Our latest video explains our appearance in Rolling Stone...
This Rolling Stone article is about how a mom found the identity of some trolls who bullied her 6-year-old daughter on Twitter.
This is a wild, winding story that started last January, and the mom’s blog is particularly good, and also reveals one of the troll’s identities, so you can follow the link in the description if you’ve ever wondered what they look like – spoiler alert, they look like what you think they look like.
We’re mentioned because the mom asked us to show support by trollings the trolls back in January of 2025 when it all happened, we did it, we moved on. And then we were pulled back into this after a Boston Globe reporters found the trolls in real life, which, oddly, made them want to threaten us again, leading us to help the mom find them in real life.
Sidebar: one of the trolls acquaintances just messaged us their info, then we confirmed it through their posts (so it wasn’t hard).
To the people who say, “How could this mom ruin this kid’s life by exposing him? Now he may lose his job or get thrown out of Iowa’s business school.”
First: The premise of this is strange:
- The victims of online bulling are told to “forget about it, it’s just words, just jokes, just locker room talk, no one even notices;”
- But the perpetrators are told, “this will RUIN YOUR LIFE if it ever comes out;”
It can’t be both! Either these are just words that no one cares about, or these are words that will ruin someone’s future.
Second thing about “why expose him,”: the mom just wanted an apology.
When we found the kid, we helped the mom write her demands, and they were very simple:
1. The four trolls would apologize to the mom and daughter directly;
2. The four trolls would post apologies to the tops of their Twitter accounts and leave their accounts up;
3. The four trolls would apologize to everyone they trolled online;
4. The trolls wuld post videos of themselves cleaning toilets – that last one you will understand if you read the blog
For doing that, they would get to keep their anonymity.
Instead, they hired a criminal defense attorney who sent me a letter claiming I was extorting this poor young man, and then instead of the four trolls showing up to apologize to the mom and girl, it was one troll, his criminal defense attorney, and his parents.
Keep in mind: this was like STRIKE 4 for these kids:
1. They bullied a 6-year old in January and got called out for it;
2. One said they’d rape a 10 year old and got called out for it;
3. In one of their “pee on things” videos they got called out for it;
4. Then one troll’s parents found his account in March
n He still left it up!
5. Then a Boston Globe reporter found them in real life and interviewed them on camera, and they STILL didn’t delete their accounts;
6. Then we found out who they were and offered them a FINAL chance to remain anonymous if they just apologized;
Though a lot of folks here at RAYGUN wanted to just expose them online, I thought that teaching these kids accountability was at he first step to recovery.
Because, in talking to these kids, their brains have been fried by years of trolling – the main kid refers to his troll account in the 3rd person, as if the troll account is someone else…. Like if Bruce Wayne talked about Batman…. And if batman just spent afternoons bullying 6-year-olds on Twitter.
These kids were assholes on line, that’s for sure.
But how low have we set the bar for accountability. The parents found his account and didn’t make him delete it? A Boston Globe reporter finds the accounts and didn’t tell them to delete it? The lawyer they hired, who works just 2 blocks from RAYGUN didn’t say, “listen, let’s just go and talk this out, take some responsibility.”
Everyone goes on the assumption that the victims in online bullying will “just forget about it.”
Welp, not always.
It’s bad luck that this girl got bullied online for no reason – that an incredible photo with Audi Crooks was ruined by assholes.
And it’s bad luck that this kids didn’t have adult authority figures who better dissuaded them from this behavior.
And it’s really bad luck that these kids messed with a mom who wasn’t going to just forget about it, and a her side-kick t-shirt shop owner whose hobby is holding grudges!
But the accountability for this falls on the trolls. These are not little kids who don’t. They are in their 20s. Some are the same age as I was when I started RAYGUN!
Not to tell the manosphere how to do it’s job, but, fellas: if you want to “be a man,” learn to take accountability.
Because as the mom writes: “when it comes to aggression, we’re raising men; when it comes to accountability, we’re raising little boys.”