social ladder of fame

I'm not trying to shame her about her plastic surgery, but it's obvious that some type of touchup was done and there's nothing wrong with that but I get the sense that she's trying to hide that she isn't all natural when in reality there has been something drastically done”

what’s your guy’s opinions? leave them below😘 my inbox is always open as well as my dms, so if u ever need to talk or want to chat about my posts, hmu! (tips are always accepted too)

until next time race-watchers, xoxo, gossipgirlgasoline

#formula 2 #scuderia ferrari #formula racing #f1 wag #f1 wags #f1 #f1 gossip #formula 1 gossip #celebrity gossip #f2 #help me

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leeryder · 9 months

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STRIKE FOR GAZA MONDAY DECEMBER 11th!

The information I am about to relate is posted on instagram by esralshikh. Bisan shared her post on her story as well.

This is a strike is where we as citizens of the world do our best to grind the functions of the economic world to a halt in protest of what is going on in Gaza. Because the only thing that gets the attention of western world leaders is money.

Bisan has asked that 'strike from economic life and daily movement and we can boycott everything'

Esralshikh’s original post says “it is necessary to paralyze the movement of life and the economic wheel in all countries so that everyone feels that [they] are directly affected by the impact of the aggression in Gaza”

Specific things that have been asked of us to do for the strike:

•do not spend any money

•do not sell anything

•do not do financial transactions of any kind

•do not trade

•do not travel (car, public transit, train, plane etc)

•do not use banks

•shut down any business you own

•if you’re employed ask your employer to close and join the strike

•join local strikes and protests if you can

It is said that if you have important appointments, important work, or an exam then do what you need to and refrain from everything else.

Just DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN DO!!!

Other ways to strike if you cannot skip work etc.

•Abstain from streaming services for the day (Netflix, Hulu, etc)

•Abstain from watching Youtube and other platforms that use Ad revenue

•Use your social media to only post about Gaza and Palestine and refrain from posting about anything else that day

•Call/text/email your leaders and representatives and demand for a ceasefire

•Educate yourself and others about what is going on

Streamers and Content Creators

Many creators are not streaming and/or creating content Monday December 11th (myself included)

Cafenby on Twitter made a thread calling others to strike Palestine solidarity by not streaming.

I, as a fanfic content creator, will be striking by not posting my regularly scheduled fic to Ao3 tomorrow.because Ao3 recently harassed a volunteer who put “from the river to the sea” on their Slack stats .

AO3 does not deserve any attention on a day we are focusing on striking for Palestine. I would rather people be reading how to help Palestine Monday rather than a fanfiction I created.

Deactivate Social Media During Strike?

I have seen some accounts on Twitter trying to spread that we need to deactivate our social media accounts for the strike, but I have not seen Bisan or Esralshikh (who are two people leading the strike) ask for that.

It has been a technique in the past for the opposers of strikes and protests such as these to stop activists and protesters from using social media to spread helpful information. (Such as hijacking hashtags and posts).

So continue to use social media unless directly told to by Bisan or Esralshikh themselves.

Social Media is our weapon and tool as the masses so use it to educate yourself and post about Gaza and Palestine ONLY tomorrow. Do not go silent about what is happening tomorrow and refrain from posting about other things.

#free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #strike #december 11 strike #gaza #gaza genocide

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darnellclayton · 1 year

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Why I Still Use X (Formally Twitter)—& Why You Should Avoid X

I have seen a lot of discussion from folks on Threads, Mastodon, Misskey, etcetera, on why they are giving up on X (formally Twitter) by either deactivating their accounts or simply abandoning them altogether.

I personally believe it is in people’s best interest to avoid using X (due to the increasing amount of vitriol on the platform), however as I mentioned on Threads I will maintain my X account until after the 2024 elections are over & the new President of the United States 🇺🇸 is inaugurated.

Without further ado, here are my three primary reasons for using X.

X is the preferred governmental communication platform

Heads of states (Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, Dictators, Junta Leaders) communicate on X first before using other platforms

Governmental agencies (US State Department, immigration & travel agencies, etcetera) communicate on X before other platforms (some information is critical for traveling)

Military news (propaganda & factual) appear on X first before other platforms (sometimes by minuets, hours or days)

Sizable national communities still utilize X

Communities that I care about in Nigeria 🇳🇬, Israel 🇮🇱, Japan 🇯🇵, Liberia 🇱🇷, Sierra Leone 🇸🇱 & the United States 🇺🇸 still use X as their primary way to communicate publicly

Good News: I am witnessing many of them switch over to @instagram, Threads, Misskey & (in rare cases) even Mastodon

I will encourage more of them to switch over, & I believe by late 2025 most of them will have abandoned X (as we are reaching a tipping point)

Powerful hate groups use X (& monitoring them is important)

These include your traditional hate groups (Nazi’s, KKK, religious nationalists, etcetera)

Criminal governments use X (Russia 🇷🇺, China 🇨🇳 via bots, Afghanistan 🇦🇫, Iran 🇮🇷, etcetera) & being aware of their propaganda helps inform me of the state of the world

Unfortunately, seditious American 🇺🇸 politicians whose incompetence & ignorance can directly affect my life also use X, which surprisingly remains an avenue for contacting them (they even respond sometimes)

Those are my primary reasons. That said, I am glad to announce I no longer need to use X for sports info (many of them use Threads & Instagram), business info/contact (Instagram has replaced X for this) or tech news (Feedly & Mastodon help keep me informed).

My guess is that X will lose relevance in 2025 after US elections. However, I do not see that happening without Threads & @tumblr joining the Fediverse.

Where to find me online (my handle is @darnell in many places)

#x #twitter #politics #tech #technology #fediverse #threads #instagram #misskey #mastodon

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realblackhelix · 1 year

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What should I do if I downloaded threads?

I heard we can't delete the our data in threads if we dont delete ig account

I can't afford to delete my acc

So this is the big problem.

Deactivating Threads only makes it silent and does not erase any of the data. The only way to do so is to delete your Instagram account.

Now the problem with the above is whether or not they have the right to keep that data for a few years, which would mean it is stored somewhere and by someone which doesn't necessarily need to be them. Now I am Australian, so I do not know the American laws regarding this nor their individual state laws.

My best suggestions are below:

1. Consider whether or not you actually really need Instagram or not. If you do really need it, consider the next suggestions.

2. Get a good anti-virus solution that also scours the Dark Web for anything similar to your sensitive information and run scans constantly, not just once every six months.

3. I cannot stress enough the need for good passwords that have complexity and length and never repeating passwords anywhere. DO NOT use a password manager until you've done your research on them.

4. If possible, MFA everything, not MFA by selecting YES or NO, but MFA, where it asks for a digit that you need to confirm.

5. DO NOT download or use it at work. Only use work social media with work credentials if needed.

Another thing to consider is that no matter what happens, the data that Threads is collecting has likely been collected elsewhere anyway. The job is making it harder for those wanting to do harm, to do anything with it.

If you do want more assistance, I am more than willing to help outside of anonymity. Just message me direct, all private. However, note that I cannot give legal advice or a promise this will 100% completely prevent cyber criminals from gaining the information. I can only make suggestions to make it harder for them to obtain it.

Anyone is welcome to ask me questions on it, whether direct or anonymous.

#cyber answers #threads

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apples-nle · 1 year

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I remember when Twitter was cool (a eulogy to a website I used to love/hate)

In the next few weeks, I’m likely going to be trying my hand at various different social media sites, figuring out where my new posting home is going to be. My sister recommended Tumblr (which here is my first attempt), Instagram launches it’s much anticipated “Threads” today, a BlueSky code is heading my way very soon, and i’ve been posting nonsense in what is affectionately being called “the drilcord” (a discord server run by twitter icon Dril). All of these things are ostensibly lifeboats being launched from a sinking ship. The death of Twitter has been slower than anticipated, but the Titanic has officially cracked in half and Elon’s takeover seems to be nearly at its inevitable and predictable conclusion: Twitter will die.

My first time logging onto twitter was probably around 2011/2012. I can’t be sure because I’ve deactivated, been banned and started new accounts multiple times over the years. So this telling contains no hard historical data. I am only a single witness to the chaos. But it wasn’t always chaos. I started using the website as a sort of diary... or maybe more accurately an online “whiteboard” where I would post fleeting ideas I could use in my weekly movie reviews that I posted for a small website at the time. I had little intent of really gaining followers or making connections, but the early algorithm tended to push many of us with similar interests together. Most of the conversations would be playful ribbing regarding what movies we loved/hated. Talking about our movie-going experiences that week, posting small capsule reviews of the newest blockbuster. All that sort of junk. I think by the end of 2012 I had something like 150 followers. But I considered a significant chunk of them to be “friends” on some level.

Most of these people would form the bedrock of what came to be known as “Film Twitter”. This experience probably sounds familiar to anyone who had been using twitter at the time. “Book Twitter”, “Weird Twitter”, “Sports Twitter” and many other circles around the website would form similarly. All neatly compacted in their own little echo chamber that didn’t really have much effect on the outside world. And it was fun. These were the early years. Over time, these echo chambers would come into clash with one another and spirited debates would become a dominant event on the website. Often these arguments would spiral in to toxic “i’m right/you’re wrong” that instilled a lot of anger in myself and others. But it also produced an intense high of calling someone a “fartknocker” and watching them “slowly shrink into a corncob”. It also, more importantly started to form a lot of the modern vernacular that would come to define what was cool/not cool on the site. As these different “twitters” converged, one of them really reigned supreme above all: Weird Twitter. I can’t definitively say this was Twitter at its best, but I can say this is when Twitter was at its most original and innovative. The shitposting was incredible. The brain rot had set in and everyone began to post nonsense onto the timeline with little regard for decency or thought. Sarcasm and insincerity ruled the land. It was glorious. And hilarious. The best days were when the Villain of the Week would reveal themselves, with a tweet so dubious, and more importantly, intensely sincere in its stupidity, that the entire site would dogpile on them with such ferocity that it would send people running and screaming from the platform. Twitter became a mean place and bullying became the norm. Even to this day, this is the one constant that remained among the changing ecosystem over the years. It result in some spectacular displays of roasting. My personal favourite of this was when polls were still a novel tool on the platform. A grandiose “shittiest twitter account of all time” bracket in the style of March Madness took place yearly. In 2016, some of the highest ranking personalities came in the form of Arthur Chu and Mike Cernovich (remember him?). But against all odds #12 ranked Kurt Eichenwald made a cinderella run after posting some truly terrible political opinions around the same time as he posted a picture outing himself as a Hentai enjoyer. This was not really a crime in it of itself, but his attempts to deflect it as he “was showing my kids/wife that this is a real thing” (paraphrasing) made him look spectacularly dumb. He ended winning that year. God that was so funny. Around this time of course though, one posting personality had emerged that would change the world online and offline: Donald Trump. I won’t recount much of the 45th President’s time in office or his politics. We all know how that went. His role on twitter though was much more complicated. One thing that you need to understand though is that Donald was one of the best shitposters of all time. He was so funny. I’m sorry if this angers you, but all the way back in 2012, all the way up to his eventual twitter ban following the January 6th insurrection, he was glorious. He was a lighting rod for those dogpiling sessions referenced above. But Donald relished in being the villain, and as a result his villainy was suddenly become to be appreciated, because at the end of the day Twitter Is A Mean Place. And those who were among the top tier of shitposting couldn’t help but appreciate the unabashed way he did not give a shit. Game recognized Game. His ascendency to the White House came with a lot of baggage and made a lot of the humor come with an asterisk. It was still very funny, but it was also incredibly terrifying. And the dogpiling became something closer to a crusade in an effort to halt his stampede to the highest power in the Western World. This had the effect of unifying twitter under one large umbrella. It didn’t quite change the website from all the differing chambers into one amorphous blob, but it came close. Politics was the order of the day and nearly everything on the site became an extension of Donald Trump’s candidacy and Presidency. This fixation on politics more and more was already sort of happening way back in 2014 when GamerGate had kicked off, but Trump was the straw that broke the camels back. His contribution is really what turned twitter into what it is today. The echo chambers did inherently still exist, but they overlapped much more frequently now. And ultimately this is also where the decline started. See the thing about politics is that it’s impossible to not be sincere. Because things aren’t really trivial when it comes to all these hot button issues. But because Twitter thrived on chaos and controversy, the loudest and most extreme voices often ended up getting pushed by the algorithm. And unfortunately that often meant suddenly things didn’t seem so trivial anymore. It stopped being fun. But getting the dopamine from those likes and retweets so was intoxicating it didn’t matter. The endless scrolling provided us with spectacular displays of idiocy and god awful posts that we couldn’t look away. We were already addicted. It was impossible to log off.

There is little positive to say about the 7 years since then. Obviously some comedy still had come about, and even twitter’s funniest arcs occurred during this era when Trump caught Covid as well as Jan 6th. But those things were the result of our crumbling society. The site just happened to be there to witness the fall of Rome. More importantly the anger and animosity which was once funny and novel started to become exhausting. Things got pretty real when Nazis and Communists started having more of a voice on the site (not that i’m equating the two ideologies; Fuck Fascists). Radicalization happened at a much larger degree. During this time I deactivated my account twice just to get away from it, because Doomscrolling had become so pervasive it was damaging my mental health. I eventually returned, but I made sure to keep my toe out of the politics pool. I focused more on engaging with experimental artists and tweeting about hockey/football. Things started to calm down after Trump left office but the scars of his time in office remained. It was just a slightly more muted version of this political era. The shitposting would never really return to it’s golden days. No one wanted to say it, but the website wasn’t the same. It was on the decline, and the algorithm had changed so much to reflect the Trump years that came before, that it damaged the once novel user experience. Eventually Elon Musk would step in. He was a big fan of the platform, but he was also one of the worst posters of all time. It didn’t matter much though as he amassed a pretty big following resulting from all his media attention surrounding his business ventures. The news would often portray him as the next Thomas Edison (they were right, but not for the reasons they intended) and many people sincerely looked at him as a genius of the modern era. That obviously disappeared with time but for some reason Musk was as brain rotted as the rest of us and considered himself an elite poster, likely using his engagement metrics as validation. Unfortunately he’s a stupid billionaire and decided to buy the aging website out of some misplaced desire to enshrine himself as perhaps a holy figure among the masses. It didn’t work. All it ensured was that the slow decline of the site would speed up dramatically. In the era of TikTok, Twitter has begun to show its age.

It’s probably for the best that twitter ends this way. Instead of quality fading into obscurity, blowing itself up in embarrassing tech blunders run by an incompetent poster is probably the funniest way for the site to die. Everyone jumping ship looking for a new home that fits their preferred communities and posting styles. I’m not sure which one I’m going to land in, but I’ll bounce around until one of them really sticks with me. Maybe it’s tumblr? Maybe Threads? Or maybe I’ll just go back to the Something Awful forums (which is inexplicably still running in 2023). I don’t know what the point of this eulogy/essay is. I don’t think there’s much of a lesson here. But Twitter was a big part of my life, it outlasted an entire 8 year relationship, multiple jobs, my graduate and post graduate education life, 5 different apartments and numerous friends that have come in and out of my life, I’m going to miss it. And I can’t wait for it to die. P.S. Can anyone teach me how to use this website?

#twitter #tumblr #essay #elon is an idiot #shitpost #random #rant post #twitpocalypse #twitimported #intro post #fuck elon #Threads #Meta #bluesky

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evesbeve · 4 years

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Hey there, you said your ask box was open for Justin Min's whole thing? I guess I just slept through the whole thing, honestly - could you just go over a gist of everything that happened? I get that it seems like a PR team didn't know how to use twitter (which, mood) and f-ed things up for him, but what were they "cleaning up" in the first place, who's Anna what did they do that warranted such a bizarre thread from the PR team, etc...? 😳

Hey! Okay so this is going to be a lot, so buckle up.

Right off the bat, I just want to say that Justin isn’t cancelled. The situation has been mostly resolved right now (more on that later).

So around a week ago, Justin Min started deleting his replies to fans. Depending on whether you’re on Twitter or not, you might know that Justin is one of the most interactive people of the cast. He knows a lot of fans by name, he has inside jokes with us, and he just interacts a lot with his fanbase. So you can imagine why him suddenly starting to delete his replies was a bit upsetting. There was nothing we could do about it though.

And suddenly, two days ago, Justin deactivated his account out of nowhere, which caused all kinds of drama to go down.

People started pointing the finger at specific accounts saying it was their fault that Justin deactivated (don’t even get me started on that logic; why a grown-ass adult deactivate because of a few teenagers is above me, it literally made no sense), even sending death threats. Others suspected that he got suspended because Twitter’s algorithm saw all these tweets get deleted and was like “welp, bot time.” Long story short, lots of misinformation was going around.

And then out of the blue, Justin’s account was reactivated, and he made a thread directed at Anna.

Now, who is Anna? Anna is a stan on twitter, whose @ I won’t be sharing for privacy, but here’s how they’re relevant in this:

Remember when I mentioned the inside jokes? Well, one of them was between a fan called Matt and Justin. Matt kept commenting on Justin’s tweets asking him to say trans rights. On the one year anniversary of Matt asking Justin to say trans rights, Justin finally said it. Then, Matt made a poll asking other stans what he should have Justin say next, and lesbian rights won.

Around a month ago, Matt replied to one of Justin’s tweets, and Justin responded with something along the lines of “haha, i know this is just an attempt to get me to say lesbian rights,” referencing the inside joke. People started commenting that the way he phrased it was a bit :/ so then he replied to his own tweet with something like “well, i’ll delete this before i get cancelled,” and that’s when things spiraled.

[id: Justin Min’s tweet #1: i see that you are trying to butter me up to say lesbian rights, nice try, matt. nice try.

Justin Min’s tweet #2: oh, here we go. this is an inside joke between myself and matt, if you’ve been a part o fthis fandom for more than a few weeks. but alas, i will have to delete this now before i’m cancelled by the end of the day. keep loving, everyone.]

Lesbians get spoken over and looked down upon not only by straight people, but also the LGBT community. So when Justin tweeted that, lesbians were like “this sounds as if you care more about your own self image rather than our community.” Then, non-lesbians got involved and started either a) calling Justin lesbophobic (which lesbians never did) or b) blindly defending Justin and saying he did nothing wrong.

(Side note: I am not a lesbian, and I’m not trying to speak over lesbians in this situation. But I did talk about this to some of my friends who are lesbians, and they told me that what Justin did wasn’t as big of a deal as Twitter made it out to be. These are their words, not mine. All I know is that it was definitely not bad-intentioned, just a huge misunderstanding.)

Anyway, Anna made a thread explaining to Justin why him defending himself came out as harmful towards the lesbian community, and then Justin apologised and that was it.

Which brings us back to yesterday (26/9/2020).

Everyone is freaking out, posting misinformation, panicking. I don’t exactly,,, know how, but the #justinminisoverparty hashtag started being used for actual hate towards Justin for deactivating, and some people (including Anna, though I think their tweet was in the context of a joke? please take this with a grain of salt though. update: it was in the context of a joke) mentioned that Justin is a lesbophobe.

A few hours later, Justin reactivated his account, tagged Anna, and said this (though it was actually his PR team, more on that later):

[id: Justin’s Tweet: @ [redacted] quickly jumping back on here from my twt break because i’m receiving messages that you’re continuing to spread misinformation, so i want to clarify.]

[id: Justin’s Tweets: 1. all of my interactions with you were deleted because of the need to set clear boundaries due to the fact that your incessant messages and replies from multiple accounts over the last several months were veering into stalking/harassment.

2. for someone who appears to pride themselves on reminding their friends/followers on a daily basis to be careful of the language they use on this app, you seem to be fine with flippantly labeling someone as homophobic/lesbophobic as if they’re cute little adjectives to give to someone, not realizing that such labels have real-life consequences.]

[id: Justin’s Tweets: 3. also noting here than in your original thread, you stated that you neither considered me nor my words to actually be lesbophobic, so a bit confused as to why your story has suddenly changed.

4. i realize you’re young, so i’m genuinely hoping you use this opportunity to learn and grow andbe a little more mindful the next time you decide to tweet.]

The next twenty minutes were pure chaos. Justin deactivated again, everyone started freaking out because that was very out of character for him. People were cancelling him because this could have easily been resolved in DMs, or tweeted without the mention of Anna (a minor) from a mainstream Twitter account.

And then, Justin Min DMed another fan on Instagram (her name is Em) about the situation.

Who is Em? For starters, I’d like to say that I personally know Em and that she’s one of my best friends. I’ve known her for more than a year now, and I can personally vouch for her. Everything that she posted is 100% true (if you want the thread where she posts proof of the DMs, please send me a different ask because I’m scared tumblr will not post this in the tag if I include it here).

The reason Justin DMed her out of all people is because he also kinda knows her? As I mentioned, Justin interacts with us on Twitter a lot, and Em is the one person he’s responded to the most, so he knows who she is. (He’s tagged her more times than other cast members, at least before all his tweets were deleted by his PR team.)

Anyway, this is what Em tweeted:

[id: Em’s tweets: please read this !!!

justin dmed me on instagram and basically the gist of it is that he hired a pr team and they tweeted the thread at anna without knowing everyone could see it. all of the tweets being deleted/ him deactivating was also them.]

Below is the image Em attached to the tweet:

[id: Justin’s DM to Em: hey. this is justin. i’m just hearing about what’s happening on twitter right now. for context, i was asked to work with a team of people to “clean up” my twitter in the past few weeks. they’ve taken the liberty of deleting a bunch of my responses and posts in order to safeguard me (whatever that means) as well as deactivating my account to comb through other things.i believe they accidentally sent anna a message and mistakenly believed the function for her to comment only would mean that she would be the only one to see it as well. needless to say, i’m no longer working with this team and want to personally apologize to her. do you know any way i can get into contact with her?]

And then, in a follow-up tweet:

[id: Em’s text at Justin: sorry for dming you again. is there any other way i can help? i just feel really bad about this whole thing and i know how quickly this stuff can spread if it’s not taken care of

Justin’s text: i mean, i guess you can share the information i’ve given you? it’ll take a bit of time for me to take back ownership on everything as i sever ties with that team, so maybe the sooner the better people know.

Em’s text: okay ! is it okay if i tweet a screenshot

Justin’s text: sure.]

Then Justin’s account got reactivated an hour ago (almost 24hs after Em’s tweets), and he tweeted this:

[id: Justin’s tweet: hi. it’s me. thank you for all your messages. this has been an incredibly tough week for me on multiple fronts. some things you might already be aware of; many other things you don’t know about.asking for a bit of privacy as i take sometime to unplug. hoping to be back soon.]

And that’s all, I think? There’s lots we don’t know about what happened yet, so please please please try not to spread misinformation. This is a stressful situation for us on Twitter, and especially for Justin, and misinformation going around is the last thing we need right now.

tl;dr: Justin Min hired a PR Team that started deleting all of his tweets and deactivated his account. Misinformation started spreading, people started cancelling Justin for no reason. The PR Team decided to respond to Anna, made the response public, deactivated again. Justin DMed Em and explained the situation, and an hour ago, he reactivated and said he’s taking a small break to sort things out.

If anyone has any other questions/clarifications, my askbox is open! Hope this shed some light on the situation <3

UPDATE 28/9/2020: Justin has DMed and apologised to Anna for the situation, and Anna has accepted the apology. Anna posted all of it on their account, but again, if you want a link, send me an ask!

#im gonna go to bed now so ill respond to any follow-up asks tomorrow #i hope this made sense #ask #anon #evelina nonesense #the umbrella academy #tua #tua cast #justin min #justin h min #justin h. min #ben #ben hargreeves #tua ben #the horror #tw: drama

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weregonnaneedmorewhiskey · 5 years

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It’s trendy to hate

Ok, so this is kind of a follow up from a previous post from my blog post on cancel culture. Something that I have observed in the last two years on social media is that there is a trend in hyping people up to great success and then once they’ve reached that level, we then see hate start to increase. The first person I saw this happen to was Taylor Swift. After the massive success of the 1989 era, her transition into pop music, we started to see a lot of hate towards Taylor. Part of this I do believe was from the whole Kanye West/Famous situation where Kim had released a recording of Taylor and Kanye’s performance in which we hear Taylor hear the lyric “I think me and Taylor might still have sex”.

We hear Taylor respond to this lyric citing no problems with it. HOWEVER we do not hear that in that recording that Taylor know about the following lyric of making her “famous”, so I’m definitely think to this day Taylor didn’t know about that lyric until The Life of Pablo was released. After this episode of KUWTK aired, the hate for Taylor was immense. Her Instagram comments were filled with snake emoji and a hate train had arrived. Thankfully Taylor was able to take this snake narrative and turn it on it’s head in the Reputation era. Something that I love.

Another example. After Cardi’s Grammy win, she received major backlash from it to the point where she temporarily deactivated her Instagram account. Since Cardi’s Grammy win, I’ve seen a lot of people overnight start to hate Cardi and it begs to question of why do people just start to hate things that are popular. Ella Mai got a fair share of hate the other day when made reference to Jacquees singing trip at Drake’s Assassination Vacation tour where Tory Lanez brought him out as a guest (by the way, you’re in front of 20,000 + people and you sing a cover instead of your original music. That’s the perfect moment to plug your music you idiot). Once Ella, who has had little to say on the situation spoke on how she felt in that moment and yet jacquees did a whole press tour on it, people said she should “get over it” and that’s she’s jealous...a Grammy award winner with two platinum songs and probably another platinum song, a platinum album, a feature with Meek Mill and a sold out tour is jealous of Jacquees’ mediocre cover. Ok go off.

Ariana Grande is another person that received a mass amount of hate after the release of Thank U, Next accusing her of appropriating black culture when Ariana has been heavily influenced by black music from the beginning of her career. Her debut album is a throwback 90’s R&B album heavily inspired by Mariah and Whitney. I could get into the whole culture vulture argument because there is valid point to made about how people roast others for appropriation but let Bhad Bhabie become a thing (this still angers me to this day because she is a joke and a walking caricature)

It’s like it’s cool to hate what’s trendy but is this jumping on the hate train because everyone is? I strongly believe so and this is very dangerous. Kevin Hart in a recent interview spoke on this and I could not agree more on what he said. We need to all have our individual opinions, not collective ones. Why do we build people up only to want bring them down? I just don’t understand this at all. My inspiration for this post was from numerous viral hate tweets about Jennifer Lopez. Recently I keep seeing tweets undermining Jennifer’s career in music and it’s frankly quite annoying and hypocritical and shows that a lot people don’t know the ins and outs of the music industry. The claim that Jennifer has stolen songs is a narrative that has been falsely spread and a couple YouTube video which I will not share the name of because I do not want to hear this narrative at all. For those of you that don’t know, back in 2001-2 the singles I’m Real and Ain’t it Funny remix were co-written by Ashanti. Ashanti’s vocals are also featured as background. Ashanti herself had admitted that she not the so called “ghost voice” of Jennifer Lopez. Also since you lot love Ashanti, I have a crazy suggestion. SUPPORT HER MUSIC AND HER CONCERTS! If you love her so much then why is cancelling concerts because of low ticket sales and not charting. Just saying. Don’t @ me. Period. Slagging off Jennifer does nothing for either one of them when Jennifer minds her, makes money and takes care of her kids and is engaged and you’re making viral tweets like that’s gonna bother her day and brighten Ashanti’s. I’m sure Ashanti would be grateful if you supported her music instead of tweeting.

Ashanti and Jennifer are cool to this day, she’s in the Ain’t it Funny music video and Ashanti is still to this day proud of how successful the songs were. This is a very common practice, there are many examples of this in music. Joe Jonas’ See No More, Lighthouse and Justin Bieber’s Christmas Eve were all written by Chris Brown and Chris’ vocals can be clearly heard in the background and yet no one thinks that Joe and Chris are ghost singing or stole from Chris. Huh. A lot of songs originally intended for other artists get passed on and sometimes their vocals are still on the track. This is a COMMON music industry practice. Some artists write songs from other artists and aren’t even credited for their contribution. An example of this is Jason Derulo’s Want You to Want Me. Want You to Want Me was actually ghostwritten by Chris Brown for his sixth studio album X but the track was abandoned because he felt that it wasn’t cohesive with the album as a whole which I agree with. His demo can be found on YouTube which I will link but unless you go on to Wikipedia, you wouldn’t know this fact. Tracks can be stolen and that has happened but 95% of the time, it is the producer that is responsible for this or a label executive. A sample of the song Firecracker was orginally meant for Mariah Carey’s Loverboy but ended up on Jennifer Lopez’s I’m Real. It was revealed that Tommy Mottola was responsible for this happening. For those of you that don’t know who Tommy Mottola is, he was the head of Sony music all through the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Tommy Mottola is responsible for many artists careers in particular Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez. Tommy Mottola was also Mariah Carey’s first husband who she was with until 1997. Mariah has been candid about the mental and emotional abuse she dealt with in the marriage and how she practically a prisoner in her own home as Tommy controlled everything in her life. After their split, Tommy seemingly attempted to sabotage her career and the stealing of the sample was one of this many attempts. A lot of the time when events like this happen, the artist is unaware of this. Yeah 3x uses the melody of Calvin Harris’ I’m Not Alone, something that Chris Brown was not aware of until he met with Calvin Harris and he played I’m Not Alone to him. Calvin knew the producer DJ Frank E and he had uses his melody with Calvin knowing. Thankfully Calvin was then credited as a featured writer on the song and the situation was resolved. I believe to this day and it’s pretty damn obvious that Tommy Mottola used Jennifer as a pawn in his plan to ruin Mariah’s career as revenge. He put Jennifer out there as his new golden girl replacing Mariah and this helped the false narrative of feud between Mariah and Jennifer when neither artist has ever said anything negative about each other and Jennifer has said in interviews that she loves Mariah as an artist.

This became very long winded but I had to discuss this because I’ve had enough but I will say this. Have you notice a theme in the trendy to hate? Because I have. They’re all women. Women are trend to hate and men get all the glory huh? Below is all the songs I mentioned and chicagojlover on Twitter did a thread in regards all the ghost singing rumours that needs to go viral.

https://youtu.be/yy5nkChQ2E0

https://youtu.be/6kXIC_6wQgM

https://youtu.be/3mC2ixOAivA

https://youtu.be/JeTE5cnkhGc

https://youtu.be/g8MyX_ewXfM

https://youtu.be/lbh7RFWS4Ro

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https://twitter.com/chicagojlover/status/1114197870519967749?s=21

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#blogpost #music #blogger #cardib #taylor swift #jennifer lopez #jlo #ella mai #mariah carey

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crawledfrombelow · 2 years

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I've literally been crying on and off for the last 2 freaking hours, and I don't know what to do anymore.

I'm so tired. I feel so empty inside. I'm so sorry that I hurt you.

I just don't understand why we were talking and then you just stopped??? And now you've literally kicked me out of every portion of your life. Fuck.

This fucking sucks.

And each time I notice something new, I hate myself even more. I don't even want to reactive my Facebook because I'm sure you've found a way to unfriend a deactivated account. I want to delete my personal and public Twitter because I don't even want to think about you when using those apps but FUCK. I can't do that, my public twitter is linked to my portfolio. Maybe I'll cave and delete my personal/private Twitter. The only reason I haven't was because I was giving you a way to contact me, just in case, but you've proven you want nothing to do with me. All that's left is Instagram which you haven't posted to in like 6 years and discord if you even still have our message history on discord. Other than that, I think you've successfully unfriended or unfollowed me on everything.

God dammit. I fucking hate this. If I had known that I needed to try harder, I would've sent more texts, more dms, more everything. But you weren't responding to anything as it was. Was I literally suppose to beg? I tried for like 16 months and then you only talk to me to fucking ghost me?

Guess it's karma. Guess that going through my own bullshit life didn't matter.

I think I'm going to delete my personal Twitter. I think I'm also going to finally delete your number off my phone. I'll do it quickly. It's been there since 2014.. Through like 8 different phones, but you've blocked my number anyway...

Maybe it'll help my healing, not seeing your number there. Not reading through our text thread.

#rant #c #mm

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paperhatboy · 4 years

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This week’s Smoshcast got me thinking about things happening within my friendships recently, so I decided to make a post about it because I’m A. too lazy to just grab a pen and paper B. no one actually reads these anyway.

So I’ve been going through a lot the past few months. My one friend keeps going back to a very toxic relationship even though we keep telling him that it’s not a good relationship considering she’s married with kids. And my stance on it is that it’s a very codependent relationship, but regardless, after speaking to our moms about it, my friend and I decided to just not be there for our entangled friend this time. And it sucks for me because being there for people is kinda my thing. And also I don’t wanna hurt him since he’s been through so much shit with people he called “friends” throughout his life, but if he’s not gonna listen to neither his weird friend nor his best friend, not being there for him might actually be the only way he might listen. He probably won’t since he’s making plans to move to Florida to be with her, but whatever. It’s his decision that I don’t accept but will have to respect.

In other news, I don’t think I can play Minecraft with another group of people again. So basically, my thing about Minecraft is that it’s a fun game, but it’s funner with more people, and especially the best and right people to play it with. And I had a group like that, but the fellowship ended. And they were the best people to play with, and once you’ve had the best, then what?

So what had happened was last year, me and two other people from the Smoshcord started playing Minecraft together, and one of them invited her irl best guy friend to the server she made for our Minecrafting. Anyway, it was all cool and all, we bonded a lot both in game or just being in vc with each other.

Anyway, a couple months ago the one friend was posting on Twitter about the guys she would trust to hold her drink, and she mentioned her irl best guy friend because, you know, he’s the coolest dude with a really good head on his shoulders. And in the server, we have an inside joke about him being a bottom along with me and her, and our other friend is the sole top. But anyway, I just reply to the tweet making the inside joke “My favorite bottom.” So it turns out that that was his public, political Twitter that she mentioned. He’s trying to get more involved within his local community while going to school. And none of our Twitters are private. So people could publicly see that reply. So, he pinged me in our server telling me to take down the joke since he doesn’t appreciate jokes like that on his professional Twitter, so I did and apologized twice to him, once in the server, the other in a dm because I know I fucked up. And then she blocked me on Twitter. And I also apologized to her twice since the first one was just so bad of an apology. Got left on read both times. And then she unfollowed me on Instagram a couple weeks later after I posted a promo for a video I did on my YouTube channel, which prompted me to just up and leave the Discord server without saying goodbye, which I probably should’ve said, but I’m not sure if it would’ve really changed anything. Either way, the four of us weren’t really talking that much anymore since 2020 started anyway, so us drifting apart was bound to happen. Throughout the year, I would still hit them up or hit up the server to see if anyone had time to play, and I would also just talk to the girl often because I could feel the drifting, and I didn’t want it to end so abruptly. And then I made a dumb mistake that didn’t need to even happen, and yeah. In hindsight, I really think I was annoying them with constant messages of wanting to play Minecraft. The other friend I still talked to for about a month after the mistake I made, but then she deactivated her Insta, and I totally understood because she has a lot of stuff going on both in school and personally, and we even had the conversation that it’s nothing too bad if we suddenly disappear from each other’s lives because of how we are as people. But when I saw that she deactivated her Insta, it really hit that it was over.

I do still hope that we all come around to each other again one day, but I stopped holding onto that hope early October. It’s still there, but it’s not something I’m killing myself over anymore.

But what sucks is that they’re all still really good people, and I wanna support them, but my energy just isn’t needed in their lives anymore. Because I don’t really blame the girl for blocking me and unfollowing me. I would’ve too if some dumb kid made an inside joke about my best and closest guy friend on a wholesome thread. And at the end of the day, they all still matter to me because they made Minecraft less lonely for me and we were able to grow a little bit as people and friends with each other.

I was watching Megaranger’s endgame episodes, and one (paraphrased) quote that got me was like about how if something important to me won’t disappear so easily unless I throw it away. And honestly, it may seem like I’m throwing in the towel because I don’t know if they need time to maybe eventually come back into my life or if they’re actually done with having me in their lives and moving on just fine. But I don’t think I’m throwing it away because I still think about them every day. More than my situation with my entangled friend. I have hope that we’ll be friends again one day, but I can’t let that hope keep me from living my life. But I also don’t really wanna play Minecraft with anyone else but them since they were the best people I could ever play with and was lucky enough to be able to play with. And I’m just so grateful that they were in my life at one point, and it sucks that this is where we are rn with each other. I sent the one friend a thank you message on Insta before she deactivated her account, and she deadass thought I was gonna commit suicide. But no, I was just really sappy that day. And I wanted to thank the other two too just to help me move on and also because I probably should’ve said it before I abruptly left the server, but I was talked out of it. So I’m just gonna use this space to thank them, and I’m name dropping since no one actually reads this.

Anna and John, you guys are already know how sorry I am, and I don’t want things to end on bad terms, but this is where we’re at, and I’m learning to be okay with it. I just wanted to say thank you two both of you guys. You made Minecraft less lonely, and I was able to become friends with you guys. And it was a fun ride.

To John, I hope you do well within your town’s community and in your studies at art school. I hope the woodworking and stuff is going well, and I hope you got elected this past election day, if you were running for board of ed this year. Also I’ve never met your girlfriend, but from what you and Anna say about her, she seems pretty awesome, so I hope you and her are awesome together. You’re a bright young man, and I hope you’ll be able to better yourself and the people around you.

To Anna, I meant what I said in that essay you sarcastically told me to write and I did in fact write because it’s the right amount of funny and dumb that’s right up my alley to do. You are a great person. You have such a passion for wanting to be able to prove to your dad (if that’s what you’re still trying to do) that you can forge your own path. I really hope you get to be able to teach in the future and be able to teach kids not just the subject matter, but teach them how to be as empathetic and compassionate as you can be. I hope your writing and the podcast is going well, too. Oh! And your passion for writing and theatre is something I really admire and respect. Anyway, I hope you’re doing good.

And I’ll just say thank you to Kath again because she had to put up with my bs whining about something that’s more or less over. I hope you find answers to your mental health issues, and I hope you’re doing well and good.

Thank you all for being in my life. Hope to see y’all in it soon. I’m glad to have met you guys. Not like physically, although that would’ve been nice since y’all are like a 4-7 hour drive from me. But like. I’m glad to have met you guys when I did. I miss y’all. And maybe I’ll learn to forgive myself for everything.

Kthxbyeee

#personal #honestly i'd be surprised if anyone actually reads this #hope they understand how grateful i am one day

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jennifersnyderca90 · 6 years

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Bug Bounty Hunter Ran ISP Doxing Service

A Connecticut man who’s earned bug bounty rewards and public recognition from top telecom companies for finding and reporting security holes in their Web sites secretly operated a service that leveraged these same flaws to sell their customers’ personal data, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.

In May 2018, ZDNet ran a story about the discovery of a glaring vulnerability in the Web site for wireless provider T-Mobile that let anyone look up customer home addresses and account PINs. The story noted that T-Mobile disabled the feature in early April after being alerted by a 22-year-old “security researcher” named Ryan Stevenson, and that the mobile giant had awarded Stevenson $1,000 for reporting the discovery under its bug bounty program.

The Twitter account @phobia, a.k.a. Ryan Stevenson. The term “plug” referenced next to his Twitch profile name is hacker slang for employees at mobile phone stores who can be tricked or bribed into helping with SIM swap attacks.

Likewise, AT&T has recognized Stevenson for reporting security holes in its services. AT&T’s bug bounty site lets contributors share a social media account or Web address where they can be contacted, and in Stevenson’s case he gave the now-defunct Twitter handle “@Phoobia.”

Stevenson’s Linkedin profile — named “Phobias” — says he specializes in finding exploits in numerous Web sites, including hotmail.com, yahoo.com, aol.com, paypal.com and ebay.com. Under the “contact info” tab of Stevenson’s profile it lists the youtube.com account of “Ryan” and the Facebook account “Phobia” (also now deleted).

Coincidentally, I came across multiple variations on this Phobia nickname as I was researching a story published this week on the epidemic of fraudulent SIM swaps, a complex form of mobile phone fraud that is being used to steal millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies.

Unauthorized SIM swaps also are often used to hijack so-called “OG” user accounts — usually short usernames on top social network and gaming Web sites that are highly prized by many hackers because they can make the account holder appear to have been a savvy, early adopter of the service before it became popular and before all of the short usernames were taken. Some OG usernames can be sold for thousands of dollars in underground markets.

This week’s SIM swapping story quoted one recent victim who lost $100,000 after his mobile phone number was briefly stolen in a fraudulent SIM swap. The victim said he was told by investigators in Santa Clara, Calif. that the perpetrators of his attack were able to access his T-Mobile account information using a specialized piece of software that gave them backdoor access to T-Mobile’s customer database.

Both the Santa Clara investigators and T-Mobile declined to confirm or deny the existence of this software. But their non-denials prompted me to start looking for it on my own. So naturally I began searching at ogusers-dot-com, a forum dedicated to the hacking, trading and sale of OG accounts. Unsurprisingly, ogusers-dot-net also has traditionally been the main stomping grounds for many individuals involved in SIM swapping attacks.

It didn’t take long to discover an account on ogusers-dot-com named “Ryan,” who for much of 2018 has advertised a number of different “doxing” services — specifically those aimed at finding the personal information of customers at major broadband and telecom companies.

In some of Ryan’s sales threads, fellow forum members refer to him as “Phob” or “Phobs.” In a post on May 27, Ryan says he’s willing to pay or trade for OG accounts under the name “Ryan,” “Ryans”, “RS,” “RMS” or “Stevenson” on any decent sized popular Web site. “hmu [hit me up] in a pm [private message] to talk,” Ryan urged fellow forum members.

The OG User forum account “Ryan” asking fellow members to sell or trade him any major Web site account name that includes the OG username “Ryan” or “Stevenson.”

I found that as late as June 2018 Ryan was offering a service that he claimed was capable of “doxing any usa carrier,” including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, MetroPCS and Boost Mobile.

“All I need is the number,” Ryan said of his customer data lookup service, which he sold for $25 per record. “Payment BTC [bitcoin] only.”

For $25 per record, Ryan offered fellow ogusers members the ability to look up customer records tied to any customer of the major U.S. mobile providers.

Very similar offerings were made by Phobia’s alter ego “AOLer” on the sprawling English language online hacking community Hackforums.

I first encountered Stevenson several years back while trying to work out who was responsible for calling in a phony hostage situation and sending a heavily armed police force to our Northern Virginia home in 2013. In a follow-up to that story, Stevenson admitted that he was responsible for the high-profile hack against Wired reporter Mat Honan, who documented how a hacker named Phobia had deleted his Google account and remotely erased all data from his iPhone, iPad and MacBook.

Going by the nickname “Phobiathegod” at the time, Stevenson was then part of a group of young men who routinely hijacked OG account names on Microsoft’s Xbox gaming platform, often using methods that involved tricking customer service people at the target’s mobile provider into transferring the victim’s calls to a number they controlled.

Fast forward to today, and Phobia’s main Twitter account (pictured at the top of this post) includes the phrase “the plug” next to his profile. In SIM swapping circles, a “plug” is hacker slang for an employee at a mobile phone store who can be bribed, tricked or blackmailed into assisting with an unauthorized SIM swap.

Reached via instant message on LinkedIn, Stevenson acknowledged running the ISP doxing services, but said his account on the OGusers forum was since banned and that hardly anyone took him up on his offer anyway.

“I shouldn’t have made the threads even though no one really asked for anything,” he said. “I’m on the good side. But its almost 2019 and I need to find a new hobby I can’t be bothered to look for breaches/vulns, haven’t got 1 job offer or recommendation yet.”

Asked about “the plug” reference in his Twitter profile, Stevenson suddenly stopped replying. Not long after that, the @Phobia Twitter account was deactivated.

Stevenson denied being involved in SIM swapping attacks, but it is clear Phobia was fairly tight with many people who are or until recently were at the center of this scene. In July 2018, authorities in California arrested 20-year-old Boston resident Joel Ortiz for allegedly conducting dozens of fraudulent SIM swaps and stealing at least $5 million worth of cryptocurrency from victims.

Like Phobia, Ortiz had a presence on OGusers and had acquired some of the most OG social media accounts available, including the Twitter and Instagram account names with the number zero (@0), and the OG Youtube accounts “Joel” and “X”.

On Oct 27, 2017, the Youtube account “Joel” published a 4-minute video of Stevenson dancing to a popular rap song in front of the camera. On July 5, 2018, just days before Ortiz was arrested, the Twitter account “0” gave a shout out to @Phobia on Twitter suggesting Phobia was actually tweeting using Ortiz’s “0” account.

from https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/11/bug-bounty-hunter-ran-isp-doxing-service/

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amberdscott2 · 6 years

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Bug Bounty Hunter Ran ISP Doxing Service

The OG User forum account “Ryan” asking fellow members to sell or trade him any major Web site account name that includes the OG username “Ryan” or “Stevenson.”

I found that as late as June 2018 Ryan was offering a service that he claimed was capable of “doxing any usa carrier,” including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, MetroPCS and Boost Mobile.

“All I need is the number,” Ryan said of his customer data lookup service, which he sold for $25 per record. “Payment BTC [bitcoin] only.”

For $25 per record, Ryan offered fellow ogusers members the ability to look up customer records tied to any customer of the major U.S. mobile providers.

Very similar offerings were made by Phobia’s alter ego “AOLer” on the sprawling English language online hacking community Hackforums.

Asked about “the plug” reference in his Twitter profile, Stevenson suddenly stopped replying. Not long after that, the @Phobia Twitter account was deactivated.

from Amber Scott Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/11/bug-bounty-hunter-ran-isp-doxing-service/

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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By now, you’ve probably heard the story.

Last week, an actress and photographer, Rosey Blair, asked to switch seats with a woman on a plane from New York to Dallas so that she could sit next to her boyfriend. Blair proceeded to live-tweet as she observed the woman and her new seatmate chat and eventually start flirting, discussing their mutual love of working out and subtly touching elbows, all details captured and posted by Blair. Her thread went mega-viral, racking up 900,000 likes, getting picked up by national news outlets and earning Blair thousands of new followers.

Many initially thought the story was adorable, even if others found it creepy and intrusive. Then the incident took an even darker turn.

An online hunt began to find the identities of the couple, now identified by the hashtag #PlaneBae. The man, a former professional soccer player named Euan Holden, embraced the media circus, but the woman, uncomfortable with the newfound spotlight, hesitated. That didn’t stop the online mob from tracking her down. She began receiving crass, sexually explicit messages in the comments of her personal Instagram profile.

She deactivated her social media accounts and declined an invitation to go on the Today show. Blair and Holden appeared without her. No one asked her if she had any reservations or concerns about being made part of a viral story. All she did was board a plane and chat with her seatmate. Now she is a public figure, a hashtag, and a target. Millions of strangers on the internet want to know about her personal life.

The erosion of the division between public and private has been coming for a while now. Maybe it started with reality television and the dramatic storylines broadcast to millions about people just like you falling in love. (Though those people willingly signed up to become public figures.) Maybe it was already in the works before then: People have always turned other people’s lives into public spectacle regardless of their will.

When I was 22, I wrote my first paid article for a publication on the internet. My essay, written under my own name, was about what it was like to date with genital herpes. I expected maybe a few thousand people to read it on the Women’s Health website; it wasn’t even going in the physical magazine. At the time, I was an intern at a media company, less than a year out of college, and my only brush with fame was as a 13-year-old writer of moderately popular Harry Potter fanfiction.

The herpes article went viral. Not just “few thousand retweets” viral — I mean invitations to go on daytime television viral. Two days after my essay went up on Women’s Health, I was featured in a trending article on the Washington Post website. It was aggregated from there on Yahoo, Jezebel, and eventually even The Daily Mail, where an enterprising staffer tracked down my private Facebook profile and raided it for photographs to use in their article.

There I was, smiling brightly in a picture my mother had taken as my father blew out his birthday candles. Of course, they cropped my father out, leaving me grinning and alone as hundreds of Daily Mail readers wrote comments underneath attacking my character. This slut, this shameful whore. She should kill herself for having an STI.

The next year I would find myself at the center of a new controversy when Genius, a well-funded startup that mostly writes annotations on song lyrics, launched a new tool allowing their users to annotate any website, anywhere. I wrote a blog post detailing why I thought the product was unethical, as it ignored the consent of the website creator and let strangers essentially scrawl graffiti on our intellectual property. I was also concerned it would be yet another tool in the hands of abusers, stalkers, and harassment mobs to come after me on my personal blog; since going viral, I had spent a year receiving horrifying sexual emails from strangers.

Sam Biddle, writing for Gawker, found my case unconvincing. His argument boiled down to my status as a public figure. “It’s brave and noble of Dawson to publicly try to combat the stigma of STD infection,” he wrote. “But when she writes ‘we need more voices to challenge the single narrative of herpes,’ she’s already acknowledging her place in public—it’s right there in the ‘we.’ If you want to advocate for a cause in front of an audience (and judging by the fact that her website has a ‘Press’ section, I’m assuming she does), you have to take what comes with it. Dawson says she has a blog ‘to have total control of how I write and who interacts with me.’ If only this were possible! Unfortunately, this is a fantasy, and will always be so.”

Chelsea Hassler, writing for Slate, argued the contrary position: That as a blogger with a few articles published, I was not someone who rose to the level of a “public figure.” I was an individual, an amateur. She wrote, “There’s a substantive difference between critiquing the work of a professional journalist or blogger and critiquing the writing of an individual who is using her blog as an outlet to communicate with other likeminded people.”

People like me pose a challenge to traditional understandings of the public-private divide. I write about my personal life, and sometimes I get paid to do so. I have fewer than 20,000 followers on Twitter. I’ve had a handful of short stories published in anthologies by indie houses and my blog has steady traffic, but I don’t have a Wikipedia page. Would you consider me a public figure? At what point did I become one? Would it change your mind if I told you I’ve never wanted to be one?

I don’t think there is any such thing as a “private person” anymore. The vast majority of us constantly groom our internet presence, choosing the right filter on Instagram for our brunch and taking polls of our friends about our next Facebook profile picture.

We don’t think about this as a public act when we have only 400 connections on LinkedIn or 3,000 followers on Tumblr. No one imagines the Daily Mail write-up or the Jezebel headline. We actively create our public selves, every day, one social media post at a time. Little kids dream of becoming famous YouTubers the same way I wanted to be a published author when I was 12.

But there are also those of us who don’t choose this. We keep our accounts locked, our Instagram profile set to “friends only.” Maybe we learned a lesson when a post took off and left the safe haven of our community, picked apart in a horrifying display of context collapse by strangers who we didn’t intend to speak to. Maybe we are hiding from something: a stalker, an abusive ex, our family members who don’t know our true queer identity. To some of us, privacy is vital.

A woman boarded a plane in New York and stepped off that plane in Dallas. She chatted with a stranger, showed him some family photos, brushed his elbow with her own. At no point did she agree to participate in the story Rosey Blair was telling. After the fact, when the hunt began and the woman took no part in encouraging it the way Holden did, Blair tweeted a video in which she drawled, “We don’t have the gal’s permish yet, not yet y’all, but I’m sure you guys are sneaky, you guys might…” And her followers did not disappoint.

When people called Blair out for this blatant invasion of privacy, she blocked them. Because she, apparently, wanted to control her own boundaries. Later she tweeted about wanting a job at BuzzFeed.

I don’t know what the woman on the plane is thinking or feeling. I don’t know if she’s afraid or angry or mildly amused but inconvenienced. But I know how it feels to see strangers scrawling obscenities on social media accounts and email inboxes you once considered safe, commenting alongside your friends and family members. I know the sour humiliation of knowing everyone in your life can see that strangers have written about you — your parents, your co-workers, your exes.

Even when the attention is positive, it is overwhelming and frightening. Your mind reels at the possibility of what they could find: your address, if your voting records are logged online; your cellphone number, if you accidentally included it on a form somewhere; your unflattering selfies at the beginning of your Facebook photo archive. There are hundreds of Facebook friend requests, press requests from journalists in your Instagram inbox, even people contacting your employer. This story you didn’t choose becomes the main story of your life.

There is no opting-in, no consent form, no opportunity to take it all back. It feels like you are drowning as everyone on the beach applauds your swimming prowess. What do you have to complain about? Why wouldn’t you want publicity?

It’s clear that to Blair, the violation of this woman’s privacy is less important than Blair’s growing platform and ambition. It is not a romantic comedy for the digital age. It is an act of dehumanization.

A friend of mine asked if I’d thought through the contradiction of criticizing Blair publicly like this, when she’s another not-quite public figure too. But Blair is not just posting about her own life; she has taken non-consenting parties along for the ride. While Blair uploads gorgeous Instagram photos to celebrate her body on her birthday (I say this genuinely: You go, girl), the woman on the plane has deleted her own Instagram account after receiving violent abuse from the army Blair created. As the content creator of this media circus, Blair is responsible for the behavior of its fans. When faced with the opportunity to discourage their privacy violations, she has done the opposite: “I’m sure you guys are sneaky.”

You become a public figure the instant that someone else decides you are worthy of interest, even if you are minding your damn business. Maybe you will tweet a joke. Maybe you will squint in a friend’s photograph. Maybe you will yodel in a Walmart. Or maybe you will board a plane.

This essay is adapted from a blog post that originally ran on Ella Dawson’s website.

Ella Dawson is a sex and culture critic whose writing has been published by ELLE, MTV, Women’s Health, and more. Find her at elladawson.com and on Twitter as @brosandprose.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at [email protected].

Original Source -> The dark side of going viral

via The Conservative Brief

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micaramel · 6 years

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A meme that insists that Millie Bobby Brown, 14, is homophobic has been circulating online for several months.

Versions of the meme superimpose homophobic statements over pictures of Brown.

Brown has since deleted her Twitter.

Contrary to the meme, the "Stranger Things" star has previously been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ rights and an anti-bullying advocate.

A meme that insists that Millie Bobby Brown is homophobic has been circulating online for several months. The main gained considerable traction in June, ultimately prompting the 14-year-old "Stranger Things" star to delete her Twitter account on Wednesday.

The meme, which was especially popular on Twitter, superimposes homophobic statements over pictures of Brown or simply presents the sentiments as if they are facts.

wtf i was just checking my snapchats and i got this one from millie bobby brown i’m literally shaking idk what to do..... pic.twitter.com/aw1vQf502f

— caleb (@calebbielskii) June 13, 2018

Good morning everybody except to Millie bobby Brown because after I exposed her she called me faggot

— peppa (@peppapiggz) June 13, 2018

today, i went to target. i am blind and gay. i was walking around with my pride shirt when millie bobby brown came up to me. she said “kill all fags and spit in my mouth” and broke both of my legs. i am now unable to walk ever again.#TakeDownMillieBobbyBrown

— maya (@dirtaiy) June 9, 2018

Millie bobby Brown when a gay fan asks to take a picture with her pic.twitter.com/eEVz8KjIU5

— addie (@addyeet) June 10, 2018

But not everyone finds the meme to be funny.

In fact, many people online find the joke to be shocking, disturbing, and generally upsetting, especially because Brown is a minor.

Gay Twitter Civil War: Millie Bobby Brown Edition pic.twitter.com/Wdl19fPEGe

— Madison 🌸 (@SKINNYAVENGERS) June 14, 2018

am i the only one who doesn’t think the homophobic millie bobby brown memes are funny pic.twitter.com/Q3Z7LxGcRz

— mantis love bot (@sebsvalkyrie) June 13, 2018

hot take: leave millie bobby brown alone

— chess (@foleysbian) June 13, 2018

stan twitter: bullying is bad stan twitter: :( stan twitter: thread of my fave millie bobby brown homophobic memes 😂😂😂

— bia🍎 (@kristennwiig) June 14, 2018

y’all made millie bobby brown deactivate with all these homophobe tweets i hope y’all feel bad

— zak (@godisfenty) June 13, 2018

In addition to all that, people are also pointing out that the meme is factually untrue.

pretending millie bobby brown, a literal child, is a violent homophobe for memes is fucking disgusting and not funny at all. You are grown adults, editing photos of her with captions that include the f slur, violence against lgbt community for comedy and it’s fucking gross.

— caa (@zunbarya) June 12, 2018

I just want to clear something out in case ya’ll didn’t know MILLIE BOBBY BROWN IS NOT HOMOPHOBIC! ALL OF THOSE PHOTOS WERE MEMES MADE BY SOMEBODY. AND BESIDES, WHY WOULD MILLIE SAY SUCH A THING TO END HER CAREER? IT’S OBVIOUS PEOPLE STOP SPREADING LIES. !IT’S A MEME!

— Gabveil | Fangirling Emo ⭐️ (@trashedhumanoid) June 10, 2018

The homophobic millie bobby brown 'meme' really isn't funny and being gay doesn't gives you a pass to harass an actual child to the point of deactivation. There's 30 year olds editing her selfies with violent homophobic captions and slurs. Its pride month, grow up.

— 🏳️‍🌈Radicles🏳️‍🌈 (@radicles_) June 14, 2018

#StrangerThings star Millie Bobby Brown deactivated her Twitter account over a meme that depicted her as homophobic in various photoshopped screenshots with homophobic, racist and body-shaming captions. In reality, Bobby is an antibullying advocate and an LGBT+ rights supporter. pic.twitter.com/gApI1T7A4Q

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) June 14, 2018

Contrary to the meme, the "Stranger Things" star has previously been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ rights and is an anti-bullying advocate with a separate Twitter devoted to the cause.

In the past, Brown has supported GLAAD's Together movement, which promotes unity and intersectionality among disenfranchised communities including women, immigrants, people of color, and LGBTQ people. Brown has also been a vocal supporter of the Never Again and March For Our Lives movements in the wake of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February.

Brown's decision to leave Twitter after being targeted online came just a week after "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" star Kelly Marie Tran deleted her Instagram after months of harassment.

Representatives for Brown didn't immediately return INSIDER's request for comment.

SEE ALSO: A teacher in Indiana claims he was forced to resign after refusing to call a transgender student by their preferred name

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The full history of Drake and Pusha T's feud shows why Drake might lose this battle

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#micaramel

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keeanonymous · 7 years

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Homage Project: “Pics or Something Happened”

“Pics or it didn’t happen” usually refers to the response given to unverifiable acts that are brag-worthy or extraordinary. In the local context, youths usually use the phrase “no pic no talk/chat”, but both phrases meant the same. With the advent of digital technology and social media, the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen” manifests itself even more so deeply in our lives. The proof for our act is just one snap away with our camera phones, or sometimes photos could be digitally manipulated to provide a false proof of committing the act.

Citing the same question of “are memories real if they are not shared?” from the previous Homage post, the phrase entails a similar idea of having a picture as a proof for the act that is to be shared to others to claim that it actually happened. The once fleeting nature of memories is now added with an element of permanence, in a sense that the picture as a proof being shared around is being eternally stored not only in the digital highway, but also in the minds of those who have seen it. In other words, memories can be stored, whether subconsciously or not, when someone else sees a digital copy of your “memory”.

This reminds me of the Pensieve in the Harry Potter series. The Pensieve is a magical instrument that is used to view memories stored in vials. Memories can be duplicated and extracted in the form of a silver thread from the minds of humans and reviewed later on, not just by yourself, but by the others too.

I could relate this idea to the use of social media, specifically Instagram, where photos uploaded are seen less of a memory for some, and more of a fame-gaining medium en-route to being popular on a virtual world where 99% of the people know about you but you know nothing about them.

The Instagram Experiment

I actually did a little social experiment on myself a few days before the forum discussion by deactivating my Instagram account to see the effects on my own life and also on the others.

A little background on my life in relation to Instagram: I used to be quite obsessed with Instagram back when I first started my account at 19. I had no idea how to edit photos using the existing filters on Instagram. I gradually began picking up the skills of shooting pictures in a square frame and downloaded other more useful photo-editing apps to edit my photos better. Instagram slowly and unknowingly sunk its deep-set roots into my life. Then, whenever I take pictures from my phone, I would take pictures both in the standard ratio and in square mode. Sometimes when someone volunteers to take group photos of my friends and I, I would request for a few taken in square frame. My life, has thus been framed within that square border.

Instagram back then, was a means for me to selectively store visual memories that frames my life as a fun/beautiful/active journey. Every picture was carefully chosen and edited to not only because I would like it to present the best of me, but more importantly to cater to the general tastes of my followers so that it would be able to garner more likes and gain followers. The way I take pictures and store memories has thus been inadvertently altered by my obsession with Instagram. It would be too serious to conclude that Instagram started to determine the way I lived, but I do not deny the fact that it has adversely impacted how I view pictures/photographs and its significance.

I gradually became less obsessed with Instagram with the neverending work that tertiary education entails, but I would still use Instagram more than 10 times a day on average just to check on updates in my “following’s” lives and watch random Stories posted by them. As the frequency of my photo uploads dropped, I noticed that the number of followers decreased as well. It is kind of interesting to see that people whom I do not know start to get bored of my life because I did not update about my life on Instagram.

So I decided to deactivate my account one night and I didn’t expect to see someone asking me about it the first thing when I woke up. Here are some of the more interesting texts that I’ve received from my close friends:

One of my few friends whom I went travelling with.

A friend who likes to joke about anything in the world.

A genuinely concerned friend who is bored doing nothing everyday. Just to clarify, the term “dying” is often used among my friends to express our exhaustion and deprivation as a result of the heavy workload, not to be understood literally.

One of my closest friend who understands me a lot and gives the most unorthodox advice.

There are two similarities across the people who texted to ask about my Instagram: 1) I have interacted with them long enough to be considered as close friends 2) they associated the deactivation of Instagram account to my overall well-being. The first point is pretty self-explanatory because I suppose no one would bother to ask an acquaintance if he has deactivated his account and it would be awkward to do so. The second point presents an interesting view on how people, specifically my close friends, thought that something bad has happened to me and thus the deactivation of my account. Several words and phrases with negative connotations appeared in the texts, such as “distraction”, “stress”, “escaping from present”, “serious”, “are you okay?”. I pondered upon these words and phrases and the possible reasons for them to think so.

I came up with a few probable reasons that are related to how we view photos on Instagram as “someone’s life” and the degree in which social media has become so deeply rooted in our lives.

1. We selectively upload memories, usually in our best selves, to showcase the positive side of our lives. Imagine us being the moon and the viewers being the earth – they could always only see one side of us. The other side of us that is not exhibited publicly is deemed as mysterious and it is by choice. When the account disappears, so does our positive side, in some way or another, as seen from the perspective of other users. They begin to question the basis of our happiness and overall well-being and naturally associated the updates on Instagram to our lives. For someone to deactivate his account, I guess to many people, it means sh*t really happened.

2. Deactivation of account means taking a break off a tremendous amount of distraction and giving your brain a rest from overloading with useless information. Deactivation simply alludes to the act of going into reclusion. This probably means every time you are browsing through Instagram, you’re subconsciously being obliged to learn about the lives of people whom you follow. And this might potentially lead to people giving quick judgements just by looking at the pictures. Sometimes it could be quite tiring having to keep up with the latest trends and updates of people’s lives, even though most of them are not of concern to you.

3. Deactivation of account also means part of you has gone missing, the part of you that your friends has been so used to looking at is no longer there. The selective memories that you have chosen to show has already been embedded in their memories as well. Without the account, it probably seems to them that part of you is no longer there, thus the influx of texts expressing their concerns.

So I asked myself, while memory storage of our lives in camera devices exudes some sense of permanence, what does selective storing of our memories and updates in life on social media alludes to? Similar to the usual storage in devices, sharing of memories on social media creates permanence, but the sense of privacy as we share our memories on new media immediately diminishes the moment online users view the photos. The memories shared online therefore are inadvertently imprinted as part of the others’ memories.

“Pics or it didn't happen” resonates so much in our lives on social media now. However, the little social experiment that was done made me realise that social media has its roots so deeply set in our lives that it bothers people when your “life” isn't there for them to follow. It seems to me that “pics or something happened” probably resonates better in this context. It is kind of chilling how social media has come to extend its effect not just on exhibiting the existence of our lives in the vast virtual world, but also the non-existence of us there. What was not seen or noticed from before becomes apparent; what was previously considered as private and genuine now becomes public and superficial; the non-existence that was not felt back then, becomes obvious now.

Social media therefore presents itself as some sort of duality whereby the existing and non-existing (or once-existed) create a synergistic relationship. For example, I would be given a judgemental look from others if I told people of similar age group that “I don’t have Instagram (or Facebook) because I don’t see the need to.” They would immediately feel a distance between us because there is one outlet less for them to get to know more about me, or worse, they might think that I am weird because I am an outlier of the trend and do not possess what they expect the others to have. In other words, one’s presence on social media highlights the non-presence of the other in the same platform, thereby accentuating its effects, which in this case, is associated with the character and overall well-being of the person.

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