Former MLB pitcher, 38 Studios founder doxes his daughter’s online abusers

Twitter trolls suffer real-world consequences for online actions.

Sam Machkovech – Mar 3, 2015 11:57 am | 286

This was the first post by a Twitter user who eventually went down a dark rabbit hole of sexual threats against Curt Schilling's daughter that included, among other wholesome things, period blood.

On Sunday, former Boston Red Sox pitcher and game studio founder Curt Schilling enacted some online vigilante justice against Twitter users who had posted violent and sexual comments about his daughter—by doxing them.

Schilling's blog post was a follow-up to his tweet a week earlier about his daughter Gabby Schilling, whom he congratulated for just signing a letter of intent to play college softball at Salve Regina University. Acknowledging that he expected to receive chiding remarks about her on Twitter—particularly from Red Sox fans and detractors alike—he nevertheless expressed astonishment at the crude, graphic replies from two Twitter users in particular. Those users, @Nagels_Bagels and @primetime227, have since had their accounts deleted, but not before Schilling could take screencaps that captured their threats of using baseball bats as sexual devices, among other comments.

The former Red Sox hurler took it a step further, using publicly available information to attach identities to these two users. One was a DJ at a community college radio station and the other was the vice president of a fraternity. "Worse yet, no less than seven of the clowns who sent vile or worse tweets are athletes playing college sports," Schilling added. "I knew every name and school, sport and position, of every one of them in less than an hour. The ones that didn’t play sports were just as easy to locate."

Schilling didn't publicly disclose the identities of the other seven people, but he did hint that he might share that information with relevant parties: "I found it rather funny at how quickly tone changed when I heard via e-mail from a few athletes who’d been suspended by their coaches," Schilling wrote. "Gone was the tough guy tweeter, replaced by the 'I’m so sorry' apology used by those only sorry because they got caught."

Schilling spoke at length about the issues of anonymous online abuse, all while linking to relevant studies and reports about the crippling effects of online bullying. "You pieces of garbage out there who are even starting to think 'what’s the big deal?' or 'I was just joking around' can stick it," Schilling wrote. (He later updated his post to add two more Twitter threats about his daughter to the page, then encouraged readers who "know how to find people on the 'net" to "have at it." )

Other news agencies have confirmed that both outed men have already suffered public consequences; one was suspended from his community college, while the other was fired from his part-time job as a ticket seller for the New York Yankees. When reached for comment, a Twitter spokesperson wouldn't confirm whether the offending accounts had been personally canceled or suspended by the service, but they did offer a reminder that "we review all reported content against our rules, which prohibit targeted abuse and direct, specific threats of violence against others."

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