I’m all for debate but being told to go home and shag my husband is hardly a gold-plated contribution

Tanya Sweeney

Journalists are told to deny Internet trolls the oxygen of attention. But sometimes the jibes are difficult to ignore

June 10 2022 06:00 AM

A few years ago, the loveliness of a sunny Saturday afternoon was cut through with a call from one of my editors. “I just wanted to check in on you,” she said, her voice ominous, low and gravely serious. “Are you okay?”

I was flooded with panic. I had to think for a second to make sure no one close to me had befallen a huge tragedy, such was the concern in her voice. Had I accidentally libelled someone? Turns out that I had written a column — about the perennial attraction that older men have for women several decades their junior — and it had evidently hit a raw nerve with some Men on the Internet. The section below piece had been flooded with comments, few of them evidently unsparing in their disgust for me.

I had to laugh; not at what was happening, but because my editor was under the assumption that this sort of thing would upset me. “Babes”, I told her, “this doesn’t even touch the sides.” I never read what’s commonly referred to as the bottom half of the Internet — good or bad. I put so little thought into my ‘online self’ that if someone random ever comes for me on social media or in a comments section, I remind them that they have no idea of my actual, real self. They might as well be shouting at a car, or a cloud.

I thought of the moment again last weekend. It was another sun-drenched Sunday, spent celebrating the return of a niece from Australia with other family members. Life was good. I felt on the grid. I got a notification on Twitter. It was a stranger reacting to a recent column on this very page, about how I wish I’d blinged out a bit more on my wedding. I’m paraphrasing here, but the tweet went along the lines of: “You’re always moaning. Go home, wax your top lip, go have sex with your husband and who knows, you might like it.”

Journalists are often told that this sort of ‘correspondence’ is merely an occupational hazard. There’s a tranche of people online who evidently cannot abide that some other people have a platform to air their thoughts and opinions (and worse, they are women who, worse again, get paid for it). To these people, journalists are attention seekers, and self-obsessed, wannabe pseudo-intellectuals. I suppose me writing about buying €20 wedding sandals makes me just that, right?

Dealing with this feedback supposedly goes with the territory, and the general advice is to ignore it. Don’t feed the trolls. Deny them the oxygen of attention. Never negotiate with terrorists, and so on. And for the most part, I wouldn’t bother. But if someone said that to me on the street, I wouldn’t just walk on, or simply put it down to one of those things I have to endure simply because I’m there. No, I would call them out on it. And so, against all received wisdom, I did.

At the same time, I was astounded. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon in Ireland. Why would someone be contacting random people with weird comments like that? In somewhat more colourful language than that, I asked him. “Haha, you took the bait,” was the flavour of reply. Next came an incredible feat of gaslighting, whereby my new pal informed me that he had gotten my identity wrong and that I was getting offended for no reason, and to try to get on with my day without getting offended. At this point, I was more entertained than anything else. In the end, the block button did its job, the conversation (if you can call it that) was closed and everyone moved on. What a really strange thing to be doing with a lovely weekend afternoon.

Much to unpack here. First things first, when it comes to offending me, internet commenters are usually barking up the wrong tree. I get irritated, possibly. But never offended. How can you get offended by someone who doesn’t know you? Someone who makes a call on your physical appearance because of a byline photo?

Also, this stuff is in the ha’penny place compared to what others in this business have experienced. I am well aware of my privilege when I say that, as I get off relatively lightly when it comes to negative commentary (or at least, I never see it if I don’t). One colleague recently told me how she had received literally hundreds of hateful messages and threats from one individual. I cannot even imagine what that must have been like for her.

I’m all for robust and rigorous debate — after all, journalists often write to initiate or propel on a conversation that’s in the public interest. If you, as an Internet commenter, want to see yourself as a much-needed counterweight to opinions and news items that you deem inaccurate or wrong-headed, that’s fine. But it’s also worth pointing out that it’s not really part of the job spec of journalists to engage with that.

Also, in case it needs to be spelled out, ‘go home and shag your husband’ is hardly a gold-plated contribution to any debate. The only sane response to that? Thanks for reading, I guess.