November 14-15, an anonymous instagram account was created. This anonymous account was named “sjusdbops.” Sjusdbops exploited girls in the San Jose Unified School District by posting nude pictures of them. A lot of work has to go into making an operation like this happen. To increase the number of followers, the page followed a good amount of people to get the word of their page out. As people began to see the page following them, they started talking, and the word spread further. The page then put the account on private. The bio read “shout us out to be accepted,” implying in order to be able to follow the account, a user must post on their own instagram endorsing the page, then giving the page more publicity.

By Monday, the account had reached 1203 followers.  As stated, a lot of work goes into an operation like this, to get the pictures of the girls, the page bio said “DM me all the bops asap.”  The number of posts grew on the page, they got what they wanted, and exploited 46 pictures of girls. This page immediately acted as an outlet to “slut shame.”

Lion Tales was aware of this, since that was all we heard about in the hallways, the classrooms, and in the quad.”Did you hear about that instagram account?” “Why would someone do this?” By fifth period Mr. Hewitson made an announcement that San Jose Police were investigating and to unfollow the account. If you were to save, or send the pictures through text, he said, you would be arrested and charged with child pornography. Right after this announcement tons of students unfollowed. On Tuesday during school, Mr. Hewitson went on the intercom to say that the 17 year old has been caught and the account has been taken off instagram.

Still students are left wondering; why would someone do this?

We need to understand the scar this can leave on the victims, the negative attention or sexual attention they do not want. There are some victims that had a normal picture of them posted but the comments on it were degrading and heartlessly worded. Whoever made this account and contributed to it had no sense of right and wrong, no sense of compassion or understanding of what they could get even themselves into.