Sharkeisha Fight Video

Overview

Sharkeisha Fight Video is a video clip of a young woman referred to as “Sharkeisha” sucker-punching an unsuspecting victim in the face in the middle of a heated argument. Upon being uploaded via Instagram in late November 2013, the video quickly went viral on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere online, inspiring a slew of photoshopped parodies involving images of sharks.

Background

On November 26th, 2013, Instagram user im_stupid____ shared a video clip^[1] of a young woman, who is referred to as “Sharkeisha” by an onlooker, sucker-punching another woman known as “Shay” in the face during an argument and repeatedly assaulting her while the victim tries to defend herself in a crouched position. The Instagram video quickly went viral and began circulating on Twitter as well, with the original post garnering more than 20,000 likes and 30,000 comments in less than 24 hours, shortly before it was removed from the site for violating the terms of service. On the next day, the video was re-uploaded to World Star Hip Hop (shown below), where it drew more than 3.8 million views in the matter of few hours.

Notable Development

Online Reactions

The fight video was quickly met with varying reactions from the viewers on Instagram and Twitter, ranging from messages denouncing the act of violence in shock and disbelief to comments expressing awe at the assailant’s physical strength, while others began poking fun at her name “Sharkeisha” with puns and photoshopped parodies involving sharks, Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards and the 2013 SyFy made-for-TV disaster film Sharknado. By early morning on November 27th, “Sharkeisha” had become the number one trending topic on Twitter and the third most searched keyword of the day on Google Trends.

According to Topsy, the word “Sharkeisha” was mentioned at least 800,000 times on Twitter between November 26th and November 27th.

News Media Coverage

As “Sharkeisha” began climbing up the trending chart on Twitter, the video was soon picked up by internet culture blogs and hip hop news sites as well as mainstream news outlets, with more than one article expressing concerns over the Internet’s obsession with violence, particularly in the light of The Knockout Game becoming a national controversy in the United States. In addition, Hip Hop Wired^[9] observed that the online parodies of the assailant’s name can be seen as an example of “coonery” at its finest, reminding the readers that there are “a legion of people who think this is the sort of classless behavior typical of any and all Black women.”

Rumored Mugshot

On November 27th, Twitter user @Desus uploaded a mugshot of a young woman identified as a “Sharkeisha Tyesha Thompson” from Charlotte, North Carolina, with a message implying that the assailant had been taken into custody (shown below). Although it remains unconfirmed whether the woman depicted in the photogram is the actual assailant seen in the video, public records of arrests suggest that Sharkeisha Tyesha Thompson had been arrested at least once before on charge of “uttering a forged instrument,” or assuming a false identity with forged dcumentation.