Unveiling the Unbearable: My Battle Against Cyberbullying and Online Harassment
It’s incredibly hard to put this into words and share what’s been going on. I’ve never asked my friends or family for emotional support, but I’m feeling truly shattered, defeated, mentally drained, and worthless due to the events of these past several months. I have been the subject of a smear campaign that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and the target of cyberbullying, cyberharassment, and cyberstalking at a level that I truly think no one would believe was imaginable. My heart has been torn to shreds, and it seems like nobody beyond my family truly sees or understands who I am anymore. Maybe that’s my fault, since the sheer embarrassment of it all has been so overwhelming that I’ve found myself hiding from the world.
Since around mid-September, I’ve been noticeably absent from social media and pretty much detached from the life I used to lead. I can count on one hand the times I’ve stepped out of my home since then, but the number of times I’ve found myself in tears is beyond calculation. Earlier this morning, around 4:30, I found myself on the floor, overwhelmed with emotions, feeling more bullied and alone than I’ve ever felt. It struck me that maybe it’s time to stop concealing what I’ve desperately tried to keep under wraps for months now. I’ve come to understand that by not being public about what I’m struggling with, I’ve made this battle harder for myself. It’s now abundantly clear that the only way to stand up to bullies is by confronting them directly.
I know that some of you caught wind of the rumors that I got pregnant by a former reality star. He had briefly been my real estate agent, and during a May evening, our professional dealings turned into something more personal. Following three positive pregnancy tests — one taken at home, another at an urgent care center, and the final one done in his presence — it was evident that I was indeed expecting. Soon after, I discovered I was pregnant with twins, and I knew with 100% certainty that he was the father. He went radio silent when it came time to take a paternity test, despite my persistent requests — twenty-nine times, to be exact — at a lab he had selected previously. When he finally responded, he dared me to reach out to the tabloids, a move I knew would compel him to comply with the test. Before the news hit the public, I pleaded with the media to keep my identity under wraps, and they agreed. However, their description of me as the “anonymous woman” contained enough details for those familiar with me to make connections and for strangers to track me down online.
Like many, I was familiar with Reddit before news about my pregnancy became public, but I had no grasp of the level of dedication its members had. Shortly after the initial articles surfaced, a friend reached out, informing me that self-proclaimed “sleuths” were actively discussing and mentioning me by name in “subreddits” centered around the reality show this man starred in. There was a barrage of misinformation circulating, and initially, I wrote back to correct those who were getting the facts twisted. However, these so-called ‘keyboard warriors’, shielded by anonymous usernames, only seemed to intensify their interest in my life once they knew I was engaging with them.
Things took a truly devastating turn when an abusive ex decided to reach out to him, telling him that I had ‘done this before’. He was referring to two prior pregnancies — a part of my life I’ve guarded fiercely, not just from the wider audience I’m speaking to now, but from everyone. Rather than having a private discussion with me about it, he broke the news to his hundreds of thousands of followers, and Redditors, like relentless detectives, latched onto this snippet of my personal history. They dove deep into my life, tearing through layers I desperately wanted to keep hidden and, truth be told, deservedly so. My life was becoming a mere public spectacle, and it caught the eye of a reality TV content creator named Dave, a major figure on Reddit, who has completely turned my world upside down.
Dave has blatantly victim-shamed me for my reproductive decisions, stating that my life would hold no interest for him if it weren’t for two prior abortions. The source of the misinformation he’s spreading traces back to two men I’d been pregnant by before. Their animosity against me, triggered by the restraining orders I have against them, is the driving force behind the distorted tales being circulated about me, and ones they have shared with Dave. They supplied him with court documents containing entirely baseless, never-seriously-considered-by-a-judge claims about me, which Dave has disseminated as if they were factual. Although their accusations were unequivocally untrue, they were mortifyingly embarrassing and not something I wanted anyone to know. My decision to stay silent inadvertently bolstered Dave’s platform, giving him free rein to harass me without facing any consequences.
The allegations they had previously made against me in response to cases I filed against them were horrendous, alleging that I falsified my pregnancies, tampered with records regarding my past pregnancies, and fabricated the severity of the injuries I sustained due to abuse. In a desperate effort to get him to stop spreading false and extremely damaging information about me, I offered to sign a release to have my previous pregnancy records sent directly to him from my providers. I sent him proof that I was one of only 630 patients accepted into the Domestic Violence Brain Injury Program at Barrow Neurological Institute, the only one of its kind in the nation, as a result of “multiple strangulation injuries” resulting in me developing epilepsy. However, he ignored my offers, revealing that he cared little for the truth.
Dave’s motivation in continuing to create content about me has been the massive surge in viewers and listeners on his monetized platforms by peddling sensationalized, entirely untrue tales about my life. He claims that he “doesn’t take a shit without monetizing it”, and so his motivation is clearly financial. Dave puts out so much content that it feels like doing damage control is a full time job: he posts three shows, usually one about me, to YouTube and two podcasts a day. Each time, it sparks a fresh wave of discussions that only add more fuel to this never-ending fire.
Dave’s enormous following on Reddit has made my life incredibly difficult. They’ve created countless threads in reality TV-related subreddits, and in the ultimate showing of targeted harassment, one person even went as far as creating a subreddit in my name just to bully me. I was taken aback when I read a post purported to be from a high school peer with outrageously far-fetched and blatantly false allegations, claiming that during that time, I was pregnant by multiple men, including a special needs student and fathers of my peers. One fabricated story claimed that my father offered one student $6000 to buy new speakers for his car if he would date me for a month. The reality was quite different — I was extremely introverted throughout high school, never attended a party, and had my first kiss during the week of graduation. These claims hold no resemblance to reality, yet they’ve left me feeling utterly powerless and deeply ashamed. It feels as though the reputation I painstakingly built and every achievement I’ve held dear have been ruthlessly torn apart and relentlessly mocked in profoundly disheartening posts.
The comments said about me have been brutal, such as, “I hope she’s an organ donor so something good can come out of her pathetic existence”, and that I am “a complete waste of skin and bones”. I’ve been told to kill myself, with comments suggesting it might help my family move past the supposed disgrace they claim I’ve brought upon them. My dad’s Wikipedia has even been edited several times by trolls to state that he only has one daughter, my sister.
Dave claims to have only referred to me by “Jane Doe”, but my name has appeared in his content many times, and his fixation on me has reached the level of an obsession. Since September, he’s churned out over fifty videos about me, boldly claiming that the count might escalate to “more than one hundred and forty” as he continues to probe into my life. Moreover, he’s generated well over a hundred hours of podcast content solely focused on me and actively pursued opportunities to appear on any podcasts, offering to fly anywhere in the country to do so, because he is so eager to discuss my life through his lens of lies.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of Dave. During one of his live streams, he inadvertently displayed a map leading to my home. In an interview just this week, his comments became even more alarming as he said he wished I had been a passenger on the missing Malaysian flight 370. Adding insult to injury, he shamelessly exhibited a picture of me in a bra with an exposed pregnant belly during one of his episodes. When I requested its removal, he callously dismissed my concerns, laughing as he told his audience, “Bra or no bra, who cares?”. He’s joked about me having a miscarriage, which is something that is not remotely funny.
As a last resort, I filed for an Injunction Against Harassment against Dave due to his obsessive interest in me and his flat out refusal to stop making videos and podcasts about me when asked. However, when I informed him that he would be served by a process server, he turned the tables. Deceptively, he began painting himself as fearful of me. His followers swiftly joined in, spreading these unfounded notions that I might pose a threat. I’ve been called “unhinged” an innumerable amount of times and his followers have posted countless times that I need to be institutionalized. It’s been outrageous, entirely unwarranted, and incredibly upsetting.
My physical appearance has been a relentless subject of mockery. Multiple memes have been created, emphasizing my looks and targeting me with hurtful comments about my looks. People claimed to be stunned that he chose to be intimate with me for just one night after having numerous beautiful women to select from during his time as the lead on a romance reality show. He himself mentioned I didn’t look as pretty as I appeared in some Instagram photos he scrolled through.
I thought that maybe if I were able to change my identity on the outside, I might get back to feeling like myself on the inside. After a lot of thought, I decided to file for a legal name change, which was discovered by Dave the day after I filed the petition with the court, and my new identity as Emily Wilson was disclosed to his audience, making it obsolete. I felt like I had run out of ideas to escape the relentless nightmare I was living in.
My integrity is everything to me. I have never lied about being pregnant or about the extent of the abuse I’ve suffered, and I have medical records to support both claims. I sought an order of protection against the man who impregnated me. Despite limiting my communication to only sending him pregnancy updates, interestingly, a month later, he obtained an Injunction Against Harassment against me
Dave’s followers have chosen to write my full name on Reddit and in the comments sections on his YouTube videos because they say that in doing so, they will alter the SEO algorithm so that these blatant lies about me are shown at the top of Google search results. He has incited hatred, harassment, and threats against me, and I am just exhausted from it.
Over the last few months, I’ve often questioned: What is the allure of a 33-year-old woman, confirmed to be pregnant three times, to him and his audience? How much more content can he create, and how much more can I take? Although I would be more than entitled to file a defamation lawsuit against Dave, I have no desire to have my life drained by the legal system and simply want him to stop and remove the videos. If you want to watch how cruelly, and flat-out bizarrely, Dave has spoken to and about me, you can watch this video.
I’m sure this post will spark more hateful content from Dave, and he will incite his followers to make more cruel comments about me. Despite outwardly claiming to my family that I’ve become desensitized to anything that can be said to me at this point, Dave’s videos still deeply affect me, as do the words of his supporters. While I know I will advocate against cyberbullying in the future, right now, I just wish for this torment to stop. His relentless bullying has pushed me to the brink, causing moments where I’ve felt close to the edge of despair. I’ve even expressed to him that the blood would be on his hands if I harmed myself due to his relentless harassment, but it had no impact on him. It just provided him with something else to talk about on his shows. And why would he stop talking about me? Spreading misinformation generates profit for him, and that appears to be his sole concern. It’s an ongoing struggle to try to rise above this situation.
My life has changed after witnessing how cruel people can be, and while I’m a changed person after all of this (how could I not be?), I still want to be Laura Owens, not Emily Wilson. I’m anxious about how people might perceive me once I share my story, but holding all of this inside hurts. In the face of relentless cyberbullying, I yearn for the torment to cease, hoping that someday, my story will speak louder than the falsehoods, and the strength I find within will reclaim the identity they sought to shatter.
