🚨“Terms & Conditions Can’t Save Us: Digital Citizenship in the Age of Tate, Trolls & Toxic Feeds”📱
Let’s be real: being “online” today means dodging hate, callouts, and the occasional Andrew Tate stan sliding into your mentions with unprovoked misogyny. Welcome to the wild west of digital citizenship, where we should be building communities, but half the time we’re just surviving the algorithm’s blind eye to abuse. 💀📉
Social media governance? A hot mess. Platforms claim to protect us, but #NoSnowflakes culture (Haslop et al., 2021) has normalized online harassment as just “free speech.” Especially for women and queer folks, the internet isn’t a safe public square, it’s a battlefield. And what’s worse? This gendered digital divide is growing, not shrinking.
Enter: the manosphere. According to Rich & Bujalkagence (2023), guys like Andrew Tate thrive by offering “lost men” a purpose, problem is, that purpose is rooted in misogyny, victim-blaming, and toxic masculinity repackaged as empowerment. Algorithms amplify it, feeds monetize it, and suddenly hate becomes content. 🤡🔗
Marwick & Caplan (2018) break it down: the manosphere doesn’t just vent, it organizes. It weaponizes memes, dog whistles, and edgy language ("male tears," anyone?) to harass feminists, enforce gender norms, and legitimize hate as humor. It’s less trolling, more networked warfare.
So where does digital citizenship fit in? Right here, in calling this sh*t out, not just canceling individuals but questioning why the systems keep boosting them. Governance shouldn’t be just moderation, it should be accountability, education, and culture change.
Being a good digital citizen in 2025 isn’t just about liking the right posts, it’s about fighting for platforms that don’t profit off pain.
References:
Haslop, C., O’Rourke, F., & Southern, R. (2021). #NoSnowflakes: The toleration of harassment and an emergent gender-related digital divide, in a UK student online culture. Convergence, 27(5), 1418–1438. Ben Rich and Eva Bujalkagence (2023) 'The draw of the ‘manosphere’: understanding Andrew Tate’s appeal to lost men', The Conversation February 13. Alice E. Marwick & Robyn Caplan, 'Drinking male tears: language, the manosphere, and networked harassment' Feminist Media Studies Volume 18, 2018 - Issue 4: Pages 543-559
