*Update at the bottom 9/14/22
I was determined to let this go and not speak out since the influencer in question, Haeli Hunt, is a smaller account than mine. I only go after the big fish, or people that are the public face of a big company, as mine has grown & it’s usually not worth it to bother.
But now she got her friend riahboflavin with over 225,000 followers, more than double my size, to target me on Instagram for her, the rules have now changed with this new power dynamic.
The defamation is not stopping even though I’ve had zero contact with Haeli for weeks and did my best to ignore this.
The situation is being misrepresented by them both, and false accusations that I ‘keep reporting’ Haeli’s posts when it was only her one video with the knockoff wings that got reported. Twice, since she was reckless enough to repost it after it was removed the first time without my permission.
I’m still going to ask everyone NOT to engage with either of these people. This is here solely to set the facts straight now that a much larger account got involved in targeting me.
I’m being falsely accused of ‘harassment’ and ‘bullying’ because I discovered Haeli was displaying knock-off copies of my Titania fairy wings she bought from a company in China in her Reels, and I tried to resolve the issue with her directly and amicably to protect my IP.
The specific design was copied exactly and I do have a copyright registration for my Titania fairy wings design or I would not have been able to file a CCB claim against Paris Hilton or SHEIN, contrary to her followers’ claims that I don’t. I wouldn’t bother otherwise, I don’t think I own ‘all fairy wings’, as their accusations claim but I do own this very specific design I created from scratch in 2007 that is not a design from nature. That’s why people say they’ve been ‘around forever’ because, you know, older artists actually exist.
I also do NOT require attribution on every photo of someone wearing my physical wings as the rumors say, only in certain contexts where everyone else is credited and excluding mine would implicate someone else made my work.
*Screenshots from Haeli’s & riahboflavin’s posts for the purpose of education, news reporting & clearing defamatory accusations, under Fair Use laws.
3 screenshots below.
1. She was a follower of mine already when she bought the knock-off wings, even though I post that design fairly often including speaking out about the theft of it.
2. I asked if she could explain in a post that the wings were illegally copied from mine, she said she would but never actually did it.
After a week at least of no response I asked if she could edit the captions of the existing posts to explain the knock-offs. It was ignored although she saw my message, and so a few days after I asked why she was ignoring my requests & said I didn’t want to report her, and I meant that. But her Reel was getting a lot of engagement and knock-offs of my design getting that attention is bad for my business if people think I made those poorer quality wings.
She got defensive and immediately blocked me. Entire convo below, 8 screenshots.
3. I started getting wild accusations on my posts that I ‘bully people who buy any other wings’ before I found she made a public post denying the wings were alike, targeting me for harassment before I reported her post.
She said she had no idea who I was, which also wasn’t true.
I reported her post at that point as it all now seemed willful & malicious.
I may not have bothered doing so if her followers had not started trolling my posts relentlessly.
6 screenshots below show a tiny sample of this.
4. She emailed me asking if I’d like to talk. I responded only once, said I was hesitant since she still had public posts up fueling harassment of me, while ironically accusing me of harassment. She responded that she’d remove the posts * if * I let her post the video with the knock-off wings.
I didn’t trust her, as she was still entertaining defamation of me in her post. Those posts should’ve been deleted or made private for me to believe she wanted real resolution.
I felt anything I said, anything I asked for her to specify in a new post would simply be twisted & used for more harassment if she didn’t want to tell people they were knock-offs. I did not respond. 2 screenshots below
5. She re-posted the same video that IG removed the first time without my permission, with a simple credit to me - while still having me blocked - with no mention of them being unauthorized copies as I asked for multiple times in our DMs.
So I reported the video again since communicating with her seemed impossible without a side of heavy drama. The simple credit made it seem as if those sub-par knock-offs were somehow official, which was not good for business. It was removed, again, by Instagram.
6. More posts by Haeli with more defamation and harassment from her friends / followers on all platforms. I made a few vague posts in my Stories without mentioning her name, ever, explaining that the trolls were due to an influencer who didn’t like that her infringing video was removed, that I never asked for credit but for an explanation that they were knock-offs. She later emails me denying she knew that’s what I wanted.
7. At that point I decide to share a few screenshots of our convo in my Insta Stories, showing the few times I specifically asked for an explanation, not credit or promotion, plus her email denying she knew that’s what I wanted, with her name completely censored.
Still wasn’t harassing or targeting her, still was protecting her identity since she’s a smaller account. I was hoping they’d burn themselves out and move on. 5 Screenshots below.
8. I have had no contact with Haeli or any of her friends since that one email response, I’ve been doing my best to ignore her and hoped it would die down.
For some unknown reason Haeli posted about me again yesterday on both platforms, dredging up old news, and again I was going to let it go and hope she got tired of talking about me. But today, her friend riahboflavin targeted me in her Stories to her 200K+ followers, more than twice the size of my account.
They are essentially doing all the things to me that they falsely accuse me of, now bullying and harassing me, a smaller creator, publicly by name complete with puking emojis.
Riahboflavin did include some screenshots of our conversation but excluded the one that shows the second time I said I wanted an explanation and that I did NOT expect promotion. Oh and, screenshot of Haeli’s public support of this larger account posting about me, aka Mariah.
The trolling comments I’ve gotten have been extensive, the defamation and accusations absolutely unhinged, many ableist insults calling me psychotic & crazy just for protecting my IP, and her friends even publicly admitted they’d be reporting me for everything from spam to harassment, none of it founded, and Haeli entertained all of this without correcting or shutting any of it down. I even had one of my posts, something shared from a photographer who used my overlays, reported falsely as soliciting sexual content even though it was simply a photo of a woman who was nude but had ALL her bits covered and I don’t doubt that may have come from Haeli’s crew. Meanwhile the only post of Haeli’s that got reported and removed was the one video she posted twice for infringement, and infringement is much harder to get removed than any other type of report. But I have all the proof plus the copyright registration, and Haeli would’ve gotten all that info when the report went thru, no matter how much she may want to convince people I don’t own my design.
2 screenshots below
The wedding photographer for the lesbian wedding posts that we shared was the first to turn off comments on those posts because they were leaving so many awful ones, which is especially crappy to post that garbage on photos of these womens’ special day when they had nothing to do with this. I eventually had to follow by turning off comments on both Meta platforms for more than a week just to make it stop.
There’s honestly too much of it to post it all here. And I wouldn’t have known about yesterday’s post at all if it weren’t for another of her friends sending me a nasty email yesterday morning out of the blue, because I stopped caring about whatever Haeli might be up to weeks ago. It’s a shame how much space I’m still taking up in her head after all this time with nothing to trigger it.
I’m going to end this with this one submission if it would stop this shit show:
Haeli * if * you and your friends call off the harassment for real & remove the defamatory posts, especially Mariah Lacy, you can go ahead and post the video of yourself in the janky knock-off wings if you want that so badly, now that your friend has brought so much attention to the fact that they’re knock-offs of mine. Leave me alone, and have your people do the same. I didn’t intend on making this public but you went and got a big account involved the same size as Chotronette, and forced a public clarification.
All you had to do was honor my simple request to explain that the wings were copies of mine & honor another content creator’s rights.
This public drama was your choice, and now it’s also your consequence. I hope this makes you happy.
*Update
Haeli emailed me, with an attempt to bargain, wanting me to also remove this post.
It’s not a fair bargain to me, and this is the response I sent her:
”Haeli, you're not completely understanding my offer so let me be clear.
I'm not removing my blog post. The harassment you've sent my way for roughly a month while I withheld your identity, revokes that privilege for you as the damage is done, especially after you got a large account involved to target me. It would not be a fair deal, I've posted a factual account of things to counter the defamation being spread. Yet even after seeing the blog post and my offer, you made yet another post falsely accusing me of twisting things, drumming up more hate & harassment. I got more overnight, I'll attach just two of the screenshots for you.
The most important thing I need from you is to make new posts on any platform you posted about me negatively, and start with asking your followers to stop harassing me.
No snark, no sarcasm, no insults misrepresenting what happened or accusations, no complaining about me or it doesn't count.
That must be the sole focus of the posts, not an edit or addendum at the end.
No entertaining falsehoods anymore in the comments or egging on the hate either, that would be counterproductive.
I've explicitly asked my followers not to engage with you or your friends without you having to ask me to do that from the start. The very few I’ve seen that ignored that and interacted with you in your posts were civil in their attempts to clarify copyright law and other facts about the situation.
I've been more than patient.
You and Mariah need to also:
• Admit I do hold the copyright for that specific wing design as it's not from nature
• Admit the designs are in fact the same, because color variations, size and materials aren't considered transformative changes.
• Admit I have not been harassing you, I had no contact with you since the one response to your email weeks ago, and that I only reported the one video AFTER people started harassing me on your behalf, and it was reported twice only because you decided to post it again without my permission after the first removal.
Also remove your public posts about me.
Then you can post your content with those specific wings as long as they are not monetized, sponsored or in collaboration with brands. This is non-negotiable and I don't want any further requests from you.
Read this all carefully so you can't say you didn't know what I want again, if you violate any part of this agreement we have no deal. If this doesn't work for you, then let this be our last interaction. Since the harassment has continued, my offer ends tomorrow, Sept. 15 at 12pm Pacific. Further harmful actions from you to stir drama in the meantime may also revoke this offer.”
~
The harassing screenshots I sent her are below, 2 screenshots
I made one more email to clarify something that I didn’t want to get mixed up due to terminology just now, saying this:
”One last thing to clarify further just in case you're not clear on what I mean by making the posts to call off the harassment:
They should be a post in your main feed on FB & Instagram since that's the format the posts about me were in, and as for Mariah she can either make a Story post and keep it in her profile Highlight or make one in her main feed. They need to be permanent type posts rather than solely temporary Stories.”
These are very simple actions that can get her the permission she wants, and end the drama and harassment. Whether she’ll accept it, I don’t know but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt this one last time.
*Update 4:52pm 9/14/22
She emailed with a response, she’s not accepting my offer. So be it.
Apparently Haeli now pinned a newer post in her main Instagram feed about me, very much defamation.
Again, stating I wanted her to link to my wings as if looking for promotion, and that I asked for a normal credit, that’s not what I asked for at all as our DMs made clear.
She’s falsely misrepresenting it as if she had made the post she said she’d make explaining the situation when she never did it, as if I never gave her a chance to correct things and never explained what I wanted.
In addition, I was falsely accused by her followers of ‘ripping off’ another wing maker in the comments and even though the wing maker herself responded to tell them they’re absolutely wrong, Haeli deleted her very polite comments.
She watched the accusation get debunked in real time, and removed it in order to allow the accusations to stay. I think that says a lot about the kind of person we’re dealing with here.
Unfortunately due to this maker’s safety concerns she’s afraid of being targeted by Haeli’s people, understandably, so I’m obscuring her name here. But it’s obvious from the comments that hers are missing. 3 screenshots below showing the accusations and the now missing comments made by the wing maker.
The truth is, I’m friends with the majority of iridescent wing makers out there and they have been incredibly supportive to me behind the scenes during all this, and can’t believe how ridiculous this has been. Some were brave enough to stand up for me in the comments - all extremely politely - but their comments get deleted and some even got blocked.
I want to thank each and every one of you who has been offering me moral support in private and public, I greatly appreciate you all.
Below are just a couple of the times she’s allowed or even encouraged lies about my ownership of the design or that I think I own ‘ALL’ fairy wing designs, and there are many more instances of this on all her posts including the one from this week. It’s exactly why those retractions from her would be needed with any request to her followers to leave me alone.
I’ve accepted that she won’t be doing the right thing.
