Ruining a young woman’s life for sport
Today, Explained

Ruining a young woman’s life for sport

B2Upper-intermediateSeptember 23, 202628 min
  • Society

It’s called the “burnerverse": an online community of anonymous college sports fans who mostly trash talk other teams, except when things turn very, very dark. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh and Avishay Artsy with help from Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by Bridger Dunnagan and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King. A man looking at his phone. Photo by Petri Oeschger/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership righ...

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Sentence 7 of 12 · 0:29

even remember shooting, let alone consenting to,

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and your sorority.

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B2

B2 · Upper-intermediate

Comfortable if you already follow TV news

A1 29%A2 33%B1 18%B2 15%C1 5%
  • 80% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 149 words a minute: a natural pace.
  • 138 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

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0:00

— Matti Kowalski is a student at the University of Florida. Last November, someone put non-consensual, intimate images of Matti on the internet. — There were videos of me naked out there. People had very obviously, purposely put them out there.

0:18

— Like, can you imagine a violation you're 19 years old and a video that you don't even remember shooting, let alone consenting to, goes viral nationally, along with your name and your sorority.

0:35

And your parents, your grandparents, everybody in your life sees it. It's a humiliation and a privacy violation that is kind of incomprehensible.

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