One Star
A True Tale of Cyberstalking and Targeted Harassment of Independent Filmmakers
Once again, this post is ‘too long for email.’ But who cares.
What follows is a hugely eye opening sage from truly independent filmmaker Cody Clarke . I won’t keep you any longer other than to say that you should read this and also check out Cody’s Substack as a gateway to the great films that he makes.
Enjoy.
TJB.
DISCLAIMER: The following article chronicles true occurrences that I find interesting, presented with my own personal opinions about them. These opinions should not be interpreted as allegations, as I maintain an open mind should any new information come to light.
It is entirely up to the readers to form their own opinions based on the information presented. I would advise that they should not take the law into their own hands, or retaliate in any way against any perceived wrongdoers. As the saying goes, the best ‘revenge’ is living a happy life—that is all that I would ever advise anyone to do. If more people simply lived a happy life, far less bad behavior like what is profiled in this article would even occur. I believe that wholeheartedly.
Prologue: Film Threat
Back in 2019, I made a movie called Mute Date. I submitted it for review to a site called Film Threat through their free submission platform.
The review I received was negative—which is fine, whatever—but I took issue with some aspects of the review that I felt were unfair. For one, if a critic details plot information, I think that information should have to be accurate. They should say whatever they want as far as their opinion on what happened in the film, but they should do their best to truthfully state what does happen in the film. This critic conflated aspects of two separate plot points (that make sense) into one plot point (that makes no sense):
I had other issues with the review as well, but this is the least subjective issue I had—pretty much anyone can agree that a critic who doesn’t tell the truth about what occurs in a film is doing their audience, and the publication they write for, and the filmmaker, a disservice. Anyone who hasn’t seen Mute Date, who reads that review, on that seemingly credible site, and sees that low rating from that critic, and is exposed to that inaccurate plot point, is going to assume that the film is poorly written, when it’s not.
I voiced my issues in the comment section of the review. (Too long to screenshot here, but if you want to read it, scroll all the way down past the review and go for it.) Some might not think that a filmmaker should ever talk back to their critics, but I think that on some rare occasions it’s important to—critics have influence, and Film Threat is an ostensibly respectable outlet that’s been around in online form since the mid nineties, and in print form for a decade before that. One would assume they have standards there.
My comment detailing my gripes struck a chord with the critic—it turns out that misreporting what happens in my film was not a simple mistake that the critic had made, but something that he firmly believes is fine to do if you don’t like a film. (Really. Read his reply in the comments if you don’t believe me.) We went back and forth in the comments on this issue and others, and then other people started chiming into the comments section as well—and that’s when things got chaotic.
I started getting trolled in the comments by someone with an obviously fake name (‘Johnathan Redcorn’, taken from the show King of the Hill) and fake email address (not even an email address—simply the url ‘yourmom.com’) who claimed to have seen the film and could confirm that it was in fact bad. I pointed out that this was impossible, as the film had not been released yet:
After I said this, a slew of fake accounts obviously made by the troll started popping up in the comments to defend him (you can visit the review if you want to read them):
Though the main goal was to troll, the side goal was clearly for me to send my film to this ‘Johnathan Redcorn’, who is not a critic, and has no channel, despite what he and his dummy accounts would want you to believe.
Film Threat does nothing to stop, or even curb, this type of behavior—anyone can comment whatever they like using any number of fake names and fake email addresses and the comments will stay up, with no pruning by any sort of moderator.
This event would mark the first time in my filmmaking career where I would deal with someone pretending to be multiple people at once in order to troll my films, but it would by no means be the last—this would become a regular occurrence and an ongoing mystery which would plague me, and several filmmakers I know, to this day.
Chapter One: Michael Haywood
About a week after the Film Threat kerfuffle, my film Mute Date was released to the public on Amazon Prime Video. A day after its release, a 1-star customer review appeared on the film’s Amazon page written by someone named Michael Haywood. I would soon become quite familiar with this name, as leaving 1-star reviews of my films on Amazon would become an ongoing habit of theirs—any new film of mine released on there, a 1-star review from Michael Haywood would be one of the first, if not the first, review left for it.
A few days after Michael put his review of Mute Date onto Amazon, a nearly identical review of Mute Date appeared on IMDB, written by an account called ‘redviperofdorne’—clearly Michael’s IMDB account. This time, Mute Date would receive 3 out of 10 stars from him instead of 1 out of 5 stars, but the complaints would be the same (often word-for-word the same) as in his Amazon review:
Michael would go on to use his ‘redviperofdorne’ IMDB account to leave a 1-star review for my next film ‘Bed’—then use it to leave 1-star ratings for pretty much any film I make, to this day, as well as for the films of a filmmaker friend of mine named Dan Lotz:
There’s nothing wrong with someone not liking my movies, or Dan’s movies, and then leaving 1-star reviews or 1-star ratings for them—everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and even the greatest movies ever made have received the exact same treatment. However, it is odd to want to watch every single film made by an obscure filmmaker that you’ve never enjoyed a single film by—and not just that, but to always want to be one of the first people to see each new one. Clearly he was getting off on his own reviews, and on knowing that I would see what he was doing, and on knowing that, for a period of time, his hastily-written 1-star review would be the only review on whatever film of mine’s Amazon page, and his 1-star rating that film’s only Amazon rating, for at least a few days until others would chime in.
Why this guy was suddenly in my life, or how he found my films, I had no idea—I didn’t have much information to go on other than what could be gleaned from his reviews. One clue was that in his reviews he would sometimes blame the reason he watches my movies on a ‘friend’ that keeps suggesting he watch them:
As I wasn’t a particularly well-known filmmaker, I wondered if this friend was someone I knew—but when I would search the name ‘Michael Haywood’ on Facebook, a ton of Michael Haywood’s would of course come up, but none that I had any mutual friends with. Even when I’d make posts on Facebook or Twitter about Michael Haywood ‘striking again’ in his clockwork-like way with a fresh 1-star review of a new film of mine, no one ever stepped up in public or private to say ‘Hey, I know that guy—sorry about that’. All this to say, I had no idea who Michael was, or who this friend of Michael’s was, or if that friend even existed, or if ‘Michael Haywood’ even existed—it could be a fake name for all I knew, since I had of course been tormented by a bunch of fake names in the comments of the Film Threat review of Mute Date (and ‘Michael Haywood’ had appeared in my life trashing Mute Date a week later):
Another clue was the fact that he specifically hated when characters in movies use ‘filler words’ like ‘like’ a lot:
He’d also complain about inside baseball technical aspects of filmmaking, pontificating as though he were some sort of expert on how films should be made. At one point he calls Ramekin ‘overexposed’ (which is ridiculous, because that movie is meticulously properly exposed, by design—that’s literally its whole visual style). He also complains that there are ‘too many cuts during a conversation’ in Ramekin (ridiculous yet again, as this is not a frenetically edited movie whatsoever—in fact, quite the opposite):
He also took issue with me acting in my movies opposite actresses, and there being any sort of intimacy on screen between our characters, even merely holding each other:
All this amounted to not much to go on though. I certainly knew the type of person he was—I knew that he enjoyed the sound of his own voice (or rather, the sight of his own text on screen) and was probably some sort of wannabe filmmaker, a tortured non-artist who thinks he knows exactly how to make a film, but has never and will never actually do so, because god forbid he learns he has no idea what he’s talking about. But that was all I could deduce about the guy.
During this period of time, several movies of mine were removed from Amazon Prime Video by Amazon due to them receiving ‘too many’ 1-star reviews. These 1-star reviews would never be Amazon Verified Purchases like the Michael Haywood reviews almost always were, which meant that they did not come from any account that had actually, verifiably, watched the movie. The complaints in the 1-star reviews would also be virtually the same, and written in the same style, from review to review. They would also be posted from brand new Amazon accounts with no other reviews for any other movies or products in their history. Either my films were weirdly specifically good at angering people who in this day and age somehow did not have an Amazon account (angering them so much that after watching my films at someone else’s house, they would finally create an Amazon account for themselves just to give my films the lowest possible rating) or my films were angering one person so much that they were using dummy accounts with fake names in order to spam my films with 1-star reviews and get them kicked off the platform.
Each time I spotted a suspicious review I would report it to Amazon. They would check it out, and after a few days it would get taken down. I wish I had some screenshots of these reviews as examples, but at that time I had no idea that I would ever be writing an article about any of this—I’d just see them, click the ‘Report’ button, and go on with my life. I can describe the reviews though: the complaints were always about the very same specific things that Michael Haywood would idiosyncratically (and erroneously) complain about. I find that interesting.
As helpful as Amazon was at getting these fake reviews taken down, they were just as not helpful in getting my films put back up on there—their policy was that once they take a film down, it’s banned and can never be resubmitted. A terrible system, one that basically gives any disgruntled individual with enough hate in their hearts and time on their hands the power to destroy any filmmaker they want financially—l lost out on thousands of dollars in streaming revenue because of films of mine getting taken down before they could gain momentum and generate much money at all. (Films of mine that stayed on the platform did quite well—’Ramekin’ and ‘Mute Date’ both became official Amazon Prime Video recommendations.)
I should mention that this policy only affected non-studio films, by the way—a polarizing Hollywood movie could dip into a 2 1/2 or 3-star average rating and be in no danger of disappearing, but a movie made by me and submitted by me to Amazon could get dropped from there for simply being in 4 out of 5 star territory—that’s exactly what happened to my film Bed, a film which is often considered to be my best work by those who have seen it, but which was gone from the platform before it could have ever reached a wider audience. I digress, though—back to Michael Haywood.
I did end up figuring out who he was, eventually—and like trying to find most things, it happened when I stopped looking. (Not that I ever really looked much at all, because I pretty much assumed it was a fake name.) It turned out to be a real one, though—there was in fact an actual Michael Haywood out there in the world behind the Michael Haywood professional Cody hater persona.
One night about two years ago I was checking out the IMDB page of a filmmaker friend of mine’s new film that he was making called ‘Toga’. My eye caught a name—Michael Haywood, listed right there as one of the co-writers of the film.
I clicked Michael Haywood’s name. He was even listed as a ‘production consultant’ on a previous film this filmmaker friend of mine had made.
Michael Haywood was real, and a filmmaker that I had known for years knew him, and had worked with him on several projects.
A filmmaker friend of mine who I had, in the past, lamented to about Michael Haywood trolling my films, and who never told me he knew him.
That filmmaker’s name is Shaun Rose.
Chapter Two: Shaun Rose
I first met Shaun Rose towards the end of 2018 when I was submitting my film Ramekin to film festivals and critics. He was doing the same for his film Upstate Story, and he had seen Ramekin pop up in some of the same outlets that his film had, and so he reached out to me, since we were both from the same state, and making similarly-budgeted movies, and in a similar part of the process. From there on we would become Facebook friends, and message each other here and there to talk shop and suggest festivals or reviewers to each other.
I like Upstate Story a lot. I still do—I’ve seen a ton of movies made for peanuts over the years and it remains one of the better ones in my mind. It has some qualities to it that few others possess—there’s a unique voice to what he does.
As far as my work, I know Shaun likes Shredder and Strummer, my two black-and-white, stripped down, fly-on-the-wall movies. It makes sense—they’re the most up his alley, as Upstate Story could also be described like that, although doing a different thing than me for sure.
The other films of mine, he might pick out some aspect of them to compliment me on, but it was palpable that they weren’t exactly his thing, which is fine—I’m friends or friendly with plenty of people who my work is not for. Plus, I’m a pretty varied filmmaker—though all my films bare my personal mark to some extent, they’re each different.
Towards the end of 2021, when I discovered that Shaun knew Michael Haywood (and had known him for as long as I had been dealing with his 1-star reviews) I was immediately curious as to why Michael Haywood had never come up as a mutual friend when I’d searched his name on Facebook. He should, since I was Facebook friends with Shaun. So, I had a friend of mine who was also friends with Shaun search Michael Haywood’s name on Facebook on their computer. Lo and behold, right at the top, a Michael Haywood came up as a mutual. It turns out that Michael Haywood had had me blocked on Facebook this entire time—likely for as long as he had been 1-starring my movies.
I wasn’t sure what to say to Shaun about it, but I felt compelled to say something, particularly because, at the time, Michael Haywood’s behavior had gotten pretty egregious. For a while, at the very least, Michael Haywood was watching my movies—each time he’d leave a 1-star review, it’d be an Amazon Verified Purchase. But his review of Ramekins: Ramekin II, the first and only review on its Amazon page, was not—and it was clear from his review that he hadn’t even watched the whole movie. His comments were entirely about the first 20 minutes of the film, which I had released for free on YouTube in order to promote it. I did this because the first 20 minutes were all set-up, all first act—the film barely even takes its big turn yet. To only watch those first 20 minutes is to only have the barest inkling what the movie even is yet. Here’s his review:
It’s interesting how little he understands the sense of humor of those first twenty minutes, by the way—the fact that it’s tongue-in-cheek goes completely over his head. It’s also bizarre that he says it looks like an ‘amateur adult film’—after hearing this, I personally viewed tens of thousands of amateur adult films, but I couldn’t find a single one that resembles Ramekins: Ramekin II. (That’s a joke, Michael, in case you’re reading this right now and think I’m serious.)
I decided it best to just ask Shaun to ask Michael Haywood to leave me alone—years of dealing with this guy was enough. Shaun responded, and I didn’t like how surprised he was in his response—it seemed like fake surprise to me, since I had been griping about Michael Haywood on Facebook and Twitter for as long as Michael had been targeting me, and had even specifically warned Shaun about Michael’s ‘redviperofdorne’ account when I had noticed that he had left a mixed review of Shaun’s film Upstate Story. But, Shaun said he’d say something to Michael, so I hoped for the best.
A week or two after that, a fresh Amazon dummy account appeared called ‘Harold Coonts’, leaving a 1-star review for Ramekins: Ramekin II as his first and only review, and of course not a Verified Purchase:
Pseudo-technical complaints that seem plausible only if you haven’t seen the film? Check. Issues with me and an actress intimate on screen? Check. Reference to a friend who watches my movies? Check. I had already suspected Michael Haywood as behind the Amazon dummy accounts, but this was the most blatant example yet. This was obviously Michael Haywood, and furthermore, it seemed to me that he had posted this review in response to me taking to social media and griping specifically about the fact that Michael Haywood isn’t even watching my movies anymore, just 1-starring them based on portions of them.
I knew who the friend that Michael Haywood kept referencing was now, of course—Shaun Rose. Who, interestingly enough, I had sent a private screener link of Ramekins: Ramekin II to—which Shaun had apparently shared, without permission, with Michael. Which meant that Shaun was not to be fully trusted.
By the time ‘Harold Coonts’ had struck, I hadn’t heard back from Shaun about if he had ever asked Michael to stop, like I asked, so I asked him if he ever did. Shaun told me that he had brought it up to him, but that Michael had told him that he had ‘only ever left one’ Amazon review for me. A boldfaced and easily disproven lie, since there were reviews by Michael Haywood for nearly all of my films on Amazon. I told Shaun that, and Shaun again feigned ignorance, trying to stay out of it, and then saying that he only ever speaks to Michael once in a while anyway. I was suspicious of this claim, because all signs pointed to Shaun having forwarded the private screener link of Ramekins: Ramekin II to Michael.
A couple days after that talk with Shaun, an account called ‘chiptatterly’ appeared on the social film review site Letterboxd, leaving 1/2 star reviews (lowest possible rating on Letterboxd) for all of my movies, plus five-star ratings for Shaun Rose’s movies Upstate Story and Making and Unmaking:
I contacted Shaun again, showing him that. In response, he said that he had never visited Letterboxd, and had only barely heard of it, and wasn’t sure what it was, and asked if it was an IMDB-like site. He also said that he was surprised by this behavior, because Michael Haywood hadn’t even liked Upstate Story all that much (unintentionally further confirming that the ‘redviperofdorne’ IMDB account is Michael). I told him what Letterboxd was, and got no response—and then I don’t have any record of any messages between us after that, for about a year. I didn’t want to continue talking to him about this, because he was coming off as obstinate and suspicious to me, and he clearly didn’t want to talk about it anymore either.
I could somewhat understand why Shaun was being like this—he actually knew Michael, them being in-person friends who lived in the same part of the state, whereas I was just some fellow filmmaker on the internet who he had never met in person. People tend to have more allegiance to people they actually know versus people they barely know. But Shaun happened to be someone who I knew cared a lot about the reputation of his films—he was always extremely meticulous when it came to amassing positive reviews, and ratings, and awards. If someone were doing to him what Michael was doing to me, he’d be livid, so his unhelpfulness was odd.
For as long as I’ve known Shaun he has employed a very specific, and determined, and debatable, strategy to success. It hasn’t actually lead to success, as his films aren’t particularly well known, but if you looked at the IMDB page for Upstate Story, you’d think that it was the second coming. It’s won nearly 50 awards, with 28 nominations. It has 35 reviews from critics. It has over 100 IMDB ratings, almost all of them 10-star:
If you know any inside baseball when it comes to filmmaking at this level though, this facade isn’t nearly as impressive. There are countless ‘online film awards’ festivals that will essentially give you whatever award you want if you pay them. You can even choose at checkout what aspect of your film you want them to pay ‘special attention’ to, ensuring a best actor award, or a best director award, or a best screenplay award, etcetera. It’s legal, but it’s gross, and more than that, it’s meaningless—nobody pays any attention to these sorts of awards festivals other than the filmmakers who submit. Shaun Rose utilizes them wildly.
He also submits his film for review to damn near any film critic on the internet, even ones that get barely any traffic. Typically these outlets are so flattered that anyone even submitted a film to them in the first place, and so they want to give the movie a good review in hopes that the filmmaker will spread the review around and the site might get a bit more traffic.
He also, I suspect, inflates his IMDB ratings with dummy accounts. In its five years of being up on YouTube—and only on YouTube—Upstate Story has just 2,500 views:
Ask any lesser-known filmmaker—that’s way too few views for there to organically be this many IMDB 10-star, 9-star and 8-star ratings for it:
IMDB is a site almost entirely used by people to rate big movies—its community isn’t particularly interested in tiny movies. Unless your movie is big, your IMDB ratings are usually nearly non-existent. My film Ramekin was a massive hit on Amazon Prime Video, yet it only has about 150 more ratings on IMDB than Upstate Story’s 101 ratings. Joel Haver’s film Pretend That You Love Me—which as of right now has nearly 640,000 views on YouTube—has only around 200 more IMDB ratings than Ramekin. The IMDB community is primarily a multiplex-going community.
I say this all was no shade towards Shaun Rose, by the way—I can certainly relate to wanting to use every legal tactic possible to get your movie out there in the world, and I’m kind of glad that he approaches it in the way that he does, because in my weaker moments I’ve considered doing so for my own work, and seeing his abject lack of success with the formula lets me know that it’s not actually worth doing. We are all examples of ways to do things, and he’s an example of doing it in this way. All I mean to illustrate here is that Shaun Rose, a man who for years would send me tips of which critics and festivals were worth submitting to and which weren’t—and who meticulously manufactures as good a reputation for his work as possible out of wholecloth—was oddly uninterested in the fact that there was someone out there who was meticulously, and specifically, trying to make my movies look bad. It should interest him, and interest him greatly, yet it just plain didn’t—which didn’t add up. Or rather, it did add up—but it was adding up to something that I didn’t want it to add up to.
Chapter Three: Floyd Perry
The harassment on Amazon stopped after my complaining to Shaun about it—no more new 1-star reviews on there from Michael Haywood, or from dummy accounts which suspiciously shared all of his highly specific opinions. To this day, Michael Haywood of course continues to leave a 1-star rating on IMDB for any new film I make, through his ‘redviperofdorne’ account, but who cares—one man’s 1-star ratings is fine. If that were the end of the story, that’d be fine—but of course, it’s not the end. The harassment from dummy accounts simply increased on platforms other than Amazon.
As I said in the last chapter, there was the ‘chiptatterly’ account on Letterboxd, an account which inexplicably thought every Shaun Rose movie was perfect and every Cody Clarke movie was terrible. Even more dummy accounts would spring up too, always with that exact same taste, though they would expand to hating the work of certain other filmmakers as well. Dan Lotz, who I mentioned earlier, would suffer the same 1/2 star fate as I, and then Joel Haver would too. All of us friends, all of us filmmakers who crank out films fairly quickly and release them for free on YouTube.
Shaun Rose was similar to us in that he released his films for free on YouTube, but different in that he worked at a much slower pace—by the time he was done with a new film, we would always have each made and released many. There’s no rules to this art form, and no way is better than another—everyone should just go at their own pace. His pace was slower, and that’s fine—but it certainly left him with a lot more free time to possibly do what he was possibly doing to us.
I didn’t trust Shaun anymore. Either it was him and Michael doing this stuff together, or it was Michael doing it alone and Shaun covering for him, or it was Michael doing a little of it and Shaun doing a lot, or vice versa. I wasn’t sure which the exact parameters of the scenario was, but I was damn sure that some version of that was occurring. I also didn’t have a smoking gun—not yet, at least.
I should mention that some of these dummy accounts that sprung up were pretty creepily named. ‘Johnnyjewboy’ was one of them. Another, named ‘Livvy_A’, took its fake name from an actress in my film No Shark named Livvy. The worst dummy account name though was one that directly referenced the recent death of Joel Haver’s father—it was literally called ‘yourfatherdied’.
Here’s some typical dummy account behavior, to give you an idea of their pattern:
In this next example, note that the name ‘eazystormborn’ is a Game of Thrones reference, much like ‘redviperofdorne’ is, and follows its same 1-star rating pattern, though this time on Letterboxd instead of IMDB:
In this third example you can see how a film by me, and a film by a fellow YouTube filmmaker, would get hit, as well as see the typical new dummy account behavior of going right after our films first thing:
One of the only dummy accounts that actually ‘reviewed’ during that period was one called ‘Floyd_Perry_90’. It began its Letterboxd and IMDB career with a 1/2 star and 1-star review of Ramekins: Ramekin II respectively, making the same pseudo-technical complaint that ‘Harold Coonts’ had made about the eye lines. This not being Amazon though, I could actually have a dialogue with this person (at least on Letterboxd) and so I did. First, here’s their review:
And here’s our exchange:
Floyd Perry would continue his charade for quite a while, pretending to be someone brand new to my films and so appalled by their terribleness that he decided to join Letterboxd just to leave scathing reviews for everything I’ve ever made. His complaints with my films would always be the same as all past dummy accounts, and he would of course also hate on Dan Lotz’s movies, and Joel Haver’s movies, and other YouTube filmmakers as well. He loved Shaun Rose’s movies though, of course, and would recommend them frequently:
At the time, I didn’t know that Letterboxd could step in and do anything about the cyberstalking and targeted harassment that I and others were receiving. People would write absolute insane reviews on that site—it seemed to be a free-for-all there, so why would the moderators care about what I was going through? I was wrong though—apparently they did believe that there was a line that shouldn’t be crossed. Letterboxd took an ongoing interest in my case—and the IP addresses of all these myriad dummy accounts matching up certainly made their job easy for them. Anytime I found suspicious dummy accounts spring up, they would easily knock them down—it seemed like they had fun with it, even. They wanted their platform to be somewhere where you could let your freak flag fly as you reviewed movies, but they didn’t want it to become a den for bullying and deception. I find that admirable.
The only problem is, every time I’d get Michael, or Shaun, or Shaun and Michael, or Michael and Shaun’s dummy accounts deleted off of Letterboxd—or off of IMDB, who were also helpful with taking down hateful reviews from dummy accounts—I would be paid back with increasing 1-star ratings for my films on IMDB—and not just mine, but Dan Lotz and Joel Haver’s as well. There was nothing I could do about that though—IMDB has probably the worst policy ever when it comes to ratings. They pretty much never take fraudulent ones down, for any reason. I could make fifty email accounts tomorrow and give my films fifty 10-star ratings each and they would stay up forever. That I don’t do that in response to the absurd amount of dummy account 1-star ratings I get on IMDB should say something about me—either that I’m a man of integrity, or that I’m a moron. I should note, by the way, that it’s interesting that many of my movies, and Dan Lotz’s movies, and Joel Haver’s movies, have about 30 to 40 1-star ratings that are out of the ordinary, whereas Shaun Rose’s film Upstate Story has about 30 to 40 10-star ratings out of the ordinary. For brevity, here are just three examples—one film by me, one film by Dan, and one film by Joel, though this applies to plenty of our films. I’ve also included, so you don’t have to scroll up, the ratings for Shaun’s film Upstate Story:
On a big blockbuster movie, this kind of 1-star bombing is a droplet in an ocean—when it’s me getting hit, it actually hurts though. Some of the best films I’ve ever made are saddled with a 2 out of 10 star average rating on IMDB that travels with it wherever it goes—Amazon and other places display the IMDB average as well as the Amazon average. Worse than that though, there are many streaming services that choose which films they pick up by their average IMDB rating—they don’t want movies below a certain threshold. That means that I have lost out on streaming opportunities, and revenue, directly because of this abuse. Between Amazon kicking movies of mine off and this, I don’t even want to think about how much money I’ve missed out on due to the targeted harassment I experience, but it’s a lot. Certainly an amount I wish I had in my bank account right now.
Worse than the hit when it comes to money though is how it has ruined the reputation of my films to the uninitiated. It’s impossible for me to know how many actors I’ve missed out on working with due to the fact that, if I contact them, and they look up my IMDB, they’re going to see an absurdly low average rating for each of my movies. Some of my best films—best if you actually watch them—you’d think were Z-grade based off their IMDB rating. This stuff matters. It’s nothing that would ever stop me from doing what I love, but it’s disheartening to know just how much one or two determined, deranged people can do to harm the careers of people who haven’t wronged them in the least.
After I finished making my film Invisible Shark, which was released this year, I sent a private screener link of it to the cast and crew, and to a few extremely highly trusted filmmaker friends… and also to Shaun Rose. He was, very intentionally, the only person I sent the private screener link to who I wasn’t 100% sure about. I didn’t tell him that, of course—I didn’t tell anyone. I just wanted to see if maybe, perhaps, ‘Floyd Perry’ would chime in with a premature review of Invisible Shark—a movie that ‘Floyd Perry’ couldn’t possibly have seen.
Well, lo and behold, he did:
I immediately called ‘Floyd’ out on this, and then we had another back and forth:
Despite saying that he didn’t want to spoil the movie for anyone, a little while after that he wrote an IMDB review of it with tons of plot details that only someone who had seen the movie could have known.
A movie that was as of yet unreleased.
And had, of course, only been sent to one person that I didn’t trust—Shaun Rose.
Here’s the review:
I didn’t gloat about this smoking gun—I simply kept it to myself. I didn’t want Shaun to know just how onto him I was, because I wanted to see what else he would do. Also, we weren’t exactly talking at the time anyway—not long after I had sent him the private screener link for Invisible Shark, he had tried reaching out with a film-related question. In response, I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable talking to him knowing that he was friends with Michael Haywood, and knowing what Michael Haywood was doing to me. His response to this was way too perplexed for my liking—he said he hadn’t talked to Michael in months, and was faux confused as to why I felt that way. ’Are you sure it’s him?’ he asked. I didn’t reply, and I haven’t replied to him since. That was many months ago.
In those many months, I’ve gotten plenty of dummy accounts removed from Letterboxd, and I’ve gotten Floyd Perry removed from Letterboxd, as well as any particularly egregiously harassing reviews by him or any other dummy accounts removed from IMDB. What I didn’t know though is that Floyd Perry was just a cocoon—unbeknownst to me, his real purpose was to one day hatch and become a butterfly known as ‘James Frederick’.
Chapter Four: James Frederick (The Longest Chapter)
Seriously. This chapter is long as hell. Strap in.
‘James Frederick’ marks the first time an attempt was made by Shaun and Michael (or Michael and Shaun, or just Michael, or just Shaun) to manufacture a seemingly plausible persona for a dummy account by creating an online presence for it outside of Letterboxd or IMDB—an Instagram account was created called ‘j_fred_bad_movie_reviews’, clearly in order to find a permanent place to keep trashing movies made by me, and Dan Lotz, and Joel Haver, and other YouTube filmmakers, amidst so many of their dummy accounts getting kicked off of Letterboxd. Since it’s damn near impossible to get an Instagram account taken down, this is their forever home:
Of particular note is that ‘James Frederick’ suffers from the same rare and debilitating condition as Toga co-writer Michael Haywood, where he can’t stand the word ‘like’. He also thinks people could use a co-writer—maybe famed Toga co-writer Michael Haywood might be available? Get a load of this:
The origins of ‘James Frederick’ start with the ‘Jimmy Frederick’ and ‘Jim Fred’ dummy accounts on Letterboxd, as well as the ‘jamesfred-72149’ account on IMDB. Here’s how totally real, not-at-all suspicious ‘Jimmy Frederick’ chose to begin his brief Letterboxd career:
And here’s what ‘Jim Fred’ thinks of one of my films. I’ve censored some brazen spoilers he included in his review:
And here’s an example of a typical ‘jamesfred-72149’ review on IMDB, which is just a carbon copy of the James Frederick Instagram review of it:
Honestly, if Michael and/or Shaun had wanted to just condense everything down to one fake persona and leave it at that (and maybe delete all those fake 1-star ratings on IMDB) I’d be happy, and pretty much any other filmmaker attacked by them would be happy. It can’t be said enough that the only major offense here—other than when the reviews say literally harassing things that are beyond the pale—is the fact that they’re pretending to be so many people. This all should just be one person, one vote—if you don’t like a film, have the courage to say so in your words and as your own, lone, human being. I don’t even care if it’s behind a fake name—just let it be one fake name that you speak through. If your opinion is so correct, and compelling, it should be able to come from one voice and still be effective. Using dummy accounts to manufacture the illusion of a vast consensus that a filmmaker, and their films, are terrible, is horrible—and for a fellow filmmaker to do it is even worse. You’ll notice that there aren’t forty different carbon copies of this exact same article that you’re reading right now, each with a different made up author name—there is just this one, and my name is on it, and I stand by what I am saying it. But I digress.
In addition to hating on me and Dan Lotz and Joel Haver, the dummy account hive mind expanded to hating on other YouTube filmmakers such as Jennifer Bauman—a very personal filmmaker who makes quiet, sensitive films inspired by the raw, self-reflective nature of Joel Haver’s work—as well as Calob Robinson and Reese Hayes— both also clearly talented, and also clearly the kind of filmmakers who, whether you even like their movies or not, show admirable effort, and independent spirit, and real talent. The idea that any films by any of us could ever seriously be deemed ‘1-star films’ is insane—especially coming from a persona who believes that all of Shaun Rose’s work deserves five stars. It’s dishonest as far as taste, because Shaun’s work is not a far cry from anything that we do—we’re all similar filmmakers in certain respects, telling small, human stories in a similar time period and for similar budgets. A real, actual human being who preferred Shaun’s work to any of ours would not see as wide a chasm between us as these dummy accounts do—and in fact, people who like Shaun’s work tend to like some of our films too, and vice versa, which means that the entire premise underlying these dummy accounts is implausible. It’d be as absurd as someone thinking Blink 182 is the best band ever and Green Day is the worst band ever—there are obviously gonna be some songs by each that you like, even if one of the bands is your ‘favorite’. But I digress again.
A funny slip-up that ‘James Frederick’ made during all of this is that, in one of his first Instagram posts, he complains about being harassed by filmmakers on Letterboxd—basically, when he writes a fake review on a fake Letterboxd account and we respond by pointing that out—mostly to the uninitiated who may be reading it, so that they understand the long pattern of abuse across multiple fake accounts—doing that counts as ‘harassment’ to him. The slip-up comes from the fact that, in James Frederick saying that he was banned from Letterboxd and had to make an Instagram, he took a screenshot of a different dummy account than the ‘Jimmy Frederick’ or ‘Jim Fred’ accounts that ‘James Frederick’ was most blatantly operating under on Letterboxd. The screenshot he chose comes from the ‘Floyd Perry’ account, which means that ‘James Frederick’ accidentally outed himself as ‘Floyd Perry’, and still hasn’t realized this to this day, because the Instagram post is still up. I find that hilarious—adorable almost, but mostly just hilarious:
Another funny slip-up is that ‘James Frederick’ can’t seem to keep straight his lie of which movie of mine is the ‘first one he’s seen since Mute Date’. Here’s him saying it about No Shark, and him saying it about Attack of the Giant Blurry Finger:
As the saying goes, if you tell the truth, you never have to remember anything—someone should pass that adage along to ‘James Frederick’, whose lies, however simple they may be, seem to be a bit too challenging for his brain to keep straight.
Other vocal dummy Letterboxd accounts from this time period include ‘Nate Bills’, and then after he was kicked off Letterboxd, his sequel, ‘TWillard’. Here’s an example of the behavior of ‘Nate Bills’:
Boring and typical dummy account, right? Wrong—Nate is an interesting case as far as dummy accounts go because he began his dummy account life by bragging that he wasn’t going to review or rate any of my movies, seemingly because he was above such behavior. However, he was of course immediately not above talking crap about me to anyone displaying any interest in YouTube filmmakers, or anyone who happened to suggest my work to others:
After that, I had to chime in:
It’s a particularly funny exchange, largely due to the excellent, unforeseen, unprompted assists by Nicholas Adamson and VictorMartin. Shout out to both of you!
After ‘Nate Bills’ got taken out in a dummy account purge, he was resurrected as ‘TWillard’—not at all speculation on my part, because this is something that the dummy account ‘TWillard’ openly admitted in order to try and reconnect with the one or two people he coaxed into following the ‘Nate Bills’ account:
Here’s some doozies from ‘TWillard’, who essentially operated as the Letterboxd twin of ‘James Frederick’—anytime a new James Frederick review went up on Instagram, a ‘TWillard’ one on Letterboxd would immediately follow it, with no attempt to create an illusion of these dummy accounts as separate people at all:
This double-attack would sometimes be meted out as punishment to a filmmaker for them complaining to ‘James Frederick’ on Instagram about how disrespectfully he talks about filmmakers and their movies, as happened to a filmmaker named Charli Rogers:
You didn’t even need to complain about James Frederick at all though—simply enjoying a movie he didn’t like, and being a filmmaker, was enough to cause ire towards all of your work, as Reese Hayes found out after he committed the sin of merely enjoying a Jennifer Bauman film:
Worth noting is that ‘James Frederick’ aka ‘TWillard’ (aka ‘Nate Bills’ aka ‘Floyd Perry’ aka the list goes on) happens to share the same proclivity towards animated comic book movies as ‘redviperofdorne’ aka Michael Haywood:
I’ve also by chance witnessed the ‘TWillard’ Letterboxd account active at the same exact time Shaun Rose was active on Instagram, so maybe Shaun likes animated comic book movies too, I don’t know—it really could have been either of them in the driver’s seat of that dummy account:
Another commonality across dummy accounts worth noting, which began during the ‘Floyd Perry’ Letterboxd days, then carried over to the ‘Nate Bills’ Letterboxd persona, then the ‘TWillard’ persona, etcetera, is to suggest movies by Shaun Rose to people on Letterboxd in the comments. On paper, that might sound like above-board behavior, simple getting the word out, but the form it takes in practice is appalling:
There is no merit to this ‘ripoff’ claim whatsoever. I use voiceovers sometimes, and so does Shaun Rose, and so do countless others. It’s not exactly an obscure literary device—and I’ve used it in literature too. I’ve been writing fiction in the first person for decades—I have published short story collections in the first person, and entire novels in the first person. Which leads me to something else that’s a bit of a clue, actually—the hatred for my work by these dummy accounts very tellingly never carries over to my books. I have written thirty books, in addition to being a filmmaker, all available on Amazon too—if someone were really so religious as to watch and hate all my work, they could very easily read (or pretend to read) all of my books and leave 1-star reviews for those. But, the hate always just sticks to my filmmaking—because that’s the only arena in which I am perceived as competition to Shaun and Michael.
I should mention that I have had plenty of haters in my lifetime as an artist thus far—they’ve always been distinct, always palpably different. That’s part of the fun—you hear something genuinely new, in a genuinely new voice, and it’s entertaining, even if it’s trashing you. Some of my favorite sentences ever written about me or my work have come from haters—here’s one of my favorite bizarre lines, from a real, genuine person (not a dummy account) who hated No Shark:
Wow, with haters writing about me like that, my fans really need to step up their love for me! The point is, be amusing, be different—entertain. My biggest complaint about the pattern of behavior I’ve highlighted in this article is that it’s boring. It just repeats and repeats—it’s same-y. The only entertainment to be derived from it comes from the sheer lunacy of the attempt, and me being able to highlight all that lunacy for you all. The actual reviews themselves are dumb, so reeking of forced distaste that no actual, organic taste can possibly seep through. I understand that they receive some titillation from feeling naughty as they do it, but no one is receiving any pleasure from reading it.
The last dummy account I’d like to highlight in this chapter is a very transparently Shaun Rose one. This dummy account was actually pegged as such by Letterboxd, by the way, because I wasn’t 100% sure it was one at the time, since it didn’t hate all my work. The account was called ‘VinStossel’. This account had issues with me, and total love for Shaun Rose’s movies, but also inexplicably seemed to like my films Shredder and Strummer—the only two films of mine that Shaun Rose likes a lot:
Of note in the screenshot above is also the fact that, in addition to liking the Shaun Rose movies Toga and Making and Unmaking, ‘VinStossel’ liked the movie Unsound, one of only two YouTube-released movies not by Shaun that were ever enjoyed by these dummy accounts, the other being a mental health documentary called Werewolves. Here’s Shaun publicly stating that he enjoys Werewolves, by the way:
And here’s the ‘TWillard’ account, also singing the praises of Werewolves:
Back to VinStossel though. The following shows VinStossel asking me a loaded question in the comments section under one of my reviews for one of my own movies on Letterboxd. (It was not a review actually, but a Director’s Statement—I just use the Letterboxd review function for that, as many other filmmakers do for their own work.) Though I would not consider the question loaded were it to come from someone uninitiated and genuinely curious, I consider it loaded coming from a dummy account, because five-starring ones own films is a behavior Shaun and Michael deride us non-Shaun Rose YouTube filmmakers for, despite it of course being what Shaun and Michael are literally doing with their dummy accounts, except they do it en masse, and completely dishonestly. When we do it, it’s like someone running for president and casting a vote for themselves—it’s harmless, it’s tradition. When they do it it’s like someone running for president and casting fifty votes for themselves. Anyway, here’s the question, plus my response, followed by the dummy accounts talking to each other, which is funny:
During one such purging of dummy accounts by Letterboxd, they decided to delete the ‘VinStossel’ account too, even though I hadn’t complained about it specifically— it was at least a little more tactful than other dummy accounts, and I was focusing on getting rid of the more overtly harassing ones. The reason they decided to axe ‘VinStossel’ though was because its IP address matched a bunch of other dummy troll accounts. That’s pretty clear evidence that Shaun is quite involved in this, in my opinion (not that I wasn’t already thinking that for some time) as ‘VinStossel’ was the very ‘Shaun’ one. Basically, you’ve only got one or two IP addresses behind all of these dummy accounts, and interestingly enough, there are only one or two suspects: Shaun and Michael. Funny how it works out like that.
As of the publishing of this piece, I’m happy to say that all of the dummy Letterboxd accounts are gone—they’ve all been kicked off of there. I’m sure some will spring up in the future again, but it’s nice to have a breather. There’s still of course the ‘James Frederick’ Instagram account, plus a couple ‘James Frederick’ and ‘Floyd Perry’ reviews still on IMDB, and the ‘redviperofdorne’ IMDB account—not to mention all those spammed 1-star IMDB ratings—but whatever. An important battle was won.
There also still persists some activity that I haven’t quite mentioned until now—I’m saving it for the next chapter because it really does deserve its own. You see, as hated as I am by these dummy accounts, I’m not even the most hated out of the filmmakers that Michael and Shaun have targeted. Everything negative said about me, or any of my films, by these dummy accounts, pales in comparison to how Dan Lotz has been treated by them—especially recently.
Chapter Five: Dan Lotz
Shaun Rose has been hating on Dan Lotz for years. I’m not talking about behind a dummy account, I’m talking about Shaun Rose the person, speaking as himself—he’s spoken very negatively about Dan to me and to others privately.
It all stems from an incident, if you can even call it that, where Dan Lotz was curating a YouTube playlist of movies made by smaller creators, released on YouTube for free. This was known as the ‘Folk Filmmaking playlist’—the idea being that, if all these movies were in one place, people wanting to watch these sorts of movies could browse the playlist and find movies and filmmakers they’d never heard of more easily.
Shaun Rose took great offense to having his film Upstate Story included on this playlist because he says it was added on there without him being asked—and even if he had been asked, he didn’t want to be associated with something that could be interpreted as some sort of ‘movement’ he was a part of, which he wasn’t, he was just doing his own thing. Which is fine, whatever—that’s his prerogative. I can understand where he’s coming from—I have similar feelings about the ‘folk filmmaking’ term, to a certain extent.
Dan removed Upstate Story from the playlist when Shaun asked, and that should have been the end of it—honest mistake, particularly since the vast majority of people who had films added to the playlist seem to have appreciated being on there. But Shaun didn’t want to let it go as easily as that.
Shaun perceived Dan as conniving, and trying to put himself over on the backs of filmmakers that had nothing to do with him. Full disclosure, there were times when I assumed the exact same about Dan. I’m a pretty autonomous artist, with a contrarian streak—I’m highly wary of groups and the formation of them. If I do something on my own, I want it to be clear that it was done on my own and not be interpreted as having been done as part of some perceived collective. I’m sure Shaun feels the exact same way. But, with time and distance—and with spending many hours talking to Dan Lotz—I do not believe that he had anything but the best of intentions with what he was doing.
‘Folk filmmaking’ as a term, as it stands today, is purely colloquial. It is true that Dan Lotz at times explored developing a sort of ‘folk filmmaking manifesto’ of sorts, but that is not a form that the term ever actually took. The term has no tenets attached to it—it is simply a word that some use to describe the sort of films that are homegrown and made inexpensively and are released for free. I don’t use the ‘folk filmmaking’ term myself for my own work, because in my opinion it’s a bit vague, and I try to avoid vague terminology in describing what I do. I prefer the term ‘truly independent filmmaking’, because it is specific and literal. But, to those who like to say that they are a ‘folk filmmaker’, all the power to them.
Shaun has not come to the peace that I have come to with it. He seemingly likes disliking Dan, likes seeing himself as ‘right’ and Dan as ‘wrong’, when in actuality, we’re all people doing similar things and trying to figure out the best way to do them. Dan’s a nice guy, and we get along just fine—our similarities are more important to us than anything we differ on. I was friends with Dan before I was wary of him for a while, and I’m happy that we are friends again.
Many times, back when Shaun and I were still talking, Shaun would sent me messages about Dan that were a bit more mean than I was ever able to muster. I saw within him certainly the potential to troll Dan, and I personally see Shaun’s particular voice, and opinions, in certain anonymous accounts used to leave troll comments on Dan’s YouTube videos.
I have spent many hours over the years talking to Shaun Rose. I know how he types, I know how he structures sentences, I know how he feels about things. I don’t think it’s fair for me to share our private messages publicly, but I can tell you that the egregious comments being left on Dan’s work is the sort of stuff he’d be saying to me in private if we were still talking and if he still thought I disliked Dan too.
All I can show you is what Shaun recently said about Dan, and me, in public:
The “12 films a year” refers to Dan’s pet project of shooting 12 feature length films in just 12 months, in order to challenge himself and see what sort of creativity comes out of him from that. It was a personal challenge, done out of fun and curiosity, and he succeeded.
The “fastest series ever made” refers to my Fast Shark series, in which I and a bunch of friends got together and shot an entire franchise of four Fast Shark movies at the same time, in just three hours, and in just two rooms, two films per room. Again—fun and curiosity. Personal challenge. Neither Dan nor I were showing off in any way, just having a good time. We don’t do this for the clicks, which are meaningless, and we damn sure don’t do it for the money, because just because you make a lot of movies quickly doesn’t mean that any of them will earn you anything. We just love making films, and having a good time, and we believe that the best way to have a good time is to make films. It’s unfortunate that this makes Shaun insecure, but he is the last thing on our minds when we do fun little challenges like this, and we do not think that we’re better than anyone who makes films in any other way. His public rant is completely off the mark, and we do not at all resemble the people he imagines we are in his head—which has been clear for quite some time now. But back to YouTube.
I should mention that the YouTube dummy comments also happen to fit the established dummy account made-up first name / last name formula as what we’ve had to put up with on Letterboxd and IMDB, including some of the very same names used for that popping up again. Here’s ‘Floyd Perry’ commenting on Reese Hayes’ movie ‘Honey Bear’, after that film was just attacked by ‘James Frederick’ on Instagram and ‘TWillard’ on Letterboxd:
Though I and other filmmakers receive the dummy account comments, Dan gets it the worse for sure. Dan’s father recently passed away very unexpectedly, and Dan has been in mourning. That’s hard for anyone, and a different process for everyone. For Dan, it has involved him opening up on his YouTube channel about what he’s thinking, and feeling, and sharing memories and videos of his father—all perfectly healthy things to do. He has also reached out to his subscribers for financial help, as his day job was working for his father, and with his father gone he is now without any income. In the eyes of the dummy accounts though, this is somehow proof that Dan is a horrible person:
That ‘Paul Lee’ dummy comment was on a video of Dan eulogizing his father, sharing a story about a time where his father saved his life.
What ‘Floyd Perry’ says next here is even more despicable to say, though—this is in response to Dan sharing a video in which his father congratulated him for his film One Shot winning an award:
It’s one thing to crap on someone’s movies, it’s another thing to crap on someone for doing healthy things that help them through the grieving process, or for being worried about making ends meet. That’s beyond what is acceptable, and if Shaun and Michael had backed off instead of seized on that, I would have gained some small amount of respect for them. They didn’t, though—instead, they saw an opportunity for a feeding frenzy. Totally uncalled for, and largely the reason why you are reading this article in the first place—I wrote it because this sort of abuse was the last straw for me.
It’s all too much at this point. It’s all so tiresome—and worse than that, it’s seriously damaging, not just to careers, but to the mental health of those who are harassed, particularly if life has already got them down. I do not want to see any filmmakers take their own lives in order to escape the seemingly unending (four years and counting) targeted bullying by these dummy accounts—and if Michael and Shaun really love that mental health documentary Werewolves as much as they claim to, they will understand this, and they will stop doing what they are doing.
Chapter Six: Redemption
I believe that everyone deserves, or is at least capable of, a redemption arc. It’s one of the most irresistible arcs in narrative storytelling—someone who is on the up and up, then falls from grace, then sets themselves right again. We want to see even the worst people redeemed. Shaun Rose and Michael Haywood aren’t nearly the worst people in the world—they’re just dicks who decided to be dicks together on the internet, and who thought that, if they did it anonymously, they could do it without ever being found out. A ‘crime of opportunity’ of sorts, and not something impossible for them to come back from.
I’m sure that there is good in them both, and as such, I want to offer them an opportunity for redemption. They don’t even have to come clean and admit anything—I didn’t say confession, I said redemption. All I want is them simply out of the hole they have dug for themselves with their behavior and back on track—that would make all of our lives better, including theirs.
Obviously, I want the harassment to stop. No more dummy accounts, no more spamming 1-star ratings or 1-star reviews. As a compromise, I will say that if they want to keep one anonymous account each, fine—one for Shaun, one for Michael, if they both still so badly want to do this. Say whatever you want—though nothing too harassing—in a name other than your own name if you want, but let it be one name. Rate and review whatever movies you want, but rate and review once each movie. Cast a vote fairly like the rest of us.
On top of that, understand just how livid you would be if everything were turned around. If, for four years and counting, me and Dan had been trolling and bothering you through countless dummy accounts, you would be apoplectic. That would be an actual example of Dan being the asshole that you always felt he was. But he’s not the asshole here—you are. Accept that, and fix it.
In my opinion, there is no apology necessary if you simply cease the behavior. Delete your massive amounts of 1-star ratings on IMDB from your myriad accounts if you can too—that would be great. You can keep the fake 10-star ratings for Upstate Story—I don’t care about those. Screw around with your own movies, just don’t screw with ours.
I started this piece off with a prologue about what happened in the comments of a Mute Date review I got from Film Threat—my first experience in being harassed by dummy accounts. I think that that event might have been where Shaun and Michael got the idea to start doing this stuff. I have no proof of that, it’s just a hunch, but Shaun was well aware of what happened to me—and their dummy accounts sometimes reference that event. It’s even possible that Shaun, or Michael, or both of them, were doing those comments on the Mute Date review themselves. I can’t know for sure, but consider the following review, in which ‘James Frederick’ pretends that he hasn’t seen a movie of mine since Mute Date, and directly references the Film Threat incident:
Clearly this event remains in their minds for some reason. I don’t know why something that had nothing to do with them affected them so much, but they need to get over it—me having valid gripes with a critic and stating them should not be an offense punishable by four years of cyberstalking and targeted harassment through myriad dummy accounts. All I did was passionately, but respectfully, speak my mind, under my own name, and under only my own name—try it some time. I am doing that again here with this article. I am doing it even if this article invites more trolling by dummy accounts as retaliation, because writing this article was the right thing to do—everything I have laid out here needed to be said.
I will say one more thing. To anyone who has experienced this sort of harassment, my heart goes out to you—and to anyone reading this who hates that this sort of thing goes on, and wants to do what they can to make peoples lives easier who experience it, I would ask that if you enjoy an artist’s work, you show that in some way, whether through a rating or a review somewhere, or word of mouth. For some reason, people who enjoy something are often quiet, and people who hate something are often vocal. Your positive and encouraging voice is necessary to the reputation and lifeblood of all that you appreciate.
If you enjoyed this Substack piece, consider contributing $2 per month to my film studio, Kill The Lion Films.
Updates
Update 8/9/23:
Since publishing this piece, I have discovered another piece of evidence worth sharing. I don’t know how I missed this before, but the ‘jamesfred-72149’ IMDB account used to attack films by me, Dan Lotz, and Joel Haver has been around since February 2019 (which is exactly when Michael Haywood started leaving 1-star reviews of my movies on Amazon):
This means that ‘James Frederick’ most likely began as a dummy account of Michael Haywood’s for leaving 1-star IMDB ratings—then of course was developed into a full persona later on.
Update 8/16/23:
In retaliation for me writing this article, multiple dummy accounts have shown up to leave harassing comments on my Substack. Because of this, I have closed the comments section on my Substack indefinitely. I took screenshots of the harassing comments and then deleted them. I will only be reposting the fake names used:
These were all brand new accounts created solely to leave the harassing comments, and the ‘Frida Calhoun’ name has since been used to troll me on YouTube as well (albeit misspelled, due to how hastily the YouTube account was created):
It doesn’t seem this pattern of dummy account troll behavior is ending anytime soon. I will continue taking screenshots of, and archiving, any more instances that arise, and will update this piece when necessary.
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Goddamn. That's some crazy shit you've had to put up with.