Tim Pool Cat Hostage Allegations

Submission 5,362

Overview

Tim Pool Cat Hostage Allegations refers to accusations that political YouTuber Tim Pool held the cat of a former colleague against the owner's will at his mansion in Maryland as part of business negotiations. The situation reportedly stems from a falling out between Pool and his former business partners of a news site that failed to launch last year. The cat's owner retrieved the cat by way of an intermediary.

Background

On March 11th, 2021, The Daily Beast^[1] reported that Tim Pool stood accused of holding a former business partner's cat hostage as a "bargaining chip" in ongoing negotiations regarding the launch of the news site Subverse (later called SCNR). Pool, co-founder Emily Molli and a third cofounder raised more than $1 million through crowdfunding efforts for the site's launch. Pool later hired Rocco Castoro, a former Vice editor-in-chief, to handle editorial and business responsibilities. According to the Daily Beast, it is unclear whether or not the site "exists anymore as a going concern."

In 2020, in-fighting among the founders "over who had access to various internal systems connected to [SCNR]" led to Molli and Castoro began investigating Pool. They claim to have discovered evidence that "Pool was involved in unsavory internet schemes."

Molli left her cat Betsy with one of Pool's podcasting co-hosts, Ian Crossland, as she produced SCNR videos throughout the country. Crossland brought Betsy to Pool's mansion, where it remained until her reunion with Molli.

On January 6th, 2021, while reporting on the capital riots, Castoro tweeted ^[2] cryptic screenshots of his investigation into Pool, which include IP logs and domain names (shown below). According to the Daily Beast, the screenshots inspired a series of text messages from Pool that implied the tweets rattled him.

Following the incident, Pool removed Castoro and Molli from the SCNR YouTube account and cut off communications, leaving the cat in Crossland's custody at Pool's mansion. Molli spent the next few weeks attempting to retrieve the cat via an intermediary but feared escalating the situation. Despite her attempts for amicable retrieval, Pool refused, telling her to correspond through his lawyer. Eventually, after speaking with Washington County Sherriff's department, Pool or an associate dropped the cat at a nearby animal shelter, where a friend of Molli's retrieved her.

On March 5th, 2021, the Twitter account @SCNRbot, presumably run by Molli and Castoro, published a video parody of the animal appreciation site The Dodo featuring Betsy detailing the experience from their perspective (shown below).

Pool states in the report that he did not have custody of the cat. He said:

"The cat was never transferred to me, Emily left it with Ian and she was talking with him. The Sheriff asked about Ian returning the cat and that was it."

Developments

Tim Pool's Response

On March 11th, 2021, the article's publication date, Pool tweeted an image of a cat with the caption,^[3] "This guy is at the top of the org chart over at Timcast media." The tweet received more than 2,800 likes and 145 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, left).

He continued to post screenshots from the article (shown below, center and right).

Later, he tweeted,^[4] "It's really a slow news day, apparently." The tweet received more than 1,700 likes and 50 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below).

Online Reaction

The article inspired conversation online. Writer Peter Slattery tweeted,^[5] "his story really has it all >an erotic internet game stealing the SEO traffic to Tim Pool’s nascent news site, so much so they changed their news site’s name >a bunch of cryptic beef from a bunch of ex-vice dudes >a cat (allegedly) held hostage in the process" (shown below, left). Gizmodo writer Tom McKay tweeted,^[6] "I've reverse aged six years reading this story and decreased my future risk of heart attacks by at least 32 percent" (shown below, center).

Others used the story to mock Pool. Twitter^[7] user @JoshHubama tweeted, "Stop kidnapping cats @timcast" (shown below, right).