Trolling, as in posting nasty provocative shit on the internet, rather than scaring billy goats under bridges is big news in the UK right now, with both the feminist writer Caroline Criado-Perez and the London MP Stella Creasy getting rape threats on twitter. Yes rape threats. On twitter. [You can read some of the abuse on this Guardian article though we warn you it ain’t pretty]
All of which reminded us of some of the more offensive comments on Alana Blanchard’s Instagram feed, which we first discussed in her cover girl interview. As we said then some of them our super sweet such as the ones below:
But others are just off the scale rude such as these examples:
And I can’t even find the “please go backside on my d**k alana blanchard” one which I read last week to screengrab.
They’re of course nowhere near the level of the rape threats, nor are they criminal, but they’re still super unpleasant and aggressive. And what troubles us the most is that the users must have known she’d read them, it is her personal Instagram feed after all and they’re mostly not even posting anonymously. So they have no problem openly saying the shit they’re saying knowing she will most likely read it. Do these guys not have mothers or sisters or girlfriends!?
In the cover interview we asked Alana Blanchard how she felt about the comments and she said:
I get all kinds of comments. I think a lot of them are hilarious. People are people and react to things in so many different ways. I love reading comments.
Which is a rad mentality, and she’s way more thick-skinned than we’d be, but then she knows her Instagram feed is vital to her career and sponsorship deals (last count 656K followers) so maybe she has no choice? And we just resent the fact that just because she posts bikini shots guys presume it’s ok to be next level crude with her. It reminds us of the old “she was wearing a short skirt so asking for it” nonsense.
Plus the nasty comments aren’t just coming from the guys, there are the girls posting bitchy stuff like this:
Call us old fashioned but if you wouldn’t say it to someone in real life why the freak are you posting it on the internet? If you would say it in real life then would you like it if someone said it to you? No then don’t say it.
While people far smarter than us are debating who these trolls are, why they’re doing it and what social networking sites such as twitter, facebook and Instagram should do about it? It makes us just want to delete the whole internet. But that could just be the first rainy day of summer making us overreact a little…but more importantly what do you think? Tell us below the line or on our twitter or facebook
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