Since having watched this a while ago I've decided that, on a good day, I am a young Caitlin Moran. I love the woman. She and I have a lot of similarities and as she started the whole '#twittersilence' thing, I thought that publishing this post at midnight on the 5th August 2013, would be the perfect way for me to mark the ending of an all important 24 hour silent protest.
This all started with Caroline Criado-Perez's campaign which ran to ensure that at least one British woman would feature as the face of our five, ten, twenty, fifty pound notes and alas!... the Bank of England announced that the wonderful Jane Austen would feature on the new tenners. But of course this all turned sour.
It was shocking enough to hear that some grotesque individuals hurled abuse at Perez- threats to rape and murder her- that eventually reached fifty an hour. But what was more shocking, as Caitlin Moran outlined in her blog post last night (well actually two nights ago as we are technically now into the 5th August), was that the number of threats by these twitter trolls increased AFTER an arrest was made.
And to give a few examples, here are the list of abusive tweets, put together by Moran for her article, that were sent non-stop to Caroline Criado-Perez:
“I love it when the hate machine swarms.”
“Rape rape rape rape rape rape.”
“Everyone report @CriadoPerez for rape and murder threats and also being a cunt #malemasterrace.”
“Wouldn’t mind tying this bitch to my stove. Hey sweetheart – give me a shout when you’re ready to be put in your place.”
“HEY GIRL – WANNA THROW THAT PUSSY TOWARDS THE BLACK MESSIAH?”
“Rape threats? Don’t flatter yourself. Call the cops. We’ll rape them too. YOU BITCH! YO PUSSY STANK!”
The threats quickly expanded to include MP Stella Creasy, who backed Perez's campaign, along with TV critic Grace Dent and Guardian fashion columnist Hadley Freeman- all three women were sent bomb threats and Creasy was sent a disturbing image of a white-mask-wearing-man brandishing a large knife as a death threat. As Moran explained, these women have been told to "“block” the abusers, and get on with their lives."
And that's going to make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside again is it? Of course not.
The fact that the ugly trend escalated AFTER an arrest was made, goes to show that the steps made towards protecting twitter users- who use it for the right reasons- have been far and few between, and all of them too late. Many people shun social networking sites because "this kind of thing happens".... that doesn't mean we should let it happen. A very small minority of twitter users have set up accounts to terrorise women and unfortunately their laptops and keyboards are acting as shields protecting them from the law; these twitter trolls are the modern day 'untouchables'.
Not enough has been done and that's why the protest took place today.
In fact, today saw Mary Beard being the latest target of twitter trolls as she was sent tweets telling her that her house was going to blow up. Prior to this, Beard was sent the following: "Retweet this you filthy old slut. I bet your vagina is disgusting." This one was sent a few days ago, when it was more difficult to report abuse, but today Mary Beard tweeted the fact that she attempted to fill in the report form and it failed to work; this is AFTER twitter has promised the new "report abuse" button with every tweet that is published on the site.
I accept that twitter cannot be held responsible for what people publish on their site, however, they are more than responsible for the difficulties in reporting abuse and their slow speed in reacting to what has been reported. An official apology from the networking site is all well and good but it HAS to materialise. This is serious, and yet to me, it seems that twitter is trying to distance itself from the problem. The targeted women have simply been left to manually block users that are sending abuse, and at 50 tweets an hour, it can all be too soul destroying to face.
I accept that twitter cannot be held responsible for what people publish on their site, however, they are more than responsible for the difficulties in reporting abuse and their slow speed in reacting to what has been reported. An official apology from the networking site is all well and good but it HAS to materialise. This is serious, and yet to me, it seems that twitter is trying to distance itself from the problem. The targeted women have simply been left to manually block users that are sending abuse, and at 50 tweets an hour, it can all be too soul destroying to face.
So why silence over throwing out masses of joyous and feminist tweets?
As a feminist and a gob on a stick myself, I made, perhaps the more surprising decision (certainly in the eyes of my mother) to join in with the 24 hour silence, backing up the rather more influential types such as Clare Balding, Alice Arnold, and Martina Navratilova.
I saw silence to be the perfect protest to the tragic bombardment of disgusting, confidence-destroying messages that took control of twitter- the otherwise brilliant online tool for communicating and networking. I think Moran summed it up perfectly in saying that the walk-out would "focus minds at Twitter to come up with their own solution to the abusers of their private company." And I really hope it did.
Moran went onto outline the fact that popular social networking sites can become looservilles within the space of a couple of months. Twitter could easily become the next Bebo rather than the next 'Big Thing'... there's always something new around the corner waiting to be the next online craze. And so with there having been a mass of people- including and endless list of celebrities- not tweeting a thing for the last 24 hours, the heads at twitter HQ will have been knocked together- with force- to come up with the best solution possible in monitoring the evil minority and, in turn, protecting twitter at large. No more sweeping under the carpet.
As much as I understand the other side of the argument, that we should be shouting and screaming, instead of, what is argued to be, sitting and doing nothing- I think a lack of tweets will have turned more of the right heads than a surge of tweets would have done.
As long as there are people tweeting, the twitter people are happy; if we stop- they're fucked.
And to the lovely lady who posted this for the world to see:
Caitlin Moran did not tell, or force anyone to do anything; she just threw an idea out there and that idea became popular. She simply adopted a technique that twitter was made for- promoting, connecting, and inspiring.
“Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.”
- Jodi Picoult
Hannah Riley
@hannahtheduck
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