DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH BLACKMAILERS

This has been a season for blackmailers: these are scum who use the vulnerabilities of guys they’ve gotten access to as leverage to try and get a big payday.

In the past couple of months, I have had three cases of blackmail reach me, and after talking extensively with the community members who were targeted by these criminals, I felt duty-bound to share some of the things I have learned from these cases. First was the case of a guy with an affluent father, who got messages from someone he doesn’t know threatening to make public damning evidence of his homosexuality.

 Then there was the guy, married, who hooked up with someone in a hotel, and the hookup’s gang emerged from their hideout in the closet (no pun intended) right when the married guy was naked and ready for sex, to harass him with their extortion.

And then, the last was of yet another member of the community who was targeted by someone his friend had linked him up with.

I would actually like to focus mainly on this last case.

This community member, who I shall call M, had asked his friend to hook him up with someone. The friend did, and even though the person whose contact he gave M was in a different but neighbouring state, M pursued the hookup. M and this person let’s call him KS – Kito Scum) got chatting on WhatsApp. Things quickly got hot and heavy, and the subject of exchanging nudes came up. KS was the person who expressed hesitation, claiming to be unsure if he could trust M with his nudes, and M assured him that he was safe, suggesting that they could both delete the photos from the WhatsApp chat after a few minutes of each other’s viewing pleasure.

So, both men exchanged the nudes, and minutes later, M clicked on the “Delete For Everybody” option, believing that he had gotten rid of the photos from KS’s phone.

It wasn’t very long after this that KS asked M for money, which was a small enough amount that M was able to send to him. However, when KS came with another financial demand, M of course said no. it was not only a big amount of money this time, but he rightfully didn’t feel like he had that kind of relationship with KS that permitted him to ask him for money that indiscriminately.

And that was when KS revealed his true colour, letting M know that he had their chats and his nudes, and that he knew M’s family members on Facebook, and that he was going to send this damning evidence of M’s homosexuality to his family members if he didn’t comply and send the money he asked for.

M was shocked but refused to be intimidated. KS went ahead with his threat, sending the screenshots he had to M’s older sister on Facebook Messenger. The sister then called M to her house, where they talked. Whether M opened up about the truth to his sister or spun a good lie is beside the point; whatever he said, he was able to gain his sister’s compassion and support.

As at the last time I was updated on the case, KS had intimated that what he did didn’t cause the damage to M’s life that he’d intended and was threatening to up his game.

Also, when M’s friend who linked him up with this blackmailing scum was confronted, he confessed that he didn’t know KS well and that he too was just getting to know the guy. So basically, M was the guinea pig he used to determine that KS wasn’t safe to try to hook up with.

THE LESSONS HERE

THE NUDES

One of the primary concerns M had was of his nude photos being made public. He was surprised that KS had them, considering that he’d deleted the photos using the safety option provided by WhatsApp. Now, this delete option is something that has fooled a lot of people into believing that they can control what they put out on WhatsApp. And oftentimes – as is with M’s case – if you’re dealing with an unscrupulous person, you don’t have that control you think you have.

There are a couple of ways KS was able to still have those nudes that M thought he deleted. First, seeing as he’d gone as far as figuring out who M’s family members are on Facebook, it would seem that KS placed a target on M right from the moment M said Hello to him. Or maybe when M told him his occupation, and he saw that it was illustrious enough to make M a person of interest.

This means that he could have been screen-shooting their chatversations as they happened, intending to use the chats when he’d had enough to harass M with. So, in those minutes when M was waiting for him to view his nudes to his heart’s content before clicking delete, KS was screen-shooting the chats that had the nudes on the screen.

Another more sinister option is what I got to find out from a friend. You see, this friend is a dick pic connoisseur. He likes to collect dick pics of people he chats with, like a porn collection, in a folder he’d occasionally go back to, to check out and get titillated by. I’d like to point out that he never has any intention of using the dick pics against the guys who sent them to him; they’re just for him.

Now, in some cases, he’d encountered guys who’d intended to delete the nude photos minutes after sending them to him. And what he does to be able to keep the photos is to go to the WhatsApp folder of his phone’s File Manager, copy (not cut) the photos from the folder and deposit these copies in another folder. So, when the sender clicks on delete, the photos in the WhatsApp folder may disappear, but the copies in the other folder will stay.

I didn’t know about this trick until he told me, and it has since become apparent to me that not a lot of people know that other people do this.

So, what’s the lesson to be learned here?

If you do not absolutely trust the other person you’re chatting with on WhatsApp to not someday use your nudes against you, if you cannot vouch for that person’s integrity, then DO NOT SEND THE NUDES!

DO NOT ENGAGE IN THAT VIDEO PHONE SEX WITH THEM! Because there is a record option that they may use while you’re busy moaning and ejaculating!

If you do not absolutely trust the other person to not hurt you, or you are the type of person whose nudes going public would embarrass, DO NOT PUT YOURSELF IN THAT VULNERABLE POSITION!

PLEASE!!!

I get a bunch of people who come to ask me which one is safer in a WhatsApp chat: sending nude photos or having phone sex via video. And my response usually is: “If you don’t trust the person so much that you are worried about safety, then you really shouldn’t be doing either.”

THE ASSURANCE

Like I earlier narrated, KS was the first to mention his reservations about sending nudes. He was the one who expressed his concern about trusting M with his nude photos.

This is a powerful psychological maneuver that I am starting to see more and more of in most kito cases.

The victims would say to me: “He was the one who started talking about safety, that he is afraid of kito, of trusting me to not kito him.”

Yes, people! These kito criminals are not all exposed for who they are by how they try to hurry you into visiting them. Some of them actually preempt you by expressing those reservations they know you’ll have. And what this does is do a mental switch on you where you become the one who then does everything in your power to make them feel safe.

And that includes going to see them – because of course, if they are “afraid” to come and see you, then it would be best to go see them.

It also includes being trusting with those nudes you send – because surely, if they’re concerned about the safety of theirs, then they would have no intention of hurting you with yours.

THE FRIEND

I think that the friend who will hook you up with someone he himself barely knows, without telling you the actual situation, is a very wicked person.

The whole point of friends asking friends for hookups instead of going to the dating apps is because of the legitimacy that the friend’s connection guarantees. There is an instant faith in the genuineness of the potential hookup BECAUSE YOUR FRIEND MADE IT HAPPEN!

So why on earth will a friend hook you up with someone he himself cannot vouch for and not tell you – if he is not a truly wicked person?

Please, dear members of the LGB community, do not be part of the problem we have in our struggle to survive. Just don’t!

Do not be this cruel, whether intentional or not.

Always have an awareness of the role you play in protecting not just yourself but your people in this community.

And when a friend asks you for a hookup, and the contact you have is of someone you’d just met on Grindr, for fuck’s sake, TELL THEM!

If it’s someone you’ve only ever chatted with but haven’t met, TELL THEM!

If it’s someone you have any sort of reservation about, TELL THEM!

They’re your friend! They came to you for some assistance in their dating struggle! Give them the full picture of whatever assistance you render. DO NOT BE A WICKED PERSON!

THE BLACKMAILER

I am going to say this and maybe say it over and over again: DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH A BLACKMAILER!

Think about this: someone believes they have something on you. They tell you they do and will make it public unless you pay them. The moment you abide by their demands, what you have done is let them know that you care so much about your image, that you’d be willing to do anything to protect it. What you’ve communicated to them is that the power they have over you is valid.

And if that is so, why should they stop at one payday? What’s to stop them from coming back again, and again, and again?

The reason people give in to extortion is because they believe that by doing so, they can still control the situation. They focus on this when they really should be doing the hard work of coming to terms that life as they know it could now be changed and figure out how to manage the new normal: that if that blackmailer actually has something, then they should be bracing themselves to weather the storm, instead of trying to put off the storm.

A blackmailer will always come back. And unless you have a plan to somehow take them down, you should never give in to their demands! Because they have no loyalty to you; so it’s really a question of when you want them to fuck you up – when they come to you the first time and you refuse to give them the money, or after you’ve paid them and then realize you can’t keep paying them?

Because they will keep coming back for their payday, and the day you decide you won’t pay anymore – guess what? – they will go ahead and make public what you’d been paying them to keep quiet. Some are even so vindictive that after they’ve gotten enough out of you, they won’t wait to be provoked by your defiance; they’ll simply go ahead and fuck you up because they can.

I want to use the second case – the one about the married guy who was kitoed – as an example here. The kito happened the way it usually does: the criminals ganged up against him (let’s call him Y) in that hotel room and threatened to expose him to his wife if he didn’t pay up.

And he paid up.

And they came back again. They called him and texted him, demanding for more money.

And he paid.

And, well, they came back again.

This time though, he resisted. He ghosted them and began screening their phone calls and ignoring their messages.

And after a bunch of threats, they went ahead and revealed what they had to his wife. By this time, Y’s panic had cooled and he’d become so tested by the extortion that he’d gotten to that point where he no longer cared. So, even when his wife turned on him, going as far as involving their pastor, who also reacted with heavy-handed malice, Y was at that point where he had no fucks to give. He simply wanted the marriage to end and to relocate from that town and begin afresh someplace else.

This case is vastly different from P, another married guy I got to know who was getting blackmailed by someone who claimed they’d had sex and he now had enough to ruin P’s life, if P didn’t send him money. P not only didn’t send him any money, but headed off his threat of telling his wife by going to his wife himself and confessing just enough to her to get her to support him. So that when the blackmailer contacted her, she shut him down.

Alternatively, in the earlier-mentioned case of the guy whose father is a public figure and who was targeted by someone who claimed he had evidence of his homosexuality, I advised him to tell the blackmailer to go fuck himself (well, not in such colourful words of course). But yeah, the guy refused to engage with the person who was in his Instagram DM trying to extort him, and the blackmailer simply disappeared after the guy blocked him. Because that happens sometimes: sometimes, blackmailers rely on your fear to make you do what they want you to do.

What’s the lesson to be learned here?

I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again: DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH BLACKMAILERS! Ghost them. Block them. Nullify their threat by doing to yourself what they’re threatening you with. Do anything really that you have to do – anything, but give in to their demands.

Written by Pink Panther