A recent trolling attempt from incels is taking aim at the bank accounts of sex workers
Of all the forms of online bullying developed since the internet was born, the very specific threat of reporting someone to the Internal Revenue Service for potential misreporting or underreporting of income should, if nothing else, gain points for being unexpected and novel. In every other respect, however, what has been called “ThotAudit” is an impressive waste of time for everyone involved. (For those unaware, “Thot” is a term [deriving from the acronym “That Ho Over There,” occasionally “That Hottie Over There,” for the more sensitive amongst you.)
The bullying campaign, carried out by a number of right-wing trolls led by a man named David Wu—who, until his recent suspension on Twitter, went by the handle @TheThotAuditor—began a couple of weeks ago, and had a simple idea behind it: Clearly, online sex workers weren’t reporting their income to the IRS, and therefore, they could all be reported and ultimately jailed, which is good because… sex work is inherently evil, I guess? To the surprise of few, those eagerly participating in the so-called movement included more than a couple incels, who are already predisposed to hating any sexually active woman. Misogyny is, of course, squarely at the root of the entire plan.
Something that should be noted about the entire thing is that it’s unclear at this point whether those responsible for the movement have actually been particularly successful in their attempts to use the IRS as a tool to harm online sex workers. Certainly, the much-shared original social media post often quoted by the so-called “ThotAuditors” has been identified as a joke, and no actual proof has been released by any party that any audit request has been followed up on by the IRS.
There’s a good reason for that. Any attempt to file a form 3949-A with the IRS—the form needed to report someone for tax fraud—requires an amount of information that any troll is unlikely have at their fingertips, legal name, address and social security number, not to mention the amount of income that has not been correctly reported upon. In other words, it’s almost impossible for those claiming to be reporting countless sex workers to actually be able to do so.
Of course, that assumes that this campaign is actually interested in tax fraud.
“The ThotAudit is about more than reporting sex workers to the IRS,” Mistress Harley, who works online under the name The Techdomme, told Playboy via email. “It’s about getting our platforms shut down, crippling our income, and reporting us to the variety of services that are generally adult-unfriendly. The IRS is just the threat that has gotten the most attention because no one likes an audit. I think the real damage being done is when girls get their payment sources shut down. The incels who are behind the ThotAudit are also advocating to report sex workers to PayPal, Venmo, Circle, Square, and any other payment providers who are not adult services-friendly.”
“The ThotAudit is about more than reporting sex workers to the IRS. It’s about getting our platforms shut down, crippling our income, and reporting us to the variety of services that are generally adult-unfriendly.”
In fact, a subset of the ThotAudit group was actively working to deplatform sex workers from PayPal and other payment providers at the same time as threatening IRS audits, with considerably more success—not that such payment processors need further convincing to penalize online sex workers.
Taken in combination, the dual attack on the financial element of online sex work is a clear attempt to scare sex workers offline. At least one sex worker who wished to remain anonymous admitted concerns to Playboy about their career in the current climate. Not everyone agrees, though—another anonymous sex worker suggested via email that, in light of recent content guideline changes for Tumblr and Facebook, the activity of online trolls is a problem best left ignored while other, more important, issues were addressed.
Miss Harley’s approach is somewhere in between.
“I do think the best response to this kind of harassment is simply to ignore it,” she explains. “The mute button is your friend. I chose to engage the ThotAudit trolls to show the many sex workers that follow me that they don’t need to fear this kind of intimation. I prefer to use my platform to show the many sex workers that follow me about how to protect themselves from this kind of harassment.”
Indeed, she saw the trolling of ThotAudit as a teachable moment in regards to running a small business. “I recommend that anyone making more than $5000 yearly in sex work do the very simple work of incorporating. Most states have a very low fee for filing an LLC, the minute you are a legal tax-paying business you are totally immune from these kinds of threats or harassment,” she says. “Additionally, legal businesses also have legal recourse against harassment and can work with adult-friendly payment providers, so I wanted to use the ThotAudit to show other sex workers how to make themselves invulnerable to these kinds of threats. The best response is to make sure you’re not legally vulnerable and ignore them.”
And if that doesn’t work, there’s always an alternate response, as Miss Harley unveiled on Twitter. As has been prescribed by exasperated parents since the dawn of time, when all else has failed, simply give the bullies a taste of their own medicine.