Sunday, also known as ‘god’s day’, is a time for rest and recuperation before the working week. It’s a day for spending time with the family, taking the dog for a walk, or calling someone a ‘cuck’ on Twitter. Good, wholesome activities.
Research by international anti-bullying charity Ditch The Label found that trolls are most likely to be active on Twitter between 5pm and 8pm on Sunday night.
The next most common days are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, implying that trolls – shattering preconceived notions – actually have something better to do the rest of the week.
WOAH.
The study analysed over 19 million tweets across the UK and the US for incidences of hate speech, masculinity and online bullying, and found stark differences in how men and women were dicks to each other online.
Women – who were more likely to be the ones doing the bullying online – tended to use insults relating to intelligence (dumb, stupid), appearance (fat, ugly) and derogatory animal terms (bitch, chicken).
Men – who were more likely to be bullied – also took aim at intelligence (stupid, dumb, moron) and appearance (ugly, fat), but were also more likely to use homophobic insults (faggot). On the other hand, men were far more likely to be the ones spewing hate speech online, accounting for 59%, 64% and 60% of racial intolerance, homophobia and transphobia respectively.
Students were more likely to perpetrate the bullying than be bullied (17.9% vs 14.5%).
Weirdly enough, however, ‘executives’ appear to be overrepresented as targets of bullying (24.6%). It’s likely that politicians are included in executives, because have you ever seen Barack Obama‘s or Donald Trump‘s mentions? They. are. dire.
@BarackObama #HappyHalloween pic.twitter.com/7s6kDUgieq
— Dimitri Nosarev ???? (@DimitriNosarev) October 31, 2016
Unsurprisingly, the research found that the old internet adage “don’t feed the trolls” rings extremely true.
“There is scant likelihood of positive outcomes when engaging with trolls on Twitter,” the report said, pointing out that responding to trolls only results in a positive outcome 3% of the time.
Tbqh with you, that figure sounds bloody huge. There is only one recorded event of a Twitter fight de-escalating, and it is this:
look at the terrifying civility and decency of these polite-ass canadians GOOD LORD pic.twitter.com/Dp7fwXi8hj
— Jake Wyatt Lost (@jakewyattriot) October 9, 2016
The good news is that discussions around homophobia and transphobia far outweighed actual incidences of homophobic and transphobic tweets (eight times and 24 times respectively), with discussions spiking during major news stories (e.g. Caitlyn Jenner announcing her transition or the devastating Pulse Nightclub shooting).
“Discrimination is visible within online bullying,” the report said. “The majority of insults related broadly to intelligence and appearance, however sexual orientation, religion and gender also featured within our sample.
“Bullying scenarios are scattered. While politics was the most common topic to be met with bullying remarks, there were no consistent themes predictive of online trolling. The finding, that most topics can lead to online bullying, poses a challenge for tracking and countering bullying behaviour online.”
Honestly, this whole thing is a wild read, and you can (and should) check it out here.
But also: tweeting? It’s bad. Never do it.
Photo: Some dark ad from the 90s.
