Deceit · funding appeal
Some people come out of a church, a movement, a marriage or a job and find they cannot stop seeing the shape of the thing that held them. The frame. The laundered claim. The apology built to sound like one without being one.
Deceit is for those people. It names the machinery of manipulation and hands the names out for free, on the theory that a pattern you can name is a pattern that has lost most of its power over you. It has been going for years, under one name or another, and this is its current form.
Easier to show than to describe. Four entries from The Deceit Lexicon, which runs to well over a hundred.
Care capture
The hug that prevents the audit.
Choice foreclosure
You picked freely. The menu was written so only one option could survive. Your choice was the cover.
Authority laundering
You stopped asking for the evidence because the phrase sounded settled. 'Experts agree' was the whole argument. The authority was borrowed, never shown.
Artificial intimacy
It knows you better than anyone does. It was paid to.
That is the method. Not fact-checking, and not calling out liars one at a time. Naming the shape, so it stays visible the next time it is used on someone else.
More than a dozen safety guides. Over a hundred entries in The Deceit Lexicon. Over a hundred published pieces. No account, no paywall, no email capture.
The guides cover stalking, sextortion and non-consensual imagery, doxxing, coordinated harassment, stalkerware, identity theft, financial abuse, elder abuse, housing emergency, deepfakes and voice cloning. Every one runs the same structure: what it is, how it is used against survivors, the warning signs, what you can do now, and when to get outside help. Every one ends with numbers that connect to a person. RAINN, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the Eldercare Locator, StopNCII.
Don't take the claim. Check it: read the stalking guide. It stays free whatever this raises.
Deceit names organizations. It names techniques, quotes the people using them, and publishes the receipts underneath. That is the entire product. It is also the thing that attracts letters.
A publication that names real manipulation needs a liability shield before it needs anything else.
Without one, a demand letter is not a legal problem to be answered. It is the end, because the cost of answering exceeds everything the project has. The letter does not have to be correct. It only has to be expensive.
And the shield is not protecting a brand. The essays and the safety guides sit on the same servers under the same name. If a letter lands and there is nothing behind it, the stalking guide goes down with the opinion pieces.
| Category | What it covers | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Legal | Media attorney consult for defamation review, and the first liability premium. General liability does not cover content claims. | $1,600–$3,800 |
| Entity | Articles of Organization, Statement of Information, registered agent, city business licence. | $240–$890 |
| California franchise tax | The state charges every LLC this annually, in year one and every year after, whether or not it earns anything. | $800 |
| Infrastructure | Domain renewals across the network, hosting beyond the free tier, transactional email. | $200–$760 |
| Development and the book | Editorial hours on new entries and essays, and design for the first print run. | $1,100–$1,400 |
| Reach | Getting the vocabulary in front of the people who need it. | $350–$700 |
| Year one | Including a 10% reserve. At the low end $10,000 leaves real runway. At the high end it very nearly doesn't, which is the honest version. | ~$4,700–$9,200 |
After year one the recurring floor is the franchise tax again, the insurance renewal, the registered agent and the hosting. Roughly $200 to $400 a month, every month, before a word is written. That is what recurring support is aimed at, and twenty to forty people at ten dollars a month covers it outright.
If it under-funds, the order is fixed in advance: attorney consult first, then insurance, then formation if the consult says form, then hosting and domains. Marketing is deferred first, every time. Anything past the floor stops being defence and becomes the next guide.
The first domain was registered in October 2025. The oldest guide still standing was written that December, months before the site it now sits on existed. The work came first and the infrastructure caught up. Both dates are public record and can be checked with a registry lookup.
Even those are late. This is the current form of something that has been going for years, under other names and on other platforms, before any of it had a domain to sit on. The registries show when the housing went up, not when the work started. That part is the author's word rather than a record, offered as testimony rather than smuggled in as evidence.
First milestone
$2,000
The attorney consult and a first liability premium.
Open now
Not $10,000. The table above is what a full year costs, and it is published so you can see the whole picture, but asking for all of it up front would be asking you to fund an ambition. $2,000 buys the one thing that unblocks everything else, and it is the line the project cannot operate without. Anything past it goes to the next item in the order, in public.
Support the work (opens in a new tab)Payment is handled by Ko-fi and opens in a new tab.
Ways to give
Questions first? Ask before you give. An unanswered question is a good reason to keep your money.
Donations are gifts, not purchases: no equity, no repayment, and not tax-deductible. The project operates as a for-profit venture rather than a charity. Until the formal entity is established, contributions are received personally and spent against the budget above. Actual spend will be published against those categories, the same way corrections are published against the pieces. A budget nobody reconciles is a wish.
Before you do, the strongest version of the argument not to. Written here rather than left for someone else to write about the project.
If any of that lands wrong, don't give. The guides stay free, The Deceit Lexicon stays free, and nothing behind this page changes based on whether you paid.