YouTube Star's Unusual Way For Tackling Internet Trolls

A prominent video game reviewer on social media has come up with an unusual strategy to hitting back at internet trolls, who had sent her rape threats: she told their mothers.

Alanah Pearce, 21, revealed: "I had a lot of people suggesting that I report these things to police but that would be so exhausting for me to have to contact police and file a report every time this happens it feels unrealistic.

"What I would like to see happen is the websites take these complaints more seriously like Facebook and Twitter for example to address people who are using social networks inappropriately."

She realised that as most of the trolls were young boys rather than adults, Pearce chose to inform their mothers in hope they would feel disgusted enough to take action as a parent.

"I realised that discussing it with them wasn't going to work when they wanted a reaction and maybe were too naive to realise what they were actually saying to me so I decided that contacting their mums was probably the best way to do it."

Pearce revealed how she contacted the mothers, checking it was their child before informing them that she had been subjected to internet abuse:

"Hi Anna, I don't know you, but I was wondering if ****** ***** is your son?"

Anna replied: "Yes he is why?"

Alanah: "I have never spoken to him before, but he sent a concerning message to my public Facebook page today that I was wondering if you might be interested in discussing with him.

The video games reviewer from Brisbane, Australia, then sent a screen shot of the abuse: "I'll rape you if I ever see you ****."

The mother replies with disgust at her son's behaving, apologising: "omg little ****. IM SO SORRY. YES I WILL TALK TO HIM"

To raise awareness, Pearce posted online the messages she had with the young boy's parents. "I wasn't going to post it on Twitter [either] but I was just so excited. And I thought some of my friends would find it amusing."

The photos of the conversations were met with overwhelming support for the YouTube star. Captioned, "Sometimes young boys on Facebook send me rape threats, so I've started telling their mothers", the photo has garnered over 33,000 retweets and 54,000.