 Good evening 40 here. Have you seen this amazing article in the New York Times? Who is the bad art friend? And of course, I'm gonna use myself as a prism through wish to discuss this article art draws inspiration from life But what happens when it's your life? So this is the curious case of dawn, Dorland versus Sonja Larsen. So dawn, Dorland Decided to anonymously donate a kidney which is a wonderful beautiful thing to do and She ended up her Anonymously donated kidney ended up going to an Orthodox Jew and saving a life so She did this in June of 2015 a year after completing her MFA in creative writing and She'd been waiting to do it for years As soon as I learned I could Essentially it's kind of like not overthinking love and she started a private face Facebook group including family and friends and After her surgery where she donated the kidney she posted to a group this heartfelt letter She'd written to the final recipient of the surgical chain for her donated kidney said my childhood was marked by trauma and abuse I didn't have the opportunity to form secure attachments with my family of origin Positive outcome of my early life. It's empathy To me that the suffering she rises offering of strangers is just as real as the suffering of a family or friend now That's that's weird through my preparation for becoming a donor I'm I focus the majority of my mental energy on imagining and celebrating you So that sounds wonderful. It also sounds kind of inhuman So she got to meet their recipient of her kidney an Orthodox Jewish man and took photos with him and his family and Then she started posting outside of her private Facebook group to all of Facebook celebrating her one-year kidney anniversary, right? She's celebrating her own anonymous donation of a kidney That eventually becomes not so anonymous and so she's she's posting and posting on social media about how she anonymously donated a kidney And then when she checked Facebook, she noticed that some people she'd invited into her little Facebook group hadn't reacted to any of her posts And so she ends up writing an email to this one woman Sunya Larson Who hadn't reacted to any of her posts? So these two women had met eight years earlier and Sunya Larson was the most successful. She was half Chinese half Caucasian and Darlan sends her an email. Hey, why haven't you responded to any of my Facebook case? So please never Never ask people why they haven't responded to your Facebook posts It's like way too needy. So this is another theme that I talk about a lot about on this on this channel That I've been trying to implement. I have an inexhaustible Desire for attention and admiration. All right, so I've got very strong tendencies towards narcissism and grandiosity And so what I've learned over the years is that one thing I can do is give myself attention and love and applause and admiration When I earn it instead of needing it from other people. So ideally you want to be able to stand on your own two feet and La Pony is bro. Yeah, I mean I love to give myself admiration and love but getting it from you It's twice as good, bro twice as good. That is like love love squared So So if you if you can give yourself the applause and the admiration that you said desperately want from others Then I think you're much less likely to email someone like why haven't you been applauding my live streams? Well, the ponies is here to give me the attention that I said desperately see so When you're desperate for attention and admiration as I have been through much of my life That makes you very easy to manipulate So that's another another reason for why You want to get a handle on these things now? Lot of people then go to the other extremes like oh, I should never seek attention. I should deny this This tender needy side of myself. I should go to the other extreme because I can make such an embarrassing cool to myself My philosophy is that if you have these these tendencies towards attention seeking then you know try to use them in a productive manner So I'm not whipping my dick out. You know, I'm not making pornography here. I'm doing high-level intellectual discourse All right, we're having high-level intellectual intercourse right now But if I did want admiration and attention, I wouldn't be making any of these streams, right? I just perhaps write anonymously on a blog so if you if you are particularly thirsty for attention and And admiration as I still sometimes am It's good to know that there are places in your life where that's appropriate and that way you'll be less exhausting I think to people in the rest of your life So if I'm needy for attention and admiration I can go on YouTube and I can seek out your attention and admiration and that way I don't have to bother my neighbors and I don't have to bother with acquaintances and friends and I Can get just get on with my life of my my few minutes of a dopamine hit and then move on with my life But obviously as best if you can stand on your own two feet so Usually is emailing or Facebook messaging in a Quenton say, you know How haven't you responded to any of my posts about my anonymous kidney donation? so So it ends up the Sun Sunya Larsen writes a short story about an entitled white woman who uses her anonymous kidney donation to emotionally blackmail people and demand from them love and admiration which which is It seems painfully prescient here so You don't want to be Manipulating people to give you love and attention because they're gonna resent you you should never ask more from a friendship than I then I can give Because that just causes people to want to put more distance between you. I've done that I've asked more from a from an acquaintanceship or you know light friendship than I could give and just like created distance between me and and There's other people so now Sunya Larsen writes a short story about a woman who donates a kidney and She includes in it a note from from Dawland and almost word-for-word and So now we've got now we've got a copyright violation. So Dawland eventually reads the story and She's really hurt. I discovered that a writer friend. Okay, so often people think that someone who's just an acquaintance as a friend Has based a short story on something momentous. I did in my own life without telling me or ever intending to tell me All right, so you can so this this Dawland Lady is obviously looking to feel hurt. Have you met people like that? I met a lot of people like that dawn Dawland She's obviously Looking to feel hurt. So I encounter a lot of people. They're just like more applying Reasons to feel hurt and damaged and victimized So I think we have certain intense experiences in childhood that we then Easily become feel compelled to to repeat over and over and over again So I remember from childhood perhaps the dominant emotional experience of childhood was the feeling of rejection And so I then found myself creating an adult life where I would recreate being rejected over and over again So I was creating the rejection, but then being absolutely traumatized and blindsided and Destroyed when the rejection occurred and then I would recreate the rejection all over again So dawn Dawland is very much this this type of person It's just kind of going through life looking for her feelings to get hurt Like people go through life like looking for reasons to feel like a victim. Ah, here we go again I'm just gonna get screwed over again and I love the title of this bad art friend. So I have friends who I've I've never written about and I have Interactions that I would never write about but I also have friends that I have written about some interactions and any writer is Constantly, you know looking for materials. So if you're if you're interacting with Philip Roth and it was Useful to him, of course, he was going to use it. I remember the woman that I lost my My virginity too she had a friend and A friend told her I shouldn't you shouldn't get into a relationship with a writer because he's gonna write about you one day so Writers can be dangerous. There's a saying that once a family has a writer in it. The family is finished so Sonja Larsen says I've seen references to my own life and other people's fiction and certainly felt weird But I maintain that they have a right to write about whatever they want as do I and as do you So this is a principle of artistic freedom. All right, so honoring another person's artistic freedom is a gesture of friendship and of trust so That's a thoughtful perspective here Sonja Larsen half half Chinese half Caucasian So daughter of a Chinese American mother and a white father and being mixed race sometimes confused her So she's the more accomplished writer when compared to dawn Dawson So eventually dawn Dawn starts calling places where Sonja Larsen is employed Christie Kenyon's family has a writer in it. Does it not? Yeah. Well, I think Chris wasn't Christie Kenyon adopted and She married my friend Rob Spillone who is not embarrassed to be written about so the the short story that Sonja Larsen wrote about the kidney donation is called the the kindest and Dawn Dawson started like phoning everyone connected to Sonja Larsen So dawn Dawson has done such a magnificent moral deed in anonymously giving or not so anonymously giving a kidney All right, this is a moral deed But she comes across as quite unsympathetic in this article So that probably the more moral person comes across as less empathetic now I had a friend who had some severe health problems and I volunteered to give a piece of my lung so that this kid could could live and The reaction to that in my religious community is that Luke is just looking for redemption Which is which is true like Luke was looking for redemption I wanted to be Embraced again by a synagogue that had kicked me out So I was volunteering to give up a piece of my lung so that I could return to this synagogue that had kicked me out So I was coming from a place of great emotional neediness. So throughout my life I've had this hope that some one grand moral gesture on my part could outweigh and Cover up all the crappy things that I've done And people could just see right through it and nobody was fooled But this was not just a you know a reflection of what a wonderful person I am. This is another needy bid for love by Luke and people don't like being around emotionally needy people It's exhausting and people don't like being emotionally blackmailed and people don't like Being asked why haven't you commented or liked my my Facebook posts? so dawned all on Threatens to sue anyone who Who publishes the kindest she she tries to destroy Sonia Larson's life like she she caused her employer She caused anyone connected to Sonia Larson. She does all the damage she can It ends up in a lawsuit. So dawned all on initially files a lawsuit for copyright infringement Sonia Larson files back a lawsuit for libel and then dawned all and does it counter Complaint which gives her access To this this All these interchanges that Sonia Larson had which which Which were quite contemptuous of Dawn Dolan and her needy Emotional manipulation so dawn Dolan wrote this letter to her anonymous donor of her kidney my childhood was marked by trauma and abuse I didn't have the opportunity to form secure attachments with my family of origin a positive outcome My early life is empathy that had opened a well a possibility between me and strangers Well, perhaps many more people would be motivated To donate an organ to a friend or a family member in need to me the suffering of strangers is just as real so One I'd hope that's not true to its emotional and moral showing off and Then Sonia Larson uses very similar version of this note in her story My own childhood was marked by trauma and abuse. I wasn't given an opportunity for secure attachments with my family of origin Etc. Etc. It's just like dawn Dolan's notes. So here we've got What seems like a pretty clear copyright violation and I can see why Sonia Larson used it because it was just so needy but and Dawn Dolan came came to Sonia Larson with objections in 2016 And then Sonia Larson starts rewriting the letter to make it less less liable for copyright prosecution Dawn Dolan's attorney keeps increasing in demand initially 5,000 their 15,000 10,000 their 15,000 just to cover legal expenses that dawn Dolan initiated Dawn Dolan like contacts all of Sonia Larson's friends from various writer groups And say why didn't you check in with me when you knew that Sonia's kidney story was related to my life? This became Sonia Larson's summer of hell So initially she'd reached heights that she'd never dreamed of she was being celebrated now her entire careers in jeopardy I had one friend who broke up with a girl and she started like faxing everyone in his life So he ended up leaving the country just to get away from this insane goal. I remember a Couple of times that I had broken out with women They just yeah, I went all out Giha to try to destroy me contact my rabbi contact Dennis Prager You know just contact everyone that they thought that I like love or am close to my family So August 2018 Sonia Larson starts playing defense. She launches this lawsuit, but then lawsuits lead to discovery So if this had all been me one, I would never have asked someone. Why didn't you like my Facebook post? To I wouldn't threaten someone for writing about me and my life I I don't own my reputation my reputation exists in your head. I don't own what goes on in your head and If you take something from my life and then write about it I wouldn't I wouldn't go after you for it and I saw it wouldn't initiate a lawsuit Because with lawsuits there comes discovery and discovery is very likely to bring out embarrassing things that people don't want known to the world So in discovery there are all these embarrassing social media comments that they come out So that's what happens when you allow a few to just escalate escalate escalate becomes increasingly damaging to all sides So you may have heard about the cat person. It was a celebrated 2017 short story in the New Yorker and we found out in recent essay in slate that the cat person was taken from elements of a woman's own life story and So when your friends with writers They are very likely to use things that you say For for their material Because we don't own our life Come on. How do I stop this? Stop