When the Floor Disappears: Navigating Targeted Attacks, Algorithmic Betrayals, and the Art of Never Stopping Quitting
This article is hard for me to write. There’s a deep discomfort in sharing vulnerability publicly because I worry about sounding whiny or like I’m victimizing myself. I’ve always strived to tell the positive story, especially since my transition. I wanted—needed—to showcase that being trans isn't inherently tragic, that support can be amazing, and that life, my life as Mercy, has actually been really nice. And that was true until a series of events unfolded, hitting hard and fast, making it impossible to ignore the possibility that something more sinister may be at play than mere coincidence.
I try to not take it as a personal attack. Initially, I attributed strange occurrences to glitches, bad luck, or the opaque workings of algorithms. But there comes a point, a confluence of events that you simply can’t ignore. This is the story of feeling the floor disappearing beneath my feet, the paranoia of searching for answers, and the ongoing process of figuring out how to stand back up in the midst of chaos.
It’s a raw look at what happens when your business, your ability to communicate and your sense of security are systematically dismantled, and the internal battleground where resilience is forged.
Part 1: The First Cracks: Hate Mail and Ominous Signs
The first undeniable sign arrived insidiously, disguised as a restaurant booking inquiry. Through the standard form on my website, a message landed, not seeking a table, but delivering venom. The name field read "what the fuck." The comments section dripped with transphobic contempt: "I am afraid the host is still lost in pronouns and sexuality. How can I be ensured this will not affect my personal integrity as the host seems to lack one."
Further down, mocking potential dietary requests: "wash your soul before you touch the food." and under "any questions?" was written "are you trying to make your own life more difficult?".
I had received hate mail personally. Once, I received over 150 hate messages via Facebook over the course of a few hours, telling me generally how they’d like to kill me and how much I should suffer in hell.
But as the first explicit hate mail directed at my business, it was jarring. Perhaps out of self-preservation or disbelief, “I didn't do anything about it.” It felt like an isolated incident, vile but contained. I pushed it aside and ignored it.
While shocking, this single message didn't connect to a larger pattern in my mind. It was ugly, but in my mind, it was an anomaly.
Part 2: The Digital Siege: Platforms Turn Hostile
The illusion of isolated incidents shattered two weeks after the hate mail. I woke up to find myself locked out of my digital life and the tools to promote my business.
Facebook & Instagram Vanish
My personal Facebook profile, my professional coaching page, and my restaurant's page – all gone. Logged out, attempting to log back in only yielded a stark notification: banned for breaking "community guidelines." There was of course there's no information to what community guideline were supposedly broken. There's been no warning and there was no way to ask any questions as to what happened. The Meta appeals process, notoriously opaque and difficult, offered no recourse. It is known that accounts can be suspended or banned due to malicious campaigns filing false violations. The lack of transparency and the impossibility in reaching human support made this situations extremely frustrating, especially given that these are primary channels to promote my restaurant and my primary source of contact with people I know and my communities.
LinkedIn Lockout & Hack
The same morning, I found myself logged out of LinkedIn, prevented from logging back in and saying my account was suspended. Thanks to their recovery system requiring me to send a copy of my ID, I managed to recover my account within 48h. When access restored, the truth emerged: “the primary email on my LinkedIn had been changed to some other random email.”
This wasn't a platform glitch anymore; now this was a confirmed hack. Someone had intentionally compromised my account, changed recovery details, and attempted to lock me out permanently. This aligns with known hacking tactics on LinkedIn, where recovery often involves ID verification and contacting support, sometimes a lengthy process, especially when recovery emails are changed. The platform's security measures, like requiring confirmation from the old email before changing it, seem to have failed or been bypassed. This confirmed intrusion solidified the chilling question: “what if it was all a direct attack... someone who intentionally hacked into my accounts?”
This question threw me into a paranoia that forced me to revisit events that happened just a few months ago that I had discarded as technological glitches.
TripAdvisor's Mysterious Plunge
In December – the critical start of the high season for my restaurant – I noticed a drastic drop in my TripAdvisor ranking. From consistently being in the top 3 in the entire province my restaurant plummeted to #24. Confused, I contacted TripAdvisor before I had recently received close to 20 new 5 star reviews so I was expecting to go up in the ranking. Their explanation was baffling: the homepage algorithm had changed, using “proprietary criterias that they couldn't tell me,” but if users searched specifically by rating, I still ranked in the top four. The crucial featured homepage, however, used this opaque algorithm, effectively hiding my business. The traffic on my TripAdvisor page dropped to as low as 15% of last year. As my restaurant is far from the main tourist town, this killed my business because TripAdvisor was the main way clients would find me. While TripAdvisor's algorithm is complex, factoring in review quantity, quality, and recency, and changes do occur, the explanation felt insufficient. The lack of transparency about the "proprietary" factors felt dismissive. At the time, I attributed this to bad customer service and glitches in the algorithm. But now, I’m being faced with the question of whether it was the kind of malicious obfuscation like the Meriton 'masking' case, leaving me feeling powerless and painfully suspicious.
The Preceding Facebook Suspension
As TripAdvisor became obsolete as a source of clients, I thought I’d go back to doing Facebook and Instagram promotions for HiR Fine Dining. That’s when I realized my restaurant's Facebook page, HiR Fine Dining, was suspended for "explicit sexual content." My profile photo and my banner photo for the restaurant... the same photos I had for years of dishes that I cook were flagged. The absurdity was stark because there was obviously nothing sexual. But there was no appeal mechanism, only the option to change the photos. The page was reinstated but with a crippling note from Meta that the page was taken off all of the Facebook and Instagram searches. It existed but was invisible. At the time, I chalked it up to a bizarre algorithmic error. Now, it seems plausible it was an early salvo, perhaps triggered by a malicious reporting campaign exploiting flawed automated moderation.
Part 3: Decoding the Chaos: Malice, Machines, or Mindset?
Standing amidst the wreckage of my digital presence and business income, the question became unavoidable: Is this a series of unfortunate algorithmic coincidences across multiple, independent platforms, or is it a calculated, targeted attack?
I wanted to believe it’s glitches in the system and the algorithm. But now that I see that LinkedIn was malicious and intentional, the evidence pointing towards a coordinated attack is sadly compelling. The transphobic hate mail was followed by simultaneous bans across Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram) and a confirmed hack of my LinkedIn account where my recovery email was altered. The timing of the TripAdvisor drop at the start of the high season, despite excellent recent reviews, is highly suspicious. The earlier Facebook page suspension for nonsensical reasons ("sexual content" on food photos) also fits a pattern of potential malicious reporting designed to disrupt and deplatform.
Then I think “who would put so much effort into such an attack?” and “does anyone really have the power and ability to attack me on so many different unrelated platforms?”.
I spiral into paranoia.
My logical mind says “surely nobody can tamper with my TripAdvisor page” and “it has to be glitches and coincidences”.
But this pattern aligns disturbingly with documented tactics used against marginalized communities like trans individuals. Online harassment often extends beyond mere words to actions aimed at causing tangible harm – economic instability, psychological distress, and social isolation. The use of platform mechanisms, like reporting systems or exploiting security vulnerabilities, is a known strategy. The hate mail provides a potential motive, linking the attacks to my identity. While individual platform issues like opaque algorithms or flawed moderation could explain isolated incidents, the convergence of these events across different platforms, coupled with the confirmed hack and explicit hate, makes random chance seem increasingly improbable. The LinkedIn hack, in particular, seems like the undeniable proof of malicious intent, suggesting the other events may be connected parts of a broader campaign.
And because of the lack of transparency of these opaque digital systems mean that I have no certainty either way. It could be a series of coincidences, and it could be malicious. The uncertainty makes it difficult to decide on the right strategy to move forward. If it’s a glitch, I can rebuild my online presence. If it’s malicious, rebuilding my presence may end up trying to swim countercurrent.
Doubt lingers and the paranoia of living in this ambiguity, wondering about unseen antagonists putting “a lot of effort” and “resources” into dismantling my life, is exhausting.
Part 4: Inside the Crucible: Processing the Punch
It’s been 24h since I discovered the Truth about the LinkedIn hack, and the cycle of paranoia it threw me in has been devastating. It is very depressing. And disheartening.
It hurts a lot and feels demotivating because if this was a targeted attack, it succeeded in its immediate goal to remove my income because it killed my economic stability. The financial consequences are stark. My restaurant, my primary source of income, saw earnings plummet during its most crucial period, making less than 25% of what I did last year. This loss means I’m going bankrupt if I don’t find a solution within the next month.
Beyond the financial, the emotional toll has been immense. It’s a complex storm. Feelings of anger, injustice, and the feeling of being victimized. And layered on top of that comes a feeling of guilt and shame from feeling victimized. Then blaming myself for being weak and letting this situation affect me. At this point, the inner critic runs rampant: “ I should be better than this. I should not let this hurt me. If I was smarter, I’d have prevented this. If I was stronger, I’d already have a solution.”
This leads to endless loops of self-blame and retroactive problem-solving: “if I had done this and not that… this situation wouldn’t have happened, so it’s my fault.“
My mind is racing to figure out “where did it come from? What did I do wrong? How am I responsible for this?”
This experience, while acute and violent, resonates with themes I've explored before, particularly in "Normal Is a Moving Target." The feeling of being singled out, judged, and attacked because of who I am echoes the lifelong navigation of difference. The pressure to maintain a positive narrative, the internal conflict when faced with external hostility – these are familiar territories, now amplified to an almost unbearable degree.
Sharing this raw, unresolved state feels necessary, particularly from my perspective as a coach. We often hear success stories after the fact, neatly packaged with lessons learned. When the problem has been solved it's always a fun story that we tell with smiles and laughter because we know that the ending is good. The success stories are fun and exciting, but the real work, the real learning, happens in the thick of it. Right now I'm at the point where the shit just happened... the rug was pulled under my feet and I just fell flat on my face and I don't know where the rug pull came from. It’s in these moments, echoing Mike Tyson’s famous quote, "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face," that our true process of growth and reinvention reveals itself.
Part 5: The Resilience Blueprint: Standing Up After the Fall
Falling flat on my face, however, doesn't mean staying down. Navigating this requires drawing on deep wells of resilience, philosophy, and structured process.
The foundation comes from the stories of my grandparents, survivors of the war. Their experience taught me a fundamental truth: “those who gave up didn’t survive and those who survived never gave up.” When survival isn't guaranteed, the act of never giving up is paramount.
This connects to a principle shared by a former client, a philanthropist who once worked in the tobacco industry. His advice for quitting smoking was deceptively simple: “never stop quitting.” He meant that even if you fail repeatedly, you must continually recommit to the goal between each failure. Each urge resisted, even for five minutes, strengthens the muscle of quitting. This mirrors the sentiment often attributed to Churchill: "success is going from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm." A sentence I once hated, that in moments like these are profoundly true.
These philosophies underpin a more structured internal process I use to navigate crises, a three-step framework:
1. Noticing & Feeling Emotions
The first step is to allow the emotional reality without judgment or haste. It’s crucial to give oneself a chance to have these meditations. Taking the time to feel and think through our emotions without fighting them. It's important to not rush with the emotional process. This involves truly feeling the anger, injustice, shame, and weakness. Then, exploring their roots: “What do they remind us of? What moments of my childhood is this sending me back to? When did I first / last feel this? What are the other moments in my life where I felt something similar?” This process of relating present emotions to the past is a way that we create a web of life experiences from which we can start seeing patterns more clearly.
2. Processing & Channeling Emotions
Once acknowledged, the emotions need an outlet. For me, I enjoy channeling emotions through physical and creative expression. I've been doing a lot of running, a lot of drawing and painting. Movement and creativity help move the emotions through and out of the body so that they weigh less. Find the activities that help you channel emotions. It can be walking in nature, dancing, singing, shouting, breaking stuff, or building stuff.
3. Action & Strategic Thinking
As the emotional intensity is being processed, the focus shifts to practical steps forward. This starts by assessing the damage. Make a list of all the doors that have been closed and all the things that are now impossible. Then, seek new possibilities from the crisis: “What are the other doors, windows, and opportunities could be opened out of these problems? What are the advantages that can be gained from this bad situation? What does this force us to do that can help us grow?” The goal isn't just recovery, but growth: “how can this opportunity get you to grow by ten folds rather than go back to how things were? What are the things that I can do now so that the next chapter is 10 times better than the last one?” This phase involves strategic thinking and taking actions to move the needle. It’s crucial to take steps in directions that are different from what we did before. This often involves a lot of failure due to the nature of trial and error.
This framework highlights that resilience isn't a passive state of being "strong." It's an active, conscious process. It requires acknowledging pain, actively working through emotions using daily practices, and then strategically planning and executing steps towards a new future, guided by a core belief in persistence.
Part 6: Building from the Rubble: An Open Invitation
Sharing this journey, while the outcome is still uncertain, feels like the most authentic way I can embody my work as a coach. Part of me feels that now that I’m at the bottom of the pit, maybe I’m not the best example, and I can’t shine from the top of the mountain. This is the best example that I don’t have fewer problems than others, but I’ve learned to use problems as a stepping stone for growth and change. Life inevitably throws punches; we can't avoid problems from happening. What we can do is figure out how we respond to the problems when they happen.
In this spirit of navigating challenges and fostering growth, I want to extend help and also ask for it.
My offerings:
Public Speaking Coaching
Helping you and others find your voice and share your stories with confidence, even amidst adversity. Public speaking techniques for professionals, beginners and advanced public speakers.
Daily Support Community
Creating a space for people who feel different, or parents of children who are different, to connect, learn, grow, nurture happiness, and achieve success despite the obstacles we face. This daily support group is like a gym for the mind, with a wide variety of opportunities to reflect and learn. See link at the bottom of this page for more info.
Mercedes Noam Kostucki
By taking up these offers, you’ll be investing in your own growth and you’ll see positive changes in your lives/work. And you will also directly help me rebuild and create new income streams that aren’t dependent on algorithms during this critical time. If these specific offers aren't right for you, sharing them with friends, family, colleagues, or anyone who might benefit is deeply appreciated.
Furthermore, I am open. Open to ideas, collaborations, and opportunities. If you have any other ideas on how we can collaborate, or how you can help me get more visibility so that I can tell my story and attract the right kind of clients or investments, please comment or reach out to me. You may not have a solution, but are you willing to talk and explore how you can help? Great, I would love to have new conversations, bounce ideas, and explore new opportunities.
The path forward is unclear. The sense of security has been fractured, the primary means of communication and income severely damaged. It requires rapid readjustment, rethinking, and rebuilding. But the commitment remains: to not give up, to keep resisting the urge to despair, and to use this devastating punch as a catalyst not just to recover but to build something stronger, more resilient, and perhaps, as I strive for, 10 times better than what I had before. The map was torn up, the plan shattered, but the journey continues, guided by the hard-won lessons of resilience and the unwavering will to redefine the road ahead.
Thank you to everyone helping through conversations, ideas, comments, shares, and emotional support.