"This horrifying and newly trendy online-harassment tactic is ruining careers"

WaPo:

The latest high-profile victim is . . . formerly a spokesperson for Nintendo of America.

...

Unrelenting, the mob kept looking for more dirt . . . . On Sunday, they found and republished what they claim is her listing on an escort service.

“The amount of obsession it must take to dig up old tweets, find addresses, link me to anon things not related to games is … not normal for a professional industry,” [she] tweeted on March 30.

There is, to be clear, no indication that the listing is real: It doesn’t show the escort’s face or real name, and [the former Nintendo employee] hasn’t publicly confirmed or denied it. But regardless of whether or not the woman in the listing is actually [her], the fact that someone dug it up says a lot about their tactics. Either [her] critics trawled the Web looking for dirt on her, without even the help of public records or reverse-image search … or they combed through escort listings until they found an ad that could arguably pass as hers.