Timcast Pulls Down Article Defaming Man Who Reported Eliza Bleu Lied About Being Sex Trafficked, Editor Suggests Readers Are Too Stupid To Understand Gonzo Journalism

 

Editor’e Note: We will be discussing this topic on the Turtleboy Live Show tonight at 9 PM. Click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

 

 

This is Shane Cashman.

He’s a self proclaimed writer and journalist who has written for a variety of media outlets throughout the years. He’s published many memorable pieces, like “The Moral History of Air-Conditioning” for the Atlantic, and “In Mary Poppins’s Return, Imagination Is Just Background Noise.”

At some point he was hired by Tim Pool to write stories for Timcast.com, Tim’s media website. According to Tim, Shane emailed him and said, “I’m a writer check this out,” sent him a writing sample, and was immediately hired to write for his website. Timcast.com is a huge website, and a media company that employs dozens of people out of Tim’s mansion. Writing for a website with this reach is a big deal, and Tim had great things to say about Shane’s recent work doing profiles on Kanye West and Kari Lake.

“We need to figure out how to get everyone to read it.”

Except Shane’s writing isn’t very good, which I realize is subjective. But he wrote a two part series on “The Case For Ye For President,” in which he explained how Kanye West was a legitimate threat to win the Presidency in 2024. No serious person actually believes this for obvious reasons.

But that’s because Timcast.com is not a serious website. I was a guest on Tim’s show 2 weeks ago, and I’m guessing that after this I will not be invited back. But I will never keep my opinions to myself in order to advance my career. It goes against everything I believe in, even if the exposure of being seen on a channel with millions of viewers would benefit me professionally.

In early January a woman named Eliza Bleu, who has built a large following that she monetizes by claiming to have been a survivor of sex trafficking, was a guest on Timcast. I wrote about Eliza two weeks ago and analyzed her long and documented history of lying about her alleged sex trafficking experience. By that point many had pointed out that Eliza was a self-proclaimed video vixen, who appeared as a scantily clad dancer in several music videos, including this 2016 video on World Star Hip Hop.

She had been seeking fame for two decades, becoming a groupie and sexual partner of My Chemical Romance lead singer Gerard Way, being featured as the date from hell on Blind Date, appearing on a 2012 episode of the Steve Harvey Show, and trying out for American Idol in 2010.

When none of these things led her to fame she began to seek attention from then Presidential candidate Andrew Yang in early 2020, asking him to help promote her campaign to end sex trafficking, and lying about the existence of a charity for sex trafficking survivors called The Humanity House.

Her timeline was constantly changing about when she was allegedly trafficked, she never named names of any traffickers, and it seemed as if she had a significant amount of freedom for someone who was under the control of a sex trafficker. In a 2016 interview she claimed she turned down $150K for sex, which no sex trafficking survivor would’ve had the option to turn down. In a 2020 interview she said that she was sold to an old rich man in Hollywood Hills for $500 by her trafficker.

None of this made sense, and any objective person could tell it was a lie. People began to share screenshots of her World Star video on Twitter, which led to accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, like The Quartering and Brittany Venti, to be suspended. Eliza had a friendly relationship with Elon Musk and Twitter’s trust and safety executive, and she seemed elated when “non-consensual” images of her were removed from Twitter.

Normally this is something Tim would cover, since he has been an outspoken opponent of censorship on Twitter. He famously grilled former Twitter executives Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde on Joe Rogan for censoring conservatives, and many of his fans accused him of covering for Eliza Bleu because he wasn’t criticizing her. On a stream last week he blew up, accusing his fans of being manipulated by a PR farm working for Eliza Bleu to make her a topic of discussion.

To throw the “mob” a bone Tim assigned his star reporter Shane Cashman to go to Eliza’s family farm in Illinois and do some background research into her to see if her claims of sex trafficking were legitimate. Many were skeptical that he would actually cover it objectively, considering the love fest he and Eliza had on Tim’s show. Eliza told Shane that she loved him so much, was his biggest fan, and compared his writing to Andy Warhol art. They flirted back and forth.

Eliza was clearly stroking Shane’s ego because she knows how to work men. She’s been doing it her whole life. She criticized “conservative INC” websites, while complimenting Shane’s writing for “having a vibe,” whatever that means. Shane agreed and said that Timcast is the only place “where you can write stuff like that these days.”

Apparently when he said “stuff like that,” he meant “pure fiction” and/or “stream of conscious garbage,” because that’s what he ended up publishing about Eliza Bleu. His story was supposed to come in 4 parts, but only 3 were published before it was pulled entirely. After reading the first couple paragraphs of Part 1 I realized this was going to be nothing but fluff.

Shane thinks he is a lot deeper than he actually is, and seems to truly believe he’s some sort of artist. He constantly inverted himself into the story:

He accepted free room and board from the people he was supposed to be objectively covering, and was the only reporter Eliza would talk to for a reason.

Eliza said that she was giving him “permission” to write what he wanted about her, which no real reporter would ask for.

In Part 2 Shane said that he would not be interviewing any of the people who had been censored by Eliza, calling them “cannibals” who were picking on Eliza for clout. Eliza seemed to approve.

He took her word for everything without asking any questions. He even said that when Eliza claimed she was sex trafficked because people made fake Twitter accounts with her name on them, she didn’t actually mean that.

In his story Elize told Shane that the World Star video was removed from Twitter and YouTube after her “legal team” contacted them and advised that she had not consented to being in the video, despite previously admitting to being paid in the video.

Eliza also told him that there was an open case against those companies, which would reveal documents proving that she wasn’t lying. Shane just kind of took her word for it, didn’t look up any of the cases, didn’t ask what the docket numbers were or what court they were filed in, and didn’t ask her to name a single lawyer on her “legal team,” as if she was OJ Simpson.

He went on to make up excuses for her not naming her alleged traffickers, while claiming to know who they were himself, because doing so would put her in danger.

So basically he’s telling readers nothing, and there is no point to his story.

To make matters worse Eliza also told Shane that she had no recollection of doing the World Star video, and believes she was drugged before doing it. That is in direct conflict with this audio of her bragging about the video, and the admittance from World Star that she was paid for it.

This only made it worse for Timcast because it was clear that Shane was covering for her. He has openly admitted that he likes Eliza as a person, he accepted hospitality from her, and she knew he would not actually investigate anything.

The stories were not helping Eliza’s cause, and she began to tweet about how she needed “brave men” like Shane to protect her.

Although this should’ve made him feel embarrassed as a journalist, it probably made him feel good about himself that the former stripper was saying nice things about him.

Meanwhile, she was making herself look less and less credible as more evidence came out that she was lying, and she began to lose followers, supporters, and appearances with organizations like The Babylon Bee. She changed her story, said that she was “digitally sexually exploited” because people were sharing the clothed World Star video, claimed that the video was not consensual because she was drugged, and warned others of the consequences of posting the video.

Clearly this woman was not even attempting to hide the fact that she was unbalanced and a pathological liar. Nevertheless, Shane continued to provide cover for her.

Part 3 was an even bigger disaster, and ended up with the company pulling the blog for fear of being sued. I did a thread on it Saturday which you can read here:

In the story Shane admits that Eliza had a direct line to Twitter and influence with the company, but never asked her if she used that influence to have the images of her removed, and accounts suspended.

Shane also blamed the entire thing on an unnamed podcaster named “Gangstalker.” He accused this individual of running a psyop about Eliza, and getting millions of people like me to believe that Eliza was lying about being sex trafficked. He went so far as to accuse this mysterious person of driving multiple people to suicide, sitting outside people’s houses in black SUV’s, and driving someone into a mental institution. He provided no evidence of any of this.

He also annoyingly

wrote sentences like this

to make himself seem

more enlightened

than he actually is.

The problem was that the person he was accusing was a real person named Manuel Defango, and he didn’t do any of those things. Shane intentionally did not mention his name because he thought that doing so what would protect himself and the company from legal liability. Not only is this untrue, but Shane also said his name on a podcast, in which he recognized that Defango was the initial whistle blower before having his account removed.

Shane seemed uninterested in why someone was being removed from Twitter for posting factual things about his friend Eliza, because Timcast now provides cover for censors. Manny came on the Turtleboy Live Show this weekend and said that he was considering legal action if they did not remove the article.

During the show all 3 articles were removed. But rather than admitting wrongdoing it came with an editor’s note that readers misperceived Shane’s brand of “Gonzo journalism.”

 

It wasn’t their fault for publishing blatantly libelous things, it was the readers fault for not being cultured enough to understand what Gonzo journalism is.

Gonzo journalism is defined as “a style of journalism that features the author as its protagonist, simultaneously experiencing and reporting on a story from a first-person point of view.”

This was supposed to be a serious investigation about a serious matter. A woman lied about being sex trafficked and used her influence with the world’s richest man to have dozens of people kicked off social media platforms. No serious journalist would use “Gonzo journalism” for a piece like this. But Shane is not a serious journalist.

Regardless, the readers understood fully that Shane was centering himself at the center of the story. They didn’t misperceive anything, and suggesting that they did was insulting to our intelligence. Readers couldn’t believe that a media company this prominent would post blatantly libelous things about an innocent person, with seemingly no editorial review. It was only removed after Defango contacted them and told them they were wrong. On my show he said that he spoke with editor Cassandra McDonald, who told him that Shane wasn’t answering her calls, so she decided to remove it entirely.

Meanwhile Shane doubled down and announced that he was proud of his work, which was so horrible that it had to be removed out of fear of litigation.

The fact that he felt proud of this work instead of ashamed shows how out of touch Shane is. There has been lots of new information brought to light, he just ignored it all.

Yesterday I started getting chirped at by something called Chris Karr, who told me I was ignorant for not knowing what Gonzo journalism was.

As it turns out this man is Timcast’s executive editor for the “rock star journalists” at Timcast.

Shane had previously stated that Chris who was his editor. He also said that he “started a war” at the end of the story.

I noticed Chris Karr followed me, and decided to reach out for comment on why he pulled the piece. He told me that the article was not pulled over any worries about libel, and suggested that readers like me were too stupid to understand what Gonzo journalism was.

So the facts of the story are not as important as subjective truth? Again, why would they play games with such important topics as sex trafficking, truth, and censorship?

He told me that my line of questioning indicate that I don’t know what I’m talking about, and that I’m not as cultured as he is about Gonzo journalism.

But he wouldn’t answer my question, and didn’t seem at all ashamed or embarrassed that as executive editor this story made it past him.

“The response has been positive.”

Actually, it hasn’t. At all. The response has been overwhelmingly negative, as anyone who reads the comments or responses can see. But I suppose he will blame that on PR firm bots too.

Chris Karr said it was pulled because of the explanation on the article – that readers misperceived the style of journalism.

But what did that mean? Because most reasonable people took that as blaming the readers, instead of the company taking responsibility for blatant libel. I asked him to clarify and he continued to treat me as if I was the stupid one.

He then refused to explain what the statement meant, claiming that it was perfectly clear as it was. He said that only some Timcast readers were too stupid to understand what Gonzo journalism is. I asked him if it was official company policy to pull down three part investigative stories when readers misperceive them.

I didn’t get a response. So I asked him if Gonzo journalism meant making up a story about Manuel Fuego running a psyop to falsely make people believe that Eliza Bleu wasn’t sex trafficked. Rather than answering that he told me I didn’t understand what Gonzo journalism was.

I continued to ask him questions about specific defamatory claims that he allowed to be published, but rather than address them he shut down the conversation after “looking into my background,” and determining that I was not a good person.

His source was a website published by a man named Rian Waters, who has been trying and failing to sue me for the last 5 years after we wrote about his 2016 arrest for beating his girlfriend and killing her dog in front of their special needs daughter. He not only sued me, but the victim of his abuse as well. It has since been dismissed multiple times. This is the individual that Timcast’s editor uses as a credible source of information:

A man who had an unconscious woman fall on top of him during a live stream that he abruptly ended.

I informed him who Rian Waters was, but it was clear that he was looking for any reason he could to avoid answering legitimate questions.

Earlier in the day he said that he wanted to destroy the Catholic Church and said it was a cult, before removing it after Jack Posobiec called him out for it.

Timcast is a multi-milion dollar organization that many people trust as a legitimate source of news, as opposed to the corporate controlled media. But this ordeal has revealed that it’s actually run by children. They have no journalistic standards and accuse supporters who offer legitimate criticism of being paid PR bots. They provided cover for Eliza Bleu, defamed Manuel Fuego, lied about why they removed an anticipated investigative series, and insulted their supporters. If they had any integrity they would invited Shane, Manuel Fuego, Brittany Venti, and Jeremy from the Quartering onto the show to discuss this all face to face. But based on their recent behavior I would assume that they’ll be ignoring this all instead.

It’s too bad, because I liked Tim, and enjoyed going on his show. If this means I won’t be invited back for telling the truth then it’s not a show I want to go on anyway. It’s unfortunate because Eliza has won awards as a result of her lies, and Tim has the platform to tell the world the truth about her. But I guess simping for this con-artist because Shane is friends with her was more important.

 

 

 

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