2 Women Flooded With Hate Over Clip Appearing to Mock Influencer
A TikToker received 33 million views after she filmed two women who appeared to mock her at a baseball game.
Viewers immediately turned against the women, condemning their apparent behavior.
Some have taken it further, trying to track down their identities to post their personal information online.
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Internet users have turned against two women captured in the background of a viral video where they appeared to mock an influencer for taking a selfie while attending a baseball game.
A TikToker who goes by @jackielabonita and has over 258,000 followers on the app posted a video on April 22 which showed her posing for photos in an outdoor seating area at what appeared to be a sports stadium while two women laughed and gestured from two rows behind.
Based on an Instagram post by the influencer and apparel worn by her and others in the audience, the incident appeared to take place at a baseball game at Minute Maid Park, a stadium in Houston, Texas, while the baseball team Houston Astros played.
In the on-screen caption of the upload, the TikToker wrote that her confidence disappeared after two "random girls" could be seen pulling faces behind her, one of whom stuck her middle finger up at the camera and appeared to record the influencer on her own phone and call her "lame."
"Realizing they were talking about me. Feeling super self-conscious. I wanted to cry," text-to-speech audio overlaid on the clip said.
In the video's caption, @jackielabonita wrote "Please be nice," and included the hashtags #meangirls and #meangirlvibes.
The video went mega-viral, receiving over 33 million views.
Although the influencer turned off the comments to the video, multiple users received millions of views after they stitched the upload and shared their own thoughts on the incident.
One user said they were "hurt" at seeing women being "mean" to other women, and described the behavior as "deplorable," while another reassured the influencer that she was beautiful and the two women were in the wrong.
The reaction to the video spilled over onto Twitter too, where it caused a stir. The majority of users supported the TikToker's decision to take photos, and suggested it was unfair to mock her for it, although some thought she shouldn't have posted the video to her large audience, as it led to such backlash toward the women.
Even rapper Cardi B weighed in, telling her 29.5 million followers that she would "put that ring to use," appearing to reference the chunky jewelry the influencer was wearing on her fingers.
Some users took it further and tried to track down and reveal the identities of the women featured in the video, and shared their findings online, in an act known as doxxing. The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication published in March 2020, describes doxxing as a form of "online harassment that breaches perceived privacy boundaries by releasing information through online mass media channels."
One TikTok seen by Insider, which showed a screenshot of a personal Instagram account purportedly belonging to one of the women, was viewed 6.9 million times. Many more users circulated what they believed to be the identities of the women, including details such as where they studied at college, LinkedIn accounts, and businesses where they believed they were employed, prompting internet users to leave a slew of one-star reviews on the company's Yelp page.
Insider reached out to the business identified in several TikToks but was unable to confirm whether either woman worked at the company. Insider was also unable to confirm whether the women identified are in fact the women in the video, and was unable to reach them for comment.
One TikToker appeared to get caught in the doxxing crossfire as she said viewers mistook her for one of the women in the video. The uploader, who goes by @niceuu6, received 1.3 million views when she stitched the TikToker's video on April 23, and wrote in an on-screen caption that she'd received insults for something she didn't do, and asked people in her caption to stop harassing her and her mother.
In a follow-up she said she and her family had received so much abuse she had to private her Instagram account, but people simply took this as proof of her guilt. "You can never win," she said in the video.
Legal repercussions for doxxing can vary from state to state in the US. In 2022, Nevada passed a bill banning the activity and gave victims the opportunity to raise civil action against their doxxer, and in California a person who attempts to put others and their immediate family in danger through doxxing can receive a one-year sentence in a county jail, a fine of up to $1,000, or both, CNN reported.
Social-media users are increasingly prone to siding with a person they perceive to be a victim of bullying behavior, although this sentiment can lead to more severe harassment of the perceived perpetrators.
On March 29, Micah Lussier, a contestant on the Netflix reality show "Love is Blind," wrote in an Instagram statement that she would be turning off her comments to protect her mental health after she was labeled a "mean girl" on the show, sparking a wave of online backlash. Earlier that same month, Selena Gomez said on Instagram that Hailey Bieber told her she had been receiving death threats after a rumored feud between the pair blew up online, and fans of Gomez believed that Bieber was involved in mocking her.
Influencer @jackielabonita posts makeup and clothing hauls on TikTok, and has over 29,000 followers on Instagram. She did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.
Source: Insider
