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| Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Kristin Wiig and Leslie Jones played the Ghostbusters in its 2016 rebo |
As
everyone who has a social media account probably knows by now, and
this is probably ancient news by now, Ghostbusters actress Leslie
Jones was cyberbullied on Twitter.
The
cyberbullying, which is really just another name for harassing and
intimidating people on social media, consisted of messages to Jones
that were racist and sexist in nature. It was pretty nasty and much
of it will leave a person wondering why and how people say such
horrible things and at the same time feel justified in doing so.
Jones
decided to make some of these posts public, sharing them to her
Twitter feed. Her intent was meant to shed light on the sort of
harassment that she, women of color and women in general often face
when it comes to social media.
In
some ways she was successful. A dialogue started and one of the
people accused of instigating and encouraging the whole thing,
alt-right blogger Milo Yiannopoulos, got a lifetime ban from Twitter.
But,
of course, sharing those posts publicly also brought even more
harassment. For many Internet trolls, getting a response from a
celebrity is the pinnacle of trolling. Having the celebrity share the
post publicly is like an actor or director winning an Oscar.
Sure,
when I brought up that Jones responding to and sharing these posts
started a piranha-like feeding frenzy, I was criticized by angry
supporters. Since nuance is not a thing on the Internet, I was not
saying that she should ignore them. I wasn't even saying she
shouldn't share the sort of harassment sh was getting. What I didn't
agree with was the fact that she actually chose to interact with
them, directly responding to them on her Twitter feed.
By choosing to
respond to them, either with her own insults or castigations, Jones essentially dived into a swimming pool full of glue. By doing that,
she only made things stickier the further she waded in and allowed
the people harassing her to redefine it as a “free speech” issue.
Now, the hashtag #freemilo has become a thing, turning a guy that
most people never heard of into an Internet celebrity and the face of
the “fight politically-correct censorship” movement.
Part
of the reason trolls do what they do is because they are anonymous.
They can say anything they want, short of threats to the President or
terrorist attacks, without repercussions. From this veil of
anonymity, they can indulge their frustrations and prejudices,
unleashing them in an onslaught of bile without fear of having to own
up to them. Twitter is exceptionally bad for this, while Facebook is
less so since it requires people to use actual names … not that
there's ways around that too.
I'm
usually pretty entertained by insults directed toward me. As a
columnist, it makes me feel like I've made an impression. But at the
same time, I'm white and male, which means I'm not the usual target
demographic for trolls. As we learned with the whole Gamergate
fiasco, women get the worst of it from trolls. It goes both ways,
since Yiannopoulos supporter Kassy Dillon appears to be getting
online harassment as well, as she has shared ones saying she should
be killed or kill herself.
Gamergate
was the name for an online war that started in 2014. As many people
outside the gaming and Internet world were left scratching their
heads about why it was a big deal, an online campaign was launched
that targeted several women in the video game industry.
The ignition
point was a blog post by a former boyfriend of game developer Zoe
Quinn accusing her of entering a relationship with a journalist in
exchange for positive coverage. Those who supported the ex-boyfriend
organized themselves under the Twitter hashtag #Gamergate and began
harassment campaigns not only against Quinn, but also prominent women
developers and bloggers. The attacks were coordinated through forums
and included doxing (researching and broadcasting personally
identifiable information about an person). threats of rape and death
threats.
Gamergate
highlighted why often times, trolling is not something that can be
ignored. It was a situation that not only saw women targeted with
online harassment, but also threats that impacted their real lives.
Many of the women involved had their physical addresses released as
well as their phone numbers. It essentially crossed the line into
stalking and for many of them, it was even worse because there was no
way to tell if someone was actually out there, waiting to harm them
or not. They couldn't be sure if the ghosts were figments of their
imagination or if they were actually out there, hiding in the
shadows, waiting to harm them.
So,
that's why it's wrong to dismiss online harassment as something that
can “just be ignored.” Particularly when it comes to women, who
are disproportionately the targets.
The
question is “what can be done about it?” That is what really
seems to elude people right now.
The
thing is, if nothing is done, Twitter will pay the price. It's still
the go-to as far live feed for mainstream and online media, the
coverage of the Democratic and Republican convention is an example of
that. But how much longer before an alternative steps up and offers
something Twitter doesn't: a willingness to crackdown on trolls. They
say people vote with their feet and the principle holds true on the
Internet, except that people vote with their clicks.
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