It is no secret that with the rise of social media, a harmful practice has also become pervasive on online platforms such as Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube: cyberbullying. Girls and women experience a gendered form of cyberbullying called cyberharassment that is meant to threaten and oppress victims. Feminist sexual violence theorists Cassandra Hill and Holly Johnson note that rates of cyberbullying in high school and in postsecondary institutions are 5 times higher for women than men. However, this number may not seem surprising due to the increase of incel culture and misogynists who use online platforms to spread their fatphobic, sexist, and racist views. With these men using “freedom of speech” to disseminate harmful messages, how can we approach, cope, and challenge cyberharassers?
Resistance is a powerful tool that can be wielded against cyberharassers who aim to silence their victims. Resistance can come in the form of fighting back against the cyberharassers, which 26-year-old Samoan social media influencer Drew Afualo does expertly. Afualo’s online presence is most prominent on Tik Tok, where she rose to popularity due to her (mostly female) fans. Afualo’s account serves to expose and challenge cyberharassers (such as misogynists and bigots who post their anti-feminist ideologies online) albeit, in a comical way:
[M]y goal is to make y’all laugh, and eradicate that platform of misogynists & bigots. & I’m really good at it LMAO… & just a hot tip: the very specific jokes & roasts I come up with … will stick w those men FOREVER. Some of y’all think the easy shit hurts the most, it doesn’t. TRUST ME. U wanna make him mad? Or do u wanna enact psychological warfare for years to come??? (Afualo, 2021)
Her goal to make us laugh is achieved with each video she creates. I am not exaggerating when I say that I cry from laughter each time Afualo cackles at a misogynist she is exposing by comparing him to Professor Finbarr Calamitous from Jimmy Neutron. I not only look forward to Afualo’s videos to brighten up my day with a good laugh, but it also feels empowering to have a woman subverting the harmful messages these misogynists put forth.
Tik Tok users will tag Afualo in the comments of videos of men, usually of college age, saying or doing misogynistic things such as tearing down a woman’s appearance, telling women to stay in the kitchen or that they are only ‘good for sex.’ Afualo will then reply to the misogynist’s video, subverting their comments by making fun of them and using their own methods against them. This includes poking fun at their fragile masculinity by calling them short, bald, and non-muscular. She blatantly tells them that they are not funny but extremely sexist and essentially humiliates them for minutes on a Tik Tok. While I am partial to “calling in,” Afualo “calls out.” Not only is it satisfying to watch these bigots face a similar kind of experience that they force women to go through, but it is also extremely effective in pressuring men to adhere to her social control.
Afualo states in one of her Tik Tok videos that sometimes her fans will tag her in a misogynist’s video, but she cannot view nor reply to the video because the misogynist has blocked her. These men intentionally go out of their way to block Afualo so that she cannot respond to their bigotry and mortify them to her 5.5 million (and counting) Tik Tok following. In most circumstances, the cyberharasser will end up deleting the video. Afualo has also created Tik Toks sharing that she is constantly cyberharassed by these men because she exposes them on a daily basis, and they feel threatened. She receives direct messages with explicit threats and vulgar language. Afualo saves every threatening, fatphobic, misogynistic message so that even if the perpetrator unsends it, she will have it forever. She does this so that she can keep exposing cyberharassers by posting their threats and messages on her various social media platforms. She does not blur out the names of the cyberharassers, because she claims that if they feel they have the right to send her the content they send her, then they do not deserve anonymity and should think twice about cyberharassing. She claims that the perpetrators will “beg me to take it down because it will affect their job, or this one guy’s teaching job. But I don’t. I don’t care. That’s there forever now” (Afualo, 2021).
Afualo’s Tik Toks have become so popular that other accounts have also felt empowered to call out misogynists, tagging Afualo in their captions. She is a feminist icon and a radical yet a highly effective example of not only resisting cyberharassers but subverting their misogyny by using the same methods they used, only more successfully. If you want a good laugh filled with feminist joy, I highly recommend checking out her Tik Toks @drewafualo.