I’ve been wanting to write about online harassment for years. Something I toy around with when I’m driving or walking my dog. But then, I’m always writing about it. I’ve just never gotten it right. How do you write it so someone can feel it. How do you make a person who still gets a little tingle of excitement, a nice little dopamine hit from that notification bell going red, how do you make that person feel the sick taste of bile in your throat that you get any time something you wrote starts going viral. How do you explain to someone who wants to go viral what going viral feels like. The absolute terror of it. The weight on your chest from that moment on. The knowledge that there are people who have never met you who watch every word you say waiting for you to slip up, who’ve stayed up nights searching for clues in every picture you’ve posted online, hoping to find you, or the people you love. How do you explain how careful you have to be, always, to never post in real time, to never show a location in an image, a window in the background, how you hide your address, how jarring it can be to hear your name in public, how you never follow family from your public accounts. How do you show them what it feel like to see the most deluded, rage-filled, armed to the teeth psychopaths pass your address around and post pictures of your front door.
There are people who want to go viral and want to be famous. The only way I can make sense of that is I also know there are people who get off on needles and want their limbs amputated. Which is to say, who fucking knows what goes through some people’s minds. The people who want to go viral, who want to be famous, they’re the people who will tell you that you shouldn’t complain. It’s the price of fame. It’s what you asked for. It’s what you wanted. They can’t understand not wanting it. But then, they’ve never experienced it. It’s a sick prank—you can get the fame you never wanted, probably more easily than if you did want it. All you have to do is be a writer, or a person on the internet. God help you if you’re a woman.
All that to say, Aubrey Hirsch wrote this last week. She did it better than I ever could. So maybe I don’t need to write about it anymore.
I truly appreciate all the support, and those of you who didn’t give me advice. Because here’s the thing that sounds shitty but it’s true, unless you live in this reality, you do not have helpful advice for those of us who do. It’s a theme you used to see on twitter—the bluechecks are circling the wagons, protecting their own. I can see how from the outside, in an attention economy, those of us with the attention look like a gated community with swimming pools and four car garages. We’re just here in our shitty apartments trying to figure out how to buy enough time to write. But we know what it feels like, to see the hordes coming at us. We know the things we don’t talk about online because we’re not supposed to talk about them online. It’s dangerous. And when we see someone we care about falling under the stampede, yeah, we try to help.
For the most part, there’s not much you can do but help someone with the bandages. But I am begging you, when you see someone going under, please don’t give advice. Don’t tell us to ignore it. Don’t tell us to not fight back. We know we’re making it worse. We know the mob or the fucking insane will see our blood in the water and want more. But sometimes you taste the blood on your tongue, and even though you know attention is the worst thing you can feed the obsessed, you know there are too many of them, and you know damn well it’s gonna hurt more, fuck it. You know you’re going down either way. You let your back hit the wall, and you swing with whatever you’ve got left. At least you didn’t go easy.
There are people who’ll blame you for the times you made the beating worse. But they haven’t seen the hordes. They think they have. Everyone does. They love to tell you about it. The time tens of people were yelling at them. They had to go private. They didn’t sleep for days. They have no fucking idea. But people who haven’t faced a mob, who haven’t been followed home, or seen the threats, they’re the first to give you advice on how to handle internet harassment. What they did, is they logged off for a few hours. They didn’t feed the trolls. That’s the secret. They’re sure you didn’t know that.
You get comments like this:
And when you tell them to eat shit, which I maintain is the kindest possible response to patronizing bullshit, you end up with shit like this.
Best I can I tell you is if you’re watching someone burn in a goddamn volcano, might not be the best time for tips on fucking sunscreen application.
PS: Eat shit, Troy.
On top of the blatant lack of awareness and ability to read the room, they lost me at the spelling of riddance…and the apology demand. Jesus Roosevelt Christ.
You handled this entire thing with so much class, grace and badassery. I hate the dark side of all of this for you, but god help the person who tries to go a round with you in the ring of words. I almost have to laugh at the audacity. As for Troy, I am sorry but I literally did not know it was possible to spell that many words incorrectly while simultaneously being that condescending. Byeeeee Troy.