I am a 15-year-old girl: the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media

Those boys were excellent target for trolling if we were at 2010 or so. I'd spend a lot of time pretending to be a 15 yo girl to aggravate them and to laugh. Probably I wouldn't even need to pretend or even do something, because the whole space would be filled with trolls pretending to be girls to make those boys angry, just pick a place and read what other trolls are doing. There would be even coordinated groups of trolls pretending to be as girls so boys, to fuel flame wars.

I wonder, are there any troll groups now? Or all this fight against anonymity made them impossible.

This was one of the most depressing articles I’ve read online in a long time. As a middle-aged man who has never used Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tik Tok or any other social media, I was shocked to find out this is what young women have to deal with. Reading this article upset me more than the Epstein revelations or any other bad news stories that have been in the press this year.

Other than the one year I worked on a building site, I’ve been lucky that I only encountered mild sexism among male colleagues but never outright misogyny as described in this article. Same goes for my experience in an all-boys secondary school and my college experience in a mostly male engineering course during the 90s.

Until recently, I really thought things were getting better for women and that they would be valued and respected more for their accomplishments than their looks. I remember being a teenager in rural Ireland in the 80s with very little money (and very little exposure to the outside world) was difficult enough but now I think I was lucky to have been born at that time. My heart goes out to anyone who is trying to learn about and navigate the world when they are being constantly bombarded with such negative and hateful messaging. Also, to all parents out there who have to try and prepare their children to deal with this.

As an advocate of free speech, I’m now less certain of my opposition to laws that restrict such hateful speech and I would support a ban on social media usage for under-16s. I’d actually like to see such a ban extended to smart-phone devices. Fuck all those ad-tech companies that “hack” human psychology to make their money.

15s discovering the world. Ok

Try 5 minutes in blackpill hell and see if you can take it.

I think there is a double standard here. I get several sexual harassing follow attempts a day on Instagram and other platforms from (seemingly) women who probably want me to watch their OnlyFans or something. As a guy I'm supposed to treat this as if it was just spam and not sexual harassment, which it is.

Men are culturally expected to be "ready all the time" and not have actual sexual autonomy either.