What They Get Told

I watched journalists from major outlets sit in front of a camera and read aloud the tweets they get hit with every single day. Emma, Julie, Katie—people you’d recognize if you paid attention to cable news or the internet. They weren’t reading compliments.

It starts fairly standard. Playground stuff: I didn’t know sluts were allowed to have opinions. Then it gets darker. I’m going to rape you. I’m going to go house to house and shoot you all. The velocity is what gets you—the escalation from stupid to violent, like someone leaning on the accelerator.

What struck me wasn’t even the crude threat-making. It’s that they had to sit down and perform this publicly for anyone to register it as real. Women have been telling people about this forever. The daily harassment, the rape threats, the sexual violence dressed up as banter—it’s just what happens when you exist on the internet and happen to be a woman. So they read it aloud. Made it a thing you couldn’t scroll past or pretend you didn’t see.

The message underneath is simple and mean: if you’re getting this, don’t close the laptop and cry about it. Show people. Make them look. And if you’re the one sending it? Stop. Or accept that you’re exactly what you sound like.