Stage 32

Reviewed by DTL
Posted August 19, 2021

In 2020, my account was terminated without notice by a Stage 32 staff member, who then emailed me threats serious enough to merit a police report. To this day a year later, Stage 32 has never acknowledged this complaint. Make of that what you will.

Interestingly, I received the following email pretty much instantly

From: "SJA" <sja252001@yahoo.com>
To: "Damian T. Lloyd" <damian.lloyd@gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, July 23, 2020 16:52
Subject: Stage 32

Goodbye, asshole.

The next morning, I received another email (all errors in original:)

From: "Shadow Dragu-Mihai" <shadowmihai@gmail.com>
To: "Damian T. Lloyd" <damian.lloyd@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, July 24, 2020 11:22
Subject: Awwww. . .

Gee did little damian get bumped from stage32?

I wonder why (not really).

Wish I had something to do with it. But . . . alas, I was far down the line of people who had been asking the moderators to bounce you . . . Your bitter, unwelcome, unqualified, sometimes stupid and just plain rude commentary caused this. You did it to yourself. I am guessing it’s a common theme in your life.

One of the other things you did is flag yourself as someone to never permit anywhere near a production. Unfortunately, the dialog has now moved on to whether your puerile and bitter attitude is common in Vancouver . . . too bad I can’t tell them it’s rare in the rainy city . . . oh well.

Have a good life in [redacted] . . . as you wait for the teensy Vancouver industry to come back on line . . . and maybe offer up another opportunity to pull out your aging zoom h3 for another no-budget short video . . . No one in the real industry will look at you.

And don’t bother writing back, your addy is filtered to be forwarded with fun notes to gmail security services, and then trashed. I won’t see them.

Ciao little flea!

I do have a few questions:

• How did he know I got “bumped from stage32” [sic]? I had not made this public knowledge at this time. Does Stage 32 publicly announce the names of users whose accounts they have revoked? Or does Shadow have something to do with this revocation? “Inquiring minds want to know.”
• Why does he mock “the teensy Vancouver indstry”? Vancouver is the third-most-active city for movie production in North America, after Los Angeles and New York City. This pandemic we have going on put a crimp in production, yes, but we were far from the only place affected; you may have noticed?
• He wishes that I “Have a good life in [redacted]” — and mentions my residential address? This would count as creepy stalking if my address were not publicly available, with a bit of searching. I suspect that this is intended as some sort of threat: Look, I can find out where you live. Yeah? So?
• He mocks my “aging zoom h3” [sic]? I assume he saw a photo I posted on Facebook (stalking again!) of my Zoom F8 audio recorder. I quite like the F8; it’s at least two-thirds as good as a Sound Devices recorder, and for one-third the price. I still have my Tascam DR-60D, too . . . and my Zoom H4n from back in the DSLR boom of the ’naughties. Gear is cool (but beware of GAS!).
• What slight does he imagine I have inflicted on him that he would go to such trouble to slag me? I don’t remember him from the site at all. He might be “HSH Prince Shadow Dragu-Mihai”, who claims he “retains the royal title Prince of Wallachia, & is Executor of House Dragu-Mihai”. That sounds very impressive. I wonder what I said that offended him so much.