Thread by @dr_eprice

TW: Transphobia, Violence

I received an awful email today, in response to my essay "These Nintendo Characters are Canonically Transgender or Nonbinary". But I was able to track down the person who sent it, so if that kind of comeuppance is satisfying to you, stick w/ the thread:

First, shameless self promo, here is the essay in question. I jokingly state in this piece that if you love Nintendo games, you aren't cis. That line appears to be what incensed the guy who hate mailed me.

medium.com/@dr_eprice/the…

I make it pretty clear in the piece that I am joking that all Nintendo fans are trans, but whatever. If you're with me so far, you probably didn't need me to explain that to you. Hateful violent email coming up in the next tweet, be warned...

Again, TW for violence, transphobia, suicide, murder

My initial reaction to this email was numb amusement. This guy was so hurt by a jokey, happy essay about Legend of Zelda that he went and wrote THIS? How absurd! How pitiful! Why not just delete the email and forget about it! That would mean I had won! Right?

But a sense of numb, cool remove is a pretty common initial response to traumatic stuff. I know it is a default, protective reaction for me. So I took a step back. Let myself actually feel the feelings. Because you know what? Being told to kill yourself hurts.

I don't live in a world or a moment where letting this hate slide down my back is possible. These kinds of attitudes pose a very real threat to me and the people I love. It can't be minimized for the sake of comfort or ease. I can't pretend this guy is a random fluke. He's not.

I'm sure this isn't David Columbus 79's first foray into hate mail. I'm sure he will continue to hurt people, including folks who might have fewer social supports than me, or who might be more affected by his threats and virulence.

So I decided to do something.

Initially, I just searched for his email handle, Davidcolumbus79. It yielded this account on the Columbus Metropolitan Library site:

As you can see from his account, David likes the film Creepshow. He even left a review of the film on the library site! Here it is:

From these two data points, I learned that 1. His last name is not Columbus, but he is from Columbus, OH (where I went to college!), and 2. He was 37 in April of 2017, so the 79 in his email handle references his birth year, 1979.

This info helped me locate his LinkedIn, which gave me his last name and (probably) current place of employment:

There are far too many AMC's in Columbus to know which David works at, so calling up his boss and getting him fired was probably out of the question. But, I did learn his last name and confirm his location at least! The search continued...

Armed with all this info, it was easy to find the names of his relatives:

Using the names of his relatives, his location, and his name, I was able to find nearly every person on this list's Facebook profile. The only people I couldn't find was Patricia Lee Wildermuth, and David Wildermuth himself.

I decided to Facebook message the two people near the top of this list: Amy and Pam. I think one might be his sister, and the other might be a mother or grandmother. Everyone else on the list who has a Facebook is a young-ish man, and I just don't trust them to give a shit tbh.

Here are the messages I sent to Amy and Pam, with screenshots of David's email included:

Of course, it's easy for a non-Facebook-friend to miss a message. I go months without checking my message request folder. So I looked into other ways to contact them, and found this post on Pam's page:

Oops my hand slipped

And as @stephenkallao noted, we can't get this dude fired because AMC already fired him for racism:

In the end, I learned that living as David Ryan Wildermuth is punishment enough.

@threadreaderapp unroll please and thank you!