networks in the country. Her hours
are all the time; hate doesn’t sign off
at 5 p.m. Her job, i.e., to stop poten-
tial mass murderers from carrying
out their plots, used to mean track-
ing domestic terrorists like Finton.
But lately, K’s focus has been pulled
toward the alt-right, a younger, more
misogynistic version of the white
supremacist movement that’s con-
verting a new generation on message
boards and social media. She is
tracking the men who hate women.
And they’re so dangerous that most
of her family and friends don’t even
know what she does. “I just tell them
I’m a researcher on domestic terror-
ism,” she says. “I think they assume I
work for a think tank.”
Her life depends on her anonym-
it y. It ’s wh a t a l low s he r t o e xe r c i s e
outside during the brightest bits of
day and to shop for groceries without
looking over her shoulder. She main-
tains such a low profile—no personal
social media, zero selfies floatingI pull into a concrete driveway
with a slight upward slope. The
house has stone siding and a match-
ing shed that sits to one side like a
life-size dollhouse (her woodwork-
ing shop, I later learn). It’s the type of
place you’d think belongs to some-
one with no secrets, the blinds wide
open for anyone to look inside.
She answers the door herself.
She’s wearing a gray T-shirt, jeans,black boots, gold hoop earrings. Her
height, her brown hair—it’s all nor-
mal, unremarkable. She looks how
she looks, which is not like a top-
secret agent hunting murderous
internet villains but also not not like
one. She projects a low-key confi-
dence that makes me feel like she
could put me in a headlock (and she
could, she will later admit, although
“that wouldn’t be my first choice”).
She tells me to call her K, based on a
childhood nickname, and gives me
a handshake-slash-hug. “I’m sure
they told you I didn’t really want to
do this,” she says.
She has a guardedness about her
but laughs easily. “I hope you like
dogs!” she says as hers yip at my feet.
(I don’t, actually, but I lie, then
immediately worry she can tell.)
We take a seat at her tawny-
colored dining-room table (she
ma de it b y h a nd). It ’s he r e , a mid
stacks of bills, sticky breakfast
dishes, and tropical vacation photos
of her, her husband, and their kid,
that K spends her days and nights
infiltrating the angriest extremist
around on the inter-
net (trust me, I
looked)—that her
biggest claim to
fame in her cul-de-
sac is that she
chased off a guy
who was grifting everyone’s Wi-Fi.
We move to her home office, where
she pulls a plaque out of a drawer.
It’s a photo and a framed letter from
then–FBI director Robert Mueller
that says, in part, “We are so grateful
for the good work—and the good—
you do.” It’s proof that the people
who need to know, know.Studying behavior
t o pr e d ic t wh a t p e o ple w i l l do ne x t i s
not a new job. The FBI has employed
profilers like K for years to help them
catch serial killers and repeat rap-
ists. But in the age of internet radi-
calization, it’s more important than
ever to determine who is actively
plotting mass killings versus just
fetishizing them online. K is the best
of the best at seeing the difference.
And of course, misogyny is having
a devastatingly proud moment.
“We’ve never really seen violent hate
being directed at women like we are
now, in the same way that it has been
for black people and Jews,” says
Heidi Beirich, director of the
Intelligence Project at the Southern
Poverty Law Center.
To join a cult of angry men, you
used to have to show up in a field in
the middle of the night. You had to
know someone, get a tattoo, shave
your head. Now you just have to click
around on a computer, anonymously
if you want to. And scary numbers ofBefore she started track-
ing dangerous men
online, K honed her
instincts—and her nerves
of steel—as a marine and
then a cop.121
Cosmopolitan September 2019