America 2020: Where A 3-Second Video Is Weaponized & The Varsity Cheer Captain Is Taken Out

The New York Times ran a story on December 26 that focuses on how a three-second Snapchat video in 2016 featuring a Virginia high school freshman named Mimi Groves saying "I can drive ni--ers" was saved by a classmate and later weaponized. The story is a runaway hit on social media. People are picking sides and deciding whether they're Team Mimi or Team Jimmy Galligan, the classmate who weaponized the video when it could cause maximum damage to the high school cheerleader captain.

Here's the timeline to this story:

• In 2016, 15-year-old Groves gets her license and fires up Snapchat. She rattles off "I can drive ni--ers" and hits send

• The video circulates around the Loudoun County school district with typical Snapchat attention, but that's the end of it. People go on with their lives



• Ms. Groves completes her freshman, sophomore, and junior years without the video causing problems

• Groves enters her senior year, things are going well. She's the varsity cheer captain and headed to the University of Tennessee to join the Vols cheerleading team

• At some point during the 2019-20 school year, Galligan receives the video and he decides to keep it in his pocket

• In June 2020, as the George Floyd news breaks, Groves takes to Instagram and urges "people to 'protest, donate, sign a petition, rally, do something' in support of the Black Lives Matter movement," according to the New York Times.

• “You have the audacity to post this, after saying the N-word," someone writes on her post

• Galligan deploys the 2016 video of Groves

You lived through 2020, so you can guess what happened next. That's right, a firestorm. The video circulated. Social media mobs attacked. TV stations ran stories. When the dust had settled, the target had been destroyed.

Tennessee told Groves she wouldn't be welcomed at the school.

Galligan, happy with the results, told the Times he had zero regrets. “If I never posted that video, nothing would have ever happened,” he said. And because the internet never forgets, the clip will always be available to watch.

“I’m going to remind myself, 'You started something. You taught someone a lesson.'”