The sad life of a troll.

Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Cyber-bulling… in this day and age? The taunts haven’t changed over time just the name for it has, this new method of cruel teasing is known as trolling.

Trolling is extremely easy due to people’s anonymity on the internet. Internet trolls can say anything in the public sphere and remain anonymous or use a fake identity. The main intention of a ‘troll’ is to get attention from their remarks. Many women have been subject to public misogynist remarks and some are starting to feel scared to post online as they fear the backlash from males. Laurie Penny has been frequently threatened and subjected to feminism; she stated that “It would be nice to think that the rot of rank misogyny was confined to fringe sites populated by lunatics. But it is found all over the web – and it’s silencing its victims. Fighting it is not the same as censorship.”

In a recent BCM112 lecture Dr Tanja Dreher presented us with interesting facts and ideas about trolls and online misogyny. She revealed to us that the male presence and power online is much stronger online with only 1 out of 10 of the most influential people online was a woman, Arianna Huffington. Also she spoke to us about gender-bias sites and online segregation with Pinterest.com users being 97% women and only 3% men, whereas the site Dartitup.com user percentage was 88% men and a mere 12% women.

It clearly isn’t every man that is trolling women and it isn’t every person that is trolling in general, however, there are many sites that prove that online misogyny and trolling is extremely present. Laurie Penny mentions the site “Don’t Start Me Off!” which is a prime example of misogyny online and she stands up for women by exposing this terrible site to the world. There are many sites that are finally trying to bring an end to this trolling, some sites include #mencallmethings, The Anti-Bogan and Destroy the Joint.

The participatory culture of the World Wide Web allows for these people to say these hate-filled words publicly and until gatekeepers are more vigilant, this will continue.

“Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights.” – Bob Marley

A common societal thought is that the youths of today do not care about social and political issues. This view has been formed mainly by comparing the way the youths today and the youths of the past (in the 1970’s etc) acted towards social issues.

The kids today may try to dress the same as the activists at Woodstock celebrating freedom (hippies) and also they may feel they are as informed about social issues as the people at Martin Luther King’s march on Washington; however, they are generally not as ‘physically’ involved with issues as the youths of the past.

The majority of youth social activism is now done through social media and they are known as ‘clictivists’. Teenagers can now sit in their chair and then post their ‘social activist’ view on a medium platform, such as Facebook, Twitter etc. ‘Clicktivism’ in simple terms is when social media users ‘like’ a photo to cure a dogs cancer… which as we all know is impossible. These clicktivists generally just like a post without getting behind the cause or knowing too much about the issue and simply feel that by clicking ‘like’ they are helping.

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

― Leonardo da Vinci

Activist work can benefit from social media posting. Seeing as most youths are on Facebook 24/7 social/political issues can go viral easily and most people will find out about these issues such as ‘KONY 2012’ and ‘Earth Hour.’ Henrik Christensen stated that “it is not possible to determine a consistent impact of internet campaigns on real-life decisions, there is no evidence of the substitution thesis. If anything, the internet has a positive impact on offline mobilisation”. A positive aspect of online activism is that more people are aware; the issue however is whether or not these people will participate in helping these causes. A problem with the KONY campaign is that it was a hoax and people that did sponsor it or spend money to help lost their money and this may discourage them from participating in social activism online.

Gate closing, please stand clear.

The game has changed but do you know how to hustle?

Nowadays almost EVERYONE in some way or another is involved in social media and different media platforms. Originally ‘back in the day’ people’s involvement was minimal, these people were ‘formerly known as the audience.’ But the audience is now the new participant, 30’s the new 40 and Androids the new apple.

These days anyone can present their opinion on the internet. Everybody is a commentator #mygrandmapassesbetterthanthat and everybody is a chef posting pictures of the food they made on Instagram, 10 years ago i wouldn’t have known what my best mate had for lunch unless I personally asked them but now their peanut butter and jelly sandwich is imposed on me. Most people now want to be heard. Facebook should say ‘sign up and Insert YOUR opinion here ______’

I’m not against presenting my personal opinion as you can see I’m doing it right now, and I also must admit that it is addictive. People are constantly checking their news feed, sports results, what events are taking place on the weekend etc and the interesting thing is, that all this information does not only come from credible sources. Someone may post a football result on Facebook that is not the correct score and the viewer could easily mistake this for being the correct result. Insignificant events such as this are not monitored by ‘Gate keepers’ people who monitor what does and doesn’t go on the internet or what is taken off the internet. Companies hire their own gate keepers, but a common form of this protection is allowing users to report a photo or post … then sending the information to the Gate keepers to take this down. But what if this information isn’t reported? What If this information is posted into a group page with supporters that share the same ideologies? An extremist rally date posted on the public domain would surely get taken down however; an extremist rally date posted on a private Facebook page that only these extremist members know about probably wouldn’t get taken down due to its secrecy and this is where the gate keeping system is flawed.

Any message can reach the global audience, so be careful what you post!