Hey guys!
Today I wanted to talk about something I haven't really been affected by before and it's not really something I have any advice on or really any experience at all; it's a first and I really hope it doesn't happen to you guys or anyone you care about.
My good friends on the internet were attacked for using the same hashtag as another organisation on Twitter. I'm part of this organisation however I wasn't present when the harassment kicked off. We're completely different groups with completely different reputations and agendas and yet the other team who used the same hashtag felt as though they had to make our lives miseries rather than be polite and try and talk through the problem they had with us using their hashtag.
The problem started when the figurehead of our group started getting aggressive tweets from the members of the other group. This also then spread to trolls on one of the members of our group who had used the hashtag in reference to our group and they attacked. Around 3 people were attacked and though at first they fed the trolls, they soon realised that the trolls would only keep going if they kept fighting them. So they did what they had to, stayed quiet, made their accounts private where possible and blocked those who had harassed them. Not only did the harassment happen on Twitter but the tweet that the friend used when tweeting contained a YouNow link which then led to the other team flooding in and spamming the chat which meant that the show was ruined.
I'm writing this a day later and we were hoping as a group, that by laying low and blocking anyone who appeared to be malicious, that we'd be able to return back to normal usage asap. We haven't used the hashtag and otherwise, things were looking good. Then it got worse - our figurehead received death threats and one of the main leaders of these trolls revealed our figurehead's number and home address as well as that of his mother and it was outrageous. On top of that, some of the blocked people found ways of refollowing those who had blocked them and right now, we have no idea what to do but to keep reporting and blocking.
As this has never happened to me before, I don't know how to react to this nor do I know how it will play out though from other people's experiences, they should move onto other people if we lay low and keep reporting. What I hate is that we can't do anything but report and hopefully wait for Twitter to respond. I didn't realise how hard it is to wait when you want justice to happen, that's something I'll definitely take from this experience; hopefully it should be sorted out soon! I also hate how they're parasites, how they take goodness away from their victims and how the victim must simply wait out the disease until it leaves and finds a new victim. It's a horribly vicious cycle, even if you do get their account suspended because it's far too easy just to create another account and restart again.
Anyways, if I have any updates for you guys before this goes live, I'll definitely add them in here so you can learn from my experience with trolls.
I hope that you guys can take something from my experience, even if it's just to make sure you don't feed trolls but also to make sure that you don't underestimate the power of keeping your full name out there.
I hope to speak to you guys soon on a happier topic but thank you for listening and God Bless!<2
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