There Are No Girls on the Internet - Uvalde school shooter had a history of threatening girls online

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

We don’t take online threats against women and girls seriously and it has big consequences  https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/28/uvalde-texas-gunman-online-threats/   Join our newsletter: Tangoti.com/newsletter Want to support the show? (thank you!) Subscribe, tell a friend, leave a review, or buy some merch at There Are No Girls on the Internet’s store: TANGOTI.COM/STORE Say hello at [e-mail] See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just a heads up, this episode talks about school shootings, harassment, and violence. When we fail to create the expectation of safety for women and girls on social media, and when we fail to meaningfully listen to them when they speak up about what they're experiencing online, we make everyone, all of us, less safe and more at risk. There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. So this is going to be a little bit of a different kind of episode because, frankly, I'm in a little bit of a different kind of headspace.

Here in the United States, we have had the last few weeks of news that was just brutal. You know, we were just processing a pretty intense series of racially motivated shootings in Buffalo in California. And last week, another shooting this time in Texas. where 21 people, mostly kids at an elementary school, were shot. And, you know, I had a situation where I thought I wasn't going to talk about this shooting on the podcast because it was just too much and too dark. And frankly, I just really felt like I couldn't. But over the weekend, news broke that really shed some light into the online behavior of the perpetrator of this shooting.

And I think it is critically important to just talk to y'all because if, It really underscores the drum I have been beating on this podcast for a very long time. And that is, we are ignoring women and girls when they speak up and share experiences of harassment and violent threats online. We are telling them it doesn't matter. We are acting like it doesn't matter. And we're all becoming less safe because of it. So some of you all might not know this, but I first got the idea for there are no girls on the internet while covering the Marjorie Douglas school shooting for this podcast they used to be on called Stuff Bonne Never Told You back in 2018. So in that shooting, the gunman, who was then 19-year-old Nicholas Cruz, shot and killed 17 of his classmates.

And according to people who knew him, nobody was surprised to find this out. Like he was the kind of student where nobody was surprised that he would do this kind of thing. And he actually left a digital paper trail full of online abuse, violence, racism, and harassment. According to CNN, on social media, he hurled racial slurs at black folks, Muslims, and according to the Anti-Defamation League, he had ties to white supremacists. And he said pretty openly online that he planned to shoot people with an AR-15. He also harassed young women and girls in his life digitally. The Miami Herald reported that Nicholas Cruz harassed a young girl who lived near his work,

obsessively texting her and calling her non-stop in the weeks leading up to the shooting. The girl was also referenced in a video that he made on his phone right before the shooting. He said, my love for you will never go away. topping off a droning speech about loneliness, anger, and isolation, saying, I hope to see you in the afterlife. Now, this girl reported that she was afraid of him and did not reciprocate those feelings. So, you know, I got to thinking that oftentimes we have these big national instances of mass violence. And they have things like misogyny at the heart of them. And it is really important that that not go overlooked.

And I remember researching the shooting and thinking, what would it look like if we had a culture that actually takes the kinds of online harassment against women and girls like this seriously? What would it look like if it wasn't just treated as, you know, boys being boys online or jokes or something like that? But rather, what if we treated this kind of thing as a serious red flag that everybody should be concerned about? Because it is a red flag. So the data is super clear that perpetrators of mass shootings in modern America overwhelmingly have a history of domestic abuse or mass violence. behavior. And we see this again and again and again. You know, for instance, men like Gerard Ramos, who repeatedly threatened his former school classmates over both email and social media to the point

where one of his targets actually moved because she felt so unsafe. He would also use Twitter to attack journalists at the Capitol Gazette over an article that they wrote covering criminal proceedings against him, as well as the judge presiding over that case. And this campaign of online harassment eventually led to a deadly shooting in Annapolis, Maryland, that left five people at the Capitol Gazette dead, or men like Elliot Roger, who uploaded several YouTube videos railing against women and girls, before an attack that would leave six people dead. And according to the International Center of Research on Women, while we know that many perpetrators of mass violence have a history of violence against women, it is also becoming increasingly clear that online gender-based violence specifically is a precursor to violence carried out offline.

And that's really the problem. Having a culture that doesn't treat online harassment and violence and threat against women and girls as serious and not actually listening to us when we speak up is dangerous. And especially as all of us, especially younger people, are showing up more and more in online spaces. What happens in those spaces really matters, both online and off. I am so sick of women and girls being a canary in the coal mine about violent acts,

and I'm sick of hearing this story again and again and again, where if only somebody had listened to women, or taken the online harassment and threats against them seriously, maybe things would be different. Sources tell ABC News the gunman was inside the school for 77 gut-wrenching minutes before a tactical team defied local authorities and entered the school. So by now, you've heard of the latest tragedy in Uvaldi, Texas,

where Salvador Ramose entered an elementary school and went on a rampage that left 21 people dead. So we are rightly having a big conversation about the police response to this shooting. You know, why they didn't enter the school and stop him sooner, and why they didn't respond as these children begged for help. But another emerging narrative also asked a compelling question. Why didn't anybody respond when people on social media reported the shooter's violent, harassing, misogynistic, and dangerous social media posts before the shooting?

Why were they not taken seriously? And what might be different if they had been? Now, in new reporting from the Washington Post, women and girls report that Ramos repeatedly threatened and harassed them on social media. Now, these women rarely reported him because the threats seem really vague, but one teen who reported Ramos on the social media app, Yubo, said that even after he reported him, nothing happened. A 16-year-old boy in Austin said that he regularly saw Ramos on panels on the social networking app, Yubo, and he said that he frequently made aggressive sexual comments to young women and sent him him. a death threat in January. Here's what he had to say. I witnessed him harassed girls and threatened them with sexual assault, like rape and kidnapping. It was not like a single occurrence. It was frequent, he said. He and his friends reported Ramos' account to Yubo for bullying and other infractions

dozens of times, and he says he never heard back, and his account remained active. But it's also worth pointing out that it really seems like the threats that he made online didn't really stand out as anything notable or out of the ordinary, because it's kind of just how people expect the internet to be for women and girls. And this reveals a real danger in how our culture minimizes what happens to women and girls on social media platforms. Basically, we're told that this is just how it is on the internet. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guest from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's

Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming, music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

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I'm just going to remind you. I have watched some Survivor. I obviously haven't watched enough. Did people not like it? Like, what was just because we? Yeah. We'll be recapping the big conclusion in the 50th season, from the final attempts at gameplay, to the desperate pleas of finalists,

to a bunch of ha, who, ha, who, ha, who. Again, we are experts. So make sure to tune into PodMeets Twirled for all our Survivor 50 takes. Listen to PodMeets Twirled on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast, and for Mental Health Awareness Month, We're dedicating a series to understanding the mind when it struggles. I'm joined by doctors, researchers, and those with lived experience. We'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car, and then my car got stolen.

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radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. We have completely normalized online violence and threats and harassment, to the point of it just being the cost of being a woman on the internet. Women and girls are not able to show up online with the expectation of safety, care, and respect. So the Washington Post goes on to say that many suspected that this was just how teen boys talked on the internet these days.

A blend of rage and misogyny so predictable they could barely tell. each one apart. One girl, the post reports, discussing moments where Ramose had been creepy and threatening to her, said, quote, this is just how online is. And it breaks my heart to say that that is kind of accurate. A 2021 Pew Research Center study found that experiences like harassment, violent threats, and the like are really common for young people with about two-thirds of adults under 30 reporting that they've experienced that kind of harassment. 33% of women under 35, say they've been sexually harassed online. They spoke to Daniel K. Satrone,

a law professor at the University of Virginia, who said that women and girls often don't report threats of rape to law enforcement or trusted adults because they've just been socialized to feel that they do not deserve safety and privacy online. Or if they do report it, they don't feel that anything will be done

because people don't take it seriously. And I really get that. You know, what will be the point about talking about this kind of thing or reporting it if people are just going to ignore you or not take it seriously. Or you've just been socialized that receiving violent harassment and threats is a normal part of you going online

because you're a woman or a girl and that shouldn't you just get used to it? So I know a little bit about this firsthand. Quite a few years ago, I was on the receiving end of some pretty nasty online harassment. And, you know, I had that same kind of mentality that this is just the cost for being a woman

who shows up online to express herself and express her people. And I really compartmentalized it. I didn't report it. I just sort of moved on with my life and just thought this was how I had to show up. I had to get used to this if I was going to show up online as a woman with something to say. And it wasn't until the threats got really specific and scary that this changed for me. So I used to live right next door to a bar in my city in D.C.

And this was kind of my hangout spot. And I posted a lot on social media about how I was always at this bar and how I was I was so lucky to live so close to it. And one day, this person who had been harassing me for weeks sent me a screenshot from Google Maps showing my apartment next to this bar. He'd obviously used the information that I put out to do this, telling me he was coming for me. And this really was a little bit different for me, right?

I had gone from all of these unspecific kind of vague threats that I could kind of compartmentalize and file away and not think of them as a job. direct threat. But here was someone making a show of telling me that he knew exactly where I lived, right? Essentially a screenshot of my bedroom window. And it was really scary. This was a new thing. So I contacted law enforcement and a law enforcement official came to my home and we talked about it. And essentially, the advice that he gave me was that I should delete my social media profiles and that I should not go online and that then the harassment would stop. There was no need to take any kind of action in real life, that this was just an online thing that could be solved by shutting

my laptop. And, you know, I found that response to be so frustrating for a lot of reasons. First of all, telling me that I should delete my social media profiles and just not show up online at that point in my career and in my life was essentially telling me to get a new career. You know, at the time, I was trying to be a journalist, a reporter, somebody who had a public opinion, the same way that I do on my podcast now. And so telling me that I just needed to shut all of that down if I wanted these threats to stop was essentially telling me that I needed to get a new career. And that didn't seem fair, right? It made it seem like that was just the cost of being a woman online, and if I didn't like it, I could log off. And it also underscored this really kind of

backward way of thinking that suggests that what happens to us online has nothing to do with what happens to us in the real world. You know, that all I had to do was shut my laptop and my problem would be solved. And we know that's not true. We know that what happens online bleeds into what happens offline and vice versa. You know, these worlds that we used to think of as a binary are increasingly blurred, especially for younger people. And this 50-year-old white man who was investigating this threat against me barely understood that, let alone took it seriously. And I'm actually glad that we're in a place where I think we're starting to have a shared understanding that the real world and the online world are one and the same. Because that's the way

it is. And that should really come with normalizing safer experiences for all of us online. Because when we fail to create the expectation of safety for women and girls on social media, and when we fail to meaningfully listen to them when they speak up about what they're experiencing online, we make everyone all of us less safe and more at risk. You know, we create a situation where red flags go missed and perpetrators like Elliot Roger and Salvador Ramos, are left to do more harm. And this does not just have to be the way it is for women and girls online. We deserve to show up with safety and respect online. And we deserve for that to be a normalized cultural expectation because when it isn't, we are all at risk.

Last weekend, protesters pleaded with President Biden to do something about guns in this country. And it is so frustrating that we have to scream and plead for our safety and the safety of our children. I want meaningful action to address the threat that guns posed to our kids in this country. And I also want to create a culture where our kids can expect better, where they know if they speak up about facing violent threats online, someone will listen and take it seriously, because our safety depends on it. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?

You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

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