In the view of Dave Hoffman, a professor at Temple University Law School who has blogged about AutoAdmit, the site offered its patrons a peculiar, vicarious kick: It allowed people who were straitlaced and risk-averse enough to want to be lawyers in the first place to become briefly, crazily irresponsible. They could spout outrageous lies, or, in the manner of Sacha Baron Cohen, invent entirely new personalities for themselves, invariably as homophobes, racists, or misogynists. Speaking a common language and flouting the same taboos, such posters became a close-knit fraternity of complete strangers who rarely even knew one another’s names. But for all their trash talk, many could even feel principled about their misbehavior; after all, they were free-speech absolutists. And they became cyber-survivalists when anyone tried to tone down or remove their posts.

Inevitably, naïfs stumbled onto the site and were mortified by what they saw. Among the most outraged was Brian Leiter, then a professor at the University of Texas Law School. In early 2005, he counted 250 threads with the word nigger in them and 350 more with Jews or Jew, including “Are Jews smarter or just craftier?” Three hundred other threads had bitches or cunt in them, and another 200 had fags. In March 2005, Leiter complained about the site on his blog. He promptly met the fate of all AutoAdmit critics. He was vilified so brutally on the site—for instance, in posts claiming that he had AIDS—that he retained counsel and briefly considered suing. Jarret Cohen, fearing that he’d have to reveal the identities of his posters in any court action, stopped collecting their internet-protocol addresses.

Women attacked on AutoAdmit saw Leiter as a sympathetic soul and emailed him with their horror stories. A black student at Vanderbilt Law School was so traumatized by such threads about her as “Gangbanged by 4 Cincinnati Bengals” that she had changed schools. At one point, Vanderbilt officials contacted Gary Clinton, dean of students at University of Pennsylvania Law School, to complain. That Ciolli attended the school was well-known around AutoAdmit; people assumed that a powerful university administrator like Clinton would have some sway over him. On several occasions, Clinton suggested that Ciolli desist and warned him that his affiliation with the site could hurt him professionally; each time, Clinton says, Ciolli expressed anguish over what was happening but said he was powerless to stop it. And he would not walk away. “I refused to allow a few jerks to ruin what I thought was a good thing,” Ciolli told me.

The attacks against Brittan Heller began in the summer of 2005, after her graduation from Stanford. “Stupid Bitch to Attend Yale Law,” declared STANFORDtroll. “She will be part of the class of ’08, and her name is Brittan Heller.” The usual cyber-mauling ensued. “I’ll force myself on her, most definitely,” promised neoprag, who added, “I think I will sodomize her. Repeatedly.” To which stanfordtroll replied, “If you go after that, you’ll be in for a suprise [sic].” Then someone calling himself :D chimed in, “Just don’t fuck her, she has herpes.”

Seeking to have the inflammatory thread taken down, Heller turned to Google—in vain. Its policy is clearly stated on its website: “Google does not remove allegedly defamatory material from our search results. You will need to work directly with the webmaster of the page in question.” So, using a mix of humor, flattery, and steel, Heller contacted AutoAdmit. “While sometimes I can be stupid and sometimes I can be a bitch, I can only aspire to be both at once...since I’m just terrible at multitasking,” she joked in an email message to Cohen and Ciolli, adding, “I would like to get this settled quickly and not have to involve any outside legal authorities.” The implied threat irked Cohen, who by law didn’t have to do anything. “Sounds like a nut,” he wrote to Ciolli. Two days later, after hearing nothing, Heller wrote again. “Please remove the post, and if you’re willing, allow me to confront my slanderer,” she pleaded.

Again, she got no reply.

By the time Heller started at Yale in the fall, the online locusts had moved on to other targets, as they often do, and Heller had moved on too. But when she interviewed for jobs for the summer of 2006, she claims, she was shut out of the first 16 spots she applied for—almost inconceivable for a Yale Law student. As far as she was concerned, there could be but one explanation: The firms had Googled her, and when they had, “Stupid Bitch to Attend Yale Law” and its progeny had come up first. In January 2007, she turned to ReputationDefender, a fledgling “online-reputation-management solution company” based in Redwood City, California. For a monthly fee, it flags negative internet content and then, usually through moral persuasion, helps get it taken down. ReputationDefender agreed to represent Heller for free.

She was initially on her own. Before long, though, AutoAdmit had created a confrere who would come in for vastly more abuse. A poster calling himself hi launched a new thread on January 31, 2007, entitled “Rate this HUGE breasted cheerful big-tit girl from YLS” with a link to a picture that Heide Iravani had put up on her Facebook page. There ensued ample, graphic discussion about whether Iravani’s breasts were real or fake, and all of the things one could do with them. Then a poster named Vincimus, clearly a Yalie, weighed in on Iravani’s workout attire: “Anyone who goes to the gym in the afternoon has seen her trapsing [sic] around in spandex booty shorts and a strappy tank top,” he wrote. This report didn’t satisfy Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey, who demanded, “Take your goddamned cell phone next time and snap a pic, for Chrissakes.”

Like Heller, Iravani had never heard of AutoAdmit. But she soon learned that she had been targeted and that it had popped up on Google. Iravani complained to the Yale administration but found little sympathy; one top administrator told her to tough it out and learn how to take criticism. (A spokeswoman for the school says, “We did everything in our power to assist them.”) But another Yale official, who knew that Heller had spoken to ReputationDefender, suggested Iravani contact her. Though they hadn’t known each other before (and still aren’t close), the two soon joined forces.