There is a popular new trend amongst Facebook users where people click that they are attending events they have no intention of going to in order to raise awareness of certain events or individuals. This practice has had some positive outcomes, Californian student Azeem Ward received Internet fame following the sharing of his flute recital, with thousands pledging to attend the event only intended for one hundred.
Unfortunately, like everything else on the Internet there is a darker side to this new trend. When thousands of Internet users, mostly white men, clicked to attend an even in Claifornia for Black Lesbians United, the group was quickly over run by racist and homophobic abuse.
The group were subjected to comments such as people asking if they can attend because they 'know a black guy' and offering to 'bring the KFC'. Some Facebook users posted links to hardcore lesbian porn, whilst one individual commented 'I'm a straight whit boy having ambitions to one day be a black lesbian.'
Following the massive amounts of abuse the group were subjected to they chose to remove the events page from Facebook, though the event itself is still planned to go ahead.
To be honest though, I'm not shocked that the group were subjected to this kind of abuse, we all know that there are a lot of very nasty and very narrow minded people on the Internet, and social media especially. What does shock me though is that once again Facebook is allowing people to get away with posting abuse of this level.
There are so many people and pages being reported every single day for spreading hate speech and abusing other Facebook users that you'd think the company would be quicker to step in when situations like this occur. Facebook needs to address these kinds of issues. They need to employ more people to stop this kind of thing from happening and they need to shut down the accounts of users that engage in these kinds of acts, not waiting for the victims to leave because they can't take anymore abuse.
Fortunately not ever person who left comments on the Black Lesbians United page was there to cause harm. One commenter wrote, 'To the black lesbians who only came to this page to find happiness and acceptance in their sexuality I want to give a sincere apology for the twisted sick people who have written racist or homophobic comments to you.
'Nobody deserves to be treated that way, no matter how fucking funny those idiots think they are. Keep being proud of who you are and don't listen to the insecure people below. One again I am truly sorry.'
Amy.
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