Dealing with trolls is just a something you have to deal with when you’re online but there are times when they go far beyond the bounds of tolerance by making rape threats or death threats. The Guardian reports that 21-year-old YouTube gamer Alanah Pearce got completely tired of receiving rape threats from teenagers and young boys on Facebook and she figured out the best way possible to get back at them: She figured out who their mothers were and sent them pictures of messages their sons had left.
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“A while ago, I realized that a lot of the people who send disgusting or overly sexual comments to me over the internet aren’t adult males,” she told The Guardian. “It turns out that mostly they’re young boys and the problem is they don’t know any better, so responding to them rationally didn’t resolve the situation. And it got to the point where their comments were starting to make me feel really uncomfortable.”
Her first effort got results too, as the first mother she contacted reacted in horror when she learned her son was sending someone else vicious messages.
And this really is the best way to discourage vile trolling among young people — there’s nothing more humiliating to some young kid who thinks he’s being “tough” and “edgy” by issuing rape threats than getting his mommy to yell at him for all the awful things he said online.
