If you’re anything like my parents, you probably wouldn’t even understand most of the content that floods my social media, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
Here’s a recent example from Instagram: “Do y’all females ever tell ur homegirls ‘Sis chill you letting too many dudes hit?’” Essentially, that means: “Women – do you ever tell your girlfriends that they’re whores and need to stop letting so many guys fuck them?” The reel, posted by a 19-year-old man, appeared on my Instagram feed without me wanting to see it, or ever interacting with any other similar content. The comments that followed were pure misogyny. “Women see body count as a leaderboard and they try to outdo each other,” was one of them. Translation: all women are competitively promiscuous.
Consider the use of the word “female” in these posts. It is not a neutral term here, it is a term of abuse. It’s used by teenage boys to degrade us and equate us to animals. Boys are never described as “males”, but girls are always “females” – the equivalent of sows or calves, creatures that are less than human. We’re also “thots” (whores), “community pussy” and “bops”. “Bop” stands for “been over passed” and is a derogatory term used by boys to refer to a girl they’ve decided has been “passed around” or had too much sex. Sexual equality has ceased to exist online. It’s absolutely fine for boys to have sex, but when girls do, they are called worthless and referred to as objects. “When community pussy tries to insult me, I just want to beat that bitch up.” That’s a message I saw on TikTok.
I’m a 15-year-old schoolgirl and like most teenagers I spend a fair portion of my spare time on social media, often scrolling through short-form videos on apps such as Instagram or TikTok. All of my friends use those apps, and many spend multiple hours a day on them. I actively try to avoid online misogyny, but I am met with it incessantly whenever I open my mainstream social media apps. It only takes a few minutes before there’s subtle or overt misogyny, such as comment sections on a girl’s post filled with remarks about her body, videos made by men or boys captioned with a degrading joke, and even topics such as domestic violence or rape, trivialised and laughed about.
Oh so social media predates kids. yeah that makes sense. we should just let the tech bros and algos shit all over the souls of kids because "puritanical fuckheads" are tired of this garbage being poured into our kids' lives.
jfc you're telling me to get perspective?
did you even read the fucking article?
bwahaha yeah I'm sure that's what the internet's pioneers had in mind NO WAIT THAT'S NOT IT AT ALL. Not even fucking remotely.
You're some usenet-wannabe twat who thinks he's l33t and the kiddies should stay off their 'net. infrastructure doesn't work that way, child.
you sound like your jimmies are rustled. that or you're too young to remember how the internet was like before social media.
no. does that rustle your jimmies more?
I think it's funny when someone probably half my age calls me a child. don't quote the old ways to me little one. I was there when they were written. war driving, BBS, phreaking, etc. I'm 50 years old son, get off my fucking lawn.
ah good, slirp my fucking zmodem connection then you dialup twat.
fifty years old and still resoundingly stupid. too stupid to understand what they're even arguing about because they didn't read the topic, just hopped in to learn us 'some of that old timey 1974 leaded gas and lead paint chip wisdom huh sparky?
christ wept.
are you trying to insult me? you don't get to my age without thick skin.
soooo...🤷 up your nose with a rubber hose?