My Friends Call Me Tag | BONUS

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While supplies last. Selection varies by location. See Lowe's.com for more details. Soil offer excludes Alaska and Hawaii. Hey, it's Stephanie, back with a bonus episode. We talked in episode five about the personas Laura allegedly used online. There was one more alleged persona that we didn't have time to get into. So in this bonus episode, we want to bring you a scene that was cut for time. During my research, I talked to many of the online content creators covering this case. And there's a few you haven't met yet, like Megan Fox. And no, not the actress Megan Fox. This Megan is a journalist and a podcaster on YouTube. You'll hear more from her in upcoming episodes. When I talked to Megan, I asked her if Laura ever contacted her directly. No, not once. Well, okay, let me take that back. That's not true. She may have, because I did get several emails from Tag. A man named Tag started emailing content creators, claiming to be Laura's ex-boyfriend. Megan, my friends call me Tag. And over the past few months, I have been following the situation regarding Laura Owens, a woman I dated and was involved with intimately from mid-late 2015 to 2016. I am not fully ready to come forward publicly with my story, but I'm willing to support you and the other victims, specifically with what I feel could be valuable background information and help fill in some critical information holes. Tag said that he just wanted the truth about Laura Owens to come out. He admits to feeling a lot of guilt over their alleged relationship, noting that he didn't truly understand the situation while he was in it. Tag then turns his attention to Dave Neal. Here's Megan reading that part of Tag's email. He and I have zero connection or personal history, yet I was immediately revulsed by literally almost all of his content from day one. Frankly, he's an unfunny vulgarian, and I take serious issue with him calling himself a journalist. For Megan, this was immediately suspicious. Most people love Dave Neal. You can't hate Dave. Dave is great. Dave is very difficult to hate. I mean, nobody hates Dave like this except Laura. Megan decided not to report. To her, the language sounded suspiciously similar to the kind of thing Laura Owens often says. But Tag's emails kept coming. So one of the things that did throw me off in the second email that Tag sent, Tag gave up some information about Chase J. Jones. Remember, Chase J. Jones was the Howard University student trying to cancel Clayton, a character that allegedly led straight back to Laura's phone number. For Megan, the fact that Tag knew Chase J. Jones was too convenient. It's got to be Laura. Megan decided to try and verify to see if Tag was who he said he was. I tried to get this person on the phone, and this person said they would be available, and then nothing. And every time I would say, let's get on the phone, there'd be some excuse. Oh, I'm traveling through Vienna. That was my favorite. I'm on a train in Vienna. If someone won't actually get on the phone with you, it's a very good sign that they're not who they say they are. Even still, Megan kept her suspicions to herself. I never mentioned it to anyone publicly until Tag started contacting Lauren. Lauren Knighty is another YouTuber who began covering the case after seeing Laura's Reddit posts. Lauren had been following Dave Neal's content. I saw that people were kind of going in on Dave, and he was getting a lot of backlash for going after someone who people thought was either the victim or she was mentally ill. At the time, Lauren worked as a psych evaluator at a hospital. She felt like she had professional insight into this kind of behavior. I myself had been working in a hospital for a long time as a psych evaluator who works with patients who come into the hospital, the ER, who need help, and I have to determine whether or not they're actually a danger to themselves, or if there's somebody who maybe needs help but can, and I had to deal with this on an outpatient basis, and I had to determine what's the basis for the things that you're saying, and what's the motivation behind these things. A lot of times people would say, well, I did this to get XYZ reaction from somebody, or there was a means to an end, and that's what I was seeing in Laura. I was seeing a lot of these threats being made for a means to an end, and people were going after Dave in a way that I was really uncomfortable with. I was like, you guys don't understand the things that go into these evaluations, and what people say, and why, and that there's more to the story than just somebody made a threat, and now we all have to stop talking about it, we have to give them what they want or else. And so I kind of came to Dave's defense a little bit, and that's how I got involved. Lauren started making her own YouTube videos discussing the case. Then, in spring of 2024, I get an email from somebody claiming to be Laura's ex-boyfriend named Tag, which, if you know the Chase J. Jones story, you know it's kind of ridiculous, because it's Tag and Chase. But he tried to convince me basically that Laura really was sick, and he really was worried that she was going to do something to hurt herself. Lauren took it seriously. She didn't report on it, but she responded to Tag. I was very empathetic and responded in a way that I would respond to anybody who was dealing with a person of that kind of illness where she was struggling with suicidal thoughts, and they didn't respond. And I tried again to say like, will you please talk to me, and verify your identity as you offered to do? And it was like, I never heard back again after that. Content creators like Lauren and Megan Fox regularly talked offline about the case. And one day, Lauren mentioned the Tag email to Megan. Who then let me know that she had also received an email from Tag, and we compared our emails, and they were very different in tone. Both of them have in common that he tried to basically gas us up to make us feel good about ourselves while putting down other people like Dave. They were never able to prove if Tag was a real person. I think that the idea of Tag was to report on this and be like, hey, someone from Laura's past came out and said, like, this is actually true, to get people talking online about how her story was not made up, basically, and it didn't work. If it was Laura behind these emails from Tag, she might have done it to try to get sympathy from people online, but it seems to have backfired. Thank you so much for listening, and stay tuned for new episodes and bonus content on the Love Trapped feed. Hey, y'all, what's up? This is Lauren La Rosa from the latest with Lauren La Rosa the podcast. Remember Varnell Hill from the '90s sitcom Martin? He's back, and now on Paramount+. More than 30 years later, Tommy Davidson is stepping back into the spotlight in an all-new Martin spinoff, The Varnell Hill Show. And Varnell has just one question: Did you miss me? Now he's got network execs, a wild writer's room, family drama, and everyone telling him he's past his prime. 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