Women Have Always Looked Out for One Another. It's Never Been Risk-Free.
But calling out bad behavior usually entails some risk of retaliation. So when thousands of user-submitted images — including photos of users' ID cards — were hacked and circulated online, women were handed a sharp reminder of the personal risks of participating in a familiar practice: protecting other women from cheaters and abusers.
Women have always relied on their friends for details about the men they've dated. Could a data breach, threats of lawsuits and growing outrage be enough to thwart this age-old practice online?
The internet boom of the early 2000s enabled women to amplify what had previously been informal whisper networks among girlfriends. Almost overnight, one woman was able to warn hundreds of others about certain men in an area, or she could seek information about men she was considering going on a date with. Two decades later, the practice has expanded into anonymous forums, apps and even spreadsheets that are shared across the internet.
'Are We Dating the Same Guy?' Facebook groups, in which women expose men while sharing stories of infidelity and abuse, exist in hundreds of cities around the world. And content creators on #DatingTok delight in sharing details of their failed dates, sometimes even going so far as naming the men in question. One of the more famous public pile-ons came in 2022, when a 25-year-old man nicknamed 'West Elm Caleb' was accused by several women on TikTok of love-bombing them.
Some of these networks focused on specific industries, like the 2017 crowdsourced spreadsheet that allowed women to anonymously accuse men in the media industry of sexual misconduct. In a matter of hours, dozens of names were added, some prominent, with the claims ranging from 'weird lunch dates' to accusations of sexual assault and stalking.
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