Celebrity’s attack on Internet trolls is chilling

Ashley Judd, star of such hit films as Dolphin Tale and Dolphin Tale 2, made some alarming comments on the Today Show that’s got some people talking and it has everything to do with how she deals with and responds to Internet trolls (anonymous cowards who derive some kind of meaning in life from being jerks on the Internet).

She apparently tweeted out her support for her favorite college basketball team that opponents didn’t appreciate and they responded by calling her a number of offensive names, including sarcastic demands that she submit to fairly specific sex acts.

In response, Judd went on the Today Show to warn that these trolls need “to take responsibility for what they write,” before dropping a bombshell claim: she’s “pressing charges.”

“The amount of gender violence that I experienced is absolutely extraordinary and a significant part of my day today will be spent filing police reports at home about gender violence that is directed at me on social media,” she explained.

So a few reactions.

She says “gender violence,” which implies she’s being assaulted based on her gender. But she’s not suffered any violence. She suffered name calling. There’s a difference, obviously, between violence and being called names and if you can’t understand that, you do more harm than good. It’s incredibly demeaning to women (and men) who actually suffer violence to pretend you’re on that level because you got your feelings hurt from some nasty tweets.

Now the tweets were nasty and trolls are real, but the reason she later says in the interview that she doesn’t expect the police reports she files to be vigorously pursued is because being called names (or being told to engage in a sex act) is not actionable.

We all need to understand something. Being called a bad name isn’t against the law. Having your feelings hurt isn’t against the law. You being called stupid or ugly or fat or whatever isn’t actionable (and even more so, when you’re a celebrity it is even harder to prove a tweet is actionable unless it poses a direct and reasonable threat).

Look, Internet trolls are awful people. I encounter them every time I post a blog entry here. Like clockwork, I post something and a handful of the same losers immediately comment about how I’m dumb and an evil Republican; they’ll occasionally throw in an anti-Semitic comment. They don’t offer anything except to disagree with me for no reason other than to disagree and try to demean me. Look at the comments below; you’ll likely see the same crew of five or six commenters obsessively commenting about me. Boohoo.

These pathetic losers just sit at their computer all day waiting for me and others to post something – anything – so they have something to do to occupy their otherwise lonely lives. And so these trolls – whose only contribution to society is being a troll – just wait to pounce.

And as much as it annoys me, they have every legal right to do it. Now, they can get banned from various websites they use depending on the rules of the site, but I can’t file a police report because they’re critical of me (and actually expect the police to do something about it). I can’t sue them for something. Being an annoying loser isn’t against the law.

Now the problem with what Ashley Judd is doing is she’s trying to stifle speech; and yes, even this kind of speech is important to protect. By threatening police reports and basically court action – some kind of legal intervention – she’s creating an environment where people are scared to speak out and criticize.

Yes, this speech in question is targeting people who called her nasty names, but the result may very well be someone who has a legitimate gripe with dumb comments she makes will suddenly think twice about saying it for fear that they’ll be taken out of context and have to deal with a potential legal intervention.

The next step is to sue – if you’re someone like Ashley Judd who thinks being called a name is gender violence and you don’t get any type of validation from a police report, your next step is presumably to sue – and even though this would get tossed out, you can still actually sue. Which means the trolls get served and they end up having to spend money getting a lawyer to represent them and they’ll have to take time to actually deal with this in court. All over protected speech.

All speech is worthy of protection, even the trolling kinds, because, frankly, who decides what is trolling and what is legitimate? The person who is offended? You want someone claiming sexual violence for a tweet the one defining what is and isn’t permissible? The answer to trolls is to either ignore them (which I sometimes do), or call them out with more speech (which I sometimes do). The answer is to nasty speech is good speech; the answer to mean, useless speech is meaningful speech.