AS THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR PLOTS HIS COMEBACK AMID SEXUAL ASSAULT CLAIMS, the Internet is convinced that he’s secretly authoring an anonymous Substack he credits with absolving him. (Spoiler: He isn’t. But I tracked down the real author—who is almost as enigmatic.)
“Thank you,” Gaiman wrote on his website Monday, breaking a year-long silence.
While the post was framed as an announcement for his next project—”the biggest thing” he’d done since American Gods—it served primarily as a defence against sexual assault allegations from nine women. In it, Gaiman dismissed their claims as “completely and simply untrue,” blasting the media as an “echo chamber” while directing readers to the “meticulous” reporting of an anonymous Substack writer, “TechnoPathology.”
In Gaiman’s own words:
“I was a journalist once, and I have enormous respect for journalists, so I’ve been hugely heartened by the meticulous fact and evidence-based investigative writing of one particular journalist, whom some of you recently brought to my attention, who writes under the name of TechnoPathology.
I’ve had no contact with TechnoPathology. But I’d like to thank them personally for actually looking at the evidence and reporting what they found, which is not what anyone else had done.
If you are curious about what they’ve uncovered so far, this clickable link takes you to really good investigative reporting: https://TechnoPathology.substack.com/p/neil-gaiman-is-innocent-introduction“
Follow Gaiman’s instructions and you’ll find an archive dedicated to one mission: discrediting his accusers. At over 41 posts and roughly 96,000 words, the Substack frames the allegations as a coordinated campaign by anti-Semites and radical feminists. Among its primary targets is Scarlett Pavlovich. A former nanny to Gaiman and his ex-wife, musician Amanda Palmer, Pavlovich alleges Gaiman assaulted her at his residence on Waiheke Island just hours after she arrived to babysit.
(You can read Pavlovich’s account—alongside allegations from other women—in detail via New York Magazine’s exposé by clicking here.)
Gaiman’s post catapulted TechnoPathology into the mainstream press, drawing scrutiny from Variety, the LA Times, and Vulture. The latter was quick to highlight the strangeness of the move, noting that Gaiman had “linked out to an anonymously written Substack arguing on behalf of the author’s innocence”—an odd inclusion “nestled between his denial of the allegations and update on his creative life.”
Elsewhere, the internet swarmed with speculation that TechnoPathology might be Gaiman in disguise.
“I can’t be the only one who thinks Neil Gaiman wrote the Substack deep-diving his ‘smear campaign’ himself, right?” thriller novelist Diana Urban wrote on Threads. Her post was one of many across X, Reddit, and Facebook that racked up thousands of likes while dissecting the Substack’s prose for Gaiman-esque flourishes. The prevailing, meme-ready theory was best summed-up by another user: “Anybody else think the Techno whatever substack […] is just three Neil Gaimans in a trench coat?
It’s a compelling theory, but the digital breadcrumbs point elsewhere—to a radical activist turned Buddhist monk-in-training, a career provocateur once known by the moniker “Treeman.”
Meet Chris Court-Dobson.
Co-founder of the alternative media collective Occupy News Network, Court-Dobson cut his teeth as an early writer for The Canary—the insurgent British left-wing site that became a digital powerhouse after its 2015 launch. He converted to Buddhism in 2018, acquiring the Tibetan name Nyma Gyeltsin (meaning “Victory Banner of The Sun”) and today works as a technology and environment journalist for a London-based media company.
As an activist, Court-Dobson was known for his theatrical, front-line style of protest—a veteran of the UK’s radical direct-action scene boasting a 200-hour community service sentence for his role in the 2010 storming of the Conservative Party’s Millbank headquarters. He accrued a slate of media interviews and arrests, and was later dubbed “Treeman” for a last-stand tree climb during the 2012 eviction of the St. Paul’s Occupy camp.
His rap sheet includes criminal charges for allegedly spray-painting “NO DIRTY BAILOUTS” on a Bayer Crop Science building, and a community order banning him from HS2 land plus a £295 fine for taking part in Extinction Rebellion’s “Stop HS2” occupation of Euston Square Gardens. (You can read more about his escapades via his vivid 2012 memoir, Tales of Rebellion, published online under the pseudonym “Donovan Volk.”)
“I’ve been a radical left-wing activist all my life. I don’t know Neil Gaiman. I am also not really familiar with his work” — TechnoPathology, July 11, 2025
I found Court-Dobson by performing a reverse image search of the moderator of TechnoPathology’s official Facebook page, who uses the handle “Azazel Pharmakoi.” The name seemingly combines two figures: Azazel, a demonic “eater of sins” from Gaiman’s The Sandman, and the pharmakos, an ancient Greek scapegoat that was sacrificed in order to purify a community. Intentionally or not, the handle functions as a mission statement: devouring Gaiman’s “sins” even as it casts him as a persecuted martyr.
By his own admission, Court-Dobson wasn’t even a fan of Gaiman’s work before 2025. So what compels a man with no prior interest in an author’s bibliography to suddenly devote so much time and energy to his defence? While Gaiman in his Monday post claimed to have “no contact” with TechnoPathology, further investigation suggests the distance between Court-Dobson and Gaiman is more of a cozy hop than a leap.
In 2019, shortly after Court-Dobson was arrested and charged for his role in the Extinction Rebellion protests, Gaiman and his then-wife, Dresden Dolls frontwoman Amanda Palmer, were giving the movement their star power. That October, the couple signed an open letter defending Extinction Rebellion—then facing a nationwide ban—and sat for an exclusive interview with the movement’s official newspaper, The Hourglass.
In it, Gaiman voiced strong support for the group’s tactics, stating, “I think that civil disobedience gets attention, has worked many times in the past. It can change minds.” Palmer, meanwhile, said she was taking a more active role. While promoting a “special event” in London, she urged her followers to study the group’s safety guidelines. When asked if she was prepared to be arrested alongside the activists, she replied: “Yes.”
I have questions: If Technopathology isn’t a fan of Gaiman’s work, what compelled him to dedicate 96,000 words to his defence? Do they in fact know each other, even though they claim not to? And was Court-Dobson ever recruited to handle Gaiman’s PR—either as a paid consultant or an unpaid surrogate? (In 2024, Gaiman hired crisis management firm Edendale Strategies, who defended Marilyn Manson and Ezra Miller against similar accusations, per The Bookseller).
When I sent these questions to the email address listed on TechnoPathology’s Substack, the author replied with an offer to provide a later comment, but noted:
“At the minute I’m a bit snowed under, blown away by the positive response and all the words of thanks coming in […] Attention is certainly going to stay on this subject for the rest of the week.”
I have asked Gaiman for comment and will update this post if and when I hear back, including any additional comments from Court-Dobson. For now, the Internet is left to wonder: is TechnoPathology the “meticulous” work of an independent investigator, or a coordinated defence by a longtime ideological ally?
The answer, much like the Substack’s author, remains carefully obscured.
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