Lily Lang's Name Might Be Trending Online, but That Doesn't Mean She Did Anything Wrong

For all of the connection that the internet facilitates, it can also be a pretty terrible place sometimes (anyone who has ever been on the internet knows this). That's especially true for women, even when they don't appear to have done anything wrong.

Recently, a college student named Lily Lang got caught up in an online smear campaign that eventually led her to set all of her online accounts to private. Here's what we know about who she is, and why she was suddenly at the center of so much online hate.

Lily Lang is a college student in the Southeastern Conference of Schools whose name started popping up all over the internet as part of the so-called "Burnerverse." This essentially describes a group of current and former fraternity members who banded together on Twitter to call out people they feel are worthy of shame. Lily was a particular target, and was accused of cheating on her boyfriend with multiple men from different colleges.

After these allegations started flying, Lily became the subject of numerous memes, and her name began to circulate around this online community. The posts started with Arthur Cacciatore, a man who was in a frat in 2008 and began posting about Lily.

Lily's name and image began to circulate after his posts, with memes shaming her or comparing her to other women who have gone viral on on the internet.

While many of the women who go viral on the internet at least take solace in the fact that their names were never revealed. Lily, who is also known as SEC girl, was not afforded that luxury. After facing this campaign of vitriol and harassment, she took all of her social media accounts private.

While it's possible that she was unfaithful to one of her romantic partners, this kind of mass pile-on still feels entirely unjustified.

The Burnerverse, which is the corner of Twitter where Lily's name went viral, appears to be a collection of former fraternity members who have similar interests and maybe engage in a fair bit of misogyny. While it's not a formally organized group, these people all follow one another, and that means that the memes that they generate can circulate both within their community and outside of it.

Lily has become one of the most high-profile targets of this group, many of whom keep their accounts relatively anonymized. Like gamergate and other online phenomena that explicitly target women, these campaigns may seem like they are all in good fun, but they do lasting damage to the people who face them.

Lily Lang is still in college, and whatever her faults might be, she did not deserve the kind of harsh treatment that she has received in June of 2024. Hopefully, that attention will die down, and she will be able to find a way to continue living her life.