Latest news with #DelbertCarver
Fox News
3 days ago
- Fox News
Crypto-coin creator claims responsibility for graphic WNBA trend amid arrests
A self-described cryptocurrency aficionado claimed responsibility for the recent sex toy disturbances at WNBA games, despite two people already being arrested for separate incidents. The anonymous "culprit" spoke to OutKick on Wednesday, the night before a fourth incident occurred in Chicago, and said that they decided to start throwing the objects on the courts because the WNBA was "being forced down our throats." The apparent thrower said there was no intent to harm or injure anybody, but rather, the goal was to make people laugh and promote his newly-created coin – with the help of the online community. An arrest was made in Atlanta earlier this week. However, the anonymous person told Clay Travis that Delbert Carver, the person charged in the incident, was "clout chasing" and not really the original culprit. Carver was booked into Clayton County jail in Georgia on Saturday, about 15 miles away from where the first sex toy-throwing incident occurred last Tuesday. According to ESPN, the police affidavit stated that Carver allegedly told police the incident was "a joke" that was "supposed to go viral" – and it certainly has. Carver was allegedly at the game with friends. "We think either he was clout chasing or the police tricked him. We don't really understand what happened there," the anonymous person said to OutKick, adding that the original thrower was still at large. The WNBA did not immediately respond to requests for comment as to the legitimacy of the group's claim. The league previously stated that anyone who throws objects on the court will face a one-year ban from games. ESPN also interviewed the culprit, who goes by "Lt. Daldo Raine" on X, an ode to Brad Pitt's character in "Inglourious Basterds." In the interview with "Raine," he left his camera off and refused to give his name or age. USA Today first reported the crypto-enthusiast's claims. According to ESPN, posts on the group's Telegram community confirmed inside and prior knowledge of the first incident, discussing it beforehand. "Raine" said Carver was not affiliated with the group. The person told both ESPN and OutKick that four other incidents were planned for Tuesday. One of those incidents involved Sophie Cunningham, two of them did not make it to the court, and the final prankster did not make an attempt. They then told ESPN they were seeking out an MLB game - a woman was seen holding a sex toy behind home plate at the Marlins-Astros game. A fourth adult toy hit a Chicago Sky game on Thursday - it is unknown if it was related to the crypto coin claims.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
The WNBA's sex toy epidemic is Skibidi brainrot writ large. Trolling has replaced meaning with noise
The first dildo dropped from the sky like a glitch in the matrix. For anyone tuned in to the 29 July game between the Atlanta Dream and Golden State Valkyries, the initial reaction was disbelief. In a world where feeds are increasingly AI-generated and algorithmically tuned for confusion, the boundaries between real and unreal have softened into clay. Our senses, once reliable, now compete with simulation. What does it mean when dildos become airborne at WNBA games? Not once, not twice, but repeatedly? Protest? Performance art? Or just another malformed blip in the automated dreamscape we scroll through daily? Two men have been arrested thus far in these grotesque affronts. One was 18, the other 23, part of Gen Z, the prime consumer of debased meme culture. Authorities have not identified suspects in the most recent two dildo-throwing incidents. However, Delbert Carver, a 23-year-old man, was arrested in connection with the first incident during a WNBA game in Atlanta. According to ESPN, Carver may face charges of disorderly conduct, public indecency or indecent exposure and criminal trespass. In an affidavit, he allegedly admitted that the act was 'supposed to be a joke' and intended 'to go viral'. When dildos become airborne at WNBA games more than once, the meaning shifts. It reveals the collapse of coherence under TikTok's attention economy. These aren't protests or insults that make a point. They're spectacles. The goal is to provoke. In a memetic landscape poisoned by irony, absurdity is the point. The dildo isn't symbolic. Its function is noise. Philosopher Guy Debord would be shocked at how on the nose we have become. His work argued we live in a 'society of the spectacle,' where life is mediated through image, and authenticity is replaced by performance. Today, women's sports are doubly mediated, first through the lens of athletic competition, then through the social gaze that still questions their legitimacy. Laura Mulvey's theory of the 'male gaze' further sharpens this: Women, particularly in visual media, are often positioned not as agents but as objects. In this context, female athletes are not merely participants in a game. They're props in someone else's viral moment. The dildo becomes mise-en-scène. But this isn't just theoretical. It's real. So is the disrespect. The dildo is a weaponized farce. It's thrown not just to interrupt but to dominate the narrative, to remind players that their gender, their careers and their stage remain vulnerable to mockery. It stops the game. Hijacks it, even. And reasserts the notion, violent and comical, that women's achievements exist on borrowed time within a culture still conditioned to belittle them. So far, the suspects in these cases are part of Gen Z, a generation raised in and by the internet. Their actions cannot be dismissed as isolated provocations. They must be contextualized within TikTok's cultural logic, or worse, the absurdist ethos of 'Skibidi Toilet'. If you are a normally functioning adult with a job, you might ask, 'What is Skibidi Toilet?' Skibidi Toilet is a viral animated web series featuring surreal, low-resolution battles between human heads protruding from toilets and humanoid characters with surveillance equipment for heads. Glitchy visuals, overstimulating pacing, and meme loops create a vibe without meaning. But to understand these trolls' intentions, and see the direction society is headed, we must contextualize them within TikTok's cultural logic. The garish green dildo mirrors the surreal, low-fi, uncanny aesthetic of Skibidi Toilet or any number of algorithm-fueled meme cycles. The dildo is an anti-symbol. Its meaning is its absurdity. Skibidi brainrot encapsulates a generation fluent in irony but starved for meaning. The dildo is funny not because it says something, but because it says nothing. It's the irrational object breaking into a space of rationality. This kind of hyper-chaotic media serves as both entertainment and an ambient worldview for young men raised online. Their minds normalize prank-as-expression. In this context, throwing a dildo on to the court during a WNBA game isn't just an act of crude rebellion. It sadly mirrors the Skibidi Toilet ethos: low-effort disruption cloaked in irony, where the gesture is meant to be meaningless and provocative at once. As traditional signifiers of rebellion (punk, political protest, counterculture) fade or fragment in the digital noise, young men are absorbing frameworks of meaninglessness, where 'funny = power' and shock is its own reward. Furthering the chronically online element of all this, in the last two days, a crypto memecoin group has claimed credit for the recent dildo-throwing incidents at WNBA games, reframing what seemed like rogue trolling as a deliberate guerrilla marketing stunt. The group, which openly mocks the league and brags about not watching women's sports, celebrated the act online as a victory. If true, this spectacle is engineered by people who understand that visibility matters more than meaning in an algorithm-driven culture. This is how meme culture is rotting America: not from the inside, but from online. The internet's lack of regulation is its greatest strength and its most dangerous flaw. It allows once-fringe ideologies and juvenile impulses to scale without resistance. Ideas that would have died in solitude or been challenged in a public square now find shelter in forums and meme loops, rewarded by engagement. In this new economy of attention, even humiliation has utility. We're left with a culture where trolling becomes its own form of marketing. How did we arrive at this level of collective debasement? Despite living in an era of unprecedented digital access, over half of American adults (54%) read below a sixth-grade level, and 21% are considered illiterate as of 2022. This foundational deficit in literacy undermines a person's ability to evaluate online messages critically. Thus, a generation raised on irony struggles to decode satire, or even manipulation. Back in 2013, 66% of fourth graders couldn't read proficiently. It was a warning sign that today's adults would fail to distinguish viral provocation from genuine meaning. Online, many young people now build identity from meme fragments, unconsciously mimicking behavior they don't fully understand. Lacking media literacy, they become perfect vessels for cultural incoherence. All of this really boils down to the death of shame within society. And it starts at the top. Donald Trump's most enduring legacy isn't a policy but a persona as the shameless troll who made humiliation a political strategy. His constant provocation and gleeful disdain for norms created a playbook both parties use now. Liberals respond with faux-moral outrage, conservatives with Nietzschean bravado, but the end result is the same: a culture addicted to performance, where shame is no longer a deterrent. This logic has trickled down into every corner of public life through race, class, gender and especially online culture, where symbolic acts of ressentiment become viral currency. The dildo thrown at a women's basketball game isn't just a crude joke but a memeified act of humiliation. It doesn't challenge power on any level, it just wants attention. And in a culture without shame, the humiliation sticks to the target, not the perpetrator. In this case, the WNBA players themselves. The fact that these incidents have popped up simultaneously across the country, from New York to Atlanta, shows that the lack of shame is collective, bipartisan and here to stay. This is where we are: everything is bait. We've collapsed the distinction between trolling and activism, and so we land – like the dildo itself – on the bottom of the floor, laughing, recording, retweeting, but never asking what it says about who we've become.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Sport
- Sydney Morning Herald
The crypto group claiming responsibility for WNBA sex toy stunts
A second man has been arrested for throwing a sex toy onto the court of a women's basketball game in the US, becoming the second charged with a criminal offence after six incidents now claimed by a group selling a form of cryptocurrency. First reported by The Athletic, the group are trying to boost the value of a meme coin called 'Green Dildo Coin' by generating virality online. The group have targeted five WNBA games since July 29, and in that time the currency's value had risen to $USD0.001. A meme coin is a form of cryptocurrency that originates from an internet meme, joke or viral moment. Their value is often fleeting and based on internet trends. On July 29, the group planned the first stunt to occur during a game in Atlanta between the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries. The group had purchased tickets and incentivised the thrower with an additional $500 if the toy landed upright on the court. While they watched the game, they recorded a seven-hour audio stream on X. Most participants on the stream were inside the US, but at least one was in Australia, according to audio broadcast during the stream. The sex toy was thrown onto the court in the last minute of the game while the group members recited the game's commentary and waited for reactions to roll in online. Two days later, 23-year-old Delbert Carver was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, public indecency and criminal trespass for throwing the toy at the Atlanta game. Across seven days, the group coordinated six stunts across five different cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. All the while, they broadcast audio streams on X, communicated on the encrypted messaging app Telegram and directed people to buy their cryptocurrency or other merchandise on their website.
The Age
4 days ago
- Sport
- The Age
The crypto group claiming responsibility for WNBA sex toy stunts
A second man has been arrested for throwing a sex toy onto the court of a women's basketball game in the US, becoming the second charged with a criminal offence after six incidents now claimed by a group selling a form of cryptocurrency. First reported by The Athletic, the group are trying to boost the value of a meme coin called 'Green Dildo Coin' by generating virality online. The group have targeted five WNBA games since July 29, and in that time the currency's value had risen to $USD0.001. A meme coin is a form of cryptocurrency that originates from an internet meme, joke or viral moment. Their value is often fleeting and based on internet trends. On July 29, the group planned the first stunt to occur during a game in Atlanta between the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries. The group had purchased tickets and incentivised the thrower with an additional $500 if the toy landed upright on the court. While they watched the game, they recorded a seven-hour audio stream on X. Most participants on the stream were inside the US, but at least one was in Australia, according to audio broadcast during the stream. The sex toy was thrown onto the court in the last minute of the game while the group members recited the game's commentary and waited for reactions to roll in online. Two days later, 23-year-old Delbert Carver was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, public indecency and criminal trespass for throwing the toy at the Atlanta game. Across seven days, the group coordinated six stunts across five different cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. All the while, they broadcast audio streams on X, communicated on the encrypted messaging app Telegram and directed people to buy their cryptocurrency or other merchandise on their website.
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Daily Mail
Donald Trump Jr. shares outrageous sex toy meme involving his father
Donald Trump Jr. posted photoshopped image of his father hurling a bright green dildo off the roof of the White House while women played basketball below. The 47-year-old made the bizarre post to his Instagram page on Thursday with the innocuous caption: 'Posted without further comment.' The meme from the president's eldest son circulated among fans as the yet another sex toy was launched against WNBA players half his age. The initial dildo toss took place during the July 29 WNBA game between the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries where someone threw a dildo onto the court. A 23-year-old Georgia man named Delbert Carver was arrested for that incident and also allegedly confessed to doing the same thing at a Dream game against the Phoenix Mercury on August 1. Copy cats did the same thing in Chicago and in Los Angeles, where the dildo actually appeared to hit Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham in the leg. Don Jr.'s bizarre post was also a reference to President Donald Trump's shock appearance on the roof of the White House on Tuesday. 'Sir, why are you on the roof?' one journalist shouted. In response, Trump gave a fist pump and replied: 'Taking a little walk.' On Thursday, another dildo was thrown onto a WBNA court during a game between the Atlanta Dream and the Chicago Sky. Meanwhile, Don Jr.'s post got more than 86,000 likes and was mostly well received by his followers, pleased that he was apparently upsetting Democrats. However, in a sign of the staying power of the Epstein files debacle, many of the commenters took the opportunity to send messages about Jeffrey Epstein to Trump's eldest son. 'So funny! Now RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES,' one person wrote. ' Epstein files? Or anything but that??' another person said. 'Was that what was hiding in the Epstein files?' said yet another. 'Uh oh Daddy dropped his toy! Release the Epstein files and leave his name in them,' a fourth said. The meme from Don Jr. came after cryptocurrency traders took responsibility for the green dildos being thrown on courts in the middle of WNBA games. @Daldo_Rain, a spokesman for the cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and currently has more planned for the future. According to the anonymous spokesman, the pranks were done to promote their meme coin, Green Dildo Coin (DILDO). One of these coins is worth $0.0009, which means about 11 of them is equal to one cent. There are 2,240 people who hold this coin, according to Etherscan, an analytics platform for the Ethereum blockchain. The largest holder of the coin owns a position that is currently worth nearly $175,000. There's also a copycat coin called TOPGDILDO that barely has a pulse, with a mere 116 holders and a $0 market cap.
