1 Marcel Fontaine, who is twenty five years old, became accused of being the shooter at a Florida high school shooting. Fontaine lives in Massachusetts, a four hour flight from Florida, and was unaware of the shooting until a friend sent them a text, only a little while after they had woken up, containing a picture of Fontain that implied they were the shooter. This picture was taken off of Fonatine’s instagram and posted to 4chan. Fontain is on the autism spectrum and struggles with anxiety and a debilitating stammer. The picture and story spread quickly through the internet on pages such as 4chan and Infowars. This led to nasty messages including death threats which have had a lasting impression on Fontaine. The role that the internet played in victimizing Marcel was that it provided a space where someone could easily create a lie and for it to be spread to the entire world. 

2 After being accused, Marcel had immediate and long lasting effects of being mistaken for the Parkland shooter. Immediate effects that they experienced were fear, confusion, anxiety, insomnia and social isolation. They were unable to function and complete basic tasks such as cooking. Marcel Fonainte is now in therapy because of panic and sleeplessness. This has caused them to be less trusting, afraid when they see someone in camo or Trump attire, which leads them to freeze and become nervous and afraid that someone will try to hurt them. 

3 Lenny Pozner was the father of six year old Noah, who was a student and sadly one victim from the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012. Lenny had moved eight times within five years. He had to move because of conspiracy theorists believed his son was never killed and that Pozner was faking it all. These theorists believe that the shooting at Sandy Hook was staged and was a “soap opera” where the children were just crisis actors. Pozner was being accused of never having a child and that “Noah had never even existed, he was a construct of photoshop” (Pilkington para 26). Some even went as far to write a 426 page book about how nobody died that day at Sandy Hook. This led to Lenny receiving death threats and people constantly finding where he lives, making his life extremely difficult, all while mourning the death of his child. Fed up with receiving these threats and this energy, Pozner decided to post Noah’s birth certificate, death certificate, and a kindergarten report card to prove that this disaster was not just a conspiracy theory. He argues that “You have the right of speech to express yourself and your opinions, no matter how offensive they may be, until your chosen form of expression impedes my rights to be free form defamation and harassment”(Pilkington para 37). 

4 Dr. Paul Offit is a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He has been working to prove that vaccines do not cause autism. While doing so, he has received many death threats. In 1998 Andrew Wakefield published a paper about how the MMR vaccine was linked to autism and managed to convince parents across Europe and the US, that this was true. Although receiving these death threats and consideration in ending his research,  Dr. Paul Offit decided to continue his studies to prove this isn’t true. What pushed him to drop it was an Anonymous voicemail left on his phone voicemail talked about office children and how they were the same age as the man from the voicemails children. Before the end of the message, the anonymous caller infomed Dr. Paul Offit that he knew his kids names and what school they went to. After talking to his wife, Bonnie, and her telling him to keep going, Offit found two motivations, anger and the life of children. He’s angry with the conspiracy theorists who believe this falsehood even though there are multiple studies on how the vaccine does not cause autism. He is also strongly motivated by children to continue his research. In one case an anti-VAX mother decided not to vaccinate her child. Her son then ended up getting the flu. He had to go to the hospital and received invasive care that included “an oxygen mask, then put in a ventilator, then an oscillator and heart-lung machine, until finally he died” (Pilkington para 52). When Offit asked the mother if she would talk to other parents about how a vaccine could be used to prevent what happened to her child, she chose not to and still believes that she made the right decision and that it would have been more harmful to the child. 

5 Brianna Wu is a 41-year-old video game designer. In the world of video games, there are a lot of people who think that women don’t belong and they think it is only a thing for guys. Being a woman in a heavily male dominated thing, can cause someone to be very targeted and being a victim of sexism. These threats even include receiving death threats.  After getting these messages and threats, Wu decided to take a stand unlike many would because they feel too afraid to speak out. In this case Brianna Wu is only getting this hate because she is a female.