When I showed my friends some of those tweets at dinner that night, they didn’t quite see it that way.“I can’t believe he did that to you!” one said.“I’m so sorry he was such a dick. What gives him the right?” cried another.I laughed it off. However, what gave me pause was the sheer volume of tweets I received, and how quick these people were to attack a 22-year-old girl at 1 p.m. on a Thursday. They jumped at the opportunity to comment on whether I measured up to their fuckability standards I wasn’t mad at Cernovich. All he did was summon the support of his loyal community, and prove to me that his audience was, at least in part, pretty vile. I can't say that I was surprised, either. He is writing a book about Donald Trump's rise , frequently takes on political pundits who criticize him, and is strategically harvesting many of the followers who have gotten Trump to the point he's now at in the election. Plus, I'm far from the first woman to endure this kind of online treatment from a white privileged male.

When Dana Schwartz called Donald Trump out as an anti-Semite , she received similar and even uglier attacks. A single tweet won her a flood of responses referencing ovens, work camps, greed, and Satan. Trolls made fun of her nose, told her to kill herself, and called feminism a cancer. According to Schwartz, no matter how much she tried to intellectualize the trolling, nothing could have prepared her for how vulnerable the attacks on her appearance, religion, and values made her feel.When Mayte Lara Ibarra announced on Twitter that she was an undocumented valedictorian with a full ride to the University of Texas, trolls took the opportunity to report her to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and ridicule her for her appearance and accomplishments.Heck, they'll even harass a mindless Twitter bot Regardless of whether internet trolls actually mean the inflammatory things they say, they know their craft, and they know their audience will eat it up. They enable cultures of hatred and promote inequality.Mike Cernovich let me off easy. He’s gotten people fired , he’s broadcasted their back taxes , and he’s proudly humiliated them. To be honest, I was a bit frightened to write and publish this article. If one tweet sparked such a tremendous response, what will these trolls unleash on me after this?I don’t know Cernovich personally. I have no idea what his real personality is like outside of his blog and Twitter antics. But he’ll always exist to me as the guy who condoned my harassment just because I criticized him.And if he and his trolls don’t like my analysis of him, I say to them exactly what he says to his critics:Go. Cry. More.