How To Best Deal With Online Trolls
Trolls Taking Their Toll
Alanah Pearce, 21, a games reviewer on Australian Radio and who also has a YouTube Channel, has found a pretty interesting way of dealing with her online trolls. After being the recipient of many rape threats, she decided to do something about it. She has been telling their mothers.It all started when Alanah Pearce realised that her trolls weren't middle aged men like she had always assumed but actually young boys: “It turns out that mostly they’re young boys and the problem is they don’t know any better, so responding to them rationally didn’t resolve the situation. And it got to the point where their comments were starting to make me feel really uncomfortable," she told The Guardian.
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| source: characterlink.com |
The young boys sending her these rape threats often used their own personal accounts, so finding out who their mother was was pretty easy - unfortunately for them, all parents have now discovered the joys of Facebook. Alanah proceeded to send a few mothers messages explaining the situation and screenshotting the boys' messages. Out of the 4 women she contacted, only one responded and Alanah tweeted her response.
Sometimes young boys on Facebook send me rape threats, so I've started telling their mothers. pic.twitter.com/0Cbs81eXiE— Alanah Pearce (@Charalanahzard) November 28, 2014
The tweet went viral, and has been retweeted 36K times and favourites 59k times. Not going to lie, but that's probably one of the best ways to deal with online rape threats. Alanah definitely has the right idea, to make these threats stop and get young boys to understand that this isn't appropriate behaviour, even online. She told The Guardian: “It was just a way to try to reach a resolution, to productively teach young boys it’s not okay to be sexist to women, even if they’re on the internet, that they are real people and that there should be actual consequences for that.”
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| source: buzzfeed.com |
These kind of trolls rely on the protection their screen gives them. They will send rape threats because they feel safe behind their screen, they do not see the consequences of their action and no one can touch them because it's the internet. And so exposing them and showing that their actions online could have severe repercussions in the real world is the best way to deal with them. Alanah, you go girl.
Laura is a recent graduate from University of East Anglia in Film and Television Studies, currently interning as a content writer but hoping to one day live off her writing. Follow her @LauraAtSMF.
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How To Best Deal With Online Trolls
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Wednesday, December 03, 2014
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Reviewed by Anonymous
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Wednesday, December 03, 2014
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