DeepSummary
In this episode, Taylor Lorenz interviews influencer Lily Chapman about a relentless online harassment campaign waged against her through a 'snark subreddit' dedicated to mocking and criticizing her. Lily discusses how she initially became aware of the subreddit, the escalating harassment and threats it fueled, and the steps she took to successfully get the subreddit taken down.
Lily explains how the subreddit members, predominantly women, spread lies and misinformation about her, tried to sabotage her career and sponsorship deals, and even targeted her friends and family. She emphasizes the misogynistic undertones of the attacks and the ironic misappropriation of activism to justify the harassment.
Despite initial advice to ignore the trolls, Lily realized that responding forcefully was necessary to regain control of the narrative. She documented everything meticulously, identified the moderators, sent cease and desist orders, filed lawsuits, and ultimately got Reddit to take down multiple subreddits dedicated to harassing her.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Online harassment campaigns, particularly against women, can escalate to dangerous levels of stalking, threats, and attempts to derail careers.
- Ignoring harassment often allows it to spiral out of control, necessitating forceful response and documentation to regain control of the narrative.
- Online platforms like Reddit struggle to enforce their own rules against harassment and are reluctant to take action against toxic communities.
- Lawsuits, cease and desist orders, and proving moderator misconduct can be effective avenues to combat harassment when platforms fail to act.
- Anger and resentment towards influencers is often misdirected from systemic issues like inequality and a lack of accountability for the ultra-wealthy.
- Distinguishing between harmless dislike and organized harassment campaigns is crucial to address the latter's toxic escalation.
- Dealing with online harassment requires perseverance, documentation, and a multi-pronged legal approach due to lack of support from law enforcement.
- Fighting back against harassment can temporarily inflame it further before resulting in successful deterrence and platform action.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “It kills me. It eats me alive. The way that these people misappropriate their activism and use it to justify misogyny.“ by Lily Chapman
- “It's no longer like what happened to the beauty of a group chat where you could take a TikTok, send it to your friends and say, this is so cringe, or, oh, my God, I hate her outfit. Bring that back. Bring back being a hater in private to your friends. That's so okay. And like, my subreddit will always say, like, she is just not okay with people not liking her. No, it is so okay to not like me. It's so okay to not like someone. What's not okay is to do exactly what you just said, which is to take your feelings of dislike for me.“ by Lily Chapman
Entities
Company
Person
Episode Information
Power User with Taylor Lorenz
Vox Media
6/27/24
For the past several years, influencer Lily Chapman has been plagued by a relentless community of women online. They congregated in a snark subreddit dedicated to mocking and criticizing her. Lily says they even contacted her friends and family, and attempted to kill her sponsorship deals. But Lily did something most influencers haven't been able to do: She fought back and won. Taylor Lorenz talks to Lily about how it all went down.
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