On April 27th one of the bloggers from “Turtleboy,” a Worcester blog with 500,000 monthy visitors, 10,000 likes on Facebook and almost 2,000 Twitter followers (as well as a significant voice in community dialogue surrounding school violence and local politics), explained that he had been sent screen shots of the student’s Facebook page by a reader. The student made several arguments on her Facebook and Twitter intended for her friends and followers about Baltimore (not addressing the blog). These points are debatable. It is fine to disagree. Turtleboy’s take on them is not the problem.

After the offending posts are shown, the blogger writes “LOL. Here’s what we’re dealing with” and posts 5 of the student’s personal pictures. None of them are incriminating; they are all of her in different outfits smiling at the camera. The blogger goes on:

If that isn’t the face of someone who understands what it’s like to be poor and black in America, then I don’t know what is. She is definitely in a position to call other white people racist. Everyone knows that freshmen in college know WAY more about the world than everyone else.

If the author wanted to make the point that she is white, young, and grew up in a predominantly white area, he could have written it. Instead, he implies that we can tell that she is inexperienced and does not understand the world because of the way she is dressed and looks.

The author goes on to post a completely unrelated tweet that the student made about sex, and writes:

Obviously [the student] is a classy young woman, and as a feminist, she has very specific demands for the kind of guy who appeals to her

He posts a second Tweet from the student about sex, and responds:

I wonder what she wants to be when she grows up? Because kids these days should probably be careful about what they put on the Internet.

Two more unrelated tweets about sex, with the response:

I’m sure tweets like this will help her get into law school

He concludes:

When you go to college you are taught to be a “feministo”. This means that you should cut your hair, neglect your armpits, hate men, and write things online about your never ending search for felatio.

This is public harassment in the name of discrediting a single student’s ideas who had no relation to the blog.



It is clear that the point in posting the student’s tweets is to discredit her ideas and shame her because she is upfront about sex. The authors of a blog with 500,000 views every month chose to subject a single college student to a whole page of shaming and harassment in order to argue for an unrelated point. The blog’s readers then went out of their way to dig up any additional personal details that they could find for the sake of refuting a single student’s personal Facebook posts about Baltimore. The community needs to be aware that this happened, and that the authors are unapologetic about it.

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