Trolls get Dose of Reality

Well, you know that old saying: The viciousness of an online bully's attack is inversely proportional to the size of his (you fill in the blank), I was thinking ego.

Many online bullies are female, but in the case of former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's daughter, the trolls are collectively male.

Recently Schilling tweeted how proud he was that his daughter, Gabby, will be playing softball as a pitcher for Salve Regina University. Schilling got a lot of responses. And some were disgusting, including one that mentioned assault (yeah, I'd like to see the dude who posted that try to mess with a collegiate pitcher—these young women aren't to be messed with).

Other repulsive acts and terminology came up in the comments. Sometimes, as Schilling set out to prove, it's not best to just ignore the bullies, thinking they'll go away.

In the case with 17-year-old Gabby, the "bullies" are more like pond scum idiots who, in real life, would probably scurry like a mouse if a woman got in their face.

Schilling quickly tracked down the names and schools, plus some other details, of the bullys. As a result, says the athlete, nine of these maggots have been either fired from their jobs or kicked off their sports teams. The Twitter accounts of two of the trolls have been deactivated.

Schilling received apologies from them, but only after the fact. Too late. And why did these young men make the posts in the first place? They don't even know Gabby. Do they have a teen or young adult sister? How would they feel if their teen sister were the subject of such vile posts? Some of the trolls told Schilling to chill. Would they themselves chill if their sister, girlfriend or mother were the object of vulgar comments?

Hopefully, Gabby is internally stable enough not to take extreme measures as a result of the online bullying, like the many kids who have taken their own lives. But still…internal stability or not…nobody, especially a proud dad, should have to receive vulgar posts about themselves when they've done nothing wrong.

If you still think this is no big deal, remember: Once you post something, it'll probably be out there for all time—waiting to smear your reputation, or hurt someone, real real bad.