In an interesting, painful video, two female sports reporters get to pull a selection of nasty online comments directed at them and have them read to them by regular guys who did not write them in a Jimmy Kimmel-style “mean tweets” video. The result is painful and awkward and, while getting the point across, also manages to miss the target.
For one, this level of “dialogue” is common everywhere on social media and online commentary. And while it’s additionally unfortunate that women have to put up with this for just doing their jobs, it’s unfortunate that this happens at all, to anyone.
But somehow, I don’t think having innocent guys–who are clearly decent guys because they are visibly bothered by what they’re asked to read–reading these posts is fair. It’s asking them to take responsibility for someone else’s despicable trolling, and that’s not fair. It would be much better (and much more difficult, obviously) if they could get the actual people who wrote the posts and get them to take responsibility for them to the target’s face. I suspect the reaction would be similar to what we see here, but much more useful. It’s the actual posters we need to shame, not random men or male-kind.
But the over-all point here is quite valid, and applicable FAR beyond the scope given here. There are nasty people everywhere online. Even those who are not anonymous and who are communicating openly with their “friends” tend to forget they are speaking to real people who may relate to the group being commented on. We wouldn’t have these types of conversations face to face. The world would be a much better place if we could learn not to be mean just because we can’t see the person. But that doesn’t seem to be the direction we’re headed.