We live in a world full of people who think that by sitting behind screens and abusing someone on a public social media platform would keep them safe as long as they’re not being harmed or approached physically.
This is where all the problems start. When abusers find themselves being triggered, especially on social media platforms, they tend to take an advantage of not actually being present over there and start abusing their targets openly without thinking of the consequences they will later face.
Every day, there are millions of reported cases of just online abuses which eventually leads to life-threatening incidents if God forbid, the victim’s pictures or information like the home address is visible on their accounts. It just makes the abuser more powerful and gives them a leverage over the target to be used in every way possible.
Recently, a girl became a target of online abuse by a guy just because she was stopping him from abusing another person. He started abusing her and went further by abusing her mother as well. This girl took a clever step firstly, by screenshotting his replies on her tweets and then using the trending hashtags of #ShehbazSharif, #ImranKhan and even #JPNA 2 asking everyone to report this guy for doing so.
Here’s the tweet she made on her account:
#ShehbazSharif #Imrankhan #JPNA2 please report this disgusting man he was abusing another guy’s mother and when I asked him to stop. He started abusing me for days I ignored it but he is not quitting it I need help please. He is replying to every tweet of mine with abuses. pic.twitter.com/J9dgoRHX6Q
— Rabia Anwar (@Rabi_is_here) June 26, 2018
This is very common in Pakistan and even worst as most of our population lacks awareness of online abuse and even if they do know, they either tend to take this matter lightly or handle it in their own ways which might even involve illegal activities such as kidnapping, hacking into social media accounts and even threatening one another by involving families and leaking one’s personal pictures if they have access to it. This mostly ends up happening with girls as men think that:
“Larki ko badnaam karne ka sabse behtareen tareeqa yehi hai k unki tasweerein lekar unko pheladiya jaye in close circles”
What they don’t actually realize that unki bhi izzat ismai jarahi hai but since they’re men, society tends to ignore it.
