IF YOU ARE A CREATIVE WHO GOT DOG-PILED

This is a resource page for (kink)-creatives who have found themselves on the receiving end of a harassment campaign. This page uses terms and resources specifically built for this audience only, however some techniques may be more useful in protection against more general dog-pile campaigns.

All of these are subjective suggestions and may or may not all work in your situation. The writer is not a lawyer, involved with law enforcement, or a therapist, and you are responsible for your own actions, including these and beyond - the suggestion are for you to pick and depending on your comfort level.

This page is written for those who draw (sometimes erotic) artworks posted on their own private or public accounts that have a higher chance of receiving backlash, and are falsely accused of abuse (it is common for harassers to dig up false accusations). If you believe someone has committed a federal crime such as being involved in harm against real, living children, please report to the proper authorities immediately.

The writer has personally witnessed 30+ dogpiles in the last two years against artists in-real time among a loose circle of acquaintances, and have been observing what seems to work vs not. The writer is at high risk for the same, and have used most of these prevention strategies to minimize said possibility.

WHAT HAPPENS IN A DOG-PILE AGAINST AN ARTIST?

Breathe.

This is not the end of the world, no matter what your (very real) anxiety or lizard-brain is saying. It is a horrible thing that happens, and your feelings are real. Once started, these harassment campaigns are very hard to stop, but there are strategies available to blunt the impact of harm.

Above all, take time to step away from the computer, every day. Talk to a friend in-person, play with a pet, sleep, meditate, occupy yourself with a favorite off-line hobby.

This too, shall pass.

If you are a friend, respond with help in the way whoever is being harassed wants it. Do not respond to the harassers with comments, it is like agitating an ant-nest. Flag specific threats via appropriate channels (most social media platforms have a process for threat reports).

I (OR A FRIEND) GOT CANCELLED/DOG-PILED. WHAT DO I DO.

content warning for detailed descriptions of dog-piles, harassment, and death threats. Skip this section and go below for specific actions to take if needed.

Critiques made in good faith and without threats are not harassment. One-off malicious comments are not a harassment campaign - these are trolls and they have existed since the dawn of the internet. Common wisdom has it that you block them if egregiously offensive, and move on.

A genuine dog-pile / harassment campaign against artists is typically started when a known harasser with followers makes a thread with screenshot, or claims, commonly called "receipts". Twitter is often the platform where these start, though it can happen on tumblr or discord as well.

Given the structure of social media sites, these posts/threads of "receipts" will quickly spread among their followers' followers. This is ground zero, and an excellent(!) list of accounts (on twitter) to quickly install block-chain and immediately block offenders. Sometimes this will blunt the spread of harassment, sometimes not.

If you are lucky, a "receipts" thread will receive a handful of views.

If you are not, these harassment campaigns can involve tens, hundreds, or at their worst, thousands of semi-anonymous accounts sending malicious comments your way. These dog-piles can (but not often) spread across to multiple sites, such as discord, twitter, and tumblr. These campaigns are often (thankfully) short-lived, with the worst happening in the first 24 to 48-hours, but can have repeated flare-ups in the months later

Sometimes you will get death threats, either sent via retweets, comments, or Direct Messages (DM's). Make a folder on your desktop, screenshot these and dump the evidence there, if needed (sometimes in rare cases, these campaigns escalate to a level where police intervention is requested - having a documented paper trail is in your best interest). See below for specific strategies against these.

Sometimes these death threats will be explicit, or carefully written to avoid being flagged twitter's (poorly implemented) anti-harassment algorithm - for example, the acronym 'kys' replacing "kill yourself". Lately, they will be poorly photoshopped images of fictional characters holding a gun. This counts as an implied death threat.

Expect future varieties. Expect slurs. Expect false accusations.

WHY DO HARASSERS DO THIS?

Typically harassers have three goals that exist on a spectrum: shame via moral grandstanding, reaction, and capitulation.

Shaming is the knee-jerk reason why harassers do this. Some harassers are in a cult-like dynamic with their friend group that requires them to punish an outsider to increase their own standing. Some drag others through the dirt for malicious fun. Most do it out of insecurity and a fear of feeling weakness. Whatever the underlying reason, they intend on publicly tearing down another living person that they have deemed an enemy.

You cannot control this, but you can take some steps to ignore and avoid it.

Their next goal is to get a reaction out of you, the target, like a typical offline bully. Given online dynamics make it tough to effectively walk away or have them removed from your space - this often means enduring harassment campaigns that last until they (quickly) get bored, move on to a new target, or get a reaction. Playing the waiting game and letting your patience out-last their maliciousness is often the wisest move.

Their final goal is capitulation. More than just a reaction, harassers want (at best) a public statement from you retracting of whatever thought-crime "receipts" they have on you. If you have been falsely accused of abuse, sometimes this is not even an option. Often-times, these dog-piles do not stop even when the target has posted a retraction, whether true or not.

IMMEDIATE STRATEGIES

This following list are for those actively being harassed. There are many ways to react to a dog-pile campaign, but targets typically respond in two rough buckets. Both have their pros and cons, and some actions can be used regardless of category.

(A) IGNORE THE HARASSMENT

(+) pros of ignoring: Much less likely to attract future "waves" of harassment. Effective if you have not been dogpiled before, or have not publicly responded yet to one in-action. The target can use the blockchain extension if desired (see below).

(-) cons of ignoring: Harassers are able to leave comments on public posts. This strategy may be more difficult on mental health in the short term - it is strongly encouraged for targets to not check social media for the first week. (If possible, as an alternative, have a trusted person aware of the situation to briefly use your account to blockchain and flag on your behalf. More on this below.

action: muting accounts has the advantage of not alerting harassers that you recognize their existence. unfortunately mute does not have a "scaled" option like blockchain extension, so you have to mute accounts by hand. Possibly effective depending on the breadth of the dogpile.

action: flag posts that count as active harm and especially death threats. Ask your friends who have the mental bandwidth if they would be willing to flag via their own accounts - the more flags, the increased chances that twitter will take down the malicious posts.

action: use the blockchain extension discretely. Blocking can alert harassers that you are aware of their existence; some times they can react to this as a challenge.

(B) LOCK DOWN ACCOUNTS (TEMPORARILY)

(+) pros of private-ing accounts: harassers are not able to leave comments on all posts, and are not able to see posts you create while the account is private. can use the blockchain extension if desired.

(-) cons of private-ing accounts: some harassers are emboldened by a visible reaction such as making a twitter account suddenly private. There are documented instances of a specific and widespread harassment tactic such as screenshot-ing the page of the private account, @-ing the recipient, and "bragging" that the harassment created that reaction. There can be hundreds of accounts that copy this reaction. In addition, "friendly" accounts will not be able to see your account while private'd, if they were not following you.

action: block, block, block. Given that you've shown your hand by private-ing the account, there's nothing to loose by blocking, whether on an individual basis or using scaled block-lists like the blockchain extension

action: flag posts that count as active harm and especially death threats. Ask your friends who have the mental bandwidth if they would be willing to flag via their own accounts - the more flags, the increased chances that twitter will take down the malicious posts.

PREVENTION: F.A.R.M.

If you have not been dogpiled yet, but have been worried about this trend or believe yourself to be at high-risk for this harassment, there are several techniques that can be done ahead of time to lessen the impact.

FIREWALL

• (twitter settings): set reply visibility to mutuals only.
• !NEW! Mega Block is a twitter extension that allows you to mass-block people who have interacted (liked and/or commented on) a tweet; excellent if you find a tweet "calling out" another kink artist and is statistially more likely to send harassers afer others.
• !NEW! Big Ass Data Broker Opt Out List is an excellent repository of links to data scrapers that doxxers often gather private information from. There are included steps on how to opt-out of this data collecting, thus making it somewhat harder for others to doxx you.
• (tumblr settings): don't allow anonymous asks/replies.
• (RSS feeds): if you are only on twitter/tumblr to see art and less the interaction between you and other accounts, consider turning specific art-accounts into RSS feeds to put a wall between yourself and unwanted interaction. inoreader is one such "reader" with a free plan to consume these feeds at a distance.
• BlockPartyApp (waitlist/$8): An app built to counter harassment by acting as a "spam folder" for unwanted tweets. Current options as of early 2021 is to be placed on a waitlist, or pay a one-time fee of $8 for instant use. - anonymous Block Party App
• !NEW! PEN's Online Harassment Field Manual does an excellent job also describing many of these actions as well as many more from a writer's context.
• while twitter technically doesn't allow accounts to be converted into feeds, there are several sites available that offer this function. Google for the latest and greatest.
• (browser extension): consider pro-actively using the twitter blockchain extension to block repeated known harassers and their followers.
• ( firefox / chrome download pages ). note: no relation to the cryptocurrrency
• (browser extension): Twitter One Click block is another extension that increases the ease of blocking so you can quickly go through a thread and block everybody.
• (firefox / chrome download pages) (via anonymous)
• Consider using different "handles" or names to further section off kink art, if you have a large fan-base that consumes more vanilla art.
• Increasing friction and the amount of effort for harassers to find and contact you is key.

ART-ONLY

• This is a trend and not a rule: dog-piles are typically ignited from text posts and descriptions as it is treated as irrefutable "evidence" of wrong-doing or wrong-thought). These can include quasi tasteless/"snarky" responses easily taken out of context, content warnings made in good faith, vent posts meant for a smaller circle of friends, and many others.
• Remove all text posts from twitter/tumblr.
• tweetdelete is recommended for twitter as of writing.
• tumblr makes it easy to mass-delete text posts with the native mass-post-editor.
• Remove all likes from twitter. semiephermal can help mass-delete beyond 2K likes, as twitter actively uses dark patterns to make it difficult to scrub accounts
• Scrub text descriptions from artworks, and re-upload.

REMOVE

• remove identifying information from bios, about pages, recent posts, and carrds. this information can include but is not limited to real names, locations, pronouns, workplace location, orientations, and beyond.
• Remove content warning / trigger lists from easily accessible bios, carrds, descriptions. Sadly, a growing number of harassers actively use these content warnings as keywords (such as incest, or non-con) as a way to find new targets.
• It is still best courtesy to mark any twitter account that posts mature works with an 18+/NSFW marking. Consider putting trigger/content warnings behind one "click" wall, such as a privatter page, or a link to an off-site gallery.

MIGRATE

• Consider moving text posts/sensitive vents to a platform that has more fine-grained privacy and comment controls such as ...
• mastodon (short form, most similar to twitter)
• dreamwidth (long form, most similar to tumblr/LJ)
• or especially sensitive art to pixiv (images, most similar to deviantART)
• Twitter (and tumblr to a lesser extent) are unique in that there is a known group of harassers that exists specifically on these two platforms, and actively look for new targets. Moving away from these two sites alone, if possible, will greatly reduce risk of being mobbed.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

• Tools For Emotional Flashbacks (via /r/CTPSD)
• Crisis Resource Toolbox (via /r/CPTSD)
• Doxxing - Red Team & Blue Teaming

Crisis Hotlines (USA)

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1- 800-273-TALK (8255). Please be aware that if you phone in while executing a plan to commit suicide, emergency services could be dispatched to you.
• Crisis Text Line
• Text “Home” to 741741 24/7, anywhere in the USA
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255) Texting: Text ANSWER to 839863
• www.crisiscallcenter.org/crisisservices.html Crisis Support Service of Nevada (gives service to anyone in the US)

if you have suggestions - especially as an artist who has gone through a dogpile campaign, - additional links to give, or additional comments; please reach out to kradeelav@gmail.com. Your privacy will be respected unless if you explicitly request to be credited.

if you are a kink artist currently experiencing a dog-pile and simply need someone to talk to in private, and if you trust this account, please reach out by email.

Whatever any fictional drawing you create on your own account does not excuse genuine harm sent your way from others. Please know that any harassment sent says so much more about those that wish harm on others, and not you.

you are not alone. this too, shall pass.

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