Australian media is all a-flutter this week on the issue of trolling, following reports of the hospitalisation of model and TV personality Charlotte Dawson after sustained attacks on her Twitter page, where (mostly anonymous) Twits told her, among other things, to go hang herself.  Repeatedly.  Loudly.  For hours.

I am appalled.  Depressed.  Outraged.  So, so sad.  This story just makes me want to cry, that people can be so hateful to a complete stranger.

Apparently it all started when Charlotte made some derogatory comments about New Zealand in a media interview, causing people to tweet her and say she should hang herself.   A follower came to her defence, pointing out that suicide should never be joked about and saying her fiancé had recently hanged himself.  A troll replied along the lines of if she was engaged to this girl she would hang herself too.  Unlike many trolls however, this person had her name and employment contact details linked to her Twitter account so Charlotte phoned her to talk about her disgusting bullying behaviour.   Reportedly this was not well received but the woman’s employer has stood her down while they investigate.  Good!

That night, I saw Charlotte on The Project discussing the issue of trolls and online bullying.  She admitted that she cops a lot of abuse but she is strong and tries not to let it affect her.  The next morning came reports that after something like 8 hours of abuse, Charlotte had been hospitalised.  The implication being there was a suicide attempt, although that hasn’t been made clear or denied.

Particularly appalling to me is the attempt at justification by one blogger (who had sent some abhorrent tweets of his own) that apparently at one time or another Charlotte made a throw-away comment that she wished another person would die.  Once.  So of course, hours and hours of abuse from strangers is totally justified…

And what is especially concerning about this issue, for me, is – what about the non-celebrities who are subjected to this kind of disgusting behaviour?  Case in point, the girl that Charlotte leapt to the defence of.

Trolling is not new and it is not confined to public figures or celebrities.  For some reason that I cannot comprehend, people get their jollies by tormenting others.  It’s schoolyard bullying gone insane.  And it’s worse, because the troll doesn’t even have the guts to face the person they’re tormenting – they just shoot things out from the comfort and security of their own home.  How is this ok?  What could possibly go through a troll’s mind when they say to a stranger (or anyone) “You should just go kill yourself?”  Sure, the anonymity and distance make it easy to forget that you are targeting a real living breathing person, but even so.  It is baffling to me.

Anyway, my point.  Charlotte, through her public profile, has shone a light on the devastating effect of this horrific behaviour.  But if she wasn’t a celebrity we wouldn’t have heard about it.  That is what concerns me above all else.  You might be just another person sitting quietly in your own home who has the courage to share something personal online and, without warning, you are torn apart by trolls.  Sure, you might be able to brush it off – these people don’t know me so I don’t care what they think.  But what if you are already vulnerable, already suffering, already depressed?  And some stranger tells you to go jump, go hang yourself, or something equally horrendous.  I imagine the internal dialogue might go along the lines of, well they don’t even know me and think I deserve to be dead – maybe they’re right… And you become just another statistic, cause unknown, assuming you succumbed to depression or some other mental illness.

I appreciate that this is a difficult issue to tackle and I will admit I don’t have any solutions to offer.  People are calling for trolls to be prosecuted, but as most set up anonymous accounts for the sole purpose of being disgusting human beings it becomes incredibly difficult to track them down, let alone make a charge stick.

Hopefully though, simply bringing this issue into the public arena in such a big way will make people think.  I hope people will pause before sending out their vitriol and consider the person on the receiving end.  I hope trolls will take seriously the message that if a person chooses to harm themselves after you said hateful things to him or her you are responsible.

Big ideals I know, but I can hope.