michelle-dean
Michelle Dean
michelle-dean

I just want to write dude, not dismiss bloody rape gif trolls every day. It is the worst part of our jobs to hear from commenters that they can't discuss, say, a teen girl being great at Little League without some person boasting a burner account using the collective comment thread as a chance to harass people.

It honestly breaks my heart a little bit that this post even needs to exist — but the manner in which this has been handled (or not handled, really) by HQ is pathetic. Not reporting on it feels hypocritical, so here we are.

For what it's worth, I want to apologize to our readers who are forced to interact with these violent gifs regularly. The point of Kinja is to create a better platform for discussion and those discussions CANNOT happen when you're inundated by such traumatizing material. It's this person's goal to shutdown

What bothers me about this is that we don't record IP addresses so as to protect these burner accounts for people who might want to tip us anonymously about a story. So the company is seemingly placing a priority on making these hypothetical tipsters feel safe over the safety of the actual real live women who write

The last thing I want to do is give this giant and troubling waste of our goddamn time the acknowledgment that is clearly so desperately craved. But the fact that I must suppress my pride and bring attention to this in a plea for support from my own employer makes it all the more ridiculous.