Rachel Corbett: ‘I never expected a reaction like this’

WHEN Rachel Corbett wrote an opinion piece about a HSC discussion group, she didn’t expect this kind of abuse. It’s frightening.

Rachel Corbett received an extreme amount of online abuse over the weekend, after an article she wrote about an HSC discussion group.

LAST week I wrote an article about the HSC Discussion Group Facebook page and to say it was poorly received might be the understatement of the century.

When you write an opinion piece, you’re used to people disagreeing with you. You anticipate there’ll be some kind of backlash but what you don’t anticipate is being called a slut, being told to “neck yourself” and “get cancer,” having your mobile phone number posted online or fans of your Facebook page being abused and called a paedophile because they try to support you.

This is even more surprising when the people saying these things are high-school students.

I’ve kept a pretty low online profile since the piece ran but yesterday I read an article suggesting my decision to lay low was because I wasn’t tough enough to deal with people telling me they disliked what I wrote. If only that was the case.

Just some of the thousands of abusive messages Rachel received. Picture: Twitter

And some more. Picture: Twitter

Yes I’ve restricted access to my social pages but the idea I did it because I couldn’t deal with teenagers “posting snake emojis” en masse, is laughable. I removed the accounts because people who liked my pages were being abused and the comment sections flooded with sexual and offensive messages.

I’m not pig headed enough to think my opinion is always right and if there were people who took issue with what I wrote I would have welcomed an inbox full of their genuine concerns.

Instead I received thousands of messages containing words like “slut” and “whore” and suggesting I kill myself. I was also informed countless times I’d brought this mass abuse on myself by choosing “the wrong group to f**k with” and that they were making it their mission to “destroy me.”

One of the many memes. Picture: Twitter

In addition I’ve had parents contact me to say I’m disgusting for parading myself as a 17-year-old to gain access to a page for high school students.

For a start, the discussion page is public so I wasn’t parading as anything and I’d never heard of it until my editor sent me some concerning posts they’d been notified of and asked if I’d write a piece about the abuse that was going on, on the page.

If among the abusive emails or mass subscriptions to sites like Pornhub (very clever guys) sitting in my inbox, there are emails from students who believe my article trivialised mental health issues in any way, I truly apologise for that.

That definitely wasn’t my intention and I concede my words could have been better chosen to reflect the importance of that issue. I also apologise for not replying to those emails but there’s only so many times you can read you’re a slut before you stop looking at your inbox.

The nature of an opinion is that it’s yours and it’s impossible to write a piece that everyone agrees with. But the idea that threatening someone’s life, photoshopping their photo onto sexually explicit material, hacking their website, calling them at 3am and telling them to get cancer is a reasonable way to express you don’t like what they wrote, is ridiculous.

To the students who use the Facebook page as somewhere to share study notes and messages of encouragement, I’m truly sorry this article has meant the place you go for advice and support has been flooded with offensive garbage.

On the upside I’ve got enough profile pics of me holding saltshakers to last me a lifetime.

Picture: Twitter