Link: https://www.wired.com/story/burnerverse-maddie-kowalski/

Over the next 24 hours, Kowalski sat paralyzed on her couch as anonymous people on the internet endlessly harassed her; they posted her old photos, her dad’s LinkedIn, and even his golf handicap. They called and texted her parents all through the night, saying things like, “I gave your daughter drugs and fucked her”; one anonymous man told Kowalski’s father he’d had sex with her and had since tested positive for HIV while playing the call live on Spaces, X’s live chat feature. Another posted on X placing bets on whether, by the end of the coming week, she’d start an OnlyFans or kill herself.

Kowalski called her best friend, Lexie Blake, who was then a sophomore at the University of Mississippi. She “wasn’t even really saying words,” Blake recounts. “She was just sobbing, hysterical.” When Kowalski’s father showed up at her apartment, she was too humiliated to face him. She tried to jump out of her fifth-floor window.

By Monday afternoon, #Maddiekowalski was trending on X nationwide, with more than 1,200 posts using the hashtag. Content about her—much of it showing her incapacitated, naked, and engaging in sex acts—had been viewed more than 8.5 million times.

Kowalski had heard about this happening to other college girls before; one of them, a University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) student named Mary Kate Cornett, had been doxed in the same way nine months prior. These campaigns were the work of the burnerverse (or “beev,” or “BV”), a loosely connected network of anonymous “burner” accounts on X, mostly operated by students and alumni, with the primary purpose of discussing college sports.

But Kowalski was learning in real time that, outside of talking shit about athletes and posting photos of crushed red Solo cups, this faceless corner of the internet has another mission: destroying the lives of young women.

But the most surefire way to go viral is to dox stereotypically attractive young women like Kowalski—even better if they’ve transgressed sexual norms in some way. There’s a sense that the health and vibrancy of the community is contingent on the sexual humiliation of women. “Feels like the beev is slowly dying,” one tweet from this past May reads. “We need another college girl to get exposed for a revival.” Another: “Feels like a national holiday every time a new whore gets exposed on the BV.”

Sickening.

Appaling. And of course, the cesspool that is X would be the enabler of all this.

Nothing new under the sun, as they say. Frats and jocks being assholes to everybody, getting away with it.

The coordinated anonymous online harassment campaign specifically targeting young women is rather new.

Online is new. But that’s it.

Online is a powerful tool for these types of predators to help spread these types of harassment.

Why are you downplaying this?

You're kidding right? This has been a thing for more than a decade!

What burns my ass is that every thing we do online is monitored and tracked at such a granular level, retailers can build a hyper-accurate profile of you off of your digital exhaust.

The NSA collects ALL traffic and dumps it into a hole in their giant data centers.

The police can just skip the warrant and buy your browsing data from data brokers.

So they all know what type of porn you like, what sites you view, what you buy, where you go, when you do it and a million other things--but they can't find a few knuckle dragging cunts who harass strangers? What the FUCK is the point of all the surveillance?!

Oh, that's right, it's not about solving crime or helping people, it's about preserving the current fucked-up power dynamic. Remember this shit the next time you go past a fucking Flock camera. The data will always be used against you, but never to help you.

Not downplaying anything - I’m saying frats are, and have been, an accepted scourge on college campuses forever, and where fratboys and jocks congregate there will be oppression and/or violence against women at least. Usually racism too, but that’s slightly more variable.

Yes, as with everything else social media has made it unfathomably worse, but this isn’t unexpected. Just because they’ve found a novel and more efficient way to be shitheads to everyone doesn’t mean they weren’t before Xitter. They most assuredly were.

One can’t be surprised about this any more than one can be surprised that a baby shot themselves after finding a gun. It happens more now, and we hear about it more now, but it was an inevitable result. Should something be done? Well - yeah. Something should have been done fifty years - 100 years ago.

Edit: Replied to the wrong comment, sorry!

but it was an inevitable result

Why is it inevitable that young women will be harassed and terrorized by men?

Why can't we say something about this? Why can't we work to stop this?

Yeah “new” meaning in the history of assholes on campus. Relatively.

And of course data could be collected and used to punish the perpetrators and prevent future abuses - as it always could have been.

“Good ol’ boys” is also not new. It’s as old as time.

Just because it's not new doesn't mean we shouldn't keep talking about it. We should be bringing attention to this, putting pressure on those in charge to hold these predators accountable.

much of it showing her incapacitated, naked, and engaging in sex acts

That’s a weird way to write ‘getting raped’

This is fucking gross.

Why? Because parents do the best they can and many are not very good. Because many social institutions tend to treat young men as a powerful force to be wielded, and that’s about it. Because football, trucks, meat, and alcohol define so many places. Because we have nothing transcendental to believe in together as a society.

We can and are doing something about this but the root of this story is exactly what I first said. Nothing new under the sun. Where did all these ICE assholes come from? A Venn diagram would overlap considerably with frats and jocks, i’m sure. Patriarchy is a bitch.

Absolutely.

‘getting taped’

Not sure if typo or weird form of censorship.

What do you think it does to shrug your shoulders and say "it's always been like this"?

Depaywalled

Videotaped.

Oh ... didn't even think of that meaning.

Whose shrugging? I’m agreeing!

THIS IS A VERY GOOD ARTICLE AND AN IMPORTANT ISSUE FOR EVERYONE.

Nothing new under the sun, as they say. Frats and jocks being assholes to everybody, getting away with it.

Your first comment set a tone of dismissiveness. That's why the reaction.

It’s dismissive that anyone expecting more from frats or the manosphere should seriously adjust that expectation. Whatever percieved good they may do does not support maintaining them.

anyone expecting more from frats or the manosphere should seriously adjust that expectation.

We can expect men to do better.

And have been. For a very long time.

I have an honest question here. What can be done about this? Maybe I'm being idealistic here, but there are lots of groups out there that that catch scammers, predators, etc. People that target victims in this way are a similar level of garbage. Is this considered to be revenge porn or something similar? The calling and harassing is a crime, but it will probably never have a resolution.

Penalize the social media platforms that enable the behavior.

What had been a piece of salacious on-campus gossip, transmitted via anonymous social media and group texts, was now a national story. X removed the post containing the video, but late the following day, @SteveCumfull posted it again. Then they posted a screenshot of a cryptocurrency token they’d bought with Kowalski’s name on it, with a market cap of $11,400. “Put your children’s college savings into this,” they tweeted. @SteveCumfull could have been anyone: a close friend, a neighbor, a mutual with an axe to grind. Whoever they were, they now appeared to be profiting from the worst moment of Kowalski’s life.

X allowed the same account to repost the video. This user was allowed to profit from the videos.

These campaigns were the work of the burnerverse (or “beev,” or “BV”), a loosely connected network of anonymous “burner” accounts on X, mostly operated by students and alumni, with the primary purpose of discussing college sports.

"Mostly operated by students and alumni" We could start holding those people accountable.

The women targeted by the burnerverse were private citizens before their names, rumors, explicit images, or videos went viral. WIRED has identified 10 women who have been doxed by the burnerverse, most of whom were between the ages of 18 and 21. The virality follows a specific pattern: salacious gossip about a college girl’s sex life, or nude photos and videos of her, make their way to YikYak or Snapchat before being disseminated by burner accounts on public social media platforms. Sometimes, the content has even made national news, with aggregation websites like TheSportsGrail or Barstool Sports employees amplifying the victim’s humiliation.

TheSportsGrail and Barstool Sports could stop amplifying these harassment campaigns.

There’s also evidence that some college sports athletics departments are aware of the burners and even maintain cordial, semi-symbiotic relationships with them, akin to the dynamic between a brand and an influencer account. According to McCarthy’s piece, one prominent MSU burner account alleged that the school invited burners to an event unveiling the football team’s new alternate uniforms. Athletics staffers would even send him photos of meetings with potential recruits: “It was like, ‘Wink, wink, nod, nod, if you want to post these pictures, feel free to do so,’” they said in the report. (A top official at MSU told McCarthy that this was not “part of athletic department strategies.”)

The colleges could stop building symbiotic relationships with these communities.

Many burners are run by school alumni or casual fans, but a non-negligible number of them are associated with fraternities, as evidenced by the photos of Greek events they post or the affiliation in their bios. Blake, who is involved in Greek life at Ole Miss, says it’s an open secret on campus that potential new members are strongly encouraged to create burner accounts in order to pledge. (Ole Miss did not respond to a request for comment.) These are “guys who would buy you a drink, who’d take you out on a date, who are your little brothers or your best friend or your boyfriend,” she says. “It could literally be anybody. It’s not mean or troubled guys doing it, or guys who need validation. It’s guys with wealthy families and support systems and college educations.”

We could stop pushing new members to participate in these harassment communities.

Almost immediately after the video leaked, Kowalski reported the harassment to campus police. They assured her they would launch an investigation, then handed it off to the Gainesville Police Department. She says UF administrators also promised to launch an investigation into how the content spread. According to Kowalski, though, they told her that unless the police filed charges, the administration couldn’t take any action against students.

The police could take these crimes seriously.

In early August, however, I received a text from Kowalski: After nine months, the Gainesville police had charged Gomberg, Ahmed, and Pitfield with sexual cyber-harassment, a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine. Additionally, Ahmed has been charged with a third-degree felony: sexually cyber-harassing for financial gain. Per a sworn complaint from the Gainesville Police Department, Ahmed and Pitfield used university IP addresses to access their burner accounts—an allegation that was maddening to Kowalski, as UF had told her they dropped the Title IX investigation because the video was shot off campus.

Kowalski has also brought civil lawsuits in the Northern District of Florida against all three men, alleging sexual cyber-harassment and asking for financial damages.

We can and should prosecute these predators. It's possible. We need to hold everyone here accountable for assuming that these young women aren't worth protecting.

A full criminal investigation. There’s gotta be at least one of those accounts that’s traceable. Get one and turn the screws to get more.

Weird way of writing ‘raped’

Combine it with the even worse cesspool of southern frats and you get one of the most toxic corner of the internet imaginable.

revenge porn or something similar

According to her she did not know the original poster

Kowalski had assumed that the burner accounts sharing her video were UF students—people she knew personally. From what she learned through police charging documents, she was half right. According to affidavits obtained by WIRED, the @SteveCumfull account was allegedly linked to a 19-year-old named Kamran Ahmed, a first-year UF student from Tampa who was a member of Theta Chi. Kowalski says she had never met Ahmed and had no idea who he was.

Looks like they are pressing charges which is good

After nine months, the Gainesville police had charged Gomberg, Ahmed, and Pitfield with sexual cyber-harassment, a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine. Additionally, Ahmed has been charged with a third-degree felony: sexually cyber-harassing for financial gain. Per a sworn complaint from the Gainesville Police Department, Ahmed and Pitfield used university IP addresses to access their burner accounts—an allegation that was maddening to Kowalski, as UF had told her they dropped the Title IX investigation because the video was shot off campus.
Kowalski has also brought civil lawsuits in the Northern District of Florida against all three men, alleging sexual cyber-harassment and asking for financial damages.

Can we just ban all fraternities in the south, nothing of value will be lost.

You again :)

This is why censorship is bad.

Seems the OC edited their comment and it was indeed rape. I mean incapacitated + engaging in sex acts ... that's rape.

I’m not sure it’s censorship so much as it’s an old-fashioned way of referring to recording video.

Frats in general tbh. I'm not from the US so I can't speak to that, but in my country they suck everywhere. There's always this cult vibe to them and they're rife with sexism and elitism. They tend to get away with shit too because they often have rich parents

Because they all fail upwards and end up running the world. It's a cycle

Ah thank you for correcting the article, she did not get raped just filmed on video tape

I'm not claiming she wasn't raped.

Those may be exclusive commas not inclusive. It all sucks regardless, but it may be videos of her unclothed, others of her intoxicated, and still more of her willingly having sex and being taped. Who knows, it doesn't change much overall about how awful this is.

Edit: Maddie Kowalski was a 19-year-old University of Florida student when an intimate video that she alleges was recorded and distributed without her consent exploded across social media, turning her private life into a target for thousands of strangers.

Video doesn't seem to have been taken with her consent, just keeps getting worse

4B

I was really hoping got to work was in the "Don't fuck with cats" way not let's make the worst moment in this girl's life worse way.

?

X allowed the same account to repost the video. This user was allowed to profit from the videos.

Sounds like Elon Musk's platform is the most culpable party here, since they enabled, multiplied and monetized the suffering caused. Algorithmic social media should probably be banned. Even this platform's upvote/downvote based algorithm is borderline. Posts should just be shown in chronological order.

The 4B movement is a feminist movement originating in South Korea that encourages women to reject heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating, and sex with men

Let’s not give the university a pass here. They’re very much involved in fostering this type of crime and they did nothing to protect these women either.