Dan Rosen Interview | Online Trolling | Episode #014

For the 14th Episode of the OTP Podcast, Mr Dan Rosen joins us once more – this time on the topic of his recent experience with online trolling and facing backlash against his fictional Susan character.

Sarah:                 Welcome Daniel Rosen, back to the podcast

Dan:                 Hello

Sarah:                 We have returned you to the airwaves and the YouTubes.

Dan:                 You have.

Sarah:                 Thanks for coming back. We wanted to come on and talk about a specific topic today. I wanted to talk about online trolling, fake accounts, that kind of thing. Because you’ve had some recent experience with people giving you some messages about what you’ve been putting out onto the interwebs.

Dan:                 Yeah. This is a serious one today because I think our last one was a funny one, wasn’t it?

Sarah:                 It was more about Susan. This is kind of like the reaction to Susan.

Dan:                 This one’s quite a serious chat, which is weird for me, because I don’t normally do those, but I just feel that it’s needed. I just think things have just gotten a bit crazy. I’m just going to tell you, basically, I’ll just give everybody who’s watching this overview for those who don’t follow me, or for those who just want a rough overview. I own a character called Susan and another one called Danielle, who is a teacher and an instructor, both just a theoretical teacher and instructor. They do all the funny things that all the teachers and students do, and I just make jokes with these characters. It’s just a bit of harmless fun, no one is supposed to be offended by them, but of course, someone always is.

Yeah, basically a girl decided to come onto my Facebook page and try to start a boycott Dan Rosen campaign. She basically posted on all of my posts and was being quite mean. I just shared it publicly and people showed their support. Then someone else basically set up a fake profile to message me again, whether it be that girl again or not I don’t know, but basically sent me another fake profile message to tell me how they think what I’m doing is wrong and how they’re a former fan of mine now. Just saying all these mean things. To asking me to think about how this girl’s mental health could be affected and what this could have done to the girl who basically sent me these messages and stuff.

So that’s basically in a nutshell what has happened. I’ve been having to deal with that for the last couple of days. It’s really raised some awareness for me I think of what people actually go through in terms of online trolling because I’ve actually never really had it before. I mean I’ve had the odd stupid comment before but I’ve never actually been trolled before. I did turn it into a bit of a joke at first because I actually genuinely found the boycott Dan Rosen hashtag quite funny. I was just a bit like, what a brilliant hashtag. That’s hilarious, but it’s a shame she genuinely means it really. But I think when it eventually set in I was a little bit like, hm actually this kind of hurt me a little bit. It sent my anxiety right off, like any message … I literally had someone message me yesterday and it’s just a really long message. I didn’t really read the whole thing I just saw it and I got really anxious thinking oh my god it’s someone else messaging to have a go at me for these harmless posts.

So yeah, it’s been a bit of shit few days to be honest, but I’m feeling a bit better now. I feel really sorry for anybody who has to go through that really. Have you ever had it done to you before?

Sarah:                 I’ve had some weird stuff online. I recently had something, which I think I shared with you about someone who got,