Swatted and Trolled

A couple news items this week brought back some painful memories.

Good morning. Before getting to this week’s post, a bit of housekeeping. By way of explanation to new subscribers, I write a post per week, usually on Thursday, but sometimes on Friday. The first post of the month (e.g., today’s) is public and free. Subsequent weeks are for paid subscribers only. When a month has five Thursdays, I grant myself a week off.

And second: I realize you’re here for nonfiction. That’s been a major part of my career, authoring and co-authoring fourteen nonfiction books and untold blog posts, journal, newspaper, and magazine articles. According to an estimate by Claude, I have published around 3.5 million words of nonfiction. And I’ll keep generating more words here for the foreseeable future.

But I’ve also made a pivot. Over the past decade, I’ve been writing fiction. Nearly every morning for four or five hours, I’ve been making stuff up. And loving it. At this point, I’ve got five complete novels and another half done. After editing and revising, I am publishing the first one on August 1.

It’s called Son of Helena, and it’s the first of a trilogy on the life of Constantine the Great. Be warned, it’s nothing like my nonfiction. It’s full of intrigue, but also murder and war and sex. It’s set in the late third century, and it’s true to that time. For the majority of you, it’s not your thing. I get it, and I’m not offended.

But some of you are saying, “That might be my thing.” If so, you can read the first three chapters for free here. And if you’re intrigued, I’m looking for a few dozen reviewers to read the whole book (for free) in exchange for an honest review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. If you’re willing to give that a go, click here.

Alright, enough of that. On to this week’s (nonfiction) post, which you can feel free to share since it’s public.

---

Me on Morning Joe in 2015, trying to act like everything was okay.

A couple news items caught my attention this week. More than caught my attention, actually. They yanked my psyche back to a troubled time in life.

The first was news that Pete Buttigieg had been swatted. He wrote about it on Substack:

A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family

He was at home in Traverse City, Michigan, when police officer and child protective service workers showed up at his home. They’d received a report that he was a danger to his children (four-year-old twin boys). For 24 hours, the children werre removed from his home and taken to their grandparents’ house, where they were interviewed. Let’s take a moment to let that sink in: four-year-olds were interviewed.

Meanwhile, Buttigieg was interviewed, during which time he learned about the accusation. CPS ultimately determined the report was false, and Buttigieg was reunited with his sons, but the day-long separation he called among the darkest hours of his life.

In the parlance of law enforcement and CPS, this is called a “child welfare check,” a phrase I know all too well. Three times between my divorce in 2009 and winning sole custody in 2015, I was investigated by CPS. My children, in elementary and middle school at the time, were pulled out of class and interviewed: has your dad ever touched your private areas? Do you feel safe around your dad? Etc.

I also got pulled over by the cops, like the time that on the way to the cabin, Crow Wing County sheriff’s deputies suddenly boxed in my car and pulled me over, one cruiser in front and another behind. They removed me from the car. One of the deputies questioned me, with my hands on his cruiser and in full view of my kids, while the other climbed in the front seat of my car and questioned my children along the same lines as above.

The difference between a law enforcement swatting incident and one that comes through CPS is that 911 can trace calls. So they know who called in the report, and therefore I could subsequently see on the police incident report who had accused me.

With CPS, anonymous accusers stay anonymous. During their three investigations of me, as I sat downtown in a sterile office cubicle, being interviewed by a caseworker, my inquiries about what I was being accused of, they took as a sign of defensiveness. I never found out who made the accusations (though I have a pretty good idea). The entire experience was among the most Kafkaesque of my life.

My attorney said, “Tony, I’ve got good news and bad news.” She assured me that there is a law in Minnesota that makes it illegal to use CPS to harass someone — two laws, actually, one civil and one criminal. However, she has never known either law ever being enforced — no indictments, and certainly no convictions. She encouraged me not to pursue legal action, and I didn’t.

Also last weekend, my chief online troll died by suicide. I am not going to link to his suicide note, which he posted online, because 1) I don’t want him to get any more clicks, even post-mortem, from me, and 2) it’s a very troubling note, in which he basically blames his death on the fact that his wife is divorcing him. He also curses God in the strongest possible terms.

What’s ironic, of course, is that he came after me online in the wake of my own divorce. More than any other person, he fanned the flames of false accusations against me. He referred to me as a “vicious abuser,” among other epithets. His site lists over a dozen posts about me, starting in 2015 and continuing until as recently as this year. And that’s not to mention hundreds of social media posts.

I reached out to him many times. I tried to talk to him, email him, DM him on Twitter. I offered to talk, to send him court documents. He refused or ignored every offer.

In his suicide note, he wrote:

I have been open and honest with many of you about my struggles with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, substance abuse, PTSD, and suicidal ideation over the years. This won’t be the first time. But it will be the last time and I will ensure that this is the case.

I knew he was troubled. That should have been obvious to anyone who encountered him. But somehow on the internet, what should be obvious was instead masked. Enough people believed him, clicked on his links, shared his posts, that it lent credibility to his lies. Then, like a snowball rolling downhill, it gathered momentum.

I take no joy in his death. It’s tragic. But I am left to wonder why so many people believed him, why one deeply troubled man was able to wreak so much havoc to my life, to do so much damage.

I don’t know that the internet has matured since he first came after me in 2015. But I do think that we, the audience of the internet, have become more cynical. Back in those days, we were all pretty naive. But now we realize that most of the salacious and prurient content on the internet is mainly about getting clicks and making money.

I spend a lot of time thinking about my past, this week more than most. It feels like a lot has changed in my life. I no longer feel like I’m an agentless character in a Kafkaesque dream. Unlike my accusers, I have joy, a great marriage, and kickass kids. I’m glad I survived it.

Thanks for reading.