Seven years ago we moved to a rural property to learn how to become more self-sufficient and build a custom home our dream home by ourselves with our own two hands and try to become debt free. It felt right to document the journey and our hopes was that maybe we could do so in a way that would inspire other people to take action in their own lives.
Our channel shared a wholesome and positive story and rapidly grew. During the course of our home building projects as we were working on our home and our property busily, there were problems brewing underneath the surface. At first we experienced the typical mean comments, which are usually pretty benign and every creator deals with, and basic moderation tools take care of this. At some point a small but very cancerous group of people started watching our Channel and using the comments section of our latest videos to recruit viewers off of YouTube to their own private group using a story like we’re fake, we don’t live in our own house, our child died, we died, we sold our property, with a little Google research I was able to find their place now for sale, there was a rumor that they didn’t even live at their house, those types of things, and the only limit is your imagination.
These were the kinds of stories they came up with, and their own groups were a private place where they could control the narrative unmoderated. While we were actually busy building our property, our home, and creating, these people have seemingly bottomless time to stir up negativity. They did this across numerous platforms, trying to stalk us and harass us. At first digitally, next they began digging through all available public records. Let me read to you a few things that they started digging for, they started digging through our internet history, public records, family history, employment history, past friends, business associates, criminal records, family criminal records, and any other publicly available piece of information that they could find about us. And as if that’s not really creepy enough, then they took the time and energy to compile all of that information into a mega document that people could download and read pretty much our entire life story whether we wanted it shared or not.
This group of people escalated and they started trying to coordinate attacks on our channel, such as stealing and trying to monetize our content, they created 3D rendering videos of our house and of us, mocking us as people and they created look-alike accounts on numerous platforms impersonating us, trying to trick naive people into thinking that we’re engaged in some really nasty and questionable behavior. They were actively recruiting across numerous channels, numerous platforms, trying to get people to join their digital crusade.
The problem with nefarious people when there’s no consequences is they tend to get more bold and they escalate their behavior, especially when there’s neurotic people who are either coordinating or egging them on, but eventually the group activity could no longer just be constrained to the Internet, it had to move to real life. People suggested getting together to fly drones over our house, we received death threats, people were following us in real time to see where we go and what our activities are, family members were contacted to see if anyone would out us for being the frauds that we are, people threatened to vandalize their airplane as well as track its every movement in real time, next they started working very hard to make sure as many people as possible know exactly where we live even though we never made that information public. They placed a Google pin on our house so that anybody with normal curiosity could find out the exact location of our home.
Connect With Us