Someone needs a time out!
(Or, y’know, a lengthy prison sentence).
Last month’s buzzed-about “White Women For Kamala” Zoom has led to an FBI investigation and court hearing, after one of the speakers got a hail of death threats, harassing phone calls and “doxxing” attacks.
Teacher-turned-social-media-star Arielle Fodor has won more than a million followers for her mix of comedy and commentary based on the world of education on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
In her trademark recurring bit, Fodor — in her “Mrs. Frazzled” character — teases stereotypically non-PC aunts and uncles by reimagining them as toddlers who are struggling to play nice with the other kids and using her skills as a kindergarten teacher to set them straight.
When “White Women For Kamala” organizer Shannon Watts asked Fodor to talk on the call about how the eponymous white woman should interact with social media users of color in the run-up to the election, Fodor mixed some heart-felt advice with some of her “Mrs. Frazzled” schtick, such as asking viewers to “use their listening ears” when chatting with diverse followers.
But some powerful online right-wingers, including X owner Elon Musk and Daily Wire commentator Ben Shapiro, didn’t seem to get the joke — and apparently thought Fodor really was speaking to the Zoom masses as if they were toddlers.
And it seems that once their followers discovered her videos poking gentle fun at imaginary, right-wing-ish relatives, they lost their cool.
The speech was dubbed “woke,” “dystopian” and “like a ‘Black Mirror’ episode,” a reference to Charlie Brooker’s dark satire about technology and politics.
Now Fodor tells us that after harassers began calling her and her family on the phone, sending her pizzas — presumably to prove they knew where she lives — and threatening to release her personal details online, she had to call the authorities. She told us she received 11 death threats.
“I was shocked by the violence and aggression [of the response],” she told us, “That’s what I’m not used to. I’m used to people being rude [online]. But this was so aggressive. It’s scary.”
Attorneys will be in court Monday seeking a restraining order against one particularly relentless alleged harasser.
But she tells us she’s not deterred — in fact, she says it makes her tongue-in-cheek videos seem more important.
“It just proves that it’s necessary to have places [online] to let out our frustration [amidst the fraught political climate],” she said.
Fodor taught kindergarten from 2018 to 2021 and started her TikTok account in March 2020 as a way to find a community of other teachers while schools were closed because of the COVID lockdowns.
She began a break from teaching in 2022 after she had a daughter.
About 160,000 people joined the White Women For Kamala Zoom call in support of the Kamala Harris White House campaign.
It raised more than $2 million.