When I go online, I see hate speech everywhere.
Usually it's about race or religion.
And I've seen this all in social media, Facebook, YouTube.
I've definitely seen hate speech in comment sections.
Basically every single platform.
There's always that one racist or sexist comment
that's always going to be there.
I don't think you have to go very far to find it.
I don't have a need to go digging for it.
It's everywhere.
# #
I define hate speech as anything that's threatening
or meant to hurt somebody else.
Anything you say or do that's,
is, like, kind of, like,
attacking any part of someone,
whether it's, like, what they look like, their beliefs.
I'm not sure of, like, the exact definition of hate speech.
Any way you use your words to oppress or harm somebody else.
It doesn't necessarily have to be a derogatory term or slur.
It could just be words that we use in our everyday sentences.
The meaning of it has become really vague,
or at least really wide.
Someone is no longer just being offensive
when what they're saying is marginalizing
or hurting a whole community of people--
for example, their religion, their race.
If that's what you're going for,
that's no longer just you being mean.
That's hate speech.
I have definitely encountered hate speech online.
I've found it a lot more on, on social media
than I have in real life.
I see it in maybe the comments on YouTube videos
or tweets on Twitter.
Twitter has a huge amount of hate speech.
It's such an open platform for people
to just type down what they think and send it off.
I definitely think YouTube is one of the places
where you most see racist or, like, sexist comments.
I've noticed it mostly on social media platforms
like Instagram and YouTube,
through jokes.
I tend to see it on memes or funny posts,
or meant-to-be-funny posts.
And I think it's that, those type of people that,
they'll say it over social media,
but they won't say it in person because they're too afraid
and they don't want to own up to having that kind of ideology.
I don't think it's a joke to me.
If it's racist, then they post it to be racist,
because that's what they're thinking about.
Some close friends of mine from middle school
actually created a private Instagram account,
and they used it to post
racist, ableist, sexist, xenophobic pictures.
Last year, someone created
an extremely anti-Semitic Instagram account,
and it was always so personal and so targeted.
And I wish that I could say that was the last time
that something like that had happened in our school,
but it isn't.
It made me kind of question my...
my place in, like, where I belong in this school,
because it's supposed to be our sanctuary space,
and students within this very building,
in the same classrooms as me,
are posting photos that dehumanize me.
It was hurtful.
I think that people are posting hate speech online
because, for the first part,
it's easier for people to talk through a screen.
It's almost like a sheet in front of you
where you can cover your face, but sound still goes through,
so people can say whatever they want,
and kind of get away with it.
I do think that xenophobia
is one factor as to why people use hate speech.
Part of it is just to get a reaction,
or part of it is just to get attention.
The people who put these types of posts on media,
they seem to be going through something themselves.
It's maybe because of their past,
or they've been hurt before, and they want to hurt others
to make them feel better about themselves.
I've never seen someone post hate speech
being a friendly person
who is just trying to say their opinion.
I think the hate speech is, like, put out there
just to target a certain group.
It's such a large platform that so many people can see
that it's really easy to get your message across.
I mean, people are going to read it because it's on social media.
So when I see something on my timeline,
I go out of my way to report it.
I go out of my way to stop that,
because I know somebody else isn't going to take it
the same way that I do.
How you feel, like, when somebody's talking, like,
some negative things about you,
that it hurts, like, your feelings.
Yeah, I feel a sort of social responsibility.
We all should be lifting each other up
rather than putting each other down.
When I see some people posting racist things online,
I just don't do nothing about it,
because I feel like...
I ask myself, "What can I do for, to stop this?"
I can't really do anything about it.
I kind of just have to ignore it.
It's really hurtful to the other person.
I don't think they realize it.
It really demoralizes them and lowers their self-esteem.
I would report hate speech when I see it.
When we see these posts on our timelines,
or on our Instagrams, in our feeds--
Twitter, Snapchat, even group chats--
we feel the need to speak out.
And when we speak out, we give those people who hurt us
that attention that they always crave.
I feel like, if you don't have anything good to say,
don't say it.
Everyone always argues with these people,
and I... I do, too, but...
I think people are free to express what they have to say,
but I don't think it should be at the cost
of putting somebody else down.
# #