Vine Kitten Kicker

Overview

Vine Kitten Kicker is the nickname given to South Carolinian teenager Walter Easley, whose self-recorded Vine video of kicking a kitten off his porch sparked an online revenge campaign on 4chan and Reddit in August of 2013.

Background

On July 28th, 2013, Easley uploaded a Vine video of himself punting a small orange kitten off of a porch into the yard (shown below). The original upload has since been deleted from his Vine account.

Easley's Vine video largely went unnoticed until August 11th, when Redditor toofrat submitted the Vine to the /r/rage^[3] subreddit and yielded over 1,800 up votes and 460 comments in the first 48 hours. In the comment section, many users began posting Easley’s personally identifiable information, eventually prompting a moderator to remove all comments in the post.

Notable Developments

That same day, 4chan users began posting his home address and Google Maps screenshots of his possible residence, to which Easley responded by taunting his detractors via Twitter (shown below).

Also on August 11th, the Internet news site The Daily Dot^[1] reported on the developing story, noting that Easley is "only adding fuel to the fire" by openly taunting his detractors and threatening to kick more cats in yet another Vine video, though the latter was subsequently deleted from his account. That evening, a document allegedly containing Easley’s address, phone number and other personal information was released via Pastebin,^[7] while an online petition titled “Bring Water Easley, the kitten kicker, to justice” was launched on The Petition Site,^[4] urging the Humane Society of South Carolina to bring him to justice. On August 13th, The Daily Dot^[2] published a follow-up article reporting that Easley has made his Twitter^[5] feed private and 4chan users has identified the owner of the cat as Twitter user @buck4411.^[6]

Arrest & Charge

On August 19th, Easley was arrested by the Orangeburg County police on charges of animal cruelty. According to the local daily newspaper Times and Democrat^[9] and the Daily Dot,^[10] upon being questioned by animal control and law enforcement officers, the 17-year-old teenager reportedly claimed that his Vine video was staged to only make it seem as if he was kicking the cat, when he had "tossed it into the air with his foot"; however, he later said that he had thrown the cat. He pled guilty and was sentenced to a pre-trial intervention, the details of which are sealed, instead of the maximum sentence for misdemeanor animal abuse of 60 days in jail.^[11]

Search Interest

External References