WHAT IT IS LIKE INSIDE ABUSIVE CHATROOMS: REPORTERS AAMIR
TWO men are haranguing a 50-year-old woman in a white cap with a yellow, sleeveless T-shirt who has just danced around her kitchen.
Broadcasting video of themselves in their homes, they can be heard spewing out abuse. One of the men can be heard saying: “50? You look more like 80. Jesus – what meth pipe have you been smoking?”
The woman replies: “Do I care what people think about me? No.”
And he says: “You should care. Consider killing yourself.”
This is a chatroom on Paltalk, the US website which bills itself as one of the largest video chat room communities in the world.
It has more than 200 million active members communicating through internet, voice and video chat everyday.
According its website, Paltalk allows people to “meet millions of friendly members worldwide”, including thousands of people within a single chat room.
But the company has come under intense criticism recently, after a number of people filmed their own deaths live on broadcasts – including Cardiff man Leon Jenkins.
Users of the chatroom say Mr Jenkins received a message on the night of the tragedy saying: “Why don’t you just do it? Your life isn’t worth it.”
Yet they are not certain whether he intended to kill himself or whether it was a prank that went wrong.
He is the third British man to take his own life after using Paltalk, following the death of Gregory Tomkins, 39, who killed himself on the site on Christmas Day last year and Kevin Whitrick – who became the first Brit to broadcast his suicide on the site in 2007.
All of the men used chatrooms where users exchange insults in what users claim is a harmless playground where you can say anything, yet others fear that people’s mental health is threatened.
We decided to take a look for ourselves, spending time inside some of the chat rooms to find out the nature of the “banter” and the abuse.
Logging into Paltalk, we found hundreds of abusive forums, some with names like Verbal Abuse Insults and Bullyz R Uz Insults.
Inside one of the forums, webcams show users in dark rooms, with many hiding their faces and speaking into their microphones.
One woman receives a huge amount of sexual abuse, which is aimed directly at her and her daughter. She laughs it off. A lot of the users appear to be male, and one active member tells us that we needed to be “strongminded” to be able to engage in the chat.
“The reason we have these chats is for freedom of speech, you say what you want and if you don’t like it, then don’t join,” they say, adding: “No one is forced to join the chats and we have been running these for years.”
Another user says: “Americans don’t seem to get fazed by the chat, it’s only you British people who get so sensitive. If a chat room is going to hurt you and make you feel sad, then go see a f***** doctor or something.”
As the chat picks up, the insults start to get worse.
One man starts to get abused for