SWAT

Juice Bro & Co: Internet Stalkers

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So it’s been about two months since I wrote anything about Juice Bro, aka Michael C. Cernovich. You might wonder why this is, since when we last left my least favorite part-time attorney he was practically screaming Zoe Quinn’s legal name from the rooftops; punishing her for something I did.

At that time, I encouraged anyone disturbed by Cernovich’s civil harrasment of Quinn to contact LA Crimestoppers, in the hopes that if they recieved about fifty emails a pair of LAPD officers might knock on his condo door and tell Mike to knock it off. Then, I ignored Michael’s subsequent tantrum and paranoid delusions that I was mobilizing a SWAT team against him.

That was deliberate, because I figured ignoring this wannabe daddy dom was the best course of action. Cernovich is a small man who likes to puff himself up on the internet, and I wasn’t going to cater to his power fantasies by giving him undue attention or column inches.

However, I find myself compelled to write about him in this space again; because for the past two months Michael Cernovich and his internet pals have been stalking me. Specifically, he’s gotten his friend Daryush Valizadeh (codename: Roosh V.) and some toadie named S.B. Roberts to spread demonstrable libel about me, with an eye for putting it up high in the Google Results for my name.

Mike has repeatedly written that I sent (or tried to send) a SWAT team to his house. This is factually untrue, since I contacted LA Crimestoppers, which is a nonprofit that involves law enforcement on their own terms. Michael has no proof that any law enforcement was ever dispatched to his residence.

However, Mike has stuck to his story about the SWAT team, repeating it on his blog “Crime and Federalism” (now un-retired): https://archive.today/gLObk

This is despite the fact that two months ago he blamed Zoe Quinn for the same thing: https://archive.today/Sr6nV

Indeed, Mike can’t seem to decide who’s responsible for this non-existent SWAT scandal; me, or Quinn. Not that Zoe Quinn had anything to do with it- she merely signal boosted my original article about Cernovich. The only reason Mike seems to be blaming her for this is her popularity as a #gamergate target; to gin up additional agita against this person.

That Mike’s cooked up a conspiracy theory about me isn’t surprising. He’s been doing it nonstop since October. Here, Cernovich thinks I’m involved in a conspiracy with David Futrelle, one of my Twitter followers, and whoever runs @FakeCernovich: https://archive.today/sVui6

How do you refute something so batshit crazy? Since I can’t prove the negative (that there’s definitely NOT a conspiracy between me and Futrelle to make fun of Mike’s skin rashes) I decided to ignore it.

But that brings me to the stalking. Michael can’t stand to be ignored: indeed, he’s begged me to give him my contact info lest he serve process “at your home in Linwood NY” (which is upstate, near Lake Erie.) He’s repeatedly asked for my email address, or for a private conversation via Skype.

I’m not giving it to him because at that point he had already threatened to sue me in CA Civil Court; and I don’t want him misrepresenting that conversation as he’s misrepresented my writings. I also don’t trust him not to share that contact info with his buddies.

Since I started ignoring Michael, he’s gone on a campaign of intimidation; to try and egg me into responding to him.

He’s tweeted my name, my father’s name, and tidbits about my grad school plans. Some of the info is laughably false, but other bits were true. This is annoying, since I’ve never carried out month-long research campaigns to name Michael’s family members. The photo I posted of him was a publicity photo from Mike’s own fitness web site; indeed it was a direct link.

But his friend, Roosh V, posted my photo recently. Since I didn’t have public photographs associated with idle diletante, Roosh must have gone to great lengths to find it:

Archive: https://archive.today/lJzyM

There was also this stupid article posted on Roosh’s site Reaxxion. It repeats the lie that I contacted a SWAT  Team: http://www.reaxxion.com/3344/first-amendment-lawyer-alleges-that-zoe-quinn-and-margaret-pless-tried-to-have-him-killed

Archive: https://archive.today/8S8S0

Roberts, who looks like he’s posting this libel under his own name even *acknowledges* that I called Crimestoppers, and not the LAPD. Yet he’s so dense that he doesn’t see how it undermines the fundamental thesis of his article.

There’s no way I could have mobilized a SWAT Team against Cernovich since I contacted a nonprofit whose job is to contact law enforcement on my behalf. SWATing someone involves spoofing a local telephone number, calling the LAPD oneself, and claiming there’s a bomb threat at the address of your target, so the cops will dispatch a SWAT team to it. Calling Crimestoppers about internet crime won’t cut the mustard; which is probably why Michael has no proof this SWAT team thing ever happened.

Roberts either doesn’t understand this, or chooses not to; currently his article has a dunderheaded “Update” which undermines his whole point; noting that I called Crimestoppers while still insisting I tried to get Cernovich SWATed.

Instead of realizing the magitude of his error, Roberts chooses to focus on the fact that I posted one of Cernovich’s own publicity photos (actually, directly linked it from Cernovich’s own site) to lend verisimilitude to the idea that I called in a fake bomb threat to Cernovich’s house in the interest of getting him murdered. Which of course, never happened.

I have nothing against Michael C. Cernovich, with the exception that he’s an awful person with terrible ideas who’s been stalking me since late October. What I write about him is the truth, and if Michael can’t handle it he might consider amending his behavior in the future. Instead, he’s focused on crazy conspiracy theories, attempting to intimidate me into issuing some kind of blanket apology for ever writing about him. Cernovich hasn’t filed any kind of legal action against me, but at this point I have an excellent countersuit if he should be so bold as to try.

I will not apologize for bringing this appalling behavior to light, and I’m not going to apologize for stepping in and standing up to a bully like Cernovich. Zoe Quinn isn’t the first woman to face an angry mob on the Internet because some guy got angry with her. But if I have anything to do with it, she’ll be one of the last.