Academic Susan Carland, one half of Australia’s Muslim power couple, is donating a single dollar to charity for each hate tweet she gets. Since making the pledge a little over two weeks ago, she’s already been forced to donate more than $1000.
The former Muslim Australian of the Year and wife of Fairfax columnist and host of The Project Waleed Aly believes Twitter is toxic for women and Muslims.
“I’m worried that it’s going to slowly send me broke,” she says. By drawing attention to it, she knows this article is only going to make things worse.
“I thought, what’s a good thing I can do? What is the complete antithesis of what these people are doing? They are putting so much ugly into the world. I thought what something is good I can put into the world.”
Dr Carland, an academic at Monash University, has used a number of forums – including her Twitter account – as an outlet for her views on religion, immigration and society.
But the trolls that plague her account and those of her friends don’t seem to care too much about the topics. They are out for the cheap thrill of inflicted pain.
Fairfax Media has chosen not to give them air, but suffice to say their insults are usually personal.
“Any Muslim certainly seems to attract a lot of hate online. And then being a Muslim woman – and when you’re an unapologetic Muslim woman – you get a lot of hate,” Dr Carland said.
Most of her trolls are men. Most, as far as she can understand them, want attention.
“They just send out a lot of hate to a lot of people. They are at their core very unhappy people. People who are happy and secure just don’t do this sort of thing – they don’t send out machine guns of hate.”
Up until now, Dr Carland has been fighting the trolls in the usual way: through the mute button.
“Some trolls see being blocked as a badge of honour. The good thing about the mute button is it’s like putting trolls behind a glass wall, and they don’t know, they are just screaming away. Sometimes I engage them – I write back ‘someone needs a hug'”.
This novel approach does not seem to be doing much to detract from trolling so far, she says. It’s only made them more vile, more attention-seeking.
She chose the charity the money is going towards, UNICEF, because she thought no one could have too many complaints about a charity that supports children.
“Of course, trolls started picking on that,” she laughs.
