A TikTok personality with over a million followers is facing backlash after a Reddit thread accused him of harassing women on San Diego's Pacific Beach.
26-year-old Erick Ronaldo is a TikTok star who currently has 1.2 million followers on the app. He is known for approaching strangers for short interviews and social experiments. He has been accused of making sexual advances and harassing beachgoers on a public Reddit thread on a San Diego subreddit.
"So I saw these guys at PB today," read the Reddit post. "The one with the camera was standing out of view of women sunbathing and taking photos of their [butt] as the other one went up to them. I witnessed them talk to a woman in a yellow swimsuit. It seemed weird so I went up to yellow swimsuit and asked what they wanted. The woman told me he said he was trying to prove that being nice to women was a successful way to pick up girls."
Ronaldo has since released an explanation on his TikTok account, wherein he claims the Reddit thread was racially motivated. Another video from Ronaldo shows him getting two women's telephone numbers on the same beach using the same pick-up line he claims to have used before being approached by the concerned citizen.
"I didn't say anything to them other than 'How does it feel to have your photo taken without your consent,' wrote Reddit user @releasethedogs, who originally posted the online discussion. "His assertion that I said anything racist to him is false. It's just him trying to DARVO [deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender]."
There is no law prohibitting people from recording others in public places without consent, although California Penal Code 632 protects confidential audio conversations from being recorded without consent of all parties.
