Indie Artist Music Hustle

Spotting Flying Monkeys In Music

• Host and Creator: Blonde Intelligence (Ms. Roni) • Season 4 • Episode 74

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Hate rarely works alone. When jealousy heats up in indie music, it often recruits a crowd—flying monkeys who amplify smears, file mass reports, and push venues to back away right as you announce a tour, drop a single, or apply for funding. Welcome to this week's Blonde Intelligence and I am your host Ms. Roni and I always seek to give you exquisite cranial repertoire. Today we pull back the curtain on how coordinated harassment actually works, from identical talking points across strangers to sudden waves of “policy” complaints that knock down pages you’ve built for years.

We start with the human patterns: isolation tactics, gossip that repeats word for word, and pressure to “choose sides.” Then we map the digital layer—fake profiles, timing attacks around your premieres, false takedown notices, and metadata tricks that bury your search results or miscredit your work. The money trail matters too. You’ll hear how orchestrated reviews, chargebacks, and quiet emails to promoters can freeze your momentum and why fewer early announcements can save deals. Along the way, we share how to tell a messy disagreement from a planned campaign by tracking convergence across behavior, platforms, and finances.

Most importantly, we offer a practical defense kit. Capture timestamps and URLs. Archive cancellations and platform notices. Ask for logs. Lean on trusted peers and neutral organizations to vouch for your record. Communicate facts to your fans without feeding the flames, and use privacy safeguards and role-based account controls to reduce your risk. If defamation or doxing escalates, get legal guidance and act with focus. You do not need a mob to win—you need receipts, resilience, and a calm plan.

If this helped you spot the signs or tighten your process, subscribe, share with a fellow indie artist, and leave a review. Your story might be the proof someone else needs to protect theirs.

#BlondeIntelProtectsArtists #AntiMobTactics #IndieArtistSafety #StopCoordinatedHarassment #ReceiptsResilienceCalm

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SPEAKER_01:

Learn about the indie artist from the indie artists.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm Shannon Keene. I'm an artist. My name is Lauren, as you already said. I am a singer-songwriter. So I'm all femmes. I originally come from the Caribbean, St. Vincent, the Grenadines.

SPEAKER_03:

My name is Brian Dusav. I'm an East Coast Canadian rocker.

SPEAKER_01:

And then I found myself in Las Vegas, where I'm at currently, for dancing for Circuit Du Soleil with my own solos. I also learned from music industry professions.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm a music producer. I've been producing professionally for about 14 years. I have uh worked with a couple people in the industry. Uh Gregmy nominated, Trev Rich, Lisha from 702.

SPEAKER_03:

After I got my deal with Universal Music, after the Alicia Keys and Gunner Record, and many other that I've done, and then Alicia Keys was the number one adult RB song of the year.

SPEAKER_01:

I asked the question.

SPEAKER_03:

That's a great question.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_03:

Ooh, uh, that is a good question. Wow. I love all these questions. These are great. Like most of the questions that I get are like, you know, tell me about Justin Bieber.

SPEAKER_01:

Indie Artist Music Hustle is for the indie artists, their fans, industry professionals, and the music lover. Subscribe on YouTube, Facebook, or the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, or Blonde Intelligence Facebook page. Don't forget to add me to your playlist. Bye. It's been really funny, especially hoping someone across the pond. Let's go. Welcome to this week's Blonde Intelligence. I'm your host, Miss Ronnie, where I always seek to give you exquisite cranial repertoire. This week I want to talk to you a little bit about flying monkeys and jealousy. And I look at some of the I guess tactic tactics that people use, and on a greater level, I see a lot of AI-generated things, but today I want to talk about the jealousy and flying monkeys that's in the independent music industry. In the independent music industry, jealousy that escalates into coordinated harassment often follows predictable patterns. Signs that colleagues or rivals are engaging in gang stalking, cyberbullying, gossip, defamation, attempts to damage finances, or recruiting flying monkeys, which are third parties to harass on their behalf. Some signs include repeated coordinated targeting across platforms, multiple accounts or people suddenly post similar negative messages about you, share the same false stories, or like and amplify each other's attacks within a short period. Sudden unexplained leaks or false rumors, private information or fabricated accusations appear on social media, blogs, or message groups that were not previously public that have been repeated in different places. Organized reporting and takedown attempts. Several account files, complaints, or copyright terms of service reports against your profiles, videos, or music in quick succession with vague or similar claims causing temporary suspensions or demonetizations. And that happens on social media. And I've had a couple of pages to be um terminated on several platforms around the same time. And I knew that it was something strange with it, but you know, hey, as Cat Williams say, if you don't have enough haters, then it's time to recruit some more. Financial sabotage attempts, unusual chargebacks, tampering with crowdfunding pages, mass negative reviews on ticketing or merchandising sites, or coordinated calls, emails to venues, promoters, or sponsors, or other people, just part of the flying monkey community, to withdraw support. Recruitment of flying monkeys. Those are people you do not personally know begin harassing you after being courage explicitly or implicitly, which means hey, go after this person, or well, you know, this person done such and such and such and such. Often echoing talking points or sharing identical messages. So if a person comes back to you, several different people come back to you saying similar things about a person that they don't know, it's up to your discernment to decide: hey, why are all of y'all saying this same thing? Where did you get this information from? Is it credible information? Instead of just taking it and running along with it, because you become the flying monkey too. Persistent doxing or attempts to access private accounts, personal contact information, home addresses, or phone numbers are published or used to make intimidating communications. Coordinated timing with career milestones, attack clusters around these dates, such as big shows, grant applications or announcements, suggesting intent to harm professional progress. That's the reason why I stopped making announcements on things that I was about to do or things that were in works or in progress, because yeah, some things can fall through, but if you have a group of haters working against you, a lot of things you have to keep to your chest until there is no way that anybody can do anything to it. Because you have, especially in the independent music industry, and it's not even just saying, you know, everybody mad at Kendrick because Kendrick went in all these Grammys or whatever. It's even on the localized level that the jealousy and harassment is just unbelievable when everybody is really still on the same playing field. Pattern harassments across mediums, the same slurs, phrasing, or false claims recurring private messages, public posts, comment sections, emails signaling coordination rather than independent opinion, accountability, evasion behavior. When confronted, and these are the people who uh orchestrate the flying monkeys, if you ask them about it or if the evidence is produced, when confronted, the perpetrator denies involvement while those connected to them subly signposts the harassment, such as liking or reposting the attack, or that they deploy plausible deniability by using throwaway accounts. So my thing is if you have to sneak to do something or to say something about somebody, then what does that say about you? First of all, you're not an upfront person, kind of cowardly, and you can't even do it by yourself. You have to have a group of people to help you harass a person that is just to me so asinine. But hey, then it's emotional manipulation and gaslighting, persistent attempts to undermine your reputation by rewriting events. That means telling lies, blaming you for conflicts. It was all her fault. I didn't do anything, I am the best in everything that I do, and I try to get along, even though she was telling me that I was on some bullshit or encouraging others to distrust you without evidence. Like I told you on another show, this girl, I just thought that I needed to warn you about her because she uh fuck over artists and take their money. Take money from artists who ain't even making money. So when you notice several of these signs together, document everything: time steps, screenshots, URLs, preserve original messages, and report patterns to platform administrators, venues, or legal counsel as appropriate. Seek support from trusted industry peers and consider using privacy safeguards and professional reputation management resources. Jealousy among independent music industry professionals can be escalated into coordinated harassment, for which I told you already, but can be grouped into behavioral, digital, professional, and financial indicators. So there's an analysis of it, some behavioral indicators, repeated public or private attempts to isolate the target. Don't don't fuck with her, don't don't talk to her or him, don't you can't mm-mm. Or if you work with her, then you can't work with me. If you talk to her, then you can't talk to me. Such things like that. That's a behavior indicator. Another one is smear campaigns in person, consistent, similar, false stories told by multiple people in different settings. So that means that they talk about you wherever they go, anywhere they can smear your name or try to damage your reputation, they gonna talk about you. So people need to be aware of where the information is coming from. Is it the same person? Why did you tell this person, that person, that person, and that person this right here, and it's false, or you don't know that person, or you just jealous? Hmm. Attempts to recruit others to act against the target. That's what you call the flying monkeys, persistent requests for favors that involve criticizing, boycotting, or publicly attacking the target. This kind of recruitment requires third parties, which means that you got to get people to jump along on the bandwagon, and that's where you become that flying monkey if you jump along on that bandwagon. Then the digital indicators, for which I you know touched on it a little bit, but coordinating timing of online attacks, such as when the person uh normally posts or they have something to premiere, you get a whole lot of people together. We're gonna get on this platform right here, and we're gonna um not like the the I don't even know what the different, you know, you can like and thumbs down and something or whatever, but we're gonna give a whole lot of negative feedback um on this platform. Then you have creation of multiple anonymous accounts or fake profiles that target the same person with harassment threats or defamatory statements, and these patterns use similar language, shared on media, or reposting the same false claims to imply coordination. So the whole thing is basically when you go through all these indicators that I've done the behavior, looking at the digital, it creates a pattern across these four uh categories. Then you have unusual spikes in negative engagement tied to specific events, such as you having a meeting or announcing a war, or you even announcing a show that you're doing, and it's a lot of insider leaks. So a person from the inside telling basically somebody who is disguised as a friend or a coworker, which is really an enemy inside information, and they're using it to sabotage that person. Attempts to manipulate search results and streaming platforms metadata, filing false takedown claims, submitting inaccurate credits. I know one page that I lost, which is totally ridiculous to me. They said that it was a Facebook page said that I wasn't who I said I was, but you were taking payments for my promotion with my credit card. So tell me how does that work if it wasn't some type of sabotage? Because how am I having to prove who I am? And I've had an account for over what seven, eight years, and you have payment information. I've have a store on there, and all different kinds of things like that. But then um I got mass reporting that I'm not who I say I am. Crazy to me. Then you have professional and financial indicators, repeated, unexplained cancellations, uh, especially when they're accompanied by rumors or vague allegations, sudden loss of access to people who call themselves industry gatekeepers, promoters, playlists, curators, venue managers, without a transparent reason of why you choose not to fool with this person. This is a coordinated influence campaign and can lead to industry-wide exclusion. Evidence of targeted financial interference, false complaints to payment processes or ticketing platforms, orchestrated negative reviews that deter clients, or deliberate interference with crowdfunding or merch channels. That's basically messing with your money. Patterns are defamation in trade outlets or fan forms that lead to sponsorship withdrawals or contract terminations. Patterns are defamation in trade outlets or fan forms that lead to sponsorship withdrawals or contract terminations. Repeated use of similar false narratives across platforms suggests planned reputation attacks. Now, it says how to distinguish targeted harassment from ordinary conflicts. Convergence of multiple indicators across domains, in person, digital, or financial, in a short time frame strengthens the interference of coordinated, jealousy-driven harassment. Documentation and metadata often reveal coordination, timestamps, IP clustering, repeated phrasing, or identical doctored materials across accounts. Independent cooperation, witnesses, platform logs, communications, such as direct messaging, distinguishes rumor from targeted defamation. So it says recommended responses and protections. Preserve the evidence, keep screenshots with timestamps, URL records, save messages, and copies of cancellations or complaints. Use platform reporting tools and request logs, such as takedown or report histories from streaming and payment services. Seek cease and desist or legal advice when defamation, doxing, or financial sabotage is present. Build transparent communications with collaborators and fans to counter misinformation. Carefully avoid escalating online arguments. Use trusted networks and neutral third parties, such as mediators, professional associations, when possible. So as I stated earlier, when you notice several of these signs together, document everything. Preserve original messages, and report patterns to platform administrators, venues, or legal counsel as appropriate. Seek support from trusted industry peers and consider using privacy safeguards and professional reputation management resources. And that's all that I have for you today. But remember, you have to keep accurate records, especially when it comes to these flying monkeys, these jealous ass people that are jumping on the bandwagon to sabotage people because they are jealous or they're stupid. One of them, both of them, whatever. Anyway, that's all I have for you this week, and I'll see you next week. Bye.

SPEAKER_00:

Where can I find it? It's on all podcasting platforms, streams lives on social media and on rptradio.com. What'd you say it was called again? It's called Indie Artist Music Hustle with Blonde Intelligence. Girl, I'm gonna have to check her out. Give it a check, girl.