Chapter 12

12

Roxi

‘I can’t hold my tongue any longer,’ began Roxi, her voice brittle. She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a tissue.

‘If you’re visiting my channel expecting me to talk about relationships or this week’s hero products, then I apologize. Because today, there’s something more important I need to get off my chest.’

She paused to take a deep breath. ‘As you all know by now, we in the Influencing community recently lost one of our own. The talented, wonderful, and inspirational Jem Jones was driven to take her own life. Trolls made this poor woman’s life a misery, hounding her just because she had a different viewpoint to theirs. The attacks on Jem went far beyond expressing an alternative opinion. It was a campaign of orchestrated, relentless abuse with a devastating outcome.

‘I cannot help but think that, had Jem been a man, he would not have faced that same level of hatred and spite. It’s ordinary women like you and me they’re trying to silence. We are the people Jem represented, and therefore we owe it to her to show these bullies that they will not win. And it’s why I’m urging you all to make your voices heard and to fight back.’

Roxi reached across the kitchen table to press the stop button on her phone. She removed the device from the tripod and appraised what she had recorded so far. There could be improvements. Perhaps she shouldn’t try to divide the sexes? She reapplied a menthol stick sparsely under her eyes and blinked hard until they moistened. She’d read about the process actors used to induce tears and had ordered one online. Then she dabbed at her lips with a balm. They felt peculiar without the recently dissolved fillers she was so used to, but Jem had prided herself on her natural look and now so would Roxi.

She rewound the on-screen autocue, hit record and began her speech again with some tweaks. This time the tears fell quickly and she wiped them away with her fingers instead of a tissue. It made her emotions appear less rehearsed.

‘None of us are completely innocent though,’ she added. ‘We all saw what Jem was going through but none of us actively did anything to try and stop it. We could have sent her messages of support, told her how much we loved her and reported the accounts that were attacking her. But we didn’t. We sat idly by, relieved it wasn’t us under attack. Shame on me and shame on all of us.

‘To everyone out there who sent Jem a nasty Tweet, who shared the appalling fake videos of her and who created memes and GIFs to humiliate her, your collective actions drove someone to their death. As a fellow Vlogger, Influencer and as a human being with a heart, I cannot sit idly by and say and do nothing – or let this happen again. We need change.

‘That’s why I am calling for Artificial Intelligence to be installed not only in the houses of couples with Smart Marriages, but in every single home in the country. As well as it protecting relationships, monitoring our conversations can also help to fight terrorism, expose criminal behaviour, child abuse, racism, bullying and spousal abuse.’ A lump formed in her throat at mention of the last. She swallowed it back down. ‘If you have to hesitate to think about what you say before you say it, or type it, you won’t be talking and acting on impulse. And isn’t that going to make us all more considerate of one another?’

Roxi counted three seconds in her head before she delivered her final line. ‘For everyone’s sake, let’s be better.’

She returned to her laptop and, once satisfied with what she saw, added a large graphic to the end of the footage that read, #IWillDoBetterWillYou? And after the inclusion of specific tags, trending sounds and other metadata to assist in making her video as discoverable as possible, she posted it and crossed her fingers.