"There are no good mobs"
Stephen Elliott's life was derailed by the Shitty Media Men List. His story casts a light on fake "crowdsourcing" and internet hysteria
Stephen Elliott, who founded The Rumpus, which was one of my favorite magazines for years, had his career destroyed when anonymous rape accusations were published against him on the now infamous Shitty Media Men list in 2017, at the height of the #MeToo movement. As detailed very well here, crowdsourcing anonymous accusations can have profoundly adverse effects - and it’s pretty damn clear that Stephen hasn’t raped anyone, even his detractors appear to know that. Stephen is a submissive, into BDSM, and doesn’t do what we refer to as “normal sex” at all; in his writing, he was open about his sexual history long before he was alleged to be a “rapist.” As he has frequently mentioned, he believes a woman whom he had previously fired from The Rumpus may be responsible for the anonymous accusation as a means of retaliation, as she had spoken about retaliating against him before.
Stephen recently reached a settlement with the creator of the list, Moira Donegan. Moira continues with her writing career — Stanford University, where she is now a writer in residence at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, describes her a leading feminist writer and critic — while Stephen has been abandoned by most of his former colleagues and friends in the publishing industry.
People in OSINT and the broader investigative community love to rely on crowdsourcing. The best of us also strive to be on the right side of history. But what happens when the internet steamrolls over good intentions?
I recently talked to Stephen about what his story can teach us. The conversation below is lightly condensed and edited for clarity.
Human beings love to bond, and one of the ways we bond is in casting out people we perceive as outsiders. This is particularly easy in the age of social media. People come to me and say, “Natalia, how do I teach myself to not become part of an online mob”? Do you have advice?
Stephen: The difference between an ape and a human being is that an ape sees a banana, and takes the banana. A human being sees a banana and comes up with a story for why they should have the banana. This is what differentiates humans from other animals — storytelling. We create stories to back up the things we need to believe.
In context of mob behavior, we should have to take a mandatory class, at least in high school if not in primary school, that would explain the sociology of the mob. So you could learn everything there was to know about mobs. So you could learn the importance of mobs and how they form.
That way, when a mob is forming, we’d be aware of it. Because once it takes hold of us, it’s like a drug.
I confronted people who participated in the mob against me, and they have no memory of it. Even when I show them what they wrote. Because it’s literally a hysteria. Nobody thinks of themselves as joining a mob [when they do it], but everyone is capable of joining a mob. Awareness is your only real defense.
In my field, which is open source research and investigations, there is a big emphasis on crowdsourcing. Get a group of people who are passionate, and get them to fill in the holes of a particular story. Sometimes, the effects are great. But there is a really dark underbelly to crowdsourcing that people sometimes don’t want to confront. The Shitty Media Men List is the perfect example of how crowdsourcing goes wrong. Considering what you’ve been through, your journey being terrible, what would you tell young journalists and investigators who want to crowdsource information?
Stephen: This is tough, because I don’t really see the list as crowdsourcing. Instead, it was mob psychology at work [with a veneer] of crowdsourcing.
Here’s the thing: Once a mob forms, it cannot be controlled. It can be influenced. But it’s a bit like trying to control the flow of water.
One solution is nuance. There’s this idea that you can believe that there is a lot of sexual assault and harassment in the workplace OR that false accusations and the presumption of guilt are bad. But actually, you can believe both of these things. The inability of people to hold both ideas as true is [how we got here]. We look for perfection instead of improvement. Nobody’s satisfied because there’s no perfect answer.
Locking up a few people who are innocent in order to pursue the guilty is not a good trade-off. Some people will say it is, but it’s not. You have to have ideals, you have to have principles, and you have to hold on to those principles no matter what.
I had an ex who told me, when we met, that his ex-wife was a “homophobic rapist and abuser.” After he dumped me, I became the “homophobic rapist and abuser.” He didn’t even bother to create a new story. Some people who I thought knew me fell for it. I lost some readers. I received some pretty horrible threats. I wound up sending his ex an apology. It was a humbling moment for me, as I, a disinformation expert, had been so fooled. But it could’ve been much worse. The Soviets had a saying: “Splinters fly when you cut down a forest,” meaning that individuals are sacrificed for the majority, but that’s not how you build a just society. Having lived a smaller version of this story myself, and in talking to you now, I just want to know, how have you been moving on?
Stephen: I settled the lawsuit, because it had been going on for four and a half years, and the other side’s strategy was just to delay and keep it from reaching the court. I think they knew that if it got to court, they were going to lose.
But it was going to take, probably, another four years before it went to trial. I held firm on the sum, it had to be a large enough sum to make it clear as to what [had really happened].
But I don’t know that it would be accurate to say that I’d moved on. Even though I won the war of the narrative, there’s much less media around the closure than around the beginning. There were so many absurd stories, including in the Washington Post, in support of this [list], which is just not defensible.
The people who defended the list have not apologized. I don’t think they ever will. I’ll always know the lawsuit was the right thing to do morally. I don’t know if I’ll ever have closure, however. I try to live a good life, to take care of my side of street, I try to control the things I can control, and to not obsess over the things I can’t control. But I’m not sure that I believe in true closure.
What I want is apologies from the people I was close to. I don’t care about people who joined this mob against me whom I’ve never met. But there were people I was very close friends with, and I want to hear from them.
People like [writer] Isaac Fitzgerald, who abandoned me for his career, should apologize, as well as my old editor.
There is a mathematical certainty that any popular movement attracts its share of grifters, misguided people, and bad actors. Yet merely admitting this and acting to mitigate the problem — such as doing due diligence on people, or being careful with sharing certain information — can be seen as "betrayal of the cause." Do you have any thoughts of how we can break this cycle?
Stephen: I guess I’m of the opinion that there are no good mobs. Once a mob forms it’s always hysteria. Good causes quickly give way to lust for revenge and punishment.
So I’d say if you see a mob forming, don’t join it. Remind people and yourself of basic principles. That it’s more important to let 10 guilty go free than condemn one innocent. Never join a mob. Decide what principles are important to you and then don’t waiver. Don’t bend them for special circumstances.
If people are taught early how mobs behave, how to spot a mob forming, that might have positive effect. Because once a mob has formed a kind of group psychosis occurs, and then it’s too late. And you’ll find, in the aftermath, that the results were not what you hoped for.