Students Harassed on Social Media

Wesley Thots Twitter description

By Evan Le’Mon (Whetstone Staff Writer)

Sophomore Mariah Payne was lying in her bed, just like she does any other night, browsing on Twitter, when her evening took a dark turn.

“I tweeted about how I wanted to cuddle with someone, and the @WesleyThotties page randomly started coming at me,” Payne said. “They said, ‘Nobody wants to cuddle with you,’ and started calling me fat names and stuff. That wasn’t OK because I’m not OK with my weight, so them pointing out something I’m not OK with concerning myself really hurt.”

Payne is just one of many recent victims of online harassment at Wesley College. Social media pages like @WesleyThotties and @WesleyThots have harassed and released personal information about several students on campus.

A “thot” stands for either “that hoe over there” or “thirsty hoeing outrageous trick.”

Wesley Thots Tweet

The latest pages that have appeared on social media are only a couple of many that have popped up during the last few semesters at Wesley College.

The fascination with making these pages can be attributed to a sense of safety that comes with anonymity, according to sophomore Jessica Holder.

“People are scared to tell people certain things to their faces,” Holder said. “They’re scared to tell them what they really think of them.”

Some students also have a problem keeping their personal business personal, according to sophomore Rashidatu Koroma.

“We live in a generation where no one can keep their mouth shut,” Koroma said. “The person who’s tweeting this stuff should be ashamed of themselves, but when you have people who aren’t able to be discrete and want to run their mouths to everyone when they have sex with someone, this is what happens.”

Junior Sarah Beckford agrees that everyone involved is to blame.

“One person can’t observe and find out all of that information by themselves,” Beckford said. “Someone is messaging them and giving them information. It’s like Gossip Girl. Wesley loves a good scandal, and everyone’s fascinated. ‘Who’s a hoe? Who’s talking to whom?’ It’s entertainment, and it’s not going to stop until it’s not fun anymore.”

Wesley Thots Tweet

Sophomore Steven Hayes thinks that people who follow the pages or respond to the tweets are part of the problem as well.

“People are going to do and say whatever they want at the end of the day,” Hayes said. “You feeding into it is what gives these people fire and keeps them going. If no one responds, they’re basically tweeting themselves and eventually they’ll stop.”

Former Wesley student Taylor Brown thinks that some people actually want to egg on the people running these pages.

“I think that people love drama,” Brown said. “It’s the bystander complex; it doesn’t just apply to physical actions. People love to see someone else get embarrassed and laugh like it’s cute to see someone get slandered. They’re sheep and I think it’s disgusting, like cheering on a fight. And I think part of it is self-preservation – people can laugh if it’s not them, and if they make the page they can be sure they won’t get talked about on it.”

Junior Jaironna Boskett is one student who isn’t laughing.

“Last year there was a girl who was cutting herself because people were talking about her, and she wanted to kill herself,” Boskett said. “Whoever’s making these pages is really spiteful and petty. I thought we came to college, but apparently we’re still in high school.”

Hayes agrees that immaturity has a lot to do with the issue at hand.

“It’s very young-minded for someone to put a person’s business out there, whether it’s true or not,” Hayes said. “And you really don’t even know if it’s true, because most of the information you hear is from a secondhand source, or even from a third or fourth source instead of the actual person’s mouth.”

Wesley Thots Tweets

Senior and Malmberg Hall Resident Assistant Gloria Ogunleye has a solution to cut out the “he-say, she-say” dilemma.

“People need to just mind their own business,” Ogunleye said. “What’s the entertainment in putting someone else’s business out there to embarrass them? And the people who respond are just as goofy, because why take any type of time or oxygen to acknowledge something that probably isn’t even true? And if they come at you, just let it go.”

Holder agrees that idle hands are part of the problem.

“If people put as much energy into their schoolwork as they did into these Twitter accounts, they’d all have scholarships,” Holder said.

Even though she no longer goes to Wesley, Brown did not go untouched by these Twitter accounts.

“I saw that another page had started up and I think I tweeted something like ‘Wesley’s at it again,’ and they started coming at me, saying ‘You don’t even go here’ and calling me names and stuff like that. I just said, ‘Don’t you have better things to do?’”