For the crime of being a young woman and an elected official, Saira Blair read on Twitter that she looked like she was regularly doing a "walk of shame" and received about three threats of physical violence.
Another woman involved in politics, Cartney McCracken, never received physical threats, but one person who followed her blog tracked down her workplace. She's received numerous online comments about her appearance, and how she should be out shopping instead of running campaigns.
For opposing abstinence-only education at her school, Katelyn Campbell was only 17 when she started receiving unwanted, lewd messages, calling her everything from a "slut" to a "sexy librarian." She received threats of physical violence, too.
And earlier this month, WSAZ reporter Brittany Hoke announced via Facebook she would be disabling private messages on her professional account due to "an inundation of vulgar and strange messages from a few viewers."
Ask several young women, especially those in the public or semi-public eye, about their experiences with online harassment, and you're bound to get several different stories.
Young women are at heightened risk of some of the more severe forms of online harassment, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey. Women ages 18-24 are more likely to be sexually harassed (25 percent among women compared to 13 percent among men) and stalked (26 percent among women compared to 7 percent among men) online, according to the survey. They are about as likely as men to be called offensive names and experience sustained harassment.
But women are more likely than men to experience harassment based on their gender, according to Karen Weiss, an associate professor at West Virginia University who teaches criminology, sexuality and victimology and has studied harassment.
Weiss said women, as well as men who are gay or bisexual or perceived to be gay or bisexual, are more likely to be victims of gender-based harassment, an even broader type of discrimination than sexual harassment, which typically brings to mind unwanted sexual attention or requests for sexual favors.
"Whenever somebody is seemingly not conforming to what we expect of women and men, they seem to be harassed in these verbal ways," she said. "Now in fairness, Donald Trump is sort of harassed for his hair, but for the most part, when physical appearances become slurs of some sort, it's usually directed toward women. Men are harassed for other reasons."
Young people are also at heightened risk of online harassment. About 65 percent of Internet users ages 18-29 have experienced some form of harassment online, according to the Pew survey.
Delegate Saira Blair, R- Berkeley, became the youngest lawmaker in the country when she was elected at 18 to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 2014. When the news hit national media, she noticed a trend among the online comments and messages she was receiving.
Blair welcomes comments from those who disagree with her policy positions. She expected that.
But while she doesn't let herself get upset by them, she doesn't welcome the comments that focus on her physical appearance.
She also wasn't expecting threats of physical violence.
Blair thinks the anonymity of the Internet emboldened many of the people who read about her.
"They can pretty much say what they want and there's not going to be any kind of consequence for what they've said," she said.
Her response has mainly been to ignore the comments when she can.
"I think it would be a lot harder in a different field when you're just doing your job and public attention isn't what you signed up for," she said. "I still don't necessarily think that makes it OK, but it's been a lot easier to deal with."
Blair believes most of the unwanted attention was because of her age, not her gender, but she acknowledges that some of the attention was gender-based.
"Sometimes I really wish I was a man in that case," she said.
Another West Virginia native active in politics, former Rainmaker Media Group employee Cartney McCracken started receiving harassment on her blog, Politico in Stilettos, while living in Charleston.
"My skin wasn't nearly as thick as it is now," she said. "It can be extremely hurtful if you're not ready for it and you're not expecting it.
"I didn't have thick enough skin, and I cried at night."
Like Blair, McCracken has noticed that many of the comments she receives focus on her lipstick or her glasses versus her positions on issues.
"I'm thinking, you're not actually paying attention to what I'm saying," she said.
Now a founding partner at Control Point Group, a Democratic political consulting firm in Washington, D.C., McCracken says it's easier to ignore the comments, even though "people aren't nearly as nice as they are back at home."
It's helped that she's had a good support system.
"These people are going to come out of the woods," she said. "You can let them get under your skin, or you can ignore them and keep going on with your mission."
Then again, she's never had a death threat.
Blair, who has received physical threats, says she probably should have taken it more seriously at the time.
Still, it never occurred to her to call police.
That disappoints Chris Atha, digital forensics examiner for the Kanawha County Sheriff's Office.
"Some people will call law enforcement literally over everything," he said. "The neighbor's dog is barking so we're going to call the police, and then have other people, they've been victims of legitimate crimes, but for whatever reason, they've justified saying law enforcement doesn't have time for it, but we do."
When he hears that the women interviewed for this article who experienced physical threats did not contact police, he wants to know why.
"Even without the element of violence, online harassment is still a crime," he said. "We can't help somebody if they don't report it."
Most people ignore online harassment. According to the Pew survey, 60 percent of people who had experience online harassment ignored the most recent attack. Just 5 percent reported to law enforcement.
Atha has noticed that many times, victims don't report until the threats have "spiraled out of control."
"We would much rather someone reach out for assistance before there's ever the threat of loss of property or physical violence," he said.
The Kanawha County Sheriff's Office doesn't catch everyone who harasses online. But Atha said they often do, and they want victims to at least give them a chance to try.
He also helps other smaller departments when they need his assistance, although he's quick to say many of them have their own investigators well-trained in Internet crimes.
It is against the law in West Virginia for anyone to intentionally harass or abuse another person using a phone or computer by: making contact without disclosing their identity; making contact after being requested not to; threatening to commit a crime against the person; or causing obscene material to be sent to that person after they asked not to receive it.
Atha acknowledges that investigating can be difficult at times, especially depending on the training level of the officer.
"The biggest thing I learned with digital forensics and computer investigations is, it depends," he said.
Some social media sites, like Facebook, are easier to work with than others.
Atha has undergone specialized training to teach him how to appropriately request records from social media sites. For instance, a site might require the officer obtain a court order to request a "photoprint" versus a "picture," he said. The officers also know how to read the data once they receive it. It's not like they receive a screenshot of a Facebook page.
"You've got to jump through their hoops to do it," he said.
For those who don't involve the police, Crystal Good, a social media strategist, recommends taking advantage of the block feature. She also recommends having conversations beforehand about when it's the appropriate time to block or contact police.
However, she noted that with social media, it's easy for trolls to simply create another account.
"It's kind of like whacking moles," she said.
Women are especially likely to report being negatively affected by online harassment. Women who have been harassed online are more than twice as likely as men to find the experience "extremely" or "very" upsetting, the Pew survey found. About 38 percent of women reported their experience fell into one of those categories, compared to 17 percent of men who were harassed.
Weiss noted that the effects can be far-reaching. She said the Internet could be considered an "additional weapon" for those who want to target based on gender.
"When I was growing up, well before the computer age, the worst that would happen would be someone would write something really nasty in the bathroom," she said. "Now with the online stuff, it reaches so far and wide and it's more anonymous, and it doesn't go away that easy."
After speaking to the media about her opposition to an abstinence-only speaker at her school, George Washington High School, Katelyn Campbell went from being the well-liked student body vice president to someone who has no plans of going to her high school reunion, in large part due to the harassment she received on social media.
She lives more carefully now, when typing posts and when she sees former classmates.
She received physical threats online when her story was in the news. A friend reported one threat made about the school, but like Blair, Campbell didn't report anything herself.
"I think looking back, I was probably in a lot more danger than I thought I was," she said.
Campbell's case is an example of the common practice of others assigning pre-conceived notions of sexuality to a woman, whether they know her or not.
"Because I was a woman, a lot of sexuality was imposed on me in a way that wasn't accurate," she said.
Because she was against abstinence-only education, she was perceived as promiscuous and told she was a slut.
"I think if I had been a man that no one would have questioned whether or not I'd had sex and what that meant," she said.
She also noted that the Internet can give bullies courage.
"On the Internet you're sitting there with nothing but time to sit and think of things to say to people who you may never meet," she said.
Campbell is doing well now, as a student at Wellesley College, and she doesn't blame her hometown for the negative attention, most of which came from out of state once her case hit national news.
"If you can go through that at 17 years old, you can pretty much do anything you want to."
Reach Erin Beck at erin.beck@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5163, Facebook.com/erinbeckwv, or follow @erinbeckwv on Twitter.