Around The World With Internet Trolls And Online Haters

A 50-year-old English steelworker, Robert Jackson is “against all immigration”. When the Calais blockade was taking place, he wrote a post on Facebook that read “run the fuckers over”. At the same time, he doesn’t seem to be bothered by his Thai wife, who he sweetly addresses as “dear”.

Ashleigh Jones, 21, is a student from Wales, who slut-shames celebrities. One of her tweets read, “I would say Amy Schumer is a cunt but you have to be smart to be a cunt.” She herself is used to hearing harsh language in return for her provocative comments. “But that doesn’t bother me,” she says. “I have a lot of sex so I can’t be that ugly.”

Robert and Ashleigh are among those featured in the project of Norwegian filmmaker Kyrre Lien, presented by the Guardian. Others, including Alexandra Velichkevich, a 51-year-old Russian who fears “that her country will be taken over by ‘Gay Europe’”, and Kjell Frode Tislevoll, a 42-year-old retail clerk from Norway, who hopes for the return of colonialism. What they all have in common is the hate they spread online.

Three years of tracking down the online commenters resulted in the 20-minute documentary, The Internet Warriors, featured alongside the article by the Guardian. Lien researched 200 potential subjects, but half denied his request for an interview. But even with the remaining half, he managed to create a brilliant investigation into the daily lives and bizarre motivations of cyber bullies.

“Lien’s research took him across the world – from the fjords of Norway to the US desert – meeting people of extreme, ‘often illogical’ beliefs: the racists, the homophobes, the slut-shamers,” says the Guardian piece.

The project shows that online trolls come in all shapes and sizes, and their motivations are extremely diverse. It also exposes the thin line between hate speech and free speech, proving that the spread of xenophobia and harassment online is a global phenomena, definitely not inherent to one country.