‘THE MAN WAITING FOR ME HAD A FLIP KNIFE’: WHEN THE TROLL INVESTIGATOR BECOMES THE TROLLED

It’s a sunny June afternoon, and

I’m walking out of the BBC’S New Broadcasting House. It should be a carefree day, only I’m on high alert. For six weeks, a man has been living in a tent outside the building. He has been shouting at me and waiting for me.

He’s very tall with grey hair. He wears a fleece and combat trousers. Beside his tent are signs declaring that the BBC is complicit in protecting paedophiles. The claims he’s making go a lot further than any real examples of where the BBC has failed victims – for example, with its former presenter Jimmy Savile. The conspiracy theories scrawled on cardboard by this man are complex, confusing and unclear.

For a while, this man didn’t notice me. Then it started. At first, it was just shouting my name. Then it was shouting and walking after me as

I headed home. I’d dash away, wondering if he was still following.

Next, it was waiting for me outside the revolving doors of the BBC’S lobby. He’d have his phone at the ready to film me. He’d shout and swear as I hurried inside. He never approached me for a reasonable conversation. He would shout and scream abuse.

On this sunny day, he appears again. I am deliberately taking a route I thought would avoid him. He comes up close, screaming, ‘Do you want to see my balls?’ then proceeds to declare he isn’t harassing me.

I never want to be scared of the people who troll me. I am, however, shaken by these sorts of incidents. They’re being investigated by the police, who have since removed this man from the BBC premises. They found a ‘bladed item’ in his tent

– a flip knife, I was later told.

Weeks later, another conspiracy theorist turns up requesting an interview. They follow the BBC’S director general to the Tube. Security teams later tell me they stand out on the plaza, by the doors where I work.

These are stark examples of the way the hate I’ve experienced online seems to be spilling out into the real world. Between 1 January 2023 and the end of June, the BBC received 14,488 escalations regarding social media posts for ‘protected assets’ – often on-air presenters or people considered at risk of online abuse. Of this number, 11,771 relate to me. Those posts were escalated because they could be indicative of cyberbullying, negative sentiment, threats of physical harm and violent language, doxing, impersonations, giving personal details and more.

My offline encounters with hate began during the Covid-19 lockdowns, with a message scrawled in red pen on a whiteboard used for updates about mask-wearing, outside a Tube station close to where I work in London. It said Marianna Spring was lying about the vaccine. The note itself wasn’t very offensive. More concerning was the message it sent: we know where you get the Tube and where you work. I still don’t know who left that note.

After that I attended rallies where protesters told me I should be hanged for treason. Others chanted and hurled abuse, and some held up placards about me – one with just my name and my age on.

What’s been happening to me is just a small part of a campaign of intimidation being waged by conspiracy activists. They have shown they are willing to act offline. And they are persistent – they’re not giving up.