A world of anonymous vitriol and hate: all at the tap of a buttonPixabay

On results day way back, I was featured in a local newspaper for grade-related reasons – I’m not talking big headlines or very exceptional A*s here, but there I was anyway, school-leaving, unsuspecting me with my grades in a piece of news. It’s not exactly the sort of thing that will have the public raging like ‘The Parents Who Raise Their Children Vegan’, ‘Immigration Is Crucial To UK Economy, Study Reveals’ or even ‘Generic Oxbridge Student Has Drink at May Ball’ might. Yet, said local newspaper has a news website, and on that website a comment function, and in that comment function many keen commenters who apparently have nothing better to do with their days than release their unfiltered anger and annoyance at the world by commenting on anything that comes their way.

Hidden behind the anonymity of usernames, bob927, mum_of_three84 and co. took it upon themselves to point out how my slightly above-average results meant that I couldn’t possibly have any life outside of school and to share with the world how a distant relation of theirs studied hard to become a doctor and ended up not married but – God forbid – a working woman, whereas their own daughter who nearly failed school is now happily married with five children, and therefore doing well at school is bad. What did I do about the onslaught of opinions? Nothing.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that people tend to be much more vocal when they can hide behind a username online than in real life when they are actually more accountable for their sayings. One of the most outrageous instances of online misogyny is the Mary Beard debacle back in 2013. After the historian appeared on Question Time, she received hundreds of comments online attacking her appearance, being called, among other things, “a vile, spiteful excuse for a woman, who eats too much cabbage and has cheese straws for teeth”. At the same time, the growing trend of cyber bullying continues to affect individuals outside the public sphere: according to a 2014 survey by BullyingUK, 56 per cent of young people said that they had seen others being bullied online, and 42 per cent felt unsafe online.

So, wholly realising that something has to be done about these blatantly gross trends, why did I shut up when my life was psychoanalysed by people I’d never met? Granted, being called a nerdy girl who is destined to be a spinster (wonderful how some commentators fancy themselves fortune tellers) is very much not on a par with what the likes of Mary Beard have to endure, but the fact remains that the commentators’ behaviour was simply unacceptable. I opted for silence partly because, while I was undeniably annoyed, I also had a good chuckle at the stupidity of the comments.

The internet is a space where everyeone feels they have the right to voice their opinion, however offensiveSebastiaan ter Burg

But my main reason for not engaging in an online debate was that I felt it would be futile to try to argue with the likes of toiletclogger34_, whose comments suggest an acute lack of grey matter. I regularly lose my faith in humanity realising how, both in real life and online, masses of people are just so hung up on their own opinions, no matter how unfounded, misinformed or logically shaky, that no amount of reasoning will even scratch the surface of their thought processes. Witness the discussions on any comment thread, and you can quickly establish that the attempts to argue against blatantly misogynistic, racist, homophobic, or just plain misinformed comments are more often than not met with silence from the original perpetrator in the best case or lead to even more futile arguments in the worst case.

But I’m not suggesting the way forward is to wave the white flag and accept that haters are gonna hate. What is needed is a more targeted, public approach: battling the problem should not focus on tackling individual comments with individual replies (although expressing disapproval is part of the game) but have more organised communities condemning misogynistic, racist, homophobic or otherwise unacceptable behaviour and establishing a culture where these comments are not accepted. And just like with raising awareness about consent with consent workshops, more awareness is needed about behaviour on social media: we need to establish definitions of what is acceptable as well as guidelines about how to find support, whether informally or formally in instances that go so far as to be law-breaking.

Social media is a way of expressing feelings and opinions, and it should remain that way. However, when these feelings and opinions start bordering on unacceptable, this should be reacted to, not with individual comments leading to futile arguments but with a whole culture of unacceptance. Would I talk back to commentators on that article now that I am older and wiser? Probably not, but I’d like to know that I could rely on the support of the online community in telling idiot_and_proud_of_it134 that getting good grades does not, in fact, destine anyone to eternal spinsterhood, nor does it warrant anyone commenting with suggestions to that effect either.