She Dyed Her Hair, and Suffered from Ruthless Online Violence

It was January 23rd, 2023, the eve of Chinese Lunar New Year festival, which was supposed to be a day for family reunion, Zheng, a 18-year-old Chinese girl chose to end her own life. The story of Zheng is definitely heartbreaking and unsettling, since the origins of the tragedy is so insignificant: a photo sharing happiness posted on her social media account.

Back in July 2022, Zheng was admitted to the college with excellent grades. She brought the admission letter to the hospital and told this good news to her grandpa, who was sick in bed. With exciting emotions, she took a photo with her grandpa and uploaded it on her social media account. This was supposed to be a warm picture, but it quickly attracted a huge amount of malicious comments, just because Zheng dyed her hair pink. From the viewpoints of some people, this hair color does not conform to ‘traditional aesthetics’ of east Asian women. Some users on social media began to mock and attack Zheng’s personal characters and even private life. Some commented, ‘this pink haired s**t look likes an escort girl’; other mocked, ‘did you scare your grandfather into hospital?’. Some even fabricated her experience and spread rumors, ‘this pink haired girl definitely had an abortion’. These remarks are like invisible knives piercing Zheng’s heart repeatedly. Facing with such overwhelming attacks on social media, she could neither evade nor refute. Zheng’s life was originally full of hope, and her college life was about to begin, but everything was destroyed by hate speech, and she was then diagnosed with depression and accompanied by severe anxiety. Only half a year later, she chose to commit suicide on the day of the New Year festival.

This is not simply a girl’s tragedy, but one for the entire society. Zheng’s experience of hate speech online is not an isolated case, and it has also become a social issue. With the popularity of social media platform, it has made information dissemination faster, while also lowering the thresholds for malicious online violence.In shorts, Zheng’s experience remind us that anyone could become the victims of online hate speech. Hair dye, dressing styles, some causal social media posts, or even some unintentional act, could all become the trigger for online violence. Do we really want to live in such an environment? If we remain silent about online hate speech and harm, the victims may be ourselves or people closet to us someday.

Zheng’s tragedy should not be ignored or forgotten, instead it is a warning bell reminding people to take measures to prevent online hate speech and harms.

Why a Person could be Destroyed with ‘a Few Finger Movements’?

From Zheng’s story, it is evident that the online hate speech is not just saying some harsh words, as it could have a devastating impact on victims’ lives and mental health. The information dissemination effects of social media platforms also make online hate speech more difficult to control. For example, the spreaders of hate speech do not need to attack the victims face-to-face, they could just easily tap the keyboards to unleash the harm. More importantly, these attacks often occur anonymously with almost no consequences for the attackers, however the victims need to bear great psychological burdens.

Relevant academic research also support this observation. According to Sinpeng et al.(2021), there is great defect of the regulation related to online hate speech by current social media platforms such as Facebook, which is significantly reflected from the fact that the attacks on certain groups are not effectively handled by platforms. This means, the hate speech would disseminate quickly, while also forwarding to wider range of users due to the defects of algorithm recommendation mechanisms. This would definitely make the victims suffer lasting harms. The survey conducted by Carlson & Frazer (2018) also figures out, the hate speech online such as the racism comments would make victims to be impacted due to their identities, even in terms of their daily life offline.

There are various forms of hate speech online, also known as ‘cyber bullying’, including direct personal attacks, open humiliation, mockery, and some subtle forms like spreading of rumors, fabricating information to isolate victims. To make matters worse, some social media platforms have opaque reviewing process on contents, the users often could not receive timely responses even if they report the hate speech, this leaves the victims of online violence defenseless, with other users feel unmotivated to take actions to fight against such violence.

Why the Females are More Likely to be Objects of Hate Speech Online?

It is also worth noting from the experience of Zheng that some hate speech targeting her are full of misogyny and sexism. This is no coincidence, as the females are more likely to became the victims of online hate speech, which is the result of the long lasting of social bias intertwined with the rules of online platforms.

First of all, the stereotypes on social media are not friendly with the females, especially when the behaviors and appearance of them are not in line with the traditional expectations, they are more likely to become the targets of online hate speech. In Zheng’s case, she dyed her hair pink, and this appearance, which does not conform to the traditional standards of Chinese female, was then criticized overwhelmingly. This suggests that many users still believe that women should keep a low profile and moderate discipline, and that any move that deviates from this expectation is magnified and criticized.

In addition, the hate speech targeting females tend to be more gendered. According to the study conducted by Massanari (2017) on the ‘Gamergate’ and the misogyny subculture on Reddit, it is found that the platforms’ mechanics unintentionally contribute to misogyny. During the #Gamergate incident, the female players suffered from mass harassment for expressing their opinions on Reddit. The specific forms of such hate speech include appearance and body shaming, sexism and even sexual threats, while the male players are more inclined to be criticized solely based on their opinions and social status.

Besides, the regulation deficiencies further worsen the problem of large-scale sexism hate speech. According to Sinpeng et al. (2021), the hate speech reviewing system fails to take the cultural contexts into consideration, this results in the fact hate speech comments against females are not being addressed in a timely manner. Even if users make the report, the platforms’ response may be slow or even non-existent, leaving the abuser more aggressive.

Last, the female public figures are more like to become the targets of hate speech, this is particularly obvious in the entertainment industry. For instance, Taylor Swift has been frequently attacked by malicious comments due to her private life, and Zheng in this case was also an internet celebrity before she was massively attacked. This phenomenon reflects that the public opinions tend to hold stricter moral standards to the females. However, the problem is that ordinary females are no safer than celebrities, any female individual who expresses her opinions and shares her personal life online could be the next target of hate speech at some point.

Why does Hate Speech Hurt?

From a psychological perspective, those people who are repeatedly abused and stigmatized by hate speech online could easily fall into anxiety, self-doubt, even depression status. A victim of hate speech once described the feeling as ‘It is often indirect but I experience it as personal racism’ (Carl&Frazer, 2018, pp.12). Especially for those young and marginalized groups, their mental toughness is still being built, and a comment like ‘you don’t deserve to live’ isn’t a joke, it could be the last straw that breaks their backs. Some of victims do not dare to speak out publicly fearing more hate speech, which is the ‘spiral of silence’ on social media platforms (Gearhart&Zhang, 2015), the silent victim is even more isolated.

What’s worse, platforms’ inaction often exacerbates this sense of isolation. As mentioned by the study by Sinpeng et al. (2021), the so called ‘reporting fatigue’ would leave the victims of hate speech nowhere to escape: no one listens to what they say, and if they don’t resist, they would be targeted even more, so over time the victims can only rely on ‘self-muffling’ to find peace.

Don’t forget the fact that much of those hate speech is not that obvious, they often combine with the local knowledge of cultural bias, sexism and racial taunts, which shows ‘the language and context dependent nature’ (Sinpeng et al., 2021, pp.1).Massanari (2017) also finds that some misogyny comments during #Gamergate incident turn hate speech into trending using Reddit’s liking mechanisms and algorithmic design, leaving the victims powerless.

In shorts, due to the innate malicious nature of hate speech, combining with the inaction of online platforms, the result is that hate speech online became particularly harmful: an online comment may be a casual tap on the one side of the keyboard, but on the other side of the screen, it may be the ‘deadly blow’ to someone’s painful life.

Why does Online Hate Speech Persist?

The reason why online hate speech is persistent, in addition to anonymity cover between users as discussed previously, the deeper pushers are hidden in the platform structure and business logic. Online platforms are not technology-neutral, and their algorithms are profit-seeking by nature (Allen et al., 2025). With the current algorithmic mechanisms of platforms, the controversial topics triggering hate speech are somehow prioritized, since this kind of content would attract users’ rate of interaction and retweeting. Once platforms realized that this kind of content could bring high traffic and ad clicks, instead of actively curbing it, they acquiesced or even encouraged it in disguise.

What’s more dangerous, some hate speech are not motivated solely by individuals’ impromptu behaviors, but are promoted in some organized and systematic ways. For instance, in #Gamergate incident, it was on platforms like Reddit and Twitter thehate speech against female players were deliberately amplified, and eventually developed into mansplaining and death threats by some extreme users, with victims forced to ‘to flee their homes and to cancel appearances after harassers published their home addresses’ (Flew, 2021, pp.115).

Moreover, the constitutional protection of free speech has been abused as a shield for online hate speech. Guided by the notion that ‘freedom of speech is itself a good’ (Flew, 2021, pp.117), some online platforms are more willing to tolerate extreme speech than risk banning such users. This abuse of liberal discourse has allowed hate speech to take on the mantle of the ‘right to expression’, while victims are forced into remain silence.

What can We Do?

It is well-acknowledged that ‘hate speech and online abuse…have been identified as significant and growing issues of concern.’ Every day we browse the social media we can see all kinds of hate speech in comment section. Hate speech is not a blip in the virtual space; it has affected people’s real lives.

To reverse this trend, we need to take measures from three aspects of platforms, regulation and individuals. First, social media platforms must bear more responsibilities in dealing with the hate speeches. This includes not only the stricter policies towards hate speech contents and relevant reporting, but also the improvement of mechanism in reviewing such contents. This requires more local knowledge experts and integration of AI tools to detect the hate speech under certain context.

Second, the regulatory measures should also keep pace to fight against the hate speech. As indicated by Sinpeng et al. (2021), the current defects in terms of regulatory system in Asian have worsen the social media environments. The governments should accelerate the designing and improvement of specialized laws to address the hate speech online, to fill the gaps. For instance, the regulations should make clear the scope and definition of hate speech, and effectively supervise the social media platforms to build up the reporting mechanisms, and keep a blance between free speech and rights of users.

Countries should accelerate the development and improvement of specialized laws to address online hate speech, in order to fill the gaps in existing laws. The law should clearly define the scope of online hatred, supervise social media platforms to establish fast and effective reporting and handling mechanisms, and ensure a balance between freedom of speech and the rights of victims.

As ordinary users, we can also do some practical things, such as reducing labeled evaluations of others, and express opinions rationally. If you really encounter hate speech, you can block it, report it, call it out, and learn more. Remember, the social media community is a part of our shared life, not an irresponsible space where it doesn’t matter what we say.

References

Allen, D., Hubbard, S., Lim, W., Stanger, A., Wagman, S., Zalesne, K., & Omoakhalen, O. (2025). A roadmap for governing AI: technology governance and power-sharing liberalism. AI and Ethics, 1-23.

Carlson, B., & Frazer, R. (2018). Social media mob: Being Indigenous online.Sydney: Macquarie University.https://researchers.mg.edu.au/en/publications/social-media-mob-being-indigenous-online

Flew, T. (2021). Platform Regulation and Governance. In T. Flew, Regulating platforms (pp.159-182). Polity.

Gearhart, S., & Zhang, W. (2015). “Was it something I said?”“No, it was something you posted!” A study of the spiral of silence theory in social media contexts. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 18(4), 208-213.

Massanari, A. (2017). # Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New media & society, 19(3), 329-346.

Sinpeng, A., Martin, F. R., Gelber, K., & Shields, K. (2021). Facebook: Regulating hate speech in the Asia pacific. Facebook Content Policy Research on Social Media Award: Regulating Hate Speech in the Asia Pacific.

Image reference list

Common Sense Media for Families. (2019, February 15). 5 ways to deal with hate speech online [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77j7Wfussrc

Michael Nuccitelli, Psy.D. (2014). [the web poster warning the danger of cyberbullying to children]. Unsplash. https://ipredator.co/examples-of-cyberbullying.

Rob Reinhardt. (2014). [a younger user of cyberspace] [Photograph]. Unsplash. https://ct.counseling.org/2015/02.

Social Media Posting Picture. (2023). [The picture of the girl with her grandpa] [Photograph]. Public Posting from Red Book, User ID: 201172946.