Kelly Marie Tran opens up about cyber bullying

This past June Star Wars newcomer Kelly Marie Tran made the tough decision to remove herself from social media after she was subjected to abuse and harassment for her role as Rose Tico in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. Tran talks about her decision to leave social media in an eye-opening op-ed for the New York Times today.

“It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them.” Says Tran, who goes on to tell us how “…those words awakened something deep inside me — a feeling I thought I had grown out of. The same feeling I had when at 9, I stopped speaking Vietnamese altogether because I was tired of hearing other kids mock me. Or at 17, when at dinner with my white boyfriend and his family, I ordered a meal in perfect English, to the surprise of the waitress, who exclaimed, ‘Wow, it’s so cute that you have an exchange student!’”

Tran isn’t the first to suffer the whips and scorns of internet trolls… Ruby Rose and Millie Bobby Brown are two other amazing actresses who ended up removing themselves from Social Media due to a flurry of sexist and abusive comments.

The internet is a disgusting place. It’s disgusting because of the people that hide behind their computer screens, using it as a shield – protecting their identities while allowing them to monger hate for no reason than to make themselves feel like bigger people. In reality, those who choose to pick on people, body shame, talent shame, any shame, whatever it may be – are all that is wrong with the world. These are the people that are perfectly fine calling out the faults (however unfounded) of someone they don’t know, however when faced with confrontation in reality hide with their tales between their legs. They are the weak, who use a channel like the internet to feel strong. They are disgraces to what it means to be human. I guess that diatribe makes me no better than them? Perhaps.

If I can get anything across from the above, it’s that the only way to combat the rampant bullying we see is to stand up against it with kindness and sincerity. Be human. Be kind. Be good.

And please be sure to “Flag/Report as SPAM/Report as Abuse” the hell out of those motherfuckers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, wherever. Those voices are not necessary and need to be buried and banned.

I really wish TrollTrace.com was a real thing:

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