Opinion by Talia Blewitt
You could say the internet is made up of two types of people: those who contribute to it and those who comment on it.
And it’s no secret that many who comment are not lavishing praise on their subject.
Earlier this week, another trend was created on Twitter. Blogger Sady Doyle started the hashtag ‘#mencallmethings’.
Time reporter Megan Gibson wrote that the hashtag highlights and encourages discussion of sexist abuse towards females who write online.
#mencallmethings certainly addresses an online issue, but it does not encompass a wider online trend where ‘trolls’ set out to say mean things for the sake of, well, saying mean things.
That’s not to say the Twitter trend should be cast off as irrelevant, because it does discuss appalling slurs woman have to put up with. But it also summons a response of “well, yeah, duh” as well as a range of counter-arguments.
Ideally women like Megan Easterbrook-Sm of Wellington should not be told to “get raped, get AIDS and die” because she expressed her opinion online regarding the Big Day Out line up.
Aurynn Shaw’s tweet, again from Wellington, is perfectly reasonable. Ms Shaw states she was called a “f**king b**ch” on Sunday after not responding to catcalls made by the opposite sex.
However, Alfonso Gómez-Arzola, Chattanooga, Tennessee, says “if anything, #mencallmethings is a superb collection of the reasons why #mencallmethings is a non-issue”. Swift, heated responses followed his tweet, probably because his comment appears flippant. But he does have a point.
What some men say to women is plain nasty and is reminiscent of a more Neanderthal time period. It’s not nice. It’s mean. Most people do not appreciate having nasty things said to them. On the whole, we should be nice to one another.
But this isn’t an issue that only affects women, and without incorporating the sort of abuse that both sexes encounter on the internet tends to lose some traction.
If you put yourself out there on the internet, you are leaving yourself open to a world of flack. Not an ideal fact, but a fact nonetheless.
Trolls are armchair bullies who are armoured by anonymity. Half the time I am not entirely sure if they wholeheartedly mean what they say. They are just trying to test the author and audience because they know they will not receive a punch to the nose through their computer.
But one thing is for sure, trolls are not limited to having penises and they are not limited to attacking women only. Trolls are everywhere. You and I are trolls, in varying forms of extremity.
Rosser Johnson is currently the acting associate dean of Auckland University of Technology’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies. He also knows a thing or two about the media, given he teaches AUT’s communication students over three years on all aspects of it.
Mr Johnson says the issue is topical, referring to the current discussion that has been running on The Guardian website since Monday and the abuse actor Robyn Malcolm received after making criticisms of John Key, which hit the New Zealand Herald’s front page.
Mr Johnson says that trolling is not specifically targeted along gender lines.
In a world where sexism, racism, ageism and speciesism is rife, Mr Johnson asks why we are surprised when the same attitudes turn up on websites.
“It is all becoming increasingly ‘normal’ trolling behaviour,” he says. “Why would we expect that not to happen online?”
The internet has an etiquette unique to itself. Whether people are engaging in hearty debate or “throwing mud”, Mr Johnson says discussions, posting, trolling can become dismissive and demeaning and people act more extremely from the sanctity of their laptop.
Another cruel fact about the internet is it exposes us and draws our attention to others who have total opposite opinions to our own. We don’t tend to associate with those who are at the other end of a polarising argument.
News websites comments sections and Facebook pages are rife with the arguments of people who would be very unlikely to meet in the flesh.
Needless to say, trolls are pests and Mr Johnson does not discredit what the #mencallmethings trend and Guardian discussion are trying to say.
He refers to a commenter discussing her dieting and being told that she would lose weight if she cut off her arms and ate them. Charming. Indeed if this comment were to made offline it would certainly be deemed threatening.
Mr Johnson says there just seems to be some informal law where men would not get those comments said to them.
But I am still not entirely convinced. I have watched YouTube videos of men who get called gays and faggots. An overweight man was told he should be shot for being so fat. A teenage boy with a birth defect received comments saying ‘ooh, what’s wrong with you’. All typed out by people not necessarily trolling, but definitely displaying ogre-like tendencies.
We live in a world that can be cruel, where often the only way to break down personal prejudices is for people to meet face-to-face. With the barrier of a computer screen in the way – that empathy is all too often lost.
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