In the faux thesis, titled "An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal academics", Owen ranked her partners based on her criteria for performance.
[3][4][5] The business magazine Forbes called it a "huge stor[y] that speak[s] to the way we live online", commenting that the "athletes" in Owen's document had "lost control over the sharing" of details of their sexual activities and prowess.
[9] In addition, as The New York Times noted, Duke University was embarrassed by the public reaction to the "private joke" written by a "senior" (a recent graduate).
[10] Vanity Fair magazine wrote that Duke University's student newspaper had printed a "wry editorial about the scandal", describing Owen as having gained a sort of "feminist victory, arguing that women had closed the gender gap if "a seemingly innocent and fairly generic Duke girl" could destroy "a dozen varsity athletes'" reputations with nothing more than a PowerPoint file, and be punished with nothing worse than a hint of a book deal.
[18] After the Duke events, controversial because of the names and photographs included on Owen's list,[18] Brandon Davies of Brigham Young University's basketball team was suspended in 2011 for breaking the college's honor code by having sex with his girlfriend.
"[19][20] Forbes commented that Owen's attempt to remove her digital footprint from the Web "proved impossible", noting that cached versions of profiles could still be found, and that it was futile to delete materials once they had been released on to the Internet.
[6] On December 1, 2010, the NBC crime drama series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit aired an episode called "Rescue", based on the story of Owen's faux sex thesis.
"[21] The protagonist, an advertising executive named Caitlin, creates a PowerPoint document entitled "My Lay List: A Scholarly Treatise On Office Relationships", which goes viral.