1 Tech Blogger Dobs In Trolls To Their Mums

A young tech-blogger from Australia has managed to think outside the square to hit back at internet trolls who were threatening her with sexual violence; she dobbed the in to their mummies.

Some of these internet trolls threatened rape towards twenty-one year old Alana Pearce of Brisbane. She took this action against the trolls after realising that they were not grown men, but teenage boys, threatening her from the safety of being hidden behind their computer.

According to the Guardian, the gaming journalist said she had received one reply from a mother who called her son a "little s**t".

'She responded in almost exactly the way I wanted her to,' Ms Pearce said, according to news.com.au. 'The fact she called him a little s**t I found funny as well because I thought that but I wasn't going to say anything.'

Miss Pearce is a gaming reviewer for radio stations Triple J and 4ZZZ. She told of how determined she was to show these boys that there were consequences for leaving violent or "disgusting" messages online, despite the apparent lack of repercussion.

"It turns out that mostly they're young boys and the problem is they don't know any better, so responding to them rationally didn't resolve the situation. And it got to the point where their comments were starting to make me feel really uncomfortable," she said, according to the Guardian.

The young woman decided to track the boys down online before contacting their mothers through Facebook, to alert them as to what their sons had been up to online. She posted her conversation in which she received a reply from the mother on Twitter, were she received a huge amount of support. Alana said that by making this public, she would show many of the younger, internet using generation who considered making such threat, to re-think there actions before they went ahead and made threats towards people.

"I've had people asking me today why this boy has been sending me rape threats, and is there any context," she said. "I can only assume he's seen a video of mine that he didn't like, or that I'm a woman in games on the internet. It sounds illogical, but it happens to so many people. Every time this happens to me, I will do this. I won't necessarily post it on Twitter, but I will definitely continue doing it."

In Internet slang, a troll is a person who attempts to disturb other internet users by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in online communities such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog. The quite deliberate intent is usually just to provoke readers into an emotional response, or just generally steer the topic off course for their own amusement.

Whilst the word "troll" and its verb "trolling" are commonly used in association with internet discourse, the terms have also been used more widely. In recent years, incidents of harassment such as the one described above concerning Alan Pearce, and also more serious and disturbing accounts, have attracted media attention which has resulted in trolling being equated with online harassment. As an example, there have been times of late where media now use the words "troll" or "trolling" in reference to "a person who defaces Internet tribute sites with the aim of causing grief to families".