ABSTRACT
Red-pilling recruits new people into these movements through increasingly violent tactics. Therefore, zoombombing, which operates under cover of “pranking,” serves as an important stepping stone to more harmful, directly racist behavior. Zoombombing and other forms of online abuse are like a stool that has three legs: the abuser, the platform, and the target or witness. After the initial shock of witnessing this unexpected event, the group left the call and returned, hoping that the disruptive person would have left without an audience to perform for. This strategy was not successful as the same user continued to disrupt the meeting, using the audio channel to spout nonsense and expose themselves. Zoombombing fit quite comfortably with other experiences of racial harassment that these three people had endured in the past. One’s living space comes to hold not only the promise and experience of comfort and safety but also the traumas of racial violence.
