1. Read two texts and be ready to discuss them:

The troll’s story

Jane, 29

Four years on, I still get panicky whenever I think of a backlash following my post. It was never supposed to blow up like it did. I did not expect more than a dozen people to see it.

In hindsight, I wasn’t thinking ahead when I posted the photos online. I was frustrated with the convention and I was trying to illustrate the point. As I love science-fiction, I’ve always looked forward to the conference. Usually, there are panels about a variety of things, like education and developing world. But that year, I was frustrated with the debates and the people, especially the fat activists. At some point I decided to secretly take photos with my mobile phone. That night, I posted them online, with sarcastic comments. I guess I was trying to be funny to impress the readers on the board. I never expected to be identified.

Somehow my comments got a lot of attention. The day after the conference, my e-mail account was full of abusive messages from anonymous people threatening me. They told me they knew, where I worked, get me fired from my job and kicked out of the university. Unfortunately, I did not cover my tracks very well when I posted the photos. It did not take long for people to figure out my identity.

I was terrified. There were threats of violence and I feared for my safety. I took a few days off work, but when I returned, it was clear that someone had tampered with my desk. Scared I went home and did not return to the campus lab where I work for a few more days.

As the frenzy worsened, I contacted the police, but was told they couldn’t do anything unless the threats were specific. But for me, the threats were real. One blogger led a campaign to “Google bomb” me – to do lots of searchers linking my name to the negative stories, so they’d be the top results if people searched for me.

I wanted it to stop. I begged the site somethingawful.com to take the threat down, which they did. I wrote an online apology, but soon deleted it because I wanted the whole thing to go away.

Four years later, I ‘m afraid the controversy will always follow me. I ‘ve nearly finished my PhD and I’m applying for jobs. I’m worried what potential employers might read about me online. I’m not hateful. I ‘m a good person who wants to move on. It’s scary that something I wrote in frustration one night as the potential to ruin my career. My advice to trolls is to be careful what you put online, because it will always be out there.

The victim’s story

Eileen Rosensteel, 38.

“You fat cow”, “You’re too fat to move”. Those are the type of hurtful messages that were sent to my e-mail account on Thursday after the convention.

During the day I work as an office manager at a university, and I was at my desk when a friend sent me an e-mail about the somethingawful.com post.

I had a great time at the conference that year. I ‘m a big reader and sci-fi fan, so I love the workshops, meeting authors and hearing readings of new work. Now after clicking the link my friend had sent, I was staring at a couple of photos of myself. My face had been whited out, but I was easy to identify. Underneath the picture the person wrote: “This is Eileen. She is 400 lb. She is bodacious!. Other people had read the board and written similar nasty comments. One person reposted a picture of me and put a pig’s face over my face. Anonymous people sent e-mails to my business account and splattered among the insults were four or five death threats.

I was shaking with anger and shock after reading the post. My immediate reaction was humiliation. Hurt, I hid myself in my office and cried.

I called my husband and he wanted to call the police because of the threats, but I wanted to get my head round what had happened first.

The next day I found out the name of the person who wrote the post, after her identity was revealed online. She was a graduate student at the university where I work. I was shocked, as I didn’t know her and I had no idea why she decided to pick on me.

Within days of the post going online, things got very intense, very quickly. I decided against going to the police, because I did not think there was a real threat of violence, but I did save the e-mails as proof.

Friends came out to support me, while strangers were taking to the Internet expressing their anger and disgust at what Jane had written.

After the initial shock and hurt, I decided it wasn’t worth spending my energy on. Instead I posted an article about the incident online. I called the piece “A Response to Hate”, because I wanted the person who wrote those things to know her pathetic attempts at humor were not going to stop me from enjoying my life and loving myself. I also complained to the dean of the university, as I wanted Jane to be reprimanded for the attack. He talked to her, but I don’t know if she was disciplined.

Personally, I think Internet trolls are sad people with too much time on their hands. Two months afterwards I was still getting e-mails – both negative and positive – because of her actions. I ‘m sad that the incident had a negative effect on her life, but she initiated this. She made the decision to take photographs without permission and post them online with rude comments, so she has to deal with the repercussions. (taken from the magazine “Marie Clair”)