A few years ago, I wrote a blog post for work tied to a celebrity event. It wasn’t huge, just part of a larger social media campaign. I didn’t meet the performer or plan any details. But when the campaign backfired, the fallout reached me in an unsettling way I didn’t expect.

That performer, Silentó, was recently sentenced to prison. When I saw his name back in the news, it brought back a memory I’d quietly put away.

This isn’t a story about him or the circumstances of his situation—circumstances I can’t fully know. It’s about what it felt like to be part of something public I didn’t control.

Shiny on the Outside, Doubt on the Inside

Back then, I was just a writer in the public relations and marketing department. During certain events, I provided social media support. Though I didn’t have the title, I also worked as the company blog manager. A lot of the time, I wrote press releases, then a blog post based on the press release, then some social media posts to promote the blog post.

The performance was the closing spectacle at a welcoming event that introduced a hashtag for the attendees to use over the next year or so for a social media campaign. I didn’t select the artist. I was told who was performing, when I needed to be there, and what sort of blog post I’d need to write afterwards.

At the time, I was caught up in the shininess of it all. I’d only been working there for two months and this was the first of many signature “wow” moments the company liked to orchestrate. I was excited by the idea that stuff like this was part of my day job. But I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little uneasy about the campaign.

After all, I’d recently been part of the target audience for that campaign. I understood the response they hoped for, but it wasn’t hard to predict what they got instead.

The Response Wasn’t Good, Then it Got Scary

Some people used the hashtag as it was intended: to share positive personal experiences. Mostly people used it to make public complaints and troll the company. I remember a fellow new colleague and I sharing “they really should have seen this coming” looks. But we did our best to handle the negative response and move on.

Unfortunately, things escalated.

A former classmate of mine issued an ultimatum for the in a post on Medium. They wanted a publicly issued report detailing the money spent that year on special events and those signature “wow” moments. They wanted to know about food at these events, plus the travel and accommodation expenses for speakers and performers, and all the expenses involved for that particular Silentó performance.

There was also a demand for a promise to crack down on “superfluous spending” and ways the company could be held publicly accountable for making good on that promise. If ignored, they threatened to make an upcoming event “a nightmare of a public protest.”

It was a nightmare in the PR office, to be sure.

When I asked my supervisor about what I should expect, she told me about a past protest that involved our very office receiving a bomb threat. I don’t remember if it was only a threat or if explosives were actually recovered, but her overall attitude was very nonchalant, like this was just what might come up on a Tuesday morning.

It sent me into a spiral of terror and helplessness that culminated in multiple anxiety attacks.

When Your Name’s on the Post, But Not on the Plan

I asked about removing my name from the blog post since, at the time, there was no intention to remove the post itself. Now, however, it is unavailable to the public. I wonder if it’s due to the recent headlines. I was told this was part of the risk of being a public-facing employee.

The ultimatum came five days before my birthday. They gave us 11 days to comply or else. The general vibe was it was being handled, but I was too busy stewing in stress dreams about being killed or maimed as collatoral damage. In reality, I don’t think there was any real threat of danger, but that didn’t feel like a safe assumption at the time.

I didn’t know if I could continue working in marketing. What are you supposed to do when the campaign you’re supposed to support doesn’t align with your personal ethics? What if saying anything at all could cost you the job you can’t afford to lose?

How do you prepare to protect yourself against the risks no one warned you about but expect you to handle on your own?

Lessons in Boundaries, Energy, and Voice

Looking back, I think this was an aspect of working in public relations and marketing that needs more attention. You can easily find guides on how to handle negative responses while operating as the voice of a brand (my post PR Nightmare: How To Handle A Bad Response on Social Media talks about that), but fewer resources on protecting yourself as the individual.

This struggle isn’t new or unique to me. No one has the perfect answer for how to reconcile the cost of silence with the cost of action. Resistance takes many forms, whether it’s on the streets in protest or in making art.

For my part, this experience reshaped the narrative of my manuscript, The Thieves of Traska. I wanted one of the underlying themes to be the struggle of working a job you’d walk away from if your survival—literal or financial—didn’t depend on it. It’s what gave me the idea to put my main character in debt and have her figure out what lines she draws for herself in a life where surviving means giving up control.

Why Bring This Up Now?

Until I saw his name in recent headlines, I hadn’t thought about this event in years. But it feels relevant for everyone sharing the same feelings:

• If you’ve ever felt afraid to show up online
• If you’ve ever been asked to put your name behind something you didn’t believe in
• If big, loud acts of resistence carry consequences you can’t suffer
• If you’re a creative trying to have a voice in world where you feel helpless

This is for you. Protect yourself physically, financially, and energetically. Don’t absorb too much. Find your own ways to resist, whether that means speaking, acting, or creating.