I’m shaking as I write this. I was recently on a panel at SXSW about online misogyny and how to combat attacks against feminists online, but I… I suppose I never thought things would ever reach this tragic conclusion. The stories I heard at SXSW were all poignant and troubling, but this story in particular makes my blood boil.
From What About Our Daughters:
That video below is of Asia McGowan. I don’t know how long the video is going to be up because Asia is dead. She was shot at point blank range with a shotgun by another YouTube user. I don’t know that the police will find a connection, but her final message on YouTube was addressed to people leaving nasty comments on her page. She references people calling her a b*tch and saying she was “stuck up.”
As someone recently said on Twitter, I don’t want this to turn into a story about how the internet is a scary and dangerous place. Rather, I want the focus of this post to be on the absolutely asinine response of the police. When a fellow YouTube user tried to alert the police to the murderer’s videos and threats, he received a message from the police that said, “I was unable to view the video. According to the site, I have to have a sign in.”
Are you fucking kidding me?
If there’s a bright spot in this story, and trust me, I’ve tried really hard to find one, it is that there was at least one member of Asia’s online community who tried to intervene. Instead of sitting idly by, this YouTube user actually stepped up and tried to hip the authorities to this potential powder keg. He deserves much respect for that.
But I’m sitting here feeling like the lives of black women are quite cheap indeed, so cheap that the cost of registering for a YouTube account was too great to potentially prevent a murder from happening.
(h/t to Tiffany)