If you’re looking for a few chuckles over a “reading mean tweets” video, you’ve come to the wrong place.
It’s not really news that the internet has become a platform for some of the most horrendous cretins who’ve ever walked the Earth to show off their true colours. The anonymity aspect and the speed at which someone can send a tweet means hurling unwarranted, hurtful abuse at someone half way across the planet has never been easier to get away with.
Just Not Sports have produced a powerful video to illustrate just how much online trolling has escalated, particularly towards women. They asked a group of men to read hate-filled tweets sent to Sports Illustrated’s Julie DiCaro and ESPN’s Sarah Spain out loud directly to their faces.
While the clip starts off exactly as you’d expect a “Mean Tweets” video should – whimsical music, laughter etc, it careens into a completely different tone very abruptly as the tweets become more offensive. Eventually the readers – who did not write any of the tweets – felt obliged to apologise to the reporters on behalf of their gender.
