Hockey Blogger Outed As An Internet Creep With A Passion For Photography
Ugh. Come on, dudes. Don’t you know by now that we women are on to the whole, “I’m studying photography so maybe I could come over and photograph you in a bikini or something. Just throwing that out there” thing? Apparently one newly unemployed sports writer had not heard the news.
Steve Lepore was a somewhat well-known hockey blogger for a site called Awful Announcing. He is now an extremely well-known internet creep. A few days ago, hockey fan Toni McIntyre shared some screen caps on Twitter from direct messages Lepore sent her. Here are some highlights, via Deadspin:
Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Steve, you are hilarious.
And you know what makes this even funnier? Once McIntyre posted about this, she got messages from over twenty other women saying that they had had the same experience with Lepore. And this has been going on for years — one woman just posted that Lepore tried this shit with her two years ago. And for anyone who thinks that this kind of encounter isn’t a big deal, I would ask you to note that all of these women are coming forward even years later because when some weirdo on the internet pushes you for revealing photos, it’s the kind of thing you don’t forget.
Lepore’s MO was to friend women on Twitter and then, within days, start talking about his passion for photography. Primarily, the photography of boobies. But he’s not just a taker, Lepore is a giver as well. Also from Deadspin:
Oh, Steve. You casual dick-wielder.
How did this guy get away with this for so long? Because there aren’t a lot of women who are going to have one creepy DM conversation with a guy and then go contact his employer. Most women (myself included) would assume that something like this wouldn’t get taken seriously by anyone else. That they would be told they were taking it too seriously, and that he was just another creep. That’s how jerks like this operate: they are suggestive without being crude, and unfailingly polite. When someone you don’t know asks you to pose naked for them but does it in such a nice way, it’s easy to get fooled into thinking that the request was harmless instead of seeing the behavior for what it is. Predatory.
Thanks to McIntyre, the jig is up for Lepore; he spent all of yesterday apologizing to everyone he has ever known on Twitter before deleting his account. And maybe other women will read about him and some more of these perverts will get taken down. If you know anyone else in sports-media who has done this kind of thing, Deadspin wants to hear about it.
(Image: Twitter)
