Unimaginable loneliness "You can't know what it's like to be exposed to online abuse unless you've been there yourself….Victims of online abuse are very lonely,” Michael Berry, a professor in the Department of Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells WHYNOT. In the spring of 2020, Berry was subjected to months of online abuse by netizens in China after he translated Fang Fang's Wuhan Diary in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some Chinese netizens believe his translation is a deliberate attempt to discredit China.The author had also been subject to huge amounts of online vitriol in China. Berry, far away, in the United States, worried about Fang Fang. "I would toss and turn at night; I couldn't sleep at all," he recalls. But when the online abuse turned to him, Berry realized that he was "too naive" as a bystander. Abuse came from all over the Chinese world. He was called an American spy who had collaborated with Fang Fang to betray her country. "I would open up my inbox on my phone every day, and there would be not one, not two, but dozens, hundreds, thousands of emails telling me to die, or that the next time I visited China they would kill my whole family," he says. "Such extreme hatred and vitriol... and all from people who had never even met me or spoken with me," he recalls. Berry is a well-known translator and expert in contemporary Chinese literature and speaks fluent Chinese. He translated To Live by Yu Hua and The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi, and recently published Jia Zhangke on Jia Zhangke, a dialogue between him and the director. He once described Wuhan Diary as "a love letter written in dark times." He hoped that, by translating it, he would show the rest of the world what happened in Wuhan, and ease their isolation. Instead, he became a central figure in the storm of online abuse. “It’s a bit like suffering from a serious illness,” Berry says. “You may think you are sensitive to what other victims are going through but unless you personally experience it, there is no way to truly understand what the experience feels like on a daily basis.” At one point, he told his wife he felt like Xiang Lin's widow, from Lu Xun's short story "New Year's Sacrifice," who keeps repeating the trauma of being subjected to constant abuse from those around her. "I stopped posting much on Weibo, and stayed away for a few months.... Receiving daily attacks like that for over a year is a very lonely experience, that the victim has to go through that alone. It was hard," he admits. WHYNOT heard about this unimaginable loneliness from several other victims of online abuse. It's not just that they were targeted and outnumbered online, in a public virtual space. The loneliness was exacerbated by the fact that public awareness of online abuse remains limited. Friends and relatives tended to minimize their suffering, either deliberately or inadvertently, by describing it as "just a few taunting words being thrown around on the Internet." "They don't really see why it's a big deal," Taiwanese American chef and food writer Tzu-i Chuang tells WHYNOT. Chuang has more than 600,000 followers on Weibo. She is married to Jim Mullinax, former U.S. Consul General in Chengdu. After the U.S. and China shut down each other's consulates in Houston and Chengdu respectively in the summer of 2020, bilateral relations were frosty, and Chuang's Weibo account was besieged by huge numbers of Chinese netizens , who verbally abused her daily on Weibo, Douban, YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms. "They pretty much said every vile thing that you could imagine," she recalls. At the time Chuang was living in the U.S. with the couple's two sons, while her husband stayed behind in Chengdu to oversee the closure of the consulate. The closure meant that more than 100 people would be left unemployed. "He was seeing so many people suffering from real persecution, harassment and hardship, right in front of him," she states. "He didn't think of my reputational damage in the same light, and it was only happening in Chinese.” Chuang also found that her associates in the U.S. didn't understand what she was going through. "It's not even a thing," they would say, compounding her emotional pain. It wasn't until her husband came back to the U.S., reuniting the family, that "he gradually started to realize how serious it was," she says. After that, she began to feel a bit less alone amid the maelstrom of public abuse. Disinformation and slander: Different forms of abuse Chuang had been in the habit of posting on Weibo about food and music, as well as sharing some funny family moments. "There was no commercial interest, and nothing about politics," she says. "My followers' tastes were pretty straightforward, and things were usually pretty peaceful." "To be honest, I wasn't in the habit of reading much on Weibo. I just interacted with my followers, and I hadn't had much exposure to the wider realm of the site," she states. "I knew it could be pretty dodgy, but, before the abuse happened, I had never experienced it firsthand." At the beginning of July 2020, Chuang made a Weibo post about leaving Chengdu in a hurry with her kids at the start of the year, the early days of the pandemic, and her thoughts about friends and relatives back in Chengdu. It included a comparison to Nazi Germany just prior to World War II. "The thought flashed through my mind that maybe it was like this for the Jews who left their homes to escape the Nazis before World War II. Then I shook my head, and told myself not to get too emotional, and that I would be back soon,” Chuang wrote. The U.S. consulate in Chengdu closed by the end of that month. Around that time, Chinese netizens, many of whom were unhappy at the comparison with Nazi Germany, dug up Chuang's post. "It was that one line that triggered fury among millions, tens of millions of internet users," Chuang recalls. Her post was forwarded more than 5,600 times, garnering more than 8,300 comments, along with countless abusive private messages. Multiple posts also sprang up on WeChat, Bilibili, Douban, Baidu Tieba, and other social media platforms, denouncing Chuang. "They called me a Taiwan spy, a mistress supplied to the U.S. by Taiwan, a traitor who hides their treachery with music, a two-faced person, a ‘banana’: anything you can think of," Chuang says. "These insults were everywhere, and they had a huge capacity to incite people." Chuang endured the constant attacks at first - until she learned how to mute notifications on her phone. Several verified influential Weibo accounts with millions of followers, started slandering Chuang, claiming her marriage to Mullinax was fake, and that he had another family back in the U.S. Rumors that Chuang was a spy for Taiwan were also widespread. "They didn't care about anything I did or said in the past; they didn't care to look or try to understand any of that; they just seized on those three things, that I was Taiwanese, American, and the wife of the consul general, and plugged it into their wildest imaginings," Chuang says. "Much of it was utterly groundless and fabricated," she states. The abuse against Berry took on a similar tone, with libelous rumors swirling that he was a CIA agent, a white supremacist, and a Nazi. "This was particularly ridiculous because my family are all Jews," Berry states. "The worst thing was that they would make up these rumors and say that we were rumor-mongers," he says. "It was very hard to get out of that vicious circle." Some of the rumors even made it outside China's tightly controlled internet. The English translation of Wuhan Diary had a large number of one-star reviews on Amazon, with comments calling the content of the book untrue, and its author a liar. Online abuse kills communication "At first, I had the impulse to talk to them," Berry says of his abusers. He even penned a long article pushing back against the rumors and false claims circulating about him. But when he sent it to Fang Fang for her opinion, she told him not to send it. "She told me I was already being targeted, and that I would only make myself a bigger target," he says. "She said that's what they want, to get a response from you, because that response will attract even more people to pile on and abuse you." Chuang agrees. "When people work themselves up into a fury like that, there's no room left for debate. Anything I said would just be used by the Little Pinks as further ammunition," she says, referring to the online army of young Chinese nationalists. "They don't think of you as a person, anyway. You're just a symbol of the enemy," says Chuang, who stopped posting to her Weibo account after the attacks. The dehumanization of the victim is another major universal feature of online abuse, WHYNOT found. Victims are labeled and turned into caricatures objects/ symbolic features; nothing they do or say in real life makes any difference. Women, members of marginalized ethnic or religious groups or sexual minorities. On the Chinese internet in particular, foreigners, international students, and feminists may also be the targets. "Do these people even know me? I don't think so. All they're seeing is a caricature of American imperialism that has spilled over from the U.S.-China relationship and various political issues," Berry states. "Also, all of the cyberbullying came during the worst period of the COVID-19 pandemic.” "A lot of people were scared, unsure of the future, might have lost their jobs, and needed to vent," he remarks. "They can just use me as a dumping ground for all of that, and not face any consequences at all. I became something very abstract." Chuang adds: "I'm a Taiwanese-American, but I also have a Weibo account, and have published several books in China. That is a public platform where everyone can vent their anger at me, so I'm a kind of scapegoat for worsening relations between China and the U.S." The abuse isn't just confined to the Chinese language, or behind the Great Firewall, either. U.S.-based legal scholar Teng Biao says he has received aggressive online messages for years because of his outspoken criticism of the CCP. In particular, the abuse comes from followers of exiled Chinese billionaire Miles Kwok, also known as Guo Wengui, because Teng has spoken out against him. "These people are crazed by their fandom, and they can't tolerate any expression of doubt [about their hero]," Teng says. Teng has also been subjected to libelous accusations and a personal smear campaign, with abusers calling him a "fake democracy activist, a fake anti-communist, and an actual spy." "I was subjected to a torrent of abuse and direct attacks from so many people, most of it on Twitter," Teng comments. "It was vile; there was all kinds of slander and lies, as well as insults to my family." Teng thought Guo's followers saw him as a god-like figure. "That's why they turn on and abuse any opposing voices," he says. "I don't care if someone on the Internet criticizes me, even in very harsh terms. That's all okay," he says. Teng learned a lot from being criticized in the past. "It's an important part of intellectual development," he says. But he has little time for the trolls. "These people make no sense at all; most of it is filth and profanity," he remarks. He thought online abuse was more about silencing people who disagreed with a particular point of view. "[They want to] scare people so much they stop questioning things," he says, to obliterate genuine communication. A lot of Teng's friends also had enough of Guo Wengui, he says. "But they dare not say anything, because as soon as they do, they'll be attacked by hundreds, even thousands of people online. It's hard to reckon with the sheer numbers involved," Teng states. A lot of those dishing out online abuse see themselves as exercising their right to free speech. "But free speech shouldn't involve death threats; you have no right to say you are going to kill someone," Berry states. "Threats are the antithesis of free speech. Once you start threatening people, what choice do they have but to protect themselves?" he says. Online suffering is real In 2019, Frances Hui, a Hong Kong woman studying at Emerson College, penned an article in her college newspaper titled "I'm from Hong Kong, not China." In it, she set out the differences between Hong Kong and mainland China when it came to freedom of speech, assembly, and the press. The article drew down the wrath of huge numbers of Chinese netizens. "There was a Chinese student at Emerson, with whom I had a lot of mutual friends," Hui recalls. "He shared my article on Facebook with a Chinese national flag and the words 'even if they're far away, they should be punished.'" "This was coming from someone at the same college as me, who I actually knew in real life," she states. "For this to come from someone with so many mutual friends was really frightening." "The first time I read it, I had a panic attack... I was shaking like a leaf from head to toe, and crying. I really didn't know how to handle it." Hui was just 20 years old at the time. In August 2019, the anti-extradition movement had exploded onto the streets of Hong Kong, and Hui organized a rally on Emerson to show solidarity with Hong Kong. Then a friend warned her that details about her were being discussed in certain Weibo groups. The well-meaning friend showed her a screenshot. "Someone was commenting about me, saying they would physically attack me, pull out a gun and shoot me, or beat me up with a cane," Hui remembers. Someone in the group even posted the address of Hui's church, and the times that she went there. Others uploaded photos of their guns. She was described as "petite" on an online forum, suggesting that she would be easy to attack. A Chinese student sympathetic to the movement spoke out on her behalf online, hitting out at the Chinese students who were attacking her, also became a target for online abuse and vitriol in a number of group chats, according to Hui. A WHYNOT poll found that more than 50 percent of respondents reported experiencing online abuse as a result of speaking out on social issues online. And it seemed that suffering had a ripple effect. Berry, Hui, and Chuang all have stories about people who trolled or threatened them getting into trouble themselves. Hui sent details of the abusive messages she received, including the gun-related threats, to U.S. police. On the day of Hui's pro-Hong Kong rally, the atmosphere was nail-bitingly tense, but the police "did their best," she says. Chuang, meanwhile, was doxxed - her address was leaked by a neighbor from a neighborhood group chat. Photos of her house and surroundings were posted by Chinese netizens, along with a map giving her location. Chuang, who was alone with her two sons in the US at the time, panicked. Photos of her and her family were even posted and commented on. "It's very harmful to women to criticize their appearance," Chuang says. Men sent her photos of their genitals, asking how much she charged per night. The trolls even made fun of the family's kitchen sink. "This went on for so long that I became jaded and cynical," Chuang remembers. "It wasn't the personal attacks so much as seeing how blatantly evil humans can be." "I even started to look at my children and feel guilty for bringing them into a world like this. I would cook three meals a day, chat with my family, go out for walks, but actually I felt as if, should I come across a lake, I would rather jump in and be done with it," Chuang recalls. "Either that or throw myself from the top of a tall building." "The whole time I felt that everything would be better if I were to just end it all. I had no energy for living any more, and the world seemed so very, very dark to me," she says. Teng saw himself as a little more battle-hardened. "I knew about the dark side of human nature, but the depths to which they stooped went beyond what I was prepared for," he remarks. In his case, the online abuse spread into his real life. Guo Wengui's supporters camped outside of Teng's house for over two months, holding signs in Chinese and English, yelling that he was a "Chinese communist spy," and live streaming video of his home. Neighbors had no idea what was going on, and some even believed he was a foreign agent, and encouraged the demonstrators. Teng was even forced to defend himself in mainstream media like The Washington Post. The dying spirit of the Internet According to research by neuroscientist and psychologist Helen Weng, people have difficulty extrapolating enough information from a computer screen to feel that someone is an actual human being. "So one quick route for our brain to understand the mental states of others is viewing people’s faces and body language. If we don’t have that access to that information through the Internet, then it’s harder for us to even think about what this person might be thinking or feeling," Weng said in a previous interview. Dorothy Espelage, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina who researches online bullying, says there is a lot of overlap between cyberbullies and those who bully others in real life. She says cyberbullies tend to have problems with emotional regulation and weak impulse control. Online abuse is also common among adolescents, and some adolescents who engage in it lack parental supervision. They may not even know what it's called. While carrying out a survey on online abuse, Chinese high school student Tuanzi and his classmates discovered that they too had apparently cyberbullied others. "I used to comment a lot and criticize others on Weibo, because of the overall atmosphere there," admits. "When you're doing it yourself, you don’t know you are cyberbullying. They don't teach you about it in school, so you have no idea that what you're doing is bad," he says. Tuanzi didn't start to reflect on his behavior until he did that school research project. Professor Faye Mishna of the University of Toronto and his team found that many cyberbullies don't realize that they are bullying others, but believe that their behavior is morally justified, that they are teaching others a lesson, that it is even “fun, popular, and powerful.” And the bullies and abusers are inventive in their ignorance: using software to make bereavement photos of their victims and posting them to various social media platforms; making fake video clips misappropriating the victims' words; merging images of their victims with animations, music, and other visual effects; 'bombing' them with frequent direct messages or onscreen messaging. Online predators constantly invent new forms of aggressive speech, making it harder for algorithms to pick up their speech patterns. In 2017, Google developed an online tool called Perspective, which uses artificial intelligence and algorithms to detect violent and abusive speech online, but it had trouble distinguishing between defamatory and sarcastic language. Google analyzed vast numbers of phrases used by cyberbullies, and found that those engaged in online bullying tend to use metaphorical language that hints at what they mean, and often give the words they use another meaning. Nonetheless, the language is just as harmful as straight-up curse words and insults. Some predators actually go online looking for targets, because they lack a meaningful social life in the real world. Jiang Qiulian, who has spent the past several years fighting for justice for her daughter Jiang Ge, who died in Japan, said it's surprising how much harm someone can do to another person using only a mobile phone. Starting in 2018, a university student in China’s Anhui Province started posting insulting and abusive comics online about Jiang Ge, her family, and friends, despite not knowing her personally. Jiang Qiulian decided to press charges, and eventually came face-to-face with the perpetrator in court. When asked why they did it, the person said: "I didn't like my major in college, and I was depressed, so I would insult people online." Left unchecked, online abuse can go on for years. Romance author Xiao Wen was subjected to torrents of online abuse after she published a book in 2016. "I went to sleep, and when I woke up the next morning, I had several hundred DMs hurling insults at me and saying my book was all fake and made up," she recalls. "One person included a screenshot of my Instagram profile picture and told me nobody would pursue me because I was so ugly.” “At the time, I was on vacation in Florida, and had posted some photos of me in a bikini, so they tried to slut-shame me for those, calling me cheap, and that nobody would want to sleep with me," she says. "After that they found my Weibo and my Douban accounts." Six years later, and some of the trolls are still going. "Occasionally I'll post a selfie on Weibo, and they'll come back and ask if I forgot how I was hounded on Weibo in 2016," Xiao Wen says. "Or they say the selfie is so ugly." While the torrent has slowed to a trickle, Xiao Wen has unwanted followers. "Some of them have been following me for a long time, and they seem to spend a lot of time reading my social media," she comments. "I don't think there's any way I can stand up for myself," she says. She feels powerless. "They can just call me a slut but they won't go to jail for that, will they?" she says. And stories of individual victims get swallowed up in the vast ocean of abuse online. A WHYNOT survey from early 2022 found that 55 percent of respondents believed that there is currently enough support for the victims of online abuse, while 60 percent said they hadn't taken any action to try to stop the abuse when it targeted them. In the next part of this special report, WHYNOT will continue to dissect the phenomenon of online abuse, the forms it usually takes, and the driving force behind it. (Some interviewees’ names have been changed to protect the identity of individuals.)