2023-08-14
17 分钟I think I was always interested in finding a medium of self expression.
Jai Ang Fan is a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine.
I always wanted to better understand my relationship to the world.
She writes long form articles and tweets about all sorts of topics.
One of the great things about working at the New Yorker is the wide range of things I get to study and then write about.
And she's remarkably unfazed about facing barbed comments online.
Part of being present on social media these days is tolerating at least being witness to a certain amount of trolling.
But in 2019, something changed when a steady stream of negative comments became a torrent.
This seemed on a different order of magnitude.
It was incessant.
And what did they say?
Dog trader Jae Young Fan, you know, calling me someone who is not even fit to be fed to the pigs.
I mean, there's something almost heartbreakingly crude about that dehumanization.
I'm Sam Judah with BBC trending, and this is Trolled, our series focusing on online abuse.
This episode is about the systematic attacks aimed at journalists like Jiang Fan, who's pushing it out, and the political forces that might be driving the campaign.
I grew up in Chongqing, China, until the age of seven, and I am a US citizen.
Right now, politics isn't Jiang Fan's regular beat, but in 2019, she visited Hong Kong.
I went to Hong Kong to cover these widespread protests that engulfed the city over demands for greater representation and democracy.
The protesters were confused about her identity, and she tweeted about it.
I said something along the lines of, you know, being a reporter here of Asian heritage makes the color of my face a liability.