Overview

Ray Rice Assault Video refers to surveillance footage of professional football player Ray Rice knocking his fiancee unconscious in an elevator.

Background

On February 19th, 2014, TMZ^[2] published a video showing Rice dragging his unconscious fiancee Janay Palmer out of an elevator at a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey several days prior. On July 24th, the NFL suspended Rice for two days and fine him $58,000/

On September 8th, TMZ^[1] released leaked additional security camera footage of the incident from inside the elevator, showing Rice punching his girlfriend and rendering her unconscious in the elevator (shown below).

Notable Developments

Online Reaction

On the same day, ClickHole^[3] published a satirical post written from the perspective of Rice titled "In My Defense, I Am A Monster." Meanwhile, Redditor eaglessoar an image of a "wife beater" tank top titled "Got my new Ray Rice Rice jersey" to the /r/funny^[5] subreddit, where it gained over 3,600 votes (87% upvoted) in the next 24 hours. Hours later, Redditor mancan submitted an image macro titled "My Thoughts on the Ray Rice Situation," which contained a photograph of professional football player Ray Lewis holding an axe (shown below). In 18 hours, the post gathered upwards of 3,400 votes (83% upvoted) and 400 comments on /r/funny,^[6] many of which disputed comparing the two cases.

#BeatsByRay

Twitter users subsequently began mocking the incident with the hashtag #BeatsByRay,^[7] in reference the Beats by Dre brand of headphones.

Fox & Friends Gaffe

During a segment about the incident on the morning talk show Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade joked "I think the message is, take the stairs." Afterwards, the show was criticized by many for mocking domestic violence.

Termination

Also on September 8th, the Baltimore Ravens published a tweet announcing that the team had terminated their contract with Rice.^[4] In the first 24 hours, the tweet received over 55,400 retweets and 28,700 favorites.

#WhyIStayed

On September 8th, 2014, Twitter user bevtgooden^[9] introduced the hashtag #WhyIStayed in response^[8] to the questions raised by Rice's domestic violence as to why his wife would stay with him in the face of his abuse. Twitter users used the hashtag to explain why they stayed in abusive relationships. Within 48 hours the hashtag was tweeted^[10] out over 70,000 times.

The same day the hashtag #WhyILeft, which Twitter users used to tell stories of escaping abusive relationships, was introduced by user SeymoreCrystal^[11]. Within 48 hours the hashtag was tweeted out^[12] over 19,00 times.

Also on September 8th, the official Twitter account for DiGiorno Pizza^[16] used the hashtag to send out a tweet reading "#WhyIStayed You Had Pizza." The account quickly deleted the tweet and tweeted out an apology, explaining they didn't know what the hashtag was being used for. The tweet was covered by several sites including TIME^[15] and Adweek.^[17]

The hashtags were covered by several sites within the following days including Mic^[13] and the Washington Post.^[14]

Search Interest

External References