Kevin Owens Takes On Instagram Hackers

After his wife’s Instagram account was hacked, Kevin Owens took to social media and lash out at the offenders

Kevin Owens does not suffer fools. I first noticed the hubbub around the Twitterverse on Monday night as I saw wrestling fans discussing alleged cheating and divorce rumors surrounding Owens and his wife, Karina Leila. As I am a naturally skeptical person, I skipped over the people who were already condemning his actions (based solely on social media posts mind you) and decided to wait until the parties involved addressed the issue. I didn’t have to wait long.

Karina quickly deleted all the posts regarding Kevin’s infidelity and posted a message to all of her followers on Instagram letting them know she and Owens had been hacked:

As a precaution, Owens deleted his Instagram account and then took to Twitter and posted a message of his own, presumably directed more at those responsible for attempting to soil his reputation:

"Social media is an absolute cesspool. The way some people try and ruin peop’e’s lives for no apparent reason is genuinely depressing. My Instagram is gone, again and now people are going after my wife too. It’s disgusting. Needless to say, I would never do this to my family.— Kevin Owens (@FightOwensFight) December 4, 2017"

Hackers and trolls have an odd sense of humor and I can almost forgive good-natured jabs in certain scenarios such a sports rivals trading shots back and forth. But this sort of cruelty is something else entirely. It’s hard to imagine the sort of person who would take joy in intentionally trying to manipulate someone’s life in such a malicious way. Some people just want to watch the world burn and see nothing wrong with peddling “fake news” and passing it off as true because in the end, the people getting hurt are strangers to them so they simply don’t care.

Herein lies the inherent problem with these types of mean-spirited internet personalities. These types of trolls lack empathy, which is a key component required to be a functional human being in modern society. They hide behind the anonymity of the internet and assume that words written online are somehow done in a vacuüm where consequences are as scarce as oxygen.

Next: WWE: Privacy in the Age of Social Media

The criminal justice system is slowly catching up to the issue of cyberbullying which can take many different forms. While there is currently no federal law to cover this problem, “cyberstalking” is considered a crime under anti-stalking, slander, and harassment laws and can include the targeted harassment of an individual with false accusations like the ones made against Owens. Each state has their own specific regulations as to what constitutes cyberstalking and online trolls hide behind the difficult issue of how victims can accurately identity perpetrators without infringing on civil liberties.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened and it won’t be the last. So long as the internet exists, there will be awful people hiding in the virtual shadows for their opportunity to get a cheap laugh at the expense of someone else. The most any of us can do is make sure we follow a rule that has been in place since the dawn of the digital age: “never feed the trolls.”