Where the Trolls at?

The one thing that I have heard over and over from people that like this blog is that it is real. They like how I sock you with honesty and talk about things that most women are too timid to put in writing. I'm sensitive to the reasons why most women don't like to talk about their weight and body image but talking about these things helps me stay on my path to being healthy and I knew from day one that I wanted to write an honest account of my experience without sugar coating it to create an image I want people to recognize instead of the image that is true. Sometimes it isn't pretty and sometimes it really, really is...

Writing has always been therapeutic for me. I've kept a journal for many years of my life and when Myspace introduced an online option for this thing they called a blog I moved that journal online. There were a few occasions when I wrote about something that offended people I cared about and ruined relationships that have yet to be repaired and I don't have the sense they ever will be. I still believe the things I wrote were honest and were written without malice and with integrity so I'm not ashamed or bothered by the way things turned out because of those experiences. For the most part though, the feedback I get is really positive. It is one of the ways this blog has surprised me in the ways it adds value to my life. And I have no delusions... this blog is driven mostly by a healthy dose of self involvement and reflection. I am beyond elated when something I've written resonates with someone else but these musings are done for my own personal benefit. Everything else is an awesome bonus.

I heard a story about the opposite experience another blogger has regarding feedback. Lindy West writes a blog that discusses a lot of the same topics I cover and does it in a brash way that some find... distasteful. I totally get that. Not everyone wants to read about the struggles of being a woman- fat skinny or otherwise. I'm hyper aware of this fact. It is why I give a warning or disclaimer if I'm about to go a little overboard like I did in this previous post about that time of the month when Aunt Flow comes to visit... Even at that, though, I received nothing but positive comments.

Now, fear not Ladies and Gentlemen, I am not a village idiot of the internet. I am aware that when people want to spew mean or hateful things the internet is the golden highway. However, because I have never been personally targeted by this kind of thing, I haven't really given it much thought until I read Lindy's story. Lindy West writes as a career and is, by nature, more likely to receive horrible comments than I am simply due to the number of readers she is exposed to. If I'm being honest, I know that the people that are reading this blog are mostly people that know who I am on a personal level and I'm not exposed to the kind of people that want to spread hate and misery on a big stage. For Lindy though the things she receives on a daily basis is horrifying and best case scenario would compromise anyone's good  mood but the worst case scenario is that it could cause some serious damage. Here's just a taste:

Being harassed on the internet is such a normal, common part of my life that I’m always surprised when other people find it surprising. You’re telling me you don’t have hundreds of men popping into your cubicle in the accounting department of your mid-sized, regional dry-goods distributor to inform you that – hmm – you’re too fat to rape, but perhaps they’ll saw you up with an electric knife? No? Just me? People who don’t spend much time on the internet are invariably shocked to discover the barbarism – the eager abandonment of the social contract – that so many of us face simply for doing our jobs.

The people that deliver these messages of pure mean are known as trolls. All I know about trolls used to add up to sweet hair and living under bridges. I, in fact, LOVED trolls as a kid. My thrid grade backpack even had a whole clan of them that kept me company on the school bus. Trolls, in my mind have been mostly positive.... you know because you still have to consider the ones that live under the bridges and eat kids. Unfortunately now we have to add mean dinkbags to the equasion and trolls are kind of ruined for me forever. At the heart of Lindy's story was a troll who had created a fake Twitter account posing as her dead father to berate her using his likeness.

But then there was my dad’s dear face twinkling out at me from my Twitter feed. Someone – bored, apparently, with the usual angles of harassment – had made a fake Twitter account purporting to be my dead dad, featuring a stolen, beloved photo of him, for no reason other than to hurt me. The name on the account was “PawWestDonezo”, because my father’s name was Paul West, and a difficult battle with prostate cancer had rendered him “donezo” (goofy slang for “done”) just 18 months earlier. “Embarrassed father of an idiot,” the bio read. “Other two kids are fine, though.” His location was “Dirt hole in Seattle”.

 Who could be so cold? I don't care who you are or what you write about, no one deserves that. Period. Lindy eventually received an apology from her troll but damage done can't be erased with an apology especially when it concerns your dead father, or so I would imagine.

I usually avoid areas of the internet where people are mean and hateful because I really just don't need that in my life but with this blog being such an important part of my life I felt like this was an important thing to address. There is a lot to be said about disagreeing with someone about their comedy, what they consider is off color, what their ideals are, etc but just plain mean is still just plain mean. If it makes you feel better to put someone else down then that's a choice you make. That becomes a part of who you are and the more you let that kind of thing dwell within you, the more you are choosing to continue to be unhappy or feel badly. If that's your choice then you're free to make it. You're also free to choose to be kind or to shut your f!@#ing mouth if you don't like what someone has to say. And the thing that really gets me about this is the cowardice.  I'm going to just say it. If you're someone who needs to be mean anonymously then perhaps you're unhappy because you're a coward in other parts of your life. Take the time you spend spewing hate to do something constructive. Start a PAC. Get a damn hobby. Whatever.

Do I think this kind of thing should be "banned" from the internet? No. Just because you have freedom of speech doesn't mean you should use it to bring more negativity into the world.  I'm just saying that as a human race don't we owe it to each other to not go out of our way to hurt each other? There is an art to learning when to shut your cakehole and when to stand up for something you believe in even if it hurts someone else but if your main goal is just to make someone feel horrible or scared is absolutely appalling.

<3 Katie
175lbs
Feeling a little disgusted
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