Knowing they’re very much out there, I’ve never felt even remotely curious about exploring the dark corners of the internet, where the racists and the homophobes and the sexists congregate to lash out and blame the woes of the world and of their lives on whoever they can.
However, unfortunately it seems like it’s becoming harder and harder to avoid the internet’s steaming-est piles of excrement as social media brings it into our feeds whether we want to see it or not.
But the face of hate on the internet is changing, and you don’t need to look any further than a 14-year-old girl on YouTube.
Yeah, we’ve come to expect this sort of thing from pale basement trolls, but seeing it from this high school freshman who goes by the name Soph is something else entirely, a surreal experience that is bringing hate to a new generation.
She just dresses it up as edgy “comedy” mocking “politically correct” culture.
The language is absolutely alarming.
As BuzzFeed News reported , in a video titled “Be Not Afraid,” Soph dressed up in a chador to mock Muslims, saying “I’ve become a devout follower of the Prophet Muhammad.”
Soph began her hateful rhetoric.
“Suffice to say, I’ve been having a [expletive] ton of fun. Of course, I get raped by my 40-year-old husband every so often and I have to worship a black cube to indirectly please an ancient Canaanite god.”
She continued to spread Islamophobic ideas.
“But at least I get to go to San Fran and stone the [expletive] out of some gays, and the cops can’t do anything about it because California is a crypto-caliphate.”
And that’s just the start.
She plays to that extremist, conspiracy theorist 4chan crowd with toxic speeches on, well, I’m sure you can imagine what sorts of topics a far-right poster child might find to pick on.
It’s all ugly.
In some of her other social media exploits, specifically on gaming chat app Discord, where she goes by the handle “lutenant f****t,” she wrote “I wish there would be a Hitler for Muslims” and to “Gas them all.”
Through it all, Soph brazenly dares YouTube to do anything about her vids.
In one video, Soph even directly addressed YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki with very specific threats. “Susan, I’ve known your address since last summer. I’ve got a Luger and a mitochondrial disease.”
“I don’t care if I live.”
“Why should I care if you live or your children? I just called an Uber. You’ve got about seven minutes to draft up a will…I’m coming for you, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.”
Not sure how that can be construed as comedy, but Soph didn’t get her account suspended.
Most alarmingly, she’s found an audience for her vids.
It’s unclear just who is watching her, whether it’s grown-up 4chan trolls, or if other kids are being exposed to her violent, hateful rhetoric.
Some action has been taken, but many feel not enough.
Since the BuzzFeed article, Soph has received a “strike” from YouTube, which prevents her from uploading new content for a week, and took down “Be Not Afraid” — but she also went from 800,000 followers to just shy of a million.
For those asking where the parents are in this case, well, there isn’t a great answer.
YouTube lets children as young as 13 have their own channel, so she’s pretty well free to create her own content without any parental supervision — and her viewers don’t need it either.
It’s no guarantee the parents would stop this behavior.
Some might even have parents who are enthusiastic about their kids taking in Soph’s content. As for Soph’s parents, it’s unknown whether they’re even aware of their daughter’s extreme views.
But, being so young, there’s no saying her views couldn’t change over time.
It’s happened with far-right poster children before. As BuzzFeed pointed out, Jonathan Krohn, who spoke at CPAC in 2009 when he was 13, has since disowned his past and now writes about extremism.
And Lynx and Lamb Gaede, who were white nationalist pop singers when they were 11, have since denounced racism and are now activists for the legalization of marijuana.
But given her history, it’s hard to say if she’ll come around in time or only get more extreme.
For now, however, Soph has no intention of stopping her videos. “You could beg me kicking and screaming to stop disseminating the ideas I believe in, and it wouldn’t make a f****** difference,” she said at the end of “Be Not Afraid.”
h/t BuzzFeed News
