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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Gutless bastard cyber-bullies

There are times when humanity simply disgusts me. And right now, this is one of them.

The host of the Australian version of the Next Top Model franchise, Charlotte Dawson, has been the target of an incredible amount of simply vile tweeting attacks. Ms Dawson has had a practice of exposing these by retweeting them so others can see what is going on. Then when one of her followers on Twitter reacted angrily to a hate tweet that had advised Ms Dawson to go hang herself, pointing out that the follower's husband had hung himself and she did not appreciate that sort of tweet, the hater responded with "you go hang yourself too."

This matter went viral with Ms Dawson blogging about it. But since then it seems her twitter feed has been exploding with simply disgusting filth - here are some examples courtesy of Marieke Hardy's Twitter feed.

As noted in Ms Dawson's blog post, one of the perpetrators was identified and it was followed up with them at their workplace only for more abuse to follow. So it was brought to the attention of the employer and probably fair enough too, seeing it was on work time and with work equipment that the specific hate mail was being disseminated. As noted in that post, said employer, Monash University, did not seem to be doing much about it, including a distinct lack of apologies from anyone. However it transpires that this disgusting troll has now been exposed to the world and suspended from work - Ms Tanya Heti. Although I cannot help but wonder if the suspension would have occurred unless the matter had gone viral as it had.

What really gets me steaming at the ears is just how bloody gutless these bastards are. Would they act like that to a person's face? Of course not. Because they are gutless bastard bullies hiding behind the anonymity they think that they have online. If they went around doing that in person, they know damned well that sooner or later someone would be given them a friendly punch or three in the face.

I know what is like to have harassment and persecution drive you literally into the nut house. Been there, done that, got the invalidity to show for it. But at least I knew who the perpetrators were, even though they did a pretty good job of keeping the lid on things, to my detriment.  I wasn't being subjected to quasi-anonymous crap from names such as Testi McTest or Seig Heil (see the image above courtesy of Ms Hardy).

If you don't like someone, then fine. Naturally you have a freedom of speech to say so. But that does NOT mean you have any form of right to get your pathetic juvenile rocks off by cyber-screaming hate-filled abuse.

I sincerely and genuinely hope that this all backfires on these pieces of shit, driving them to the point of needing help. I also hope that they get said help. Then perhaps they might have some sort of idea of what their gutless behaviour has done to someone else.

Charlotte Dawson - hang in there. Don't let those bastards win. And whatever happens, do not lose sight of the fact that there others out here who support you.

And a small update: here's a good piece by Corrine Grant about this episode. How about we all send Charlotte a bit of cyber-love-best-wishes to her Twitter feed - @MsCharlotteD - let her know that there's more than cyber-bully cowards out there.

Now if you have an opinion on what I'm blathering about or even just feel like saying hi, then don't be afraid to leave a comment or post something to me via Twitter or Facebook. I don't bite - at least not always.

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