Ej Dickson

They have social media networks like Snapchat and also X, which is unmoderated.

And there was a really, really devastating story published in Wired last month by the reporter EJ Dickson about a new phenomenon called the Burniverse, which is men on college campuses, often affiliated with sports teams and with fraternities, who have taken it as their mission to go viral by sharing sexually degrading footage, images, pictures of, of women.

Hmm.

And that's how they find community, and-

Of course, the student journalists, I should just say, from the Cornell Sun at the university itself, who decided to publish the names of the seven accused men, basically saying, "We're gonna take this matter into our own hands and publish their names and really shame our university for not taking stronger action here." All of these things together have led to a really different way that lots of people are consuming this story.

What do you think that does to the national conversation? I- is it helpful in some ways? Is it harmful in other ways?

I mean, I'm so glad that we can give credit to these Cornell Sun reporters and editors who are astonishingly brave to do what they did and who really exemplify the best of sort of old-fashioned journalistic [laughs] reporting integrity, really sort of maintaining doggedly that they would stay with this story and that they would get it out into the public consciousness, which they have done.

And seeing sort of the game of catch-up that everyone has been [laughs] trying to play in the weeks after in terms of additional reporting and you s- you know, you see the biggest news organizations in America devoting all their resources, and that's why things like, you know, more phone calls are coming out and more text messages.