Students fight back against trolls
One student was teased about being a “brown, bald lesbian.” Another was the target of conspiracy theorists who claimed he was really an actor. When a group of teens posed for a photo, they were accused of lapping up attention from the news cameras and “partying like rock stars.”
Just days after watching their classmates die, survivors of the Florida school shooting came under a different kind of assault, this time from online trolls who threatened the students as they seek tighter gun laws.
In the face of such attacks, the students have been undeterred, confronting the trolls head-on in television interviews and on social media.
“They see us as a threat. And honestly, that’s kind of entertaining to me. And I love it because it means what we are doing is working. We are changing the world,” student David Hogg told MSNBC on Wednesday at a rally outside the Florida Capitol.
Some conservatives have suggested that the teens are being used as political pawns, but the most vicious of the trolls go well beyond that, into personal attacks and baseless accusations.
Hogg was the subject of perhaps the most outlandish conspiracy to surface since the Feb. 14 attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High that killed 17 people. He was accused of being an actor who was never at the school.
But Hogg is no actor. He recorded a harrowing video of terrified students huddled in a darkened room on the day of the shooting. His classmates responded to the trolls with biting sarcasm.
Hogg “is smart, funny, and diligent, but my favorite thing about him is undoubtedly that he’s actually a 26-year-old felon from California,” tweeted classmate Cameron Kasky. A troll had cast Hogg as a 26-year-old man arrested for drugs.