#VerifiedBullies

Submission 7,948

Part of a series on Covington High School Students' Confrontation With Native American Activists. [View Related Entries]

About

#VerifiedBullies is a hashtag campaign founded by teenage entrepreneur CJ Pearson to expose verified Twitter users who bully, harass users or send threats towards other people. The hashtag gained traction as a backlash to an online controversy surrounding a viral video involving students from Covington High School engaging with a Native American activist and has been promoted by the conservative media startup company Culttture.

Origin

On January 18th, 2019, Instagram user @ka_ya11 posted video footage of a Covington High School student wearing a "Make American Great Again" hat and smiling in front of Native American veteran Nathan Phillips drumming while singing a prayer chant (shown below).

On January 20th, Pearson created a Google Doc^[2] form titled "Verified Bullying – MAGA Youth," calling for viewers to submit instances of verified Twitter users who posted tweets attacking the Covington High School students (shown below).

Spread

That evening, Pearson posted a video of the database, claiming it was "1800+ tweets strong" (shown below). Within 72 hours, the video gained over 22,800 likes and 10,100 retweets.

Update: Our #VerifiedBullies Database is now 1800+ tweets strong. We’re cross-checking for accuracy and will prep this list for transfer to the legal counsel of the Covington Catholic students. The Left picked the wrong battle this time. #StandWithCovington pic.twitter.com/w1atUDoStk
— CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) January 21, 2019

The following day, Twitter user Ali Alexander posted a tweet promoting the hashtag #VerifiedBullies along with a Change.org^[3] petition titled "The Students Of Covington Catholic Are Facing Expulsion and Need Our Help" (shown below).

Everyone please use the following: #VerifiedBullies 1) attach screenshots and the username of the account that has violated the terms of service2) link this petition https://t.co/XJW5YVdApI3) all violators are being reported #StandWithCovington 🇺🇸
— Ali Alexander (@ali) January 21, 2019

Meanwhile, the @Culttture^[4] feed posted a tweet directed to @TwitterSafety, featuring a tweet by Twitter user @HouseShoes calling for fans to "fire on any of these red hat bitches when you see them" (shown below, left). That same day, Pearson tweeted^[5] a screenshot of a tweet by Twitter user Jack Morrissey saying "#MAGAkids go screaming, hats first, into the woodchippter" (shown below, right).

On January 22nd, The Daily Dot^[6] published an article about the campaign titled "Why Culttture came to the defense of the MAGA teens--and what it has planned next."