I’ve been giving a bit of thought to trolls of late. Luckily for me, I’m not a celebrity. And nor am I prone to sweeping public statements which I can’t actually back up with facts, furthermore I make a point of staying the hell away from comments threads on newspaper stories. I am disinclined to engage with idiots and long ago realised that the net is a prism for all that is grubby and disagreeable in the human psyche, so my limits of internet disagreement are defined by arguing with Australians on cricinfo comments threads, and most of them are fairly reasonable. So when I see vile comments and slurs thrown around on twitter or wherever I shake my head sadly for the vapidity of man and go about my day. I long since ceased wondering why people feel the need.
But feel the need they do, and it really is time something was done about it. Because whilst it’s easy for me to say, I’m not a celebrity. More pertinently I’m not female, or homosexual. Unlike, for example, the marvellous Jack Monroe, who is all of these things; and if being well known, possessing a vagina and liking other vaginas wasn’t enough to inflame the poorly-spelt crowd, the fact that her politics tend towards the left really do seal the deal. To the extent that her five year old read a death threat to her over her shoulder, replete with picture of noose, and now wants to know why people want to kill his mum.
You can carp on about free speech as much as you like (and predictably, people are), you can huff that she shouldn’t have let him see it (to which the only reasonable response is, have you ever had children? Oh no, wait a minute, you’re an internet troll, stupid question. You see, when two people love each other very much....no, not a woman and fifteen men in a warehouse, I’m aware that’s the extent of your sex ed, no, you’re not supposed to put it there...oh, never mind). The simple fact is this shit is out of order. The troll in question has been banging on about what a great time they had doing it, chortle chortle, and no doubt they are sat at home having a good giggle about it. Because to send that sort of crap into the ether you have to have the sort of mind which entirely disassociates actions from consequences.
Aha, you cry, but consequences there are, are there not. Aren’t the rozzers collaring these sorts now? Well, yes, some. And as I understand it the old Bill is onto this one, as a particularly egregious example of its type.
But you can’t expect the police to do everything, and there are a number of good reasons for not banging trolls up in chokey. For starters, it’s full. For seconds they’re quite busy as it is. For thirds there’s the problem of validation. These arseholes aren’t worth acknowledging as members of society, they may even try to paint themselves as warriors of freedom or some such other synonym for emotionally-illiterate man-child.
So here’s my solution: state-sponsored misery. What a troll does is inflict anonymous misery, which is what they should receive in return. When the troll is identified, they become subject to a lengthy campaign of state-sanctioned practical joking. Get community service offenders placing flaming bags of shit on the door and running away, or spraying “x is a big gayer” on their house. Government approved taxis and pizza deliveries turning up at all times. Collect their tweets and send them anonymously to their mums, their workplaces. I’d say their girlfriends but, y’know. Maybe get the local newspaper to print them. When the trolling stops, the harassment stops.
My tongue is only half in my cheek here. What’s happened to Jack Monroe is, to my mind, definitely CPS worthy, a death threat is a death threat, not LOL jokes bruv. But the vast majority of this crap is just low-grade misogyny of the “u fat whore i wudnt fuk u” variety. Distasteful but not life threatening. What it undoubtedly is though, is a source of misery to the recipient. Locking them up is an overreaction. Naming and shaming, on the other hand, may well be the way to go.
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