Men read terrible tweets to female sportswriters

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

The question to ask oneself after watching the video is: What can I do to help stop this type of behaviour?

Ok what can you do to help stop this behaviour?

[saillias]

I am someone sympathetic to the issue as well and the whole thing just feels a little contrived.

Originally Posted by jayswin

There was something a little overly done/fake about that segment. That's coming from someone totally sympathetic to the issue, but you put men in front of a couple women and read tweets to them and you're not going to get the guys crying and pausing indefinitely while staring into the abyss saying "I'm sohuhuhuhuhuorrrry, this isn't me, I'm just reheheheheeading tweets".

Everyone involved knows what's going on and in normal interaction it would just be the guys reading them and going "Wow, brutal hey?" "Man, people are awful".

It was just awkward overacting that kind of took away from it, imo.

Yup I had the same impression. They really milked their internal struggle with just reading the tweets someone else said.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Thor

The internet as a whole is very toxic to women, we have a long way to go.

The internet is pretty toxic in general. You can read thousands of tweets just as if not more vicious towards male beat writers in professional sports (we have another Larry Brooks incident again) and there's plenty exploitation of women, men, animals, etc.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

The question to ask oneself after watching the video is: What can I do to help stop this type of behaviour?

Maybe look in the mirror as there's not too many posters here that can claim to being saints on the internet. At the end of the day everyone is guilty at one time or another of being mean to another person on the internet and while they are trying to make this video some powerful statement about how women in sports are treated but the truth is that a guy like Skip Bayless probably gets more viscous tweets in a week than these two women will get in their careers.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Ok what can you do to help stop this behaviour?

Bring the mean tweeters on Anderson Cooper, and have them explain their tweets to their moms?

[East Coast Flame]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

Maybe look in the mirror as there's not too many posters here that can claim to being saints on the internet. At the end of the day everyone is guilty at one time or another of being mean to another person on the internet and while they are trying to make this video some powerful statement about how women in sports are treated but the truth is that a guy like Skip Bayless probably gets more viscous tweets in a week than these two women will get in their careers.

That's your takeaway from the video? Really??

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by troutman

Bring the mean tweeters on Anderson Cooper, and have them explain their tweets to their moms?

I don't normally like public shaming but that's not a bad idea. Problem is, why would these people go on cooper in the first place?

[East Coast Flame]

Originally Posted by troutman

Bring the mean tweeters on Anderson Cooper, and have them explain their tweets to their moms?

I read that Sarah and Julie tried to track down some of the guys that actually wrote those tweets but with the anonymity on twitter, they weren't able to.

Twitter really should shoulder a lot of responsibility for this. I doubt they would ever do this - but take away the ability for someone to be anonymous. I doubt these Neanderthal's would be so bold then.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by troutman

Bring the mean tweeters on Anderson Cooper, and have them explain their tweets to their moms?

You don't need their moms to be there. Anyone with a soul would wilt under Anderson's disapproving glare.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by East Coast Flame

Twitter really should shoulder a lot of responsibility for this. I doubt they would ever do this - but take away the ability for someone to be anonymous.

This sounds downright dangerous.

[heep223]

Originally Posted by saillias

I am someone sympathetic to the issue as well and the whole thing just feels a little contrived.

Yup I had the same impression. They really milked their internal struggle with just reading the tweets someone else said.

Of course it was contrived. I'm sure they were told to milk it, and I'm also sure it really was hard to read them. If that's what you're taking from this, whoosh

[CliffFletcher]

Being d-bags to women on the internet is a sub-category of being d-bags to people on the internet. I'm not sure why it would be any easier to suppress that specific kind of d-baggery than it would to suppress d-baggery in general. The people who do this stuff aren't going to be shamed by social pressure. They don't do it because they think it's socially acceptable (anymore than internet trolling and harassment in general is socially acceptable). They do it because they're d-bags and the internet enables them to be d-bags without repercussions.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by East Coast Flame

I read that Sarah and Julie tried to track down some of the guys that actually wrote those tweets but with the anonymity on twitter, they weren't able to.

Twitter really should shoulder a lot of responsibility for this. I doubt they would ever do this - but take away the ability for someone to be anonymous. I doubt these Neanderthal's would be so bold then.

Disagree. I hate that the internet is losing anonymity. This kind of trash is the price you pay for it, but I think the price is worth it. You want Twitter to police this? I couldn't imagine the amount of staff you would need to do that, then you get the arguments that you are being censored, where is the line etc.

[troutman]

I linked this podcast earlier:

http://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-...it-in-all-caps

A female blogger confronts her Troll on the air with surprising results.

[The Yen Man]

I'm not sure there is any way to stop it. Lets be honest, there are a lot of jerkwads out there. What prevents most from acting out in the real world is the fact that they aren't anonymous. Give these people anonymity like the internet has, and their inner jerk comes out.

Some people just like to post as inflammatory of comments as possible to try to get a reaction out of everyone. You have youtube comments telling people they hope they get cancer and die a painful death, or they should just go kill themselves. But these people would never dare say it to the face of the other person.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

Maybe look in the mirror as there's not too many posters here that can claim to being saints on the internet. At the end of the day everyone is guilty at one time or another of being mean to another person on the internet and while they are trying to make this video some powerful statement about how women in sports are treated but the truth is that a guy like Skip Bayless probably gets more viscous tweets in a week than these two women will get in their careers.

Well, as someone pointed out earlier, Skip Bayless gets vicious tweets because he tweets stupid, inflammatory crap. I wouldn't say any of it is directed at him because of his gender or cites things like his weight or his appearance, or threatens him with rape, etc. like female reporters get.

[Swift]

The Guardian did a series of articles on this topic a couple of weeks ago regarding their own commenting system - https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...rdian-comments

Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the “top 10”, one was Muslim and one Jewish.
And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Well, as someone pointed out earlier, Skip Bayless gets vicious tweets because he tweets stupid, inflammatory crap. I wouldn't say any of it is directed at him because of his gender or cites things like his weight or his appearance, or threatens him with rape, etc. like female reporters get.

Have you seen the work from the two women in question? You know that inflammatory writing specific to male writers only. I'm not saying that I don't sympathize with these women but disparaging Twitter remarks are not limited to any specific gender or race.

[Russic]

I think what's complicated about this issue is that in order to solve it, you probably have to take a few steps back and explore other difficult societal problems. Yes, everybody who has a son needs to be addressing what's happening on the internet and how toxic it can be. But that's just addressing it at the base level.

These are not the types of actions that you see out of well adjusted, respectful people. I simply do not believe once the lights are off a balanced person starts making rape jokes. We need to learn from reformed trolls about what made them tick. Once you do that, we get into all sorts of bumpy territory linked to mental illness, abuse, and a host of other problems.

I think it pays to look at what other countries and groups have done to solve those types of problems and ask ourselves how we can implement them. I would be nightmarishly difficult, but truthfully I don't see an easier option.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Russic

I think what's complicated about this issue is that in order to solve it, you probably have to take a few steps back and explore other difficult societal problems. Yes, everybody who has a son needs to be addressing what's happening on the internet and how toxic it can be. But that's just addressing it at the base level.

These are not the types of actions that you see out of well adjusted, respectful people. I simply do not believe once the lights are off a balanced person starts making rape jokes. We need to learn from reformed trolls about what made them tick. Once you do that, we get into all sorts of bumpy territory linked to mental illness, abuse, and a host of other problems.

I think it pays to look at what other countries and groups have done to solve those types of problems and ask ourselves how we can implement them. I would be nightmarishly difficult, but truthfully I don't see an easier option.

I tend to view these types of behaviours from two points of view. One is like you said, whether it is mental illness, abuse etc. These aren't likely to be balanced people in a lot of cases.

On the other hand, I also wonder about how normal people tend to make over the top attention seeking remarks. I've seen some heinous posts on CP and a lot of times I think a person's mindset, temporary loss of self control and desire for attention and to be heard can drown out the part of their brain that knows these types of comments are wrong.

As a society we are so obsessed with hyperbole in every sense of the word. Every movie is the best ever, every player the greatest of all time, every journalist isn't just "meh" they are "the worst POS to ever live". Why are we obsessed with this? I don't know. Information overload? Lack of self identity? When you are one of a bazillion twitter users the only way anyone will pay attention to you is by being over the top. And what is the best way to get the attention of a non-male or non-white person or non-straight person etc? To use their their non-maleness and non-whiteness as an insult.

Sometimes I wonder if it isn't that we have hoards of racist dbags who would lynch every woman, racial minority and LGBT person at the drop of a hat, but instead that these usually 18-35 white males have no sense of consequence of their actions and are simply using whatever means possible to express what should be a fairly mundane opinion. It gets them attention, even if it is the wrong kind.