Ep 134 How Should Women Handle Social Media Abuse May 13, 2016

How do you deal with the ugly dark side of social media?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So folks, this is not a pleasant subject at all, but we can't ignore unpleasant subjects. New York Times in late April did a huge spread great article featuring a couple of sports journalists, Julie Tuccaro and Sarah Spain. They've produced some videos. They are one is a host at AM670 the score the other animals ESPN reporter and host. And it's an in depth story about the tremendous, massive, massive abuse that female sports writers, sports journalists receive online from men. Now I should say most people in the world are good people. I believe most people on the Internet are sharing recipes with friends and sending pictures of their kids. That's the vast majority of people. But there is a small minority of people who are absolute haters, trolls. I frankly get very little of that these days because the subjects I talk about are so narrow and specific to communication. I'm not doing a political talk show and I'm not doing a sports show. I can tell you back when I did political commentary, it was not at all uncommon for me to get death threats. For me to get the nastiest, most vicious personal emails, people that obviously investigated on me, talking about personal relationships, going into all sorts of nasty innuendo, bile. And of course there's the physical comments of people saying oh you bald ugly loser, you beady eyed loser, you fat disgusting pig. And these are comments I'm getting. I have to assume that if you're a female, especially a young attractive female, the comments are a thousand times worse. And it was pretty nasty with me. And the death threats were not that rare, it wasn't daily, but I did get them. And just the graphic depictions of I want to ram my, my foot or my fist right up your. You know where apparently for women journalists, especially women sports journalists, it is absolutely non stop the vitriol and it's often of a sexual nature. This New York Times story focuses on just how nasty. I mean they're basically the, the themes are you should be because you offered an opinion different from mine about a particular sports team. You deserve to be raped, killed, bashed in the head. This is, it's shocking and disgusting on the one hand. On the other hand, I'm not surprised by it at all. I have found when the subject matter is sports or politics, people who otherwise might be perfectly lovely neighbors, friends become complete monsters. I'll give you some of my thoughts on the best way of coping with this sort of thing.

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You can laugh and say that's ridiculous, but one of the coping mechanisms I certainly used to use in these situations is just avoidance. If I started to read an email, the first word I saw that was obviously just beyond the pale cheap shot and not someone offering a serious or thoughtful opinion. I just stopped reading and hit delete. Now that does take a certain level of self control. But you know what? It saves time. If someone is just spewing hate, they already know about that. That's not a new idea. Now there are times when I found it comical. I will confess, someone was so inventive with their invective and just trashed me so royally it would create a chuckle and I'd send it to my friends and they would say this is the funniest thing I've ever read. It is a little different I think. I mean I'm a. I don't want to sound like I have a low self esteem. I'm an over 50, I'm a 53 year old gray haired man. Maybe I should worry, but I don't really worry about some physical assault of a sexual nature late at night. I'm just not on most people's radar screen. Again, I don't want to sound like I am belittling that sort of thing for anyone of any of any age or race ethnicity, but rightly or wrongly I wasn't worried about that. I think if I were and for most of that time I weighed over 200 pounds, I think if I were a young, light, perhaps slight female, it would feel very different. The whole idea of physical intimidation, of someone constantly making threats of a physical violent nature. I think it would be a lot more intimidating. And I'm not saying I have psyche that's somehow much stronger. I just think the situation is a little different. So one technique I do recommend is just don't read it. Hit delete. Another thing I recommend if it's your own channel, if it's your own YouTube channel and it's just non step nonsense, your own blog, just get rid of comments. I know you're supposed to have interactivity, but at some level if it's just too Much nastiness. Just turn off the blog comments. I did on my own blog for several years, not for the reason of the nastiness in the bio, but because there's just so much spam. Bottom line is, if you're getting so many comments that just aren't adding anything, you don't want it, cut it off. The other thing, I think for the larger media organization, if you're an ESPN and you have an employee, and I think in this case especially a female journalist, and they're getting this sort of thing, you need to spend some money and hire a bunch of, and I'm sorry if this sounds sexist and ageist, I think you ought to hire a bunch of 22 year old guys to just read the emails and the comments and to be quick to delete it before sending it to the journalist so they don't have to read it. If it's out of sight, out of mind, it doesn't hurt as much. It just doesn't annoy you, it doesn't keep you awake at night. At some level, if someone is persistently harassing someone, legal authorities do need to be involved. Threats should be taken seriously. I never took any of mine seriously, although I had one guy who just harassed me for years. I didn't really take it seriously. Maybe I should have, but certainly if I were in a much bigger spotlight, let's say a young attractive female working for ESPN covering football and basketball and major sports, do I really need hundreds, if not thousands of vicious attacks, threats of rape on a daily basis? No. And at some level I think that espn, they may be doing some of this, but there's got to be something so that the journalist, the female journalist in particular, just don't see it. Because once you see it, you can't unsee something. When you see an email from someone saying, I know where you live and I'm going to come attack you, and ran my fist through your, you know what, you can't unsee that. And while you can send that to the police or other authorities or be assured it's, you know, someone 10 states away from you, you never really know. My advice? Don't look at it, but someone in your media organization does need to and follow up with authorities. Look, folks, everyone has a right to an opinion. But stalking someone and making threats of violence, that's not an opinion, that is not protected speech. And more needs to be done for that, really. I applaud anyone willing to put out their ideas on the Internet because of the nastiness and bile and unfortunately it takes even more strength and courage from young women. And I applaud those who continue to speak out and not let the haters destroy them. I'm TJ Walker. May all of your presentations be successful and ideally not induce and not create or incite violent responses.

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