Local residents are plagued by Instagram’s newest mystery: the case of the anonymous “Peter Griffin” accounts.
Peter Griffin, the protagonist from the FOX animated sitcom “Family Guy”, is the mascot of the recent meme accounts. Cities hit with the self-proclaimed “city propagandist” include San Ramon, Danville, Dublin, Pleasanton, and Livermore. The first of the accounts began to appear in February.
Peter Griffin posts memes of San Ramon, Cal High specifically. These posts satirically present the city in multiple lights, sometimes promoting parts of San Ramon but also ridiculing places or people.
What intrigues people the most is the sanramon_peter account, which recently ran headfirst into a controversial battle with the San Ramon Valley Unified District.
Sanramon_peter is a former Cal student. He is not to be confused with “sanramonca.peter”, another San Ramon account that is thought to be made by a Dougherty Valley High student.
This San Ramon Peter Griffin account, which has nearly 4,000 followers, is slightly different from the others. Some of sanramon_peter’s posts are dedicated to not just memes, but about events or people in the local area. Specifically, he posted about a Monte Vista student who attacked a teacher in her classroom during lunch in March. The post included the student and teacher’s names and faces in a video.
According to the video, the student allegedly attacked their math teacher with a tripod after being given a failing grade for cheating on a test. Text proof of the student’s confession was included. Sanramon_peter went on to add that the teacher suffered a blow to the head and was hospitalized.
The district messaged the account asking the owner to take the post down or edit it due to the privacy rights of the student and teacher. The account owner did not comply with the district’s request.
Senior Caed Coffie thinks the ethics of both the teacher and student pictures being revealed in the video are questionable.
“As long as they consented to the release of their photos, it should be fine,” Coffie said. “But if they didn’t, [sanramon_peter] should take it down.”
Cal High marine biology teacher Jacob Martin is inclined to think in terms of the legality of the situation.
“I think the bigger legal issue, from my understanding, is student privacy,” Martin said. “Even if a student does something bad, if they’re a minor, I think there might be laws protecting them.”
But sanramon_peter remains solidified in his belief.
“I think if you basically almost murder a teacher in her own classroom, you lose that right to your privacy,” the owner of sanramon_peter said in an in-person interview. The owner wished to remain anonymous.
There some who believe the posts fall in a gray-area.
“Legally SRVUSD is in the right, because it is illegal to do what [sanramon_peter] is doing,” senior Maxwell Lassiter said. “But is it really that serious? [The Monte Vista student] already [attacked the teacher] and everyone already knows who they are. And it’s probably easy to get that information.”
Sanramon_peter agrees that the information was easily attainable for him, despite not being a Monte Vista student. But there is one thing that he wishes that he had done differently.
“The one thing I would have done, if I could go back, was keep the teacher out of it,” sanramon_peter said.
On the flip side, some people have come to appreciate the frank reporting of sanramon_peter.
“It’s good to keep people educated,” freshman Hunter Cox said.
Being anonymous led to colorful theories about sanramon_peter’s and his counterparts’ identities and motives.
“[The Peter Griffin accounts] are all one person and they just do multiple accounts because they want to get their hypnosis out there,” junior Camryn Ornelas said.
Similarly, Martin believes the accounts to all be run by a group of friends who most likely graduated pre-COVID.
“I wouldn’t say I’m just trying to expose a bunch of things,” sanramon_peter said. “I kind of just make videos for fun, when I have free time. So whatever’s going on, I’ll post about it.”
Despite the account’s humble origins, it’s had an impact on their viewers nonetheless.
“It was cool to see that San Ramon was on my for you page,” freshman Eshan Gill said.
Junior Sonora Bouey also enjoyed seeing content related to the city, specifically Cal High.
“[Sanramon_peter] was really funny to me, so I think [the account] is like a good thing because it’s making light of this school,” Bouey said.