When a 37-year-old man harassed a woman with every swear word he knew, she thought of the perfect way to tackle the situation.
Kallie Plagge simply took a screenshot of the message and sent it to the harasser’s mom.
This is not the first time Plagge, who works in the video game industry, was harassed by a man – but this recent encounter was worse than ever.
After sending the screenshot of the vulgar message to the guy’s mom, Plagge received a heartening response from her the very next day.
The mother apologized for her son’s behavior, assuring Plagge that she’ll be ‘going after him’ to ‘straighten him out.’
It all started when the GameSpot.com writer wrote a review for a popular game, Days Gone. “Most aspects of Days Gone lack purpose,” she wrote.
“Its many narrative threads flirt with being meaningful and interesting but never quite commit, with characters whose actions and motivations don’t make sense.”
Plagge gave the game a rating of 5 out of 10, even though it had an average rating of 8.4 from GameSpot users – and it was what infuriated the 37-year-old.
Her review received more than 950 comments, and she also got scores of messages on her social media accounts from people who disagreed with her.
“It was very clear [from] very early on that it had nothing to do with the content of our review,” she told The Daily Beast. “It was very much just that guys wanted to find an excuse to say sexist things to women.”
“I don’t know any women in the industry who haven’t experienced something like this,” she added.
“It varies by how outspoken you are on Twitter, for example, but I think we all get demoralizing comments, whether it’s about our appearance or about the things we say.”
Plagge didn’t reveal the identity of the harasser as well as his mom.
Her tweet went viral soon after she posted it, racking up more than 205,000 likes. People across the globe applauded her for how she tackled the situation.
She was happy for being able to raise awareness about harassment.
“There needs to be less of a rhetoric about, ‘Don’t feed the trolls,’ because they will come no matter what. And my philosophy on it is I’m not going to just lie down and be silent,” she said.
“I don’t want anyone to forget that this is what we have to do to do our jobs.”
Replaced!