The rise of uninvited sexual images has unfortunately become a fact of life for many young women on social media. A recent YouGov study showed that almost 5 in 10 women (46%) of millennials have received an unsolicited D pic, and they are more likely to have received one the younger they are.

And while we are aware this is not acceptable and essentially humiliating, if you’ve found yourself in this disturbing situation, the words do run dry. But one woman who goes by the Twitter handle @FruityNesa has just come up with probably the most genius way to fight back against internet creeps.

After receiving such an unsolicited pic from a dude who thought it was a good idea, @FruityNesa replied with a staged automated message that made the freak cry for “help.” She then posted the screenshots on Twitter with the caption “I don’t typically post dms but I was really proud of this one,” which blew up immediately with 751.6K likes and 110.5K retweets and comments.

This woman’s viral response to an unsolicited picture has been hailed as genius on social media

Image credits: FruityNesa

Bored Panda reached out to Nesa, the woman behind the viral message fighting back against the internet creep, who preferred to stay anonymous. She told us that over the lifetime of her account, “I received a few unsolicited pictures.”

Nesa came up with the idea to write an automated message in the spur of the moment. “Most unsolicited-pic-senders never listen to what you say.” As soon as she saw his first message, she said she knew the dude was going to send the pic no matter what.

“I had to be sure that he had the cognitive ability to understand my refusal to see his picture. So, I figured I’d write something that would get a clear and deliberate response from him.”

Someone tweaked the staged automated message to make it seem even more realistic

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Nesa believes that the best way to address and mitigate harassment is to approach it as a collective unit. “Responding to hateful replies under posts may be tiring, but if everyone works together, it becomes less taxing.”

However, Nesa initially received a few misogynistic responses to her post. But before she could get her own words in, others came to her defense. “What’s better is, as the defensive replies from people increased, it triggered the algorithm to boost the harassing comment to the top.”

Other men then saw it and said: “’Whoa. I had no idea this was actually a thing; this is gross. How can I help?’ and that’s when the dominos begin falling in your favor,” she explained.

The author also said that every little detail counts in making the message believable

Image credits: FruityNesa

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Nesa truly believes it’s important to expose these people because “there may be more players involved than just you.”

It turns out, after her post went viral, she received a DM from a concerned person who thought this could have been her boyfriend.

“We worked together to gather more information. When they confronted him, he confessed.”Nesa concluded that “If I had ignored his messages, he would have just harassed other women and the dominos would have kept toppling.”

Many people joined the thread to share their views on the matter

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Many women around the world often face the task of protecting themselves from unwanted attention online and this unfair burden is getting worse as new ways of communication evolve. There has been a recent surge in “cyberflashing” cases, which refers to men sending sexually explicit images via the wireless AirDrop system to devices that carry female names.

In order to protect themselves from AirDrop harassment, some women reported that they renamed their phones to male names, like “John’s work iPhone.”

Laura Thompson, who investigates online abuse and harassment, believes that “these things have always been a problem, there has always been sexism, and men who abuse power and abuse women, and this is just another way to do it.”

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Unfortunately, there are no universal sexting laws across the US, and state laws are either not very well defined or vary widely.

While the Harmful Digital Communications Act (HDCA) “makes it illegal to post a digital communication with the intention of causing serious emotional distress to someone else,” it counts only if you’re sending multiple sexually explicit images to a person who hasn’t agreed to it, or if the receiver is a minor. When sexting involves minors, it violates both state and federal child pornography laws.

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