Mistress Harley on Reply All Today

I was recently featured on the popular podcast Reply All. Here is a transcript of the episode or you can click the LINK to listen!

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Mistress Harley

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Transcript

[THEME MUSIC]

 

PJ VOGT: From Gimlet, this is Reply All, I’m PJ Vogt.

 

ALEX GOLDMAN: And I’m Alex Goldman. 

 

PJ: So Alex.

 

ALEX: Yes.

 

PJ: You’ve been mostly out sick this week. 

 

ALEX: Yeah, yes I have.

 

PJ: Well, so, we did something that was a little bit unusual, which is normally, when somebody makes a mistake in one of their stories and there’s a correction, it’s the reporter’s job to handle it obviously.

 

ALEX: Yes.

 

PJ: But you’ve been out and there was sort of an error in episode 115, The Bitcoin Hunter, where you tried to help somebody find their lost bitcoin. There was a mistake in that episode that we’ve been fixing without you. 

 

ALEX: What! 

 

PJ: What? 

 

ALEX: Well, first of all, I feel like I’m in the principal’s office. I feel (laughing) I feel like I’m in trouble.

 

PJ: Like you’re about to get punished somehow.

 

ALEX: And second of all, what was the mistake? 

 

PJ: So, I’m just going to play you the part of your episode that has the mistake in it right now.

 

ALEX: Ok.

 

PJ: You had found this bitcoin hunter and you were just explaining how the guy was going to help you.

 

ALEX: So the bitcoin hunter I found, his name is Jeremy Rubin.  Jeremy lives in San Francisco, but I had him remote into my computer so we could take a look at Jia’s hard drive together and try and find the lost bitcoin.  

PJ: It’s cool that you finally found someone, anoth- a new person to remote into your computer

ALEX: (laughs)

PJ: I feel like you’re like a “remote into my computer” fetishist.

ALEX: (laughs)

PJ: And every story we do is just like an excuse to give like, “Oo, remote access!”

 

PJ: So, the premise of that joke was that, that thing doesn’t actually exist, there’s no such thing as a remote into my computer fetishist.

 

ALEX: I like where this is going. Also, so far, this doesn’t feel like a mistake I made.

 

PJ: Both things are true. So it turns out there are such things as remote into my computer fetishists.

 

ALEX: What? 

 

PJ: Sruthi spoke to a dominatrix named Mistress Harley, and I’m just going to play that for you. 

 

ALEX: Oh my god. I’m so overwhelmed. 

 

PJ: So I think all you need to know is that Mistress Harley says that the first time she encountered this fetish was a few years ago and she had just been like going about her normal life as an online dominatrix. 

 

HARLEY: I was doing kind of your typical pro domme sessions which look like Skype sessions you know, where you're dominating someone via cam. Um, and people started to ask me if I could dominate their computers. 

 

SRUTHI: Are the- is that the words they use, like dominate my computer?

 

HARLEY: Yeah. Dominate my computer, take over my computer, lock down my computer, install parental controls on my computer. These were the kind of requests I was starting to get. To take remote control of people’s devices in order to dominate them in a BDSM context.

 

SRUTHI: So when you first started doing this and the first time somebody asked you to like, “OK like dominate my computer.” Like what did you think?

 

HARLEY: Oh I thought it was the most boring thing in the world. Like, so my background is computers and IT, I worked in the game industry for many years and I have a Masters in Library Science and Information Technology—

 

SRUTHI: Library science? Wow. OK.

 

HARLEY: Yes, yes. So, having come from a technical background, to me it felt like being an I.T. person again where it's like oh this system thinks that my parental control software is malware. Now I have to disable your antivirus. Now I—

 

SRUTHI: You're actually like you have to do a bunch of tech support things? Just to like—

 

HARLEY: Absolutely. So the actual act of taking over a computer I think is really boring. But then once you have someone under your control, like for me that's when the fun part begins. I have made people like install Nest cameras in their house so I can watch them 24/7. Uh, I’ve put a keyloggers on their computers so I can get all of their passwords and logins for every website—

 

SRUTHI: Uh huh.

 

HARLEY:  —they go to, I get banking information. I get their email I get all their contacts. You know I'll transfer files to myself and I'll tell them that, “Hey, oh I found your tax return. I'm just going to take that. Oh here's your resume, I'll just take a copy of that as well. And then the more fear that they have. I call this like the fear boner, the bigger the fear boner is, like then the more exciting all of this is. And now that they're thinking about like, “Oh my God, Mistress Harley knows where I work, and she's got my mom's phone number, and if I don't do what she says, then things are going to get really really bad.” And um, it kind of puts them into that state where they're super obedient and super submissive.

 

SRUTHI: I guess I'm wondering like what kind of person will be into this and why. Like is it a really powerful person or even like tech savvy person? Like what, what person is like, “I want my computer to be taken over”?

 

HARLEY: I do think tech savvy people find it intriguing, but ultimately I really think it's people who crave this real life domination, but from a distance. So a lot of my uh submissives, they've never even spoken to me on the phone like you're speaking to right now. They've never met in person. At best they've seen pictures and videos of me.

 

Um, but what they really want, you know, they don't want to have like a phone sex dominatrix relationship, where they call and I'm like, "Yeah I'm going to make you do stuff," and then you hang up the phone and now your fantasy is over.

 

SRUTHI: Mhmm.

 

HARLEY: This is literally the translation of your fantasy into reality, because now I can see your Facebook, I can see your LinkedIn, I can see your email. There are no secrets, and it’s a really really intimate experience without ever having to shake my hand. 

 

SRUTHI: Uh huh. And like what does your day look like? 

 

HARLEY: I wake up whenever I wake up, so usually between 10:00 a.m. to noon. I check my emails.Usually sitting in my emails when I wake up is two to three hundred dollars that people have owed me. You know, they know they owe me this money, and so they pay me. And so when I wake up, there's this money sitting there waiting for me. And so I think, “Ok, that's nice.” And then I make a cup of tea and I have- my husband is a homemaker. So he makes me all my meals and stuff, so he makes me breakfast and then— 

 

SRUTHI: I mean can I just say: Of course he makes you breakfast.

 

HARLEY: Of course he makes me breakfast.

 

SRUTHI: Okay, alright.

 

HARLEY: Um, so, after I’ve checked my emails, I turn on my phone lines, and so my submissives can call me. And it's a minimum of five dollars a minute to speak to me on the phone. Although depending on where you live, like I have a lot of slaves in Germany and they—

 

SRUTHI: Oh come on now. That is amazing. In Germany?!

 

HARLEY: Oh I have slaves everywhere. I have slaves in Kuwait, I have slaves in Germany, I've got slaves all over America and the UK. Oh my god, guys in the Middle East and places that are sexually repressed, they love me. And they love computer takeover, because it's like this real way they can interact with a dominatrix.

 

SRUTHI: Uh huh.

 

HARLEY: So let's say Mohammad, living in Kuwait, he finds my website, and he sends me an email and says, “Mistress Harley, I love the idea of being controlled by a strong powerful woman. Can I book a computer session with you?” And then I would say, “Yes. Booking a computer session is 100 dollars. Go to my website MistressHarley.com. Pay me, and then we will set up a time for the session, if it's not immediate.”

 

And then he would give me... whatever remote desktop sharing software he's using, he would give me the login information for that. We would discuss limits. You know, if he says, “Look you can do anything you want, but do not email my wife.” Like, ok. Great. 

 

SRUTHI: Got it. 

 

HARLEY: Now I know. I won't email your wife. And then once we start, it's like any BDSM play session where now we've negotiated. So now I'm not going to be polite anymore. And now I'm to do whatever I want, within the realms of what we discussed. The guy I’m thinking of in particular who I'm thinking of, who is Mohammed from Kuwait, uh, he likes to be exposed. And so when I go on his computer, I open up his camera on his computer and start taking pictures and videos of him. And then, I start posting those pictures and videos to my Twitter where I have like 50,000 followers. Or I might post them on my Loser Hall of Shame on my website. And then, you know, now his computer is locked down, and he is exposed. And this is all very exciting to him.

 

SRUTHI: So when you say he's excited, like how is he showing it?

 

HARLEY: Oh I mean, usually there's a little text chat in the corner, where he's like “Oh my god! What are you doing?” And me like, “Oh well I'm- You didn't say I couldn't go on your Facebook. And so now I'm in your Facebook, and now I see all your friends, and now I see where you work.” And “Oh my god this is so- this is so- you're so powerful. You’re- this is so exciting.” They'll say to me. And I'm like, “Yeah, of course I'm very powerful. I own all your shit now.”

 

You know it's just like ransomware, except the ransomware is consensual, because people ask for it.

 

SRUTHI: And it's legal? Right?

 

HARLEY: Well there is nothing illegal about inviting someone to install software on your computer, and them doing that. I liken it to, like, if I broke into your house and stole your television, that's a crime. But if you open the door, and you tell me to come take your TV, there is no crime. (laughs)

 

SRUTHI: Mmhm. Yeah. And I'm just curious if there's cases like, where you feel sorry for the person, or something happens that makes you feel like, “Oh this is like not good or healthy in this particular situation.”

 

HARLEY: Well I’ve always said if I ever see child porn or something on someone’s computer I would immediately inform the police. There are definitely those cases where I think people are unstable. I feel the most sorry for people with obvious gender dysmorphia who do not have the kind of therapeutic help that they might need in order to determine that. One of the common requests with computer control is for feminization. If I take over your computer, I can force you to feminize yourself to be more like a girl instead of a boy. 

 

SRUTHI: Yeah.

 

HARLEY: But then, of course, like these things do have real life consequences. And I've definitely had some submissives, like, kind of get all the way up to a point where they were starting to talk about fully transitioning into being a woman, and then um they really freak out. And you know get really upset, and start talking about you know hurting themselves, or you know just not knowing what to do. And I always, at that point, I always tell them, "Look I am a dominatrix. I'm not a mental health professional. You know you need to talk to a therapist about these feelings." And I have, I've sent a lot of clients to therapy So these relationships, especially the long term ones, they do turn into real relationships. 

 

SRUTHI: And like, what do you get out of it?

 

HARLEY: I mean, besides like, being paid twice as much as I got paid to go to an office?

 

SRUTHI: Yeah.

 

HARLEY: Um, you know, I live a completely autonomous and independent life. I sleep when I want, I don't have a boss, I make men support my lifestyle, And now, I have all these slave machines that have to pay me all the time.

 

SRUTHI: You have a good life, Harley.

 

HARLEY: You know, I really do. I don't hate to brag, uh, obviously. (laughs)