Fighting back against “creep-shot” culture, cyber-vigilantes are now “naming and shaming” men who take photographs of women..and in some cases under-age girls…solely to ogle and pass around on the Internet, reports Jezebel.
Yes, that Jezebel, the magazine that published the “no-kiss-but-plenty-of-tell” account of a supposed encounter between some John Q. Trashbag and conservative politician and continence advocate Christine 0’Donnell, an account that was so vile that even left-wing magazines that mainline manure for a living managed to wrinkle their noses.
“One afternoon in late September, Coweta County Sheriff Investigator Jason Fetner asked Christopher Bailey, a 35-year-old substitute teacher at East Coweta High, to meet with him regarding a school theft. But when Bailey arrived, Fetner told him the real reason for their meeting: he knew that Bailey had been posting photos of his students — “Hot senior girl in one of my classes,” read one charming caption — on the subreddit r/CreepShots, some of which had been viewed thousands of times.
Most of Bailey’s CreepShots contributions were relatively “innocent” (for example, you couldn’t see the senior girl’s underwear) and therefore legal, but the content Fetner subsequently found on Bailey’s cellphone — including multiple texts and nude photos that he sent to girls as young as 16 — were not, and police are now pursuing charges. But how did Fetner know that the substitute teacher with a clean record was a secret sexual predator? Thanks to a tip from a group of anonymous Redditors who are sick of seeing the CreepShots community gleefully post teen upskirt photo after teen upskirt photo while telling the “internet morality police” to “fuck off” and stop ruining their fun.
Fetner told us that the tipster’s anonymity made it extremely difficult for him to convince a judge to sign a search warrant for Bailey — it took “several hours of arguing” before he conceded — but that he sees no real alternative for the time being. “In my personal opinion, not all speech deserves to be protected,” he said. “But until the laws in this country catch up to technology, we’re going to continue to see these types of problems. There’s nothing wrong with people looking out for this sort of thing and taking legal efforts to do something about it.”
One of the leaders of these “people” is Samantha*, a 25-year-old Redditor who recently launched Predditors, a collection of incriminating personal information — photos, social media accounts, screencaps of CreepShots posts — that she plans on using to “out” Redditors whom she considers sexual predators. One day, she hopes, the site will allow users to report men to a select group of moderators, who will then investigate and verify claims and report the worst offenders to the appropriate local authorities.”