Offline/Online: Abuse is Still Abuse
When the internet first became accessible it was imagined as a virtual space, separate from our everyday lives. You could use your dial-up internet connection (if you’re old enough to remember!) to hop online and reinvent yourself, create a better version of you or just escape the real world altogether.
Nowadays though many of us have access to high-speed internet and mobile 4G. We check our social media first thing in the morning and the last thing at night (and for those of us who are health conscious our smartwatch has even been monitoring us as we slept). Are we ever really offline? Our online selves are a part of us and it’s difficult to say where one ends and the other begins.
This raises a new problem when it comes to how we interact with one another online. Online abuse is often dismissed as not being real abuse since it occurs in the virtual world. But, if our ‘online’ and ‘offline’ worlds are becoming increasingly linked, how can we separate the two?
Feminist artist, Hazel Soper, considers these issues in her video installation piece ‘She’s so annoying and so irrelevant’ by engaging the audience in a physical experience of being trolled. In this installation we see a mouth reading aloud critical and abusive comments posted publicly online. The walls of the room are papered with the same comments writ large, that pile onto the floor.
For Soper, “This video explores the relationship between the ‘online’ and ‘offline’ spheres.” By giving abusive comments a voice in her video, Soper brings the digital abuse into the material space and forces the audience to face the emotional consequences. It challenges the detachment relationship between the troll and the recipient of abuse and exposes the very real effects.
(CW: Sexism, homophobia)
In Soper’s words: “I am particularly interested in how human communication is translated into an online realm…This piece explores boundaries of communication: how the distance of the internet can influence what is acceptable to say; and to whom. Does this detachment encourage objectification and violence towards the ‘Other’? It discusses the atmosphere and emotions created by trolling, and whether this is ‘real’ or imagined.”
We know that online abuse can be as damaging and detrimental as any abuse that occurs in person. It causes anxiety, stress and can contribute to depression and suicidal feelings. Trolling attacks on people can cause issues in their personal relationships, damage their reputation and even result in loss of employment. Soper’s work communicates these emotional effects and emphasises the importance of thinking about how we interact with one another.
Opt Out Tools is releasing a browser extension to manage online misogyny — Follow us on twitter @optoutools
Hazel Soper is based in Newcastle, UK. Check out her work at https://www.hazelsoper.com/ or follow her on twitter @HazelSoper
