Your #TwitterSilence Will Not Protect You

Goldie Taylor, Cyber Threats, and Silence

Internet flaming—or trolling—has been a … thing for as long as the World Wide Web has been in existence. In fact trolls and the internet go together like Chipotle and explosive diarrhea. And lest you're a person susceptible to bubble guts, sometimes it's best not to feed that kind of hunger. As technology and social media trends evolve, cyber thugs tend to kick things up a notch on the sociopathy scale with their harassing behavior; much of it is easy to disregard and some of it is cause for alarm. And more often than not people of color and women (especially) tend to be at the receiving end of the vilest of vile comments and threats. 

Recently, journalist and cable news pundit Goldie Taylor was the latest person to come under attack, at the receiving end of some pretty nasty threats from a prolifically racist Twitter troll who called himself ‘Americanist’, and whose handle was @BreakObama. This person launched an all-out virtual assault on Taylor (and other noted media and social media personalities), tweeting her personal contact information for public consumption, assailing her with nasty racial epithets, and menacingly telling her to watch her back. I mean, you could practically see the fumes of hate blistering from his every word: “@goldietayler, I know where you work. Better watch over your shoulder. But you won’t know before it happens.”