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The screenshot, circulated in reporting on the allegation of sexual assault by several members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell in 2024, is painful to look at, and painfully familiar: a more extreme example of an episode that plays out on our own phones. Someone in the group chat says something fucked-up. You cringe as laughing emojis roll in. You think about saying something. You probably don’t. And you feel worse for it. Northwestern sociologist Aaron Shaw, who has studied how groups talk to each other online, explains why it happens.
Snapchat transcript adapted from a lawsuit filed by one of the defendants named in Jane Doe’s suit. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What do you see in this screenshot? This kind of interaction is seen linked to the general disinhibition effects documented in digital communications: If your face isn’t there, and if you’re not confronted with the presence of other people, it’s a lot easier to behave in ways that may break with normal social conventions. There’s a long legacy of misogynistic groups existing and thriving. Some people might want to say, “Oh, this is a problem because of Snapchat,” but what research in the last 30 years suggests is that people will find ways to connect no matter what digital communication platform they are using. Research about online communities dates back to the 1980s and ’90s, and some of the high-drama incidents occurring in that time were around rape culture.
Gaming is an incredibly heterogeneous space of human activity, but there are some communities where violations of social norms are not just okay, but important: “If you want to play the game, you’ve got to get over it.”
They might be communicating at multiple levels in ways that are hard to see from the outside. By drawing on particular words they’ve used in the past, they might be signaling things to each other, like their membership in the group, their commitment to each other. Their desire to stay connected with each other may be more powerful than the desire to speak in an empathetic way about, in this case, the experience of a young woman.
Some research on bystander effects suggests that the larger the group size, the less likely any one individual in that group is to speak out against it. Individuals may feel like they don’t have control or that they can’t be responsible for the behavior of everybody in the chat. If their sense is that others in the group think this is okay—or would be willing to ostracize them if they were to speak out—they’re less likely to be willing or able to speak out.
There’s also a performative element. They are putting on a show; they are onstage for each other. Group chats really do serve that purpose. It’s hard to know what elements of that performance are, in a sense, fiction and what elements are a factual representation of the events that night in the frat house. The tropes these young guys may be using may be profoundly objectionable, may be hyper-misogynistic, may undermine the humanity and rights and autonomy of women, but it doesn’t necessarily equate to evidence of rape. In some ways it’s like cultural expression.
It might feel comforting to say, “Well, we can’t fix culture easily, but what we can do is kick people out of group chats or ban fraternities from campus.” But there’s lots of reasons to believe that that’s not going to actually address the root causes. There’s evidence that a lot of young men feel left behind or excluded by prevailing cultural and political and economic forces. I’m not saying that’s factually true, but the feeling seems to have made some young men hateful towards those they perceive to be not like them, who they perceive to be threats to their authority. It’s heartbreaking, not just for the alleged victim of sexual assault, but also for the people who engage in the chat. I don’t think that’s going to give them the sense of security and self that might allow them to behave more generously and respectfully towards others, either. ◼︎
Fraternities control access to coveted resources. They use humiliating rituals to bond with each other, enforce hierarchy, and belittle outsiders. Sound familiar?
Read More Young Men of Cornell Want to Talk. Why Are Older Men So Quiet? What people in Ithaca are saying—and not saying—about the sexual assault allegations brought against members of the Chi Phi fraternity.
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