SMEARED: In Defense of my Actions, my Name and my Reputation
An open rebuttal defending the most important thing to a person: their name.
By Russell Greer
A few months ago, a notification popped up on my phone from a person named “Zachary Smith”. This Mr. Smith claimed to have “heard about” me and was interested in writing an article on me. A sense of excitement filled my body. After years of enduring relentless harassment from trolls and similar people, there seemed to be somebody who wanted to advocate for me. Don’t get me wrong: I have friends and followers on social media, but haven’t really had anybody step up to fight for me. To say that I was tickled pink is an understatement.
However, because of the trolls that I have had to endure, I am cautious with everybody I encounter online. Like any normal person would, I asked Mr. Smith for examples of previous writing work he had done. While he couldn’t give me any specific links to articles, he rattled off a few publications he had written for. Thrilled, I Googled him, as verification, and what I found was…well, nothing. Quickly, I ceased all communication with Smith and soon discovered that he published an unfavorable article about me on Medium.com. The article was entitled, “The Fan Who Sued Taylor Swift.” Invigorated by that incident, and after years of being smeared on various avenues, I have taken the liberty to defend myself.
If I were to pinpoint where the harassment began, I would say 2015. Four years ago. I was 24, a full-time college student, close to obtaining his Associates Degree as a paralegal and working two part time jobs, just trying to be more than a guy with a disability. You see: I suffer from a rare disability termed, “Moebious Syndrome”, which means that the 7th cranial facial nerves in my face are paralyzed. Think of smiling and winking and putting your lips together. I can’t do any of that, which kind of sucks because when I tell a joke, I can’t wink to acknowledge that it’s an actual joke and so nobody ever catches the punchline.
While it’s not the worst disability one could have, my life hasn’t exactly been a cakewalk either. However, I don’t want to throw a pity party with this story. I am genuinely grateful for many things that I am able to do, though, I must be truthful: my disability impedes my expression, which is important in the field I hold a degree in and the field I’m trying to get into: the entertainment industry.
Yes, 2015 was the year I graduated college and seemed to be a most excellent year, but it was also the year when everything would change. During that year, I tried auditioning for America’s Got Talent with a motivational speech about overcoming obstacles as I played the piano. Those connected with me seemed to have liked it: 50 likes on Facebook, which is rare for me to achieve. However, the scouting agents for the show apparently didn’t like it…because they didn’t catch any of the punchlines. *Wink.*
They say that the entertainment business is all about who you know, not what you know. If you can’t nail an audition, you better know somebody who knows somebody or else you just have to press your luck. It was during this year that I saw pop star Taylor Swift help people in various ways: donating money, accepting gifts and shout outs. She had said multiple times throughout the years that she likes underdogs and unique stories.
Instantly, boxes formed within a thought bubble above my head: I’m an underdog. Check. I’m a fan. Check. I can do something unique for her to stand out. AMBITIOUS CHECK. Optimistically, I hoped that my efforts would yield good results, like making a connection with her. To boot, I had a lot of people support my ambition. Seems crazy? That’s only because you’ve been led to believe that “feel good” stories are fictional. Oh, and she’s clearly interacted with other guys who have reached out to her, so the narrative that “I’m a guy and therefore it’s creepy”, needs to instantly dissipate.
Working away on the piano and my sheet music for over a year, I came up with a catchy jingle called, “I Get You, Taylor Swift.” It was late 2016. The song was a short jingle that talked about how I understood her struggles and I hoped that it would build bridges.
With it all on paper and MP3 audio from my sheet music program, I just needed it produced and sung. In my haste, I hired a producer, who resided in a different state, and what I got was a mediocre song that I could get no refunds for. It was discouraging because I’m not an ATM and so I couldn’t just spit out more money to hire somebody else. I was stuck with a product that I was not proud of.
To condense a long situation: friends encouraged me to send my well-intentioned song to her, figuring that my story and efforts would be my selling point and not the mediocre song. Bewilderedly, Taylor’s agents thought I was trying to get her to do a song, and somehow, even after back and forth calls and emails, they could not understand it was a gift song.
Since I have a paralegal degree, I saw this as “negligence” and I figured that the only way I could get her attention was by suing her for their bad conduct. In law, we call this “vicarious liability” and it is a frequently used concept, most often in employment situations, like the one at hand. I was trying to claim that her agents had been negligent with their job duties to pass on important communication and that she was liable for their negligence. Again, I wasn’t trying to hold her liable, I was only trying to get her attention to my plight.
Granted, my approach was unconventional, but it was the only way I could get her to notice what was going on.
Let me put this another way: if I were a pilot, I would have wrote messages in the sky above her house to get her attention. It just meant that much to me. Another motivating factor was that I had been put onto the underbellies of Reddit and thus I didn’t want the mockery to be for naught. So in comparison to the pilot example, I have a paralegal degree, following the concept of established law was the only thing I could do to get her attention. I mean, she had responded to previous lawsuits that were filed against her, like a few copyright infringement lawsuits and the butt grabbing goofball. So I figured this would get her attention if the news picked it up.
For some reason, fighting for your efforts is a foreign concept to the idle and the aimless. However, for determined people like me, it made perfect sense.
To make everything as coherent as possible, I recorded videos of myself, explaining everything, and sent them to the agents and assumed they would be passed onto her since she was now named in a lawsuit and they were obligated to inform her of the nitty gritty. In my head, it made sense. However, in their heads, and Taylor’s, it didn’t make sense.
According to the Motion to Dismiss, filed by her Utah lawyer Greg, it stated that I had taken my admiration for Taylor to a “troubling level”, FOR HER and for her agents. Instantly, the wind was knocked out of me. It clearly said that SHE, Taylor, was perturbed by my good intentions. I began to breakdown. To be fair, the Motion was vague on exactly how she was disturbed, but I could only assume the worst. Also, a lawyer cannot lie in a legal document, so that’s why I took the words so personally because they were coming from her, through her representative. For a moment, I thought that maybe I was misreading the words, but friends and a lawyer assured me that the words were clear in what they meant.
As a note to add in the middle of this: people won’t accept the words written by her lawyer as her being “troubled” by me and they say it’s all in my head, despite other people having read what the lawyer said. Hilariously, this is quite amusing since our entire country is consumed with “The Mueller Report” and salivates over each and every single word found in that document. Dare I say it’s a double standard to proclaim that one document can be used as a source of truth and evidence, yet another document is a fabrication and is silly for me to rely on those words?
Instead of dismissing the lawsuit and moving on with my life, once I found out Taylor didn’t like me, I decided to continue to the scheduled trial of December 8th, 2016 because I felt it was wrong of her and her agents to spit on good intentions. In addition, I also wanted to make a point about celebrity misrepresentation, as I felt she misrepresented her words, which caused me to invest all of that time and effort. The point seemed to be lost on everybody, though.
Infuriatingly, the news twisted my story and didn’t mention anything about “vicarious liability”. Rather, they used a statement from her Motion that I had sued her to go on a date, which I never said that in ANY legal filings. The mention of a date came from one of my videos where I made the off the cuff comment regarding a date. A second video was then made to clarify what I had said in the first video, but nobody bothered to mention my clarification. I was extremely mad, embarrassed and confused by everything.
For the publications that had picked up my story, including a few international publications, I was made to appear to be an idiot. None of them even reached out to me for comment, which was odd since I thought that’s what news organizations do.
The trial came. It was a Thursday, the 8th of December, 2016, and all of my evidence was stuck at a FedEx print shop. Luckily, I had a laptop with electronic evidence, but i wasn’t able to show it because the “judge” had it in for me. Quotations are used because judges are supposed to be fair and impartial. This guy clearly wasn’t. During my little trial — if you even want to call it that — the judge interrupted me with laughs, scoffs and eye rolls. A local news crew filmed the entire thing from the corner of the room. And surprise, surprise: when the 9 PM news came, everything was edited to make me look like a big weirdo.
Apparently, Taylor Swift thought I was a weirdo too and released her song, “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”, just mere hours later, on Friday, December 9th, 2016, in which publications praised her song as a “surprise-drop”, though, I knew it was to conduct damage control. It cemented the truth that she knew about all of this.
To add insult to injury, my misunderstood efforts attracted trolls, including one troll site that has endlessly harassed me with slander, smear and spite. This particular troll site “showcases” those they deem to be weird in some way, and because the story surrounding my efforts was taken out of context and indeed could have come across as weird, everything about me was put onto said site. I refuse to openly name the site because it only feeds the attention that they crave. This site has doxxed all information regarding my family and me, has created fake profiles of me and have used those profiles maliciously. Oddly enough, they even debate how big my penis is. Their slander has left me homeless and jobless.
Before anybody chimes in with, “Well, you brought this on yourself, you weirdo”, I would like to let you know that I’m not the only one they pester. They’ve done this to many different people, including three individuals who ended up killing themselves because of the harassment. Suffice it to say, the last three years have been a huge nightmare.
I have tried defending myself through books and posts and op-eds, yet anywhere I post or anything I do is inundated with false reviews from these rabid vermin that just don’t move on. The trolls weaponize the falsity of that site against me and “warn” others about Russell Greer. My life is totally ruined, all because I did something that made sense in my head (and that was backed up by law) to get a person’s attention, whom I really admired, because her agents were negligent with their job duties.
Spending many hours on how I can solve this mess, I have contemplated moving to a different state, but Google search results will follow me wherever I go. Admittedly, I still do plan on moving because I hate the snow. Those close to me have suggested that I change my name. The problem still arises that if the trolls find me again, all they’ll have to do is link my new name to all of the filth surrounding me. I try to remain positive through all of this, but some days, it gets hard knowing that I’m hated for being me.
People often ask me, “If you could do it all over again, would you?” That’s a truly tricky question because this incident has opened my eyes to many things in this world that are wrong. Cyber bullying is a problem and our federal laws need to be amended to punish those who host sites specifically created to victimize others. Current law, the Communications Decency Act, shields ALL websites from third parties and I feel that’s wrong. Recently, FOSTA was passed in Congress and signed into law by President Trump to punish websites that run prostitution ads (which leads me to another debate of why does our government care what adults do with their bodies?). With that precedent, there is no reason Congress can’t create laws to take down hate sites.
One could argue free speech violations, but where does the line begin and end concerning free speech and me being able to live my life without employers, etc, being misled by such sites? It’s not fair to me for a potential employer to Google me and to find slanderous results on me from questionable sources and therefore not want to hire me. It seems to me that I went to college for nothing because I still have not landed a job as a paralegal. Sure, I’ve worked in law firms and interned for the Utah Attorney General’s Office, but ever since this all transpired, that all seems to be unobtainable. I’m being treated as if I were a criminal, even though I’ve committed no crime. In the 21st century, everything is taken at face value and people don’t bother questioning sources, like that Medium article that prompted me to write this rebuttal, here on Medium.
Another eye opener was public figure misrepresentation. I think celebrities should be more cautious with their words and actions. Studies show how powerful the influence of celebrities is. See, “Celebrities’ Impact on Health-Related Knowledge, Attitudes, Behaviors, and Status Outcomes: Protocol for a Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Meta-Regression Analysis”. BioMed Central. (2017). Honestly, had Taylor used some sort of disclaimer to caution people who want her attention, I wouldn’t have gone to extremes and none of this would have ever happened. Pain and my efforts drove me to do something people don’t want to understand. I guess it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth to see Swift champion story and effort on a daily basis, yet the prefect candidate, who put in effort, was found to be troubling. My critics and those who come across me only discuss “what I did”, they refuse to listen to “why I did it”.
While I don’t expect my words or my reasoning to change the minds of people who hate me (which is odd that a person in Australia can hate me when I’ve never been to that country, though, I’d like to visit one day), I do hope that I have shared enough information to have offered a robust rebuttal to those unfamiliar with the situation. We each have a unique pain. Not everybody will understand your pain, but nobody deserves to be smeared and harassed for their pain.