It's time to stop dismissing violent threats against women on social media as the price of doing business online.
Trolling, which at some point of my life was called trawling, was making statements merely to gain as big of a reaction from as many people as possible. It is a way to steer and alter conversations generally to personal hobby-horse races. Although it may be used to hatch a discussion about a subject that the troll want to hear at all. Like this huge quote from This American Life and The Screwtape Letters: Well, there's a way more interesting version of the devil out there in this book by C. S. Lewis called The Screwtape Letters. And the idea of the book is that it's a series of letters from this older, very experienced demon named Screwtape to a much younger demon. And he's giving him advice. And at one point, Screwtape says to the younger demon, if you want to commit somebody's soul to hell for eternity, don't try to reason with them. You don't want to be arguing with somebody about what's good for them or bad for them, because you could lose an argument. What's better, what works way, way better, is to simply banish reason from the room. Screwtape tells this story to the young demon about this atheist who one day is in the library. And in the library, the atheist starts mulling over some godly thoughts, very threatening for Screwtape. But rather than engage this guy in an argument over God and goodness and all that sort of stuff, Screwtape simply plants the thought in his head, "It's time for lunch." The guy heads outside. The battle's won. If you want to lead people into darkness, you don't want reason to even come into play. That is classic trawling/trollingIra Glass:
Most of us have an idea of what the devil's supposed to be like, red skin, horns, a tail. Sometimes he disguises himself as a dapper gentleman. Often, he loves to sing. And the way that he actually gets you into hell, in the movies, and in operas, and stuff, is that he actually shows up in person. He makes a personal appearance with you, and he tries to talk you into it. He tempts you with stuff that you want.
Whoops. Anyways ... I don't think that they are trolling. This is something more insidious meant to blunt and blur people from making a narrative that gives new voices to a group whose demographics has changed. This is intellectual fossilization; this is think conservatism to maintain a status quo that ain't so status and mostly not quo.
Why attack just one part of the problem? The larger issue is that the normal curtailments to freedom of speech (hate speech, harm potential, threats of all kinds) don't apply on the internet, for two reasons. 1. laziness and 2. the general "20 years behind" approach to justice that has been institutionalized by the Supreme Court for 150 years.