(00:10):
Sometimes I find it's hard to keep on. I read the news. See the reds and the blues. Isn't it a pity. Isn't it a shame.
(00:41):
Music by Champagne Charlie and the Wah Wahs, find them on Spotify. The song title is Sometimes I find. Hey everybody, it's Sally Hendrick with Shout Your Cause, and I've got a dear friend of mine, Coco Briscoe, here to talk about online profiles being a social media influencer and the online harassment and offline harassment that can come with that. Welcome Coco. Hi,
(01:16):
Sally. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.
(01:19):
Podcast. Yes, I have been wanting to talk to you for a while about all of this stuff, but it did seem to die down a bit, I guess because for a couple of years you didn't really talk about it as much, but then lately it's been ramped up again talking about different things, different people online who just can't seem to leave you alone.
(01:42):
Well, that's actually the experience of all social media creators. I feel like there's this magic number, and I haven't figured out from my research what that magic number is, but it seems to be around a hundred thousand followers that people start getting targeted by these online hate groups. You'll hear the term gang stalking a lot, and people hate that term because it sounds like a crazy person being like, I'm being gang stalked and the government's after me. Right? And that's not really what's happening. What's happening is that these groups form online to harass social media creators. They target them, they create Reddit snark, they create hate pages, and they'll just blatantly lie about creators just to cause drama, and a lot of times I think it's just to boost their own social media platforms.
(02:33):
Yeah, it does seem like that, especially this one particular user that I'm thinking about and she seems to have it out for you with 17 videos related to just you.
(02:46):
Yeah, so I don't know that woman. I don't know her. I've never met her. I've never interacted with her. When I first got on social media, I mean I've always had a Facebook page or whatever, but when I first got on TikTok, she came after me right away. She had stitched one of my videos and made some snarky commentary. I started off on TikTok doing a dating series called Dating dc. I was on TikTok to have fun. I was on there doing content about my dating life and just about what my experience dating in DC was like, and this woman just has had it out for me ever since. She has dug through my life. She has made slanderous and defaming videos and she just will not leave me alone with this group that she has formed, and it has snowballed into the craziest experience that has led to harassment offline.
(03:38):
Yeah, it's crazy. I've seen a lot of her videos and she even went after me in one of her videos a couple of years ago because I had commented on your video that I was not happy with the Washington Post author who wrote an article about you.
(03:57):
Yeah, I was really, really upset about that article actually. For anybody listening who doesn't know, some people in this hate group have filed false police reports against me, and this is all collectively the same group of people. They continue to write false police reports against me and signing off swearing out warrants for my arrest. They've gotten multiple emergency protective orders barring me from talking online about the harassment I'm experiencing, which is crazy. And I was arrested in 2001 for violating one of those emergency protective orders stating that I couldn't talk about what was happening on TikTok, and I did, and I got arrested. I went to jail, which is such a First Amendment right violation, and I think that people don't understand this, right? The thing that people keep saying was, well, you violated a protective order, a protective order. That was against my freedom of speech, which was ruled by Judge James McHugh, who's now retired.
(04:54):
He was absolutely furious that these orders had been signed off on because you cannot get an emergency 72 hour emergency protective order against someone unless somebody's been hit, unless there was a direct threat to unlive somebody. And so these people have just caused all kinds of chaos in my life. Rachel Weiner from the Washington Post called me immediately the moment that I got out of jail and I was disheveled, I hadn't slept, and I really felt that this woman was gunning for me. She was questioning me as if I was guilty of something, and she just did everything she possibly could to what felt like do a hit piece on me. That's what it felt like. She didn't name any of the people involved who were harassing me. She didn't name any of the magistrates who did not do their job properly and signed off on these orders. When it was a violation of my first amendment rights, she was gunning for me it felt like, and that really sucked. So I appreciate you having my back on that, Sally.
(05:55):
Yeah, I remember that and I commented about it because I thought it was so strange that she would take away from her normal writing and write something as if she were writing for Buzzfeed,
(06:10):
Right? I was like, what is the Washington Post now? TMZ? Why is this relevant to anything that the Washington Post writes about? Normally I think she writes about political things, but she did cover what was going on in the courts, but I don't see her writing about all the Virginia police officers getting arrested for sexual assaults. She doesn't seem to be interested in those cases. So I just find it interesting that she decided to write that article because this is something I have to answer for in job interviews. This is something I'm going to have to answer for forever. I'm now applying to colleges to finish my undergrad, and I want to eventually go to law school because this whole situation has been such an insane debacle that I have felt so helpless in everything that's happened, and I think that law might be the route for me.
(07:01):
Speaking of the law, filing a false police report is a serious crime in the United States, and those who engage in it can face significant legal repercussions. The specific charges and severity of the punishment can vary depending on the jurisdiction and the nature of the false report. For example, filing a false police report can be classified as either a misdemeanor or a felony depending on the state and circumstances with fines up to a thousand dollars and jail time up to a year for the misdemeanor and higher fines and longer jail times for felony offenses. If the false police report is part of a pattern of harassment or if it causes emotional distress to the victim, harassment or stalkings charges may apply even more fines in jail time can be added on. If a false police report is done across state lines or over the internet, federal charges may apply.
(08:02):
In Coco's case, a couple of social media managers were involved in filing police reports and they used business accounts. They were managing to do some of the harassing likely in error and in the heat of the moment, one company account in particular that harassed me as a result of me taking up for cocoa a couple of years ago is located in Texas. I am in Tennessee and cocoa is in Virginia. I've reported their harassment to the company in question, and the social media managers hired through Fiverr have since been fired per the senior management of that business. I love your content, the food and drink content that you do online where you talk about dating in the DMV area. For anybody who doesn't know, that's the area around Washington DC I guess, right?
(08:55):
Yeah. So my original series was dating DC and then I named it dating DMV because I branch out into Virginia, Maryland, and the DC area, and I do live in the state of Virginia now. I love doing that content. Actually, Sally, that's what I came on TikTok to do. I came on TikTok to have fun. I was ready for a relationship when I got on TikTok and I was like, why don't I just document this journey? A lot of women struggle like being single in big cities. It's not fun going on lots of dates, and I found that I was having so much fun making that content because so many women can relate, and that's how I built my community. And then my platform turned into this whole drama of all these crazy things happening to me and all of these people attacking me, and I still can't wrap my mind around why complete strangers on the internet will press record on their camera, hella boldface, lie about you and continue to attack you when you repeatedly ask them to stop.
(09:59):
That's what I don't understand. All the people that have made really disgusting videos about me, they've all been blocked for years. They'll screen record my content, I guess from burner accounts and then post it with slanderous things over it, and I'm just like, why are these people gunning for me? And I've learned that it's not just me. This isn't just like a unique cocoa Briscoe situation. This is happening to a ton of creators, and I've befriended a lot of creators and talked to them about their experience with this because it's more than trolling, right? So I think that's, when we talk about computer harassment, people think like, oh, people are just calling you ugly or stupid. That's a trolling we're used to. Everybody gets that kind of trolling, but this is a very insidious type of trolling. It is attacking someone's character on every level, pretending to be the victim.
(10:52):
That's what I see happen a lot. People will terrorize creators and then claim that they're the victim. They're like, oh, they're my bully. They're bullying me. As soon as we call out the behavior, as soon as we're saying, this is what this person has done to me, and as you know what has happened to me, the offline stuff is the scariest, the filing of false police reports against me. These people found out where I work. They posted my job publicly, and then their angry mob of people rang the phone off the hook at my job for days on end until my boss fired me. Luckily, they paid me. They paid me for a month after they let me go, and they felt really bad about it, but they have to run a business. So I understood that I was not happy about it. I was upset. My feelings were hurt. I was a great employee. I liked working there, but I don't think people understand how dangerous this kind of behavior is because it's more than just annoying. It's dangerous.
(11:46):
Didn't some people actually show up and follow you around at one point?
(11:52):
So when I was doing my dating series, the people who filed these false police reports are people who were doing that during my dating series. So I went on a date with someone who worked in a local restaurant, and it was his group of friends that started all of this online bullying against me. They would take videos of me without me knowing, and they were posting them on this Facebook group. It was a Facebook group that included a bunch of locals, people that were friends, some of them were employees of local restaurants, and it was just right in my area. So I was in a really small area of Arlington, Columbia Pike. There's three or four restaurants and bars there that this group of people worked at hung out at, and yes, they had, without my permission taken videos. They were sharing my social media.
(12:39):
They were saying really disgusting things about me, like calling me a whore, talking about my body. When I found out about this, I was horrified, and I don't know if you remember this, but back in early 2021, I was attacked by my Lyft driver, and that was a really scary situation for me. I had to go through nine months of trauma therapy. And so when I started doing my dating series, that was months after I'd been in trauma therapy. So that was sort of like me feeling safe to get out again, feeling safe to be social again. And so when I found out that this group of people and their group on Facebook was called Choosing Violence, I just felt so unsafe by that because these were people who were working in local restaurants, they were employees, they were working at the time, and they felt the need to post where I was, to take these videos of me, say disgusting things about me, and tell people where I was in that very moment.
(13:36):
And when you have a bunch of men calling you a whore and saying awful things and saying, I choose violence, and a female bartender saying exactly where you are, that was incredibly scary to me. So I was the first person to file a police report during that time. The police told me there was nothing that they can do. They didn't care about the online harassment. And then that woman, the woman who shared my location and said where I was and took the video of me, she's the one who filed the emergency protective order against me, barring me from talking about it on TikTok
(14:08):
Social media influencers due to their visible online presence and often candid sharing of personal lives can attract unwanted attention that sometimes escalates into dangerous stalking behavior. Here are some real life cases where social media influencers have faced both online and offline stalking. One case in particular is Caitlyn Ragusa. Caitlyn is a popular Twitch streamer and social media influencer known for her cosplay, A SMR, and gaming content. In 2022, she reported a severe case of offline stalking involving a man who traveled from to her hometown in Texas. He live streamed his attempts to locate her standing outside her home and made multiple threats online stating that he was willing to harm her if she didn't meet with him. She took steps to alert the authorities and law enforcement became involved. She has since increased security around her personal life and home. Another case is Liza Kashi, a widely known YouTube influencer, actress, and comedian with millions of followers. Her comedic videos and relatable content have attracted a large and dedicated fan base. Kashi encountered a fan who repeatedly harassed her online, sending obsessive messages, and eventually finding her home address. He showed up at her home multiple times, attempting to confront her and leaving notes. Kashi sought legal action and enhanced security, particularly around her home. While she had kept many details private, the incident underscored how social media exposure can encourage some followers to cross personal boundaries
(16:02):
And what these people keep doing because they were able to get these emergency protective orders because they were able to get me arrested, and everybody's going, how the hell did that happen? They're now making up all these crazy stories, and I'm just like, none of this is true. And the fact that people do this online and think they cannot be sued, they absolutely can be sued. I can absolutely sue them. The question is, who the hell do I start with?
(16:26):
Exactly. Who do you start with? Well, I did notice that recently one of the accounts that they made on TikTok finally got taken down. I had reported it. I know that a lot of other people probably reported it, and it kept saying that it wasn't a violation, wasn't a violation, and then somehow it disappeared. So I don't know what happened. Do you know?
(16:46):
I don't know. I've been writing a ton of police reports. I have been in contact with the police constantly because the harassment hasn't stopped. It hasn't stopped. I mean, I'm blocking hundreds of accounts a day. They say crazy things to me. They make these hate pages, they slander me all over line. I mean, it's more than an annoyance because they posted my most recent job just recently on a public forum, and I was just like, when does this end? When do these people just leave me alone? I have moved out of this city where they live. At one point, I took every video related to this incident down. I just want to move on with my life. Months after I did that two police show up at my house with two warrants for my arrest for harassment by computer. Now people are like, well, if you didn't do anything wrong, how were they able to get these warrants?
(17:37):
Well, in the state of Virginia, we have something called magistrates, and you can go to a magistrate and swear out warrants against someone as long as you have witness testimony. So what these people did, because they're a group harassing me, they go as their group and they do witness testimony. They sign sworn statements and they get warrants for my arrest. Now, when the prosecutor goes to them and says, okay, you've issued a warrant for this person's arrest. Now you have to show me the evidence and we can prosecute. They don't have any literally these last two warrants for my arrest for harassment by computer, they printed out the comment section of one of my videos. They printed out other people's comments, and one of the comments was like, get 'em by the throat, or something like that. They considered that to be threatening their safety, even though it was not a comment I wrote, but it was in my comment section, and they had me arrested for that. Isn't that insane?
(18:28):
That's ridiculous. That is so stupid.
(18:32):
So every time the prosecutor was like, okay, show me how Coco Briscoe is harassing you, and then we can have a court hearing and they don't have any evidence. And so the prosecutor both times has said, you don't have anything for me to take to court to actually have a court hearing. And the charges are immediately dropped, and they go all over the internet and they go, she wasn't prosecuted, but she's guilty and she did all these things. And I'm like, if I did these things, I would've been prosecuted. You had witness testimony, you swir out statements. And the thing that I'm working on now is trying to get them prosecuted for acting as an organized group to write false police reports, which I can prove to be false. This is very easy. I have them all connected to each other. I have them all talking to each other.
(19:18):
I have them talking about how they friends and each thing, I don't have any of their addresses. So them saying I'm posting their addresses. I'm like, I don't even know what town these people live in anymore. They have said publicly, they don't live in Arlington. I'm like, I don't know where you live. I'm not hunting you down. I'm not trying to find these people for any reason. I just want them to leave me alone. And these aren't people, again, they're not people I know. They're complete strangers that harass me on the internet. I don't know why the state of Virginia is allowing this to happen. And so my goal is to go to the Commonwealth Attorney. I have a binder of evidence of the harassment that I have experienced. The Commonwealth attorney is a former police officer. That would just be my luck, wouldn't it?
(20:05):
Just the other day, I got a message from one of the accounts that came after me back then the social media person for this company is harassing me online. They sent me some pretty detailed information saying, we know who you are. We're coming after you kind of a thing. They sent me threatening messages on Instagram and back then when they kept making accounts using my name, Sally with a Y is a whore. Sally with a Y is a cunt. Sally with a Y is X, Y, z, whatever. They were doing that, and they kept doing reply videos and all this stuff. And so I just closed my account for a short time, changed some things on my Instagram, and then maybe a week or two later, I turned it all back on and it all stopped. But I did just get a message literally a few days ago on, and I had restricted them on Instagram. So they can't see that. I can see what they've been sending, but I can see it. But I just wonder if they realize that I know who they're working for. And it would be awful if I called that company and said, look, this is what your social media person is doing to people online.
(21:30):
And it's weird. It's like, why Texas? I don't understand what that's about. But this group harassment online, it becomes interstate stalking. So I know one of the people lives in New York, one of them lives in Pennsylvania, one of them lives in Florida. And this is all information I've gathered from their social media pages before. I've had them blocked. And I'm like, why are all these people jumping in to harass somebody that they've never met? And you're not the only friend of mine that's been harassed. Everybody who ever made a video standing up for me has had death threats. One of the witnesses to one of these incidents, they threatened him. It has gone on and on. They have posted my family's address saying that there was a $50,000 bounty on my head, which obviously nobody's paying anybody 50 grand to come capture me or kill me or something, right? But hosting that publicly, like a giant billboard on a social media platform is so dangerous because you just never know who's looking at it. You know what I mean?
(22:35):
Exactly. Like this person of Texas that came after me, all of a sudden it was like, how are you involved? And it probably is just somebody who's reading comments online on some of these videos and then deciding who they're going to harass next,
(22:52):
Right? Yeah, absolutely. And they just go after whoever. And it's weird. And what's so crazy and creepy about this, one of the women said that she was my attorney at one point. This woman is not an attorney. I've never spoken to her, never saw this woman in my life, never seen her face, had no idea who she was. She started making videos. She made hundreds of videos about me before her account was taken down, but saying that she was my attorney at one point, that she was giving me legal advice. And I'm like, what is happening right now? There's another woman who says she's a private investigator. She is not a private investigator. She's a lash tech in Florida. I have had to do some research to find out who the hell are these people. But it's literally a crime to say that you're an attorney.
(23:37):
It's literally a crime to say you're a private investigator without a license. And so these people are committing crimes, right and left, posting my address, posting my family's address, saying that there's a $50,000 bounty on my head, and the police will do nothing. And then these people go to the police, and it's crazy because their police reports sound like confessions. They read exactly like confessions. Every single thing that they're saying that I am doing are things that they've done to me. And can I prove it? Yeah, I have all the proof. Can I prove it's them? Not unless I get a warrant. And so the law enforcement has the power to do that. They just will not do it. In 2022, I opened a police investigation up with Detective Cook at Arlington County when I in Arlington, and he told me, there's nothing we can do.
(24:25):
This was after they mobbed my job. That investigation was still open. I'm like, these people mobbed my job. They posted it publicly. They're doing all these things to me. I feel unsafe. Can I get a protective order? Can I get something? And he said, there's nothing we can do. This is their first amendment. And then two police show up at my home with charges for harassment by computer with no evidence. I wasn't even given any evidence before I had it appear in court for an arraignment. And an arraignment is where they just give you your court date or whatever and tell you to get a lawyer. And I was just asking the court clerk. I was like, can you give me something? Can I have something? What am I exactly being accused of? Because I didn't know, and I didn't know until I hired a lawyer and the discovery came out for my case, and he emailed it to me.
(25:10):
He goes, this is the discovery. I said, this is the discovery. Them printing out a comment section of my video, and they're having me arrested for comments I didn't even make that were made by troll accounts by somebody else. I'm like, that's like saying I got punched in the face by Coco's next door neighbors. I want you to go arrest Coco for me getting punched in the face. Make it make sense. And they'll say anything. And it's so, I'm not an influencer to anybody listening. I'm not an influencer. I don't make my money on TikTok. I have a full-time job. I'm a licensed healthcare worker. So when these people are going online and making false accusations, and they're not saying allegedly a lot, they're saying, this is true. Coco Briscoe did this. They have said, I harass children. They have said, I talk about their children.
(25:59):
I don't know any of these people's children. They've said, I've posted photographs of their children and that Homeland Security was involved. What? Sorry? If Homeland Security was involved, I would know about this, right? They've said that I'm violent. They've said that I've attacked them. There's a woman who punched me in the face four years ago who's coming out, and she's saying that I broke her finger. And I'm like, this woman literally punched me in the face four years ago. I have blocked her on all social media. I have no contact with her. I filed, I filed a restraining order against her back in 2020, and now they're coming out saying that I was her attacker. And I'm just like this woman, no contact with her whatsoever. And she's all over line saying that I attacked her and she's a part of this group, and they contact friends of mine on different social media platforms.
(26:51):
They're always trying to get people involved. Literally, they call people on Facebook that I know personally. It's to a point that it's the obsession that scares me. Do you know what I mean? It's not the trolling, it's not the false accusations. It's the obsession that it has gone on for so many years and it will not stop. And you're right, you said earlier, it slowed down a bit. It slowed down a bit, but they were still doing it. It just wasn't happening in this giant wave where this giant group of people would not stop. And the mental impact that this has, if you haven't gone through something like this before where you're getting falsely arrested, you're getting fired from your job, people are calling you a horrible person all over line, making up disgusting lies about you contacting your family, putting your family's safety in jeopardy, it will make you lose your mind. I am so glad I'm strong and I'm so glad that I have a great support system of good friends around me because I don't think I would've survived it. I really don't.
(27:58):
Well, I'm glad that you are on this side of it and that you are feeling probably more in control than in the past. And I commend you for going to the police over and over and over again, and I wouldn't stop that. If you can keep that pressure up, I think maybe they'll back off. They need to find something better to do.
(28:24):
Absolutely. I don't understand why I'm their hobby. I don't understand why destroying my life is their hobby, and they think that this is some kind of tip for chat game. I'm playing some kind of game with them. I don't know these people. I don't have it out for them. I'm not slandering them online. I don't know anything about them. I've never said anything about them. I've said, these are the people who are making false allegations against me who are harassing me. I want them to stop. I've asked them to cease and desist, and whenever I am like, please just stop. Leave me alone. They amp up. It's like a fun game to them. It's not a game to me. It's my real life. And the fact that law enforcement refuses to do anything about this to help me, makes me so incredibly disappointed in Virginia law enforcement.
(29:08):
But I'm not stopping. I'm not going to give up. They can say whatever they want. They can slander me all over the internet in their giant groups, but I will have the last word. I will have my day in court, whether it be criminally that I am able to get them charged, or we go the civil route. I don't want to spend the money. I don't think anybody wants to be sued. So it's like if you don't want to be sued, why don't you just leave people the hell alone? But they're trying to drive this point home that I am this dangerous maniac who is putting their safety in jeopardy. And I'm like, do you hear yourselves?
(29:44):
Why are these magistrates not saying, how do you Coco Briscoe? Because if the magistrates were to ask that question, and these people said, oh, well, I've never met her before. I feel like they wouldn't be able to swear out warrants for my arrest. You know what I mean? What's the most dangerous about this whole thing other than the fact that law enforcement refuses to get involved, is that they're putting people's mental health in jeopardy and they're putting people's children's safety in jeopardy. A lot of social media creators have had issues with Child Protective Services being called on them, and then cops show up at the school or social services shows up at school to talk to their children, which is crazy, right? And this is not because people are genuinely concerned about their children's safety. It's because they're just trolling. They're just bullying them. There was a creator who was talking about all the narc and slander that was happening to her, and they called animal welfare and said that she was abusing her animal. I mean, it is just crazy. People are getting swatted where SWAT teams are coming to people's homes in the middle of the night. I just don't know where it ends, and I don't know when it has to get bad enough that states actually do something and get involved because they're going to have to eventually.
(31:05):
Thank you for listening today. I hope you got something out of this conversation. Please subscribe to the podcast and give a rating while, until next time.
