*If you want to learn more, I talk about this topic in depth with one of my Plan A Magazine cofounders and writers, Oxford Kondō, in our latest podcast.
I have gained quite a bit of notoriety in Asian American circles for some of my blog posts. While the stuff I've said is divisive, most of the feedback has been supportive and positive and I've met some of the most amazing people and even a few of my heroes because of what I've written. But, this being the internet, I've also become the target of some seriously horrible trolls and online stalkers.
Being on social media is so critical to our livelihoods now. We socialize, job-hunt, network, shop, date, etc. online. But the dark side of social media is that since everyone is on there, you're going to end up with trolls and bullies. We have a president who is basically a professional Twitter troll and he has people who actively troll for him. South Park's entire last season was about online trolling. So much of the internet is anonymous so it's become the preferred tool for bullying. When people are hiding their identity, it's going to lead to some seriously bad behavior and shit-posting. When you say something divisive, you can expect people to get emotional. But when does it cross the line? It's one thing to debate someone on a particular topic, it's another thing to go out of your way to bring down someone's quality of life and attack a person personally.
I do think that so much online bullying happens because people want to boost their reputation inside of their own ingroup. They love raking in those likes and those upvotes. Women, people of color and activists get it so much worse (I should know since I'm all three). And it's really easy to eventually internalize such negative comments and personal attacks.
Why am I being targeted? I have put out some very divisive opinions and made some people VERY angry. I've gotten harassed in the form of emails, rape threats, messages telling me to kill myself, threats of bodily harm, and personal attacks on my appearance, especially my haircolor. I've been accused of being an attention seeker.
What can you do about it? The advice out there isn't great. Some people say that you should just delete all your accounts and get offline as if this is your own fault. But like I said, our livelihoods are so online dependent now that that's just not a solution. It's almost impossible to report this stuff to social network admins because they are dealing with a huge amount of reports of abuse everyday. So they pass it on and tell you to block the person. They minimize and trivialize your issue. I think they do this because they just can't keep up with how much of it goes on. I really think that if police were to start investigating every single time someone is harassed online, that is all they would ever do.
You need to document it meaning you need to keep a permanent record of screenshots in a file somewhere, even if it's just on your phone. It's pretty terrible but I have a ton of screenshots of disgusting things people have sent me. (The problem with this is that it's so emotionally difficult to have all of this visual evidence of abuse.) When you report these attacks on the platform they occurred on, the admins will almost always ask for a screenshot. If you're friends with someone who is being harassed, you should report it too. If enough people report it, the faster the admins will actually do something about it.
When it comes to comment threads, a lot of it depends on those first initial comments. A lot of people don't read articles. They respond to other comments. So if those first initial comments are negative, it just becomes a pile on and everyone starts ganging up. The people will a differing opinion or a more positive comment will probably be a lot more hesitant to say anything because they don't want to get ganged up on either. It can get toxic really fast.
If the harassment is in email form, Gmail has a policy in place for email harassment and there is a page on Google to report any email abuse from a gmail user. It takes a long time. I honestly don't think that the law has done a good job with keeping up with all the changing technology.
So what not to do? Don't retaliate or engage. Also, stop blaming the victims of abuse saying it's their own fault. That's not helping anyone.
It’s instinctive to react defensively to people attacking you on the internet. But it’s a lot easier to figure out how to depersonalize the criticism. I’ve realized that their anger says more about their own personal life than mine. Someone also told me that other people’s rage has to do with the difficult topics I write about -the ones that challenge cultural norms.
Recent Posts
Follow Me On Instagram!
I usually do a write up of the events I’ve organized or hosted and my most-read articles at the end of the year. This was an unusual year (obviously, there is no need to go into it here) so I didn’t bother. Instead I want to highlight a project of mine that I am particularly proud of — it’s my new podcast show, Unverified Accounts, that I cohost with my frequent collaborators, Chris Jesu Lee and Filip Guo. If you're a big movie/TV/book buff, have leftist sympathies, but can't stand 'wokeness' dumbing down our culture, then we're the podcast for you. So far in our 25 episodes, we’ve covered a range of contentious topics.