Bejzik - The Brown Backpack Guy · @bejzik8
13th Oct 2022 from TwitLonger
Hi, I’m “the brown backpack guy” and I have been harassed, humiliated, name called, kicked out of events and even threatened by fellow community members. All of this while I'm completely innocent and working transparently with the event organisers, Ethereum Foundation, mediators, witnesses... I put my trust and reputation in the hands of them and now that is all gone.
I am a software engineer and a guest of Devcon Bogota. These 3 days have been the worst days of my life. What started off as an amazing week turned dark really quick when I had an encounter with one of the members of Blu3DAO. This is how it all started and how events quickly escalated.
As unlucky as this gets, this all happened on the Day 1 of Devcon during lunch time next to the 3D photo booth (next to the main entrance, with a lot of security staff and overall high traffic of people). I have an interest in photography and I think the setup for the 3D booth is pretty amazing. I started a conversation with the photographer about it while he was taking photos of the guests. The photographer always recommended people to jump so the picture looks cool in 3D. Next up was a group of 11 persons wanting to take a 3D photo. They started off by all crouching. This is where the photographer usually would recommend the group to jump instead.
I wanted to be helpful, so I told the group: “Jump! The photo will look much better!”.
They started waving me off, one particular member of this group response was: “Who the F*** are you?!”.
Maybe they misheard, so I repeated myself: “Jump! It will look better.”
She responded: “Who the F*** are you?! Who the F*** is this guy?! Get out!”
I was shocked and confused by the response and it was clear that they heard me but just didn’t want to receive my message. I looked back at the photographer, he shrugged it off and I did a thumbs down expression showing I didn’t appreciate their reaction to what I thought was a helpful comment.
Some minutes later I was approached by two staff members of Devcon. Without saying anything they flipped the ID badge around my neck to check my identity. They asked if I’m a speaker. I said: “No, I’m just a guest”. I asked back “Why did you flip my badge without asking? I might want to be anonymous. You can’t just go around flipping people's badges like this?”. They responded by saying some women felt harassed by me w/o giving me the reason why. I explained myself and what happened and they responded by saying they will let me stay inside but warned me to not do something like that again and walked away.
On my way to take some refreshments two other staff members approached me. They told me I have been harassing women at the event by booing at them. I explained myself again and told them I wasn’t booing anyone. She pointed out the Devcon’s Code of Conduct that everyone should be treated with respect and that everyone should be safe and comfortable at the conference. I pointed out that I am actually starting to feel uncomfortable and harassed. The lady I was speaking to was respectful, understanding and polite but she still insisted that I should stop harassing the women.
On my way to the Scaffold.eth’s talk, two security guards were following me up the escalator. In front of the exit of the escalator they stopped me. This was extremely awkward for me because the people behind couldn’t exit normally without pushing themselves out of that situation. I felt very ashamed and people were looking at me like I had done something wrong. The guards didn’t speak English and were saying something in Spanish, I didn’t understand much and was standing there confused. A group of random people was asking what was happening. I said I didn't understand what the security was saying. The lady from the group helped translate and she turned back around to me, took a step back in shock asking: “You have been taking photos of girls!?”.
I was shocked and said “What!?”. She repeated the question again. I was forced to pull out and show my phone. They checked all my photos including my deleted photos. They saw nothing unusual. Without me knowing the accuser from Blu3DAO was standing behind us all the time. The security pointed at her that it was her claiming these false accusations. They went through my phone a second time. This time the accuser was also looking at my phone.
Again, without finding anything, the guards still checked me and recorded my name. I left the situation feeling ashamed, harassed and vulnerable.
During the rest of the time the accuser was stalking me and I tried to avoid her and her friends to not experience any more humiliating situations. During the next hour I felt that everyone was looking at me. Maybe I was just imagining this, I thought. Later a colleague of mine showed me that my face was all over crypto Twitter in a post made by Daphne from Blu3DAO. This is the same lady that cursed, harassed, falsely accused and violated my privacy. I left Devcon Tuesday afternoon and haven’t come back ever since.
Yesterday night, my friends persuaded me to try to relax, to go out and have some fun while trying to forget about all of this, so we went to rAAVE. In the line to get inside, it happened that the accuser was behind me and skipped the line in front of me to stand with her friends. They recognised me and tried to take photos of me during the whole 30 minutes of waiting in line. While inside on a crowded dance floor, 3 huge security guys stormed the dance floor with torches to pull me out and kick me from the club. This happened in front of hundreds of other guests and was extremely humiliating for me. From what we were told Blu3DAO requested for me to be removed, by sending pictures of me to the event organisers.