Lily Lang, aka the SEC girl, is a young woman who was the target of an online harassment campaign by frat bros in June 2024. It started when one account from the so-called "burnerverse" made a dubious accusation of infidelity against Lang that spread into a flood of trolling, forcing Lang to lock down her social media accounts.
The memes made by these fraternity members are often misogynistic in nature and fairly nasty in general.
Lily Lang is a college student at the Southeastern Conference (SEC) of schools, which is where the nickname "SEC girl" comes from. She is also reportedly a member of a sorority on her campus.
Lang became the target of a group of anonymous trolls who tend to target women for the supposed crime of having a sex life or for usually unfounded accusations of cheating on their partners.
On June 24, 2024, a man going by Arthur Cacciatore on Twitter posted a photo of Lang posing with her boyfriend and claiming that she "may or may not have had sex with like 35% of the SEC."
The "burnerverse" took this to mean she had indeed engaged in a lot of sex and that this was an act of cheating without the benefit of a shred of evidence. As a result, her name is now plastered all over social media channels, and her accounts are all set to private.
On a locked Reddit post asking what is the deal with the Lily Lang fervor, many of the comments reference a "vid," with some claiming that they are in possession of it, suggesting that there may be a video of Lang engaging in sexual contact.
It's unclear if any such video exists, but spreading this kind of thing without the subject's consent is a highly violating and reprehensible act. Even some Redditors are pointing out how messed up it was to target Lang over an unsupported rumor of a woman having some sex.
The burnerverse is the name given to a network of anonymous social media accounts that can be easily thrown away or lost to a ban without the owner shedding a tear.
The term "burner" comes from around 20 years ago, when it was common for people who were either poor or engaging in illicit activities to use "burner phones"—cheap cell phones that were programmed with a set amount of "minutes" that they could be used for calls. These minutes could be reloaded for an additional charge, but were often thrown away after use so they couldn't be traced back to the owner after making a drug deal or whatever.
In the 2020s, the same term can be applied to social media accounts likely to be abandoned or shut down for other kinds of damaging activities, such as spreading false information or engaging in malicious harassment.
The burnerverse in particular is known to be a collection of current or former fraternity members. Frat bros, on and offline, are notorious for being awful toward women, both demanding sex from them (and also chronically targeting them for sexual assault) and shaming them for having sex. Lily Lang is their most recent target.
The man who started the harassment against Lang is reportedly a 40-year-old former fraternity member who is for some reason getting involved in a relationship between people likely not old enough to legally consume alcohol in the U.S. There has thus far been no indication that Cacciatore knows either Lang or her boyfriend personally.
He also did not include any evidence of the alleged infidelity. What is included on the burner Twitter account, which is currently locked and labeled "temporarily unavailable because it violates the Twitter Media Policy," is a bio in which Cacciatore self-identifies as a racist and a photo of someone holding up a Confederate flag.
The memes about Lang from the burnerverse aren't worth sharing, as they are all the typical misogynistic and sex-shaming fare that has been seen for as long as social media has existed.
Outside of this trash collective, people are making jokes about how Lang, among other young women, have taken over their timelines during the month of June. Other memes comment on how destructive harassment campaigns can be or make fun of the kind of person invested in said campaigns.
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