You know things are bad when you have a folder labeled “creepiness” on your computer desktop. Mia Matsumiya received so many sinister messages online that she began archiving screenshots. Over the past ten years, her folder has accumulated over 1,000 messages – so many that, last month, she finally hit breaking point and decided to share them.
“I didn’t deserve to be treated this way and neither did other women,” she told Buzzfeed. “I decided I needed to do something about it, so I created [an] Instagram account.” Matsumiya posted her first screenshot to @perv_magnet four weeks ago, and the account now has over 20 thousand followers.
The messages “from creeps, weirdos & fetishists” started arriving when Matsumiya was living in New York in the early 2000s, playing in rock bands and blogging. Over time, the comments moved from MySpace to Facebook to Instagram, and escalated from mid-level disgusting to actionable. Matsumiya has been sent bids for pairs of her worn panties, explicit accounts of people’s sexual fantasies and threats from a man who was later arrested for stalking another woman. At one point, the police advised her to stop blogging when a death threat arrived in her inbox.
The comments on Matsumiya’s @perv_magnet account now include encouragement from women who report similar experiences of online harassment. Men have also sent apologies and requests that she not publish their old messages. But Matsumiya emphasizes this is not a personal revenge mission. Her goal is to highlight the degradation that all women are subjected to on the internet: “I want these messages to demonstrate the crazy, awful, and unacceptable things women receive online,” she says.
Credits
Text Alice Newell-Hanson
Images via @perv_magnet