Twitter abuse leads to Aussie presenter's suicide attempt

Xavi6

http://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainment/perth-confidential/charlotte-dawson-in-hospital-after-twitter-attack/story-e6frg30l-1226461549528?from=public_rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

TV host Charlotte Dawson is in hospital after hundreds of social media trolls viciously targeted her on Twitter overnight....

Dawson appeared on the Nine Network's A Current Affair and Ten Network's The Project last night to expose vitriolic Twitter bullying this week, with many followers calling for the celebrity to "please go hang yourself."

The social media war started after Dawson tracked down one alleged Twitter hater, Tanya Heti, who has since been suspended from her mentoring job at Melbourne's Monash University after Dawson reported her abusive tweets to the university.

After Dawson's TV appearances last night, hundreds of tweeters took aim at her....

In more than 100 messages of abuse, which Dawson re-tweeted on her own page, followers told the celebrity to "neck yourself you filthy s***" and "please put your face in a toaster".

During the abuse some offenders sent images of dead bodies covered in blood and told Dawson to "please hang yourself promptly."

Followers also attacked the former model's appearance and personal life.

"It's a very good thing that you cannot breed," one poster wrote.

"How the f**** did you become a model."

Shortly after 2am today Dawson posted on Twitter "Hope this ends the misery" and "You win x."

Thoughts on the whole thing?

Personally I think if you're a 'celeb' using twitter you need to expect some level of abuse and not take it to heart. If you can't do that then don't use social media.

Of course this sort of thing shouldn't happen but at the same time, privacy laws give people anonymity on Twitter so it's easy to do as we see weekly at this stage.

stoneill

Fúck sake - did she really have to read them?

Sindri

Dawson appeared on Australian television last night to expose vitriolic Twitter bullying this week, with many followers calling for the celebrity to "please go hang yourself."

The social media war started after Dawson tracked down one alleged Twitter hater, Tanya Heti, who has since been suspended from her mentoring job at Melbourne's Monash University after Dawson reported her abusive tweets to the university.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQJDLJgZIRU

Absolutely vile and disgusting. It's sad how ****ed up this world is. Why be so deliberately nasty?

Wompa1

Sounds like she doesn't have the toughness to deal with being in the public eye. Haters gonna hate and all that

Pdfile

could they not get peirs morgan to hang himself..

no seriously... can we ?

Wompa1

Pdfile wrote: »

could they not get peirs morgan to hang himself..

no seriously... can we ?

Russell Brand has a talk show once a week in the US now...chuck him and Pierce in front of the same firing squad

Nodin

Xavi6 wrote: »

Thoughts on the whole thing?

.....

The person probably has a lot more issues going on.

Jimoslimos

She's an ex-model, surely she must have had much nastier abuse directed at her everytime she ingested anything with a higher calorific content than tap-water. If she's that thin-skinned then being in the public eye isn't the place for her.

On the other hand why do people still target 'celebs' on twitter when it's patently obvious that it is NOT ANONYMOUS! How many people have been tracked down recently after sending abusive tweets?

I've actually met one of those so-called celebs subjected to abuse on twitter featured on the youtube vid Sindri posted.....not saying anything or who it was... but.....warranted maybe.....

RaRaRasputin

Nodin wrote: »

The person probably has a lot more issues going on.

Agreed, but as usual this whole story gets blamed on a mass of internet bullies, because this is the trend right now.
Sorry, as others mentioned before me, just don't use social network, especially twitter (i don't understand the appeal of this thing anyway) if you cannot distinguish between your personal and public persona.

PhlegmyMoses

There seems to always be an attitude in these cases that semi-exonerates the cretins who post this stuff.

Trolling is the best thing about the internet when it's done well but those kinds of attacks are just rubbish and serve no other purpose than to try to take someone down a peg for having the temerity to step into the public eye.

People can say that the girl obviously had deeper issues but in most cases this will not lead to suicide. The decision to commit suicide is often a spur of the moment thing and a pretty ****ty experience like this can be the straw that broke the camel's back.

seven_eleven

please put your face in a toaster

I laughed.

Yakult

Twitter is a funny place filled with some of the most stupid inbred pricks this world has to offer. Personally, I avoid the **** hole.

floggg

Whether its online or offline, bullying is bullying. Whether or not she had thin skin, nobody should be subjected to that sort of abuse, and grown adults should be above that.

Telling people they should stay off twitter if they don't want to be insulted is wrong as well. Are we conceding twitter or the Internet to bullies? Rather than expect a reasonable standard of behaviour from people, we are to tell people they should avoid certain forms of communication as we've given it over to juvenile and harmful behaviour.

geeky

floggg wrote: »

Whether its online or offline, bullying is bullying. Whether or not she had thin skin, nobody should be subjected to that sort of abuse, and grown adults should be above that.

Telling people they should stay off twitter if they don't want to be insulted is wrong as well. Are we conceding twitter or the Internet to bullies? Rather than expect a reasonable standard of behaviour from people, we are to tell people they should avoid certain forms of communication as we've given it over to juvenile and harmful behaviour.

This.

Seriously, anyone who thinks it's normal behaviour to ask a stranger to hang themself needs their f**king head examined.

Yeah, there are clearly bigger issues with Charlotte Dawson to make her so vulnerable, but people with nothing better to do than abuse celebrities are a waste of human skin.

Paco Rodriguez

Sounds like a pr stunt to me. She did have a show showing awareness of bullying....and what better way of further highlighting the bullying problem than to stage a fake suicide attempt.

Xavi6

geeky wrote: »

Seriously, anyone who thinks it's normal behaviour to ask a stranger to hang themself needs their f**king head examined.

Who said it was 'normal behaviour' though?

You can condemn the abuse but at the same time be of the opinion that if you don't have a thick skin you shouldn't be on there.

BunShopVoyeur

"Hope this ends the misery"

"You win x"

Dramatic much?

Even suicide has to be an event with some people.

sunflower27

The whole Twitter phenomenon is pathetic.

God, I hate it. :rolleyes:

I hope she recovers soon. You can be tough as nails, but sometimes, abuse can be too much.

splashthecash

So she tried to committ suicide because she was getting abusive messages "all night"?? Jez, I thought it was because she was subjected to abuse over a number of months...a bit of an over the top reaction in my opinion. There must have been something deeper going on in her life to jump to such an extreme measure in such a short time

floggg

Xavi6 wrote: »

You can condemn the abuse but at the same time be of the opinion that if you don't have a thick skin you shouldn't be on there.

Should we say the same about the school yard? Or the workplace?

And why is it that innocent people should be the ones who shouldn't use twitter rather than the people who use it for harmful and abusive purposes.

People will say she's a "celebrity" so she should expect it. What about a 15 year old kid who does nothing buy be a little geeky or gay maybe. When they are bullied to death online (as happens far too much) should we pass it off as just something to happens online? Or should we tell them they shouldn't be able to engage online in the same was as the rest of their generation.

Why should the bullies be allowed set the terms by which the rest of us can use the Internet?

If this sort of thing would be unacceptable to say or do offline (which it is) it should be equally so online.

Ficheall

floggg wrote: »

Why should the bullies be allowed set the terms by which the rest of us can use the Internet?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055909959

>_>

<_<

sunflower27

floggg wrote: »

Should we say the same about the school yard? Or the workplace?

And why is it that innocent people should be the ones who shouldn't use twitter rather than the people who use it for harmful and abusive purposes.

People will say she's a "celebrity" so she should expect it. What about a 15 year old kid who does nothing buy be a little geeky or gay maybe. When they are bullied to death online (as happens far too much) should we pass it off as just something to happens online? Or should we tell them they shouldn't be able to engage online in the same was as the rest of their generation.

Why should the bullies be allowed set the terms by which the rest of us can use the Internet?

If this sort of thing would be unacceptable to say or do offline (which it is) it should be equally so online.

Totally agree.

This 'she is a celeb, she should be able to take the abuse' attitude is lame. It's like saying abuse to that level is just part and parcel of the perks. Ridiculous.

As for the idea it is a PR stunt.... bit extreme I would have thought for that. The woman is now open to be called 'weak', 'unstable' and mentally unwell' for the rest of her life. Very extreme for a bit of PR.

Xavi6

floggg wrote: »

Should we say the same about the school yard? Or the workplace?

And why is it that innocent people should be the ones who shouldn't use twitter rather than the people who use it for harmful and abusive purposes.

People will say she's a "celebrity" so she should expect it. What about a 15 year old kid who does nothing buy be a little geeky or gay maybe. When they are bullied to death online (as happens far too much) should we pass it off as just something to happens online? Or should we tell them they shouldn't be able to engage online in the same was as the rest of their generation.

Why should the bullies be allowed set the terms by which the rest of us can use the Internet?

If this sort of thing would be unacceptable to say or do offline (which it is) it should be equally so online.

While your morals are perfectly sound, it just doesn't work like that. Twitter privacy laws means that you can be as anonymous as you like behind a pseudonym. You can also pose as someone else, dish out false and libellous information, and tarnish the reputation of the person you're pretending to be yet Twitter won't release your name or details once you're caught out.

With that in mind, your school yard / workplace analogy is flawed and irrelevant and it's a different ball game altogether until those laws change.

For now, if you can't take the heat you should get out, rightly or wrongly.

Kenno90

Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt



^^^^
If only it were true

floggg

floggg wrote: »

Should we say the same about the school yard? Or the workplace?

I think bullying in any form is horrendous, but it did come to my mind to ask "why not just switch off the computer and not read them?" In the school yard or the workplace, you can't just switch them off.

I don't use twitter much myself and I'm not a public figure and all, but I don't understand why you would read all those

floggg

Xavi6 wrote: »

While your morals are perfectly sound, it just doesn't work like that. Twitter privacy laws means that you can be as anonymous as you like behind a pseudonym. You can also pose as someone else, dish out false and libellous information, and tarnish the reputation of the person you're pretending to be yet Twitter won't release your name or details once you're caught out.

With that in mind, your school yard / workplace analogy is flawed and irrelevant and it's a different ball game altogether until those laws change.

For now, if you can't take the heat you should get out, rightly or wrongly.

Funny, the law has been able to prosecute plenty of people for facebook and twitter bullying to date, never mind thr airport joke trial.

The analogy is not flawed. Bullying is bullying no matter where it is committed. It shouldn't be tolerated and in no circumstances, context or location should the victim ever be told that it was their fault for putting themselves in that situation or that they brought it on themselves.

To me, that's not very far removed from telling a rape victim that they were asking for it.

There are laws and usage policies against this sort of thing. You would hope in this day and age adults wouldn't require laws and policies to tell them to be civil to other people, but of they can't figure it out for themselves then they should be prosecuted to the full extent of said laws.

The fact that this started because she exposed one bully who then get fired showed that the rules can work. The problem is that people seem to have taken the attitude that bullying should be encouraged or protected on twitter and responded by ganging up on her seemingly out of revenge. Given that attitude, I don't think any form of victim blaming should be acceptable.

Duggy747

Something doesn't seem right about this story, attempting suicide after harsh Tweets in a short space of time?

Sounds like there's more to her situation than that.

anncoates

Bullying is horrible but I sometimes feel that there is kind of mutual dependence in these situations: where people live by popular opinion (via the net) and are hung (for want of a better metaphor in this situation) by it.

I honestly think I could deal with that kind of anonymous abusive opinion if I was famous. I simply would not read it but there is something in some people that compels them to be involved in this farrago.

The schoolyard/word analogy is flawed as anybody bu8liied in a real-life situation in a environment that they cannot avoid would doubtless give anything to be able to "switch off" the abuse as it were. Even abuse on a forum is worse than twitter as it's interpersonal, not merely the publishing of abusive opinion.

Not saying that the abuse is warranted in any way or that the people that do it are anything other than cretins, of course.

floggg

anncoates wrote: »

Bullying is horrible but I sometimes feel that there is kind of mutual dependence in these situations: where people live by popular opinion (via the net) and are hung (for want of a better metaphor in this situation) by it.

I honestly think I could deal with that kind of anonymous abusive opinion if I was famous. I simply would not read it but there is something in some people that compels them to be involved in this farrago.

The schoolyard/word analogy is flawed as anybody bu8liied in a real-life situation in a environment that they cannot avoid would doubtless give anything to be able to "switch off" the abuse as it were. Even abuse on a forum is worse than twitter as it's interpersonal, not merely the publishing of abusive opinion.

Not saying that the abuse is warranted in any way or that the people that do it are anything other than cretins, of course.

Perhaps a 40 year old adult might turn off twitter. Although if probe to suicidal thoughts or actions they are not always thinking fully rationally.

But try telling a 16 year old victim of cyber bullying, for whose entire generation the Internet is an extension of the playground, that they should cut themselves off from online communication and therefore their friends and peers.

PS - sometimes turning off twitter doesn't do much good either where cyber bullying is concerned. Not reading or watching the posts about themselves wouldn't do much to help the likes of Amber Cole or Tyler Clementi.

Gongoozler

Yakult wrote: »

Twitter The internet is a funny place filled with some of the most stupid inbred pricks this world has to offer. Personally, I avoid the **** hole.

It's not confined to one site. The solution isn't to switch off, that's just bordering on victim blaming. The solution is to make people accountable for what they do and say online.

BunShopVoyeur wrote: »

"Hope this ends the misery"

"You win x"

Dramatic much?

Even suicide has to be an event with some people.

The girl can't even try kill herself without criticism. Jesus.

wes

There are some really sad people out there, hurling such childish abuse at people.

Rascasse

Can't say I have much sympathy for her if the chronology is as I understand it.

1. She says in a paper "New Zealand is small, nasty and vindictive. It's a tiny, little village ... a tiny country at the end of the earth,".

2. Someone then tweets her "on behalf of NZ we would like you to please go hang yourself".

3. She then gets her followers to discover that persons identity and gets her suspended from her job.

4. It becomes a big story, people upset, she get abuse, decides to announce her impending suicide on twitter.

If you don't want abuse on twitter either don't publish provocative comments in the paper or, if you do publish them, delete your twitter.

Mr Benevolent

Jesus. Talk about sensitive.

Sala

I don't use twitter but when I heard about the Tom Daley thing I started looking around for stories and I can honestly say I couldn't believe how mental people are, especially young people. Did you see the picture of the girl with the knife sent to Caroline Flack?? Mental.

Anyway this story is a bit suspect, but I would think if someone was very low online abuse could push them over the edge. It 's very sad that something with so much potential for information sharing and connecting people is used by lunatics to vent their rage or envy at people they don't even know.

BunShopVoyeur

Gongoozler wrote:

The girl can't even try kill herself without criticism. Jesus.

Not when the overly dramatic, attention seeking idiot has to make her cry for help a public event.

Scram

Xavi6 wrote: »

http://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainment/perth-confidential/charlotte-dawson-in-hospital-after-twitter-attack/story-e6frg30l-1226461549528?from=public_rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter



Thoughts on the whole thing?

Personally I think if you're a 'celeb' using twitter you need to expect some level of abuse and not take it to heart. If you can't do that then don't use social media.

Of course this sort of thing shouldn't happen but at the same time, privacy laws give people anonymity on Twitter so it's easy to do as we see weekly at this stage.

These "celebs" crying over trolls, why didnt she just close her account? What did she expect to happen?

ScumLord

So the twits tell an ex model to kill herself and she gives it a go? I would have told her to go **** herself.

Colmustard

Rascasse wrote: »

Can't say I have much sympathy for her if the chronology is as I understand it.

1. She says in a paper "New Zealand is small, nasty and vindictive. It's a tiny, little village ... a tiny country at the end of the earth,".

2. Someone then tweets her "on behalf of NZ we would like you to please go hang yourself".

3. She then gets her followers to discover that persons identity and gets her suspended from her job.

4. It becomes a big story, people upset, she get abuse, decides to announce her impending suicide on twitter.

If you don't want abuse on twitter either don't publish provocative comments in the paper or, if you do publish them, delete your twitter.

New Zealand should threaten to hang itself.

Awwww another celebrity gets abuse on twitter, the pains of being in the public eye and subscribing to an anonymous media. She should cry herself "all the way to the bank".

I am pie

I am convinced that the human race gets stupider by the second. I can't believe that there are people out there who think that:

1. They won't receive horrific abuse if they abuse an entire country
2. That take the time to post hateful abuse to strangers

...and, worse...

3. That someone out there thinks that trolls are the best thing about the internet if done well.

What a fcking sad indictment of the human race that is. We invent a massive, open framework for free expression and communication and the best use of it is apparently to post abuse for amusement.

Multiple facepalms...millions of them. Fck me.

Colmustard

Twitter is muttering. Mutterings are not meant to be heard, but yet some post them.

smash

"Author of Air Kiss and Tell"

Shudder...