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Sexist, racist – the web hounding of Ellen Pao shows the trolls are winning
Could a woman ever have won the affection of Reddit – the closest thing the internet has to a frat house? With the resignation of Ellen Pao as interim chief executive of the link-sharing and discussion site, we may never know. Because which woman would be brave and foolish enough to take on a high-profile role at the site now?
In the eight months after taking on the job, Pao did what Reddit’s board asked her to: she tried to expand the site’s audience beyond its core user base of young, white American men. For that, she was compared to Hitler, had her personal details posted online, endured crude jokes about her sex and ethnicity, and saw 213,000 people sign a petition calling for her to be ousted.
But let’s rewind. Why should anyone care what happens on a glorified discussion board with far less name recognition than peers such as Facebook or Twitter? The nature of the internet means that even incredibly popular sites – and Reddit has more than 160 million users – can be unknown to outsiders. But even if you haven’t heard of Reddit, you will have seen one of its creations. It spawns many of the viral news stories that drive so much traffic to the mainstream media.
Over the past few years Reddit has also come to be associated with a particular type of internet user: the kind of people who believe that unless they are given unfettered space to be as offensive and disruptive as they want, we might as well declare free speech dead and all move to North Korea. In the past the site has hosted forums with names such as Creepshots, dedicated to photographs of women taken without their knowledge; Jailbait, where users shared pornographic images of women who looked underage; and a whole slew of racist microsites known collectively as the Chimpire. The rationale for all these was the usual one given for bad behaviour online: don’t get mad – it’s just the internet, not real life.
In the eight months after taking on the job, Pao did what Reddit’s board asked her to: she tried to expand the site’s audience beyond its core user base of young, white American men. For that, she was compared to Hitler, had her personal details posted online, endured crude jokes about her sex and ethnicity, and saw 213,000 people sign a petition calling for her to be ousted.
But let’s rewind. Why should anyone care what happens on a glorified discussion board with far less name recognition than peers such as Facebook or Twitter? The nature of the internet means that even incredibly popular sites – and Reddit has more than 160 million users – can be unknown to outsiders. But even if you haven’t heard of Reddit, you will have seen one of its creations. It spawns many of the viral news stories that drive so much traffic to the mainstream media.
Over the past few years Reddit has also come to be associated with a particular type of internet user: the kind of people who believe that unless they are given unfettered space to be as offensive and disruptive as they want, we might as well declare free speech dead and all move to North Korea. In the past the site has hosted forums with names such as Creepshots, dedicated to photographs of women taken without their knowledge; Jailbait, where users shared pornographic images of women who looked underage; and a whole slew of racist microsites known collectively as the Chimpire. The rationale for all these was the usual one given for bad behaviour online: don’t get mad – it’s just the internet, not real life.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/17/ellen-pao-reddit-sexist-racist-internet-trolls-winning
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