“Hey beb wassup?” “Waooo, so hot!” “Kya sexy maal hai!”
Any woman with a social media account is sure to understand what I just alluded to here: receiving unsolicited messages by internet romeos who clearly have got no chill whatsoever. And in case you can associate with these messages then you also know that my rendition is an extremely watered-down version of the kind of internet trolling and harassment women endure on a daily basis.
Also, for those who might have tried it in the past, there’s just no point in reasoning with these people or explaining to them how inappropriate they actually happen to be. But then again, if that’s not the solution then how on Earth are we supposed to deal with the everyday harassment? Are we really supposed to take it with no option but to endure the impunity and ignore it all just like that? Well, “no” is the answer and Moose Jattana, a Melbourne-based Indian girl recently gave us an amazing solution to deal with these unsolicited messages.
Instead of letting her online harasser ruin her day, she decided to ruin his. She clicked screenshots of problematic messages that he had sent to her and then forwarded them to his friend. She also emailed the same screenshots to this guy’s school and what followed next is truly epic.
Mosse’s Instagram post has been going viral since then and it didn’t take too long for her online harasser to slide into her DMs again, this time to apologise though. ‘The new normal. We’re changing things,’ she captioned the post while sharing a screenshot of the apology.
Just two weeks since Moose called out her harasser, and she actually seems to have changed things. Taking inspiration from her ingenious method of shaming the online harassers, we recently came across two more women who followed her lead and shared problematic screenshots with people in their harasser’s social media friend lists. Here’s how they called out their online harassers:
Openly Called Him Out!
While Moose had to go all the way to her harasser’s school to teach him a lesson, it only took a publicly posted screenshot to take this one down. Amazing how comfortable and delusional men get in the discreetness of social media DMs, clearly unaware how this can backfire and we are so glad that it did!
This One Sent The Screenshots To The Harasser’s Wife!
Okay, this one’s hands down our favourite for the woman actually ended up finding the harasser’s wife on Twitter and told her what all her husband had done to random women on Twitter. She then told him about the same and was immediately blocked by the man.
But here’s the best part, clearly scared AF the man then unblocked her, apologised, and promised that he wouldn’t repeat the same. He was duly left on read!
So, here’s the truth: women in India have long been told to ignore men who eve-tease or harass them. “Baat ko aage kya badhana” is what we have been told time and again. But why on Earth should we endure all this ridiculousness and harassment while the perpetrator walks about unscathed? It is really very simple: they are the ones with a dirt infested mind and thus they are one’s who should be ashamed.
For years now we have been asked to ignore it all and nothing has changed. In fact, the wound has only festered in the past decade as the harasser comfortably shifted from roads to the comforts of his social media DMs. However, all it took was a screenshot to show some online harassers the mirror and teach them a lesson. This is an ingenious trick and I don’t see any reason why more women should refrain from giving it a go.
Featured Image: Instagram