After accidentally tweeting a series of letters and numbers while her phone was in her pocket, 24-year-old social worker and feminist writer Rachel Peterson opened Twitter to find hundreds of threatening tweets in response to the post.
“I had on my new jeans, and the pockets were slidey-er than I was used to,” says Peterson, from an undisclosed location. “I never thought a string of semicolons would lead to this many death threats.”
A conservative blogger retweeted the post, saying, “This is what all feminists think,” starting a cascade of responses from his followers.
“Your grammar is terrible. Did you ever think about using spellcheck?” said another user. “Idiot.”
Although Peterson deleted the tweet two hours later, the comments continued pouring in.
“U dum bitch, I hope u get shoved in tracks,” said @LoveGodnJesus, who has seven followers.
“Ur better off dead,” he followed up, tagging three of his friends.
“N ur fuckn ugly,” replied one of his friends.
After three days and blocking over 300 Twitter users, Peterson tweeted, “My last tweet was sent by accident. Please stop harassing me.”
“See? She can dish it out, but she can’t take it,” replied @IowaRealtor. “Typical feminazi.”
Journalist Kevin Schmitt immediately replied, “Is this about me? If so, then you’re a liar.”
One of Schmitt’s followers replied, “All women are fucking liars.”
And another replied, “fuck hillary Clinton”.
Here is the tweet in full: “;;ffffeoopaaappp;;;’’’eeeeeee;;;;;”
Peterson has opted to freeze her account for a week, “just until everything blows over, or at least until the death threats stop.”
