Australian tennis player Priscilla Hon spoke in an interview about the insults she has received on social media. According to her, her Instagram and Twitter followers turned to threats and insults because she did not meet their expectations.
Users bet on matches with Priscilla and then, after losing money, take out their anger on the tennis player. The popularity of sports betting increased after the COVID pandemic and with the advent of mobile betting apps. Now sports fans can easily bet from their iPhones or download one of the best iPhone casino apps, which entails huge debts and problems for themselves and others.
Indeed, if you look at the comments under 24-year-old Hon’s posts, you’ll find a lot of horrible messages. Some wish her arms were amputated, and others wish bad on her entire family.
Priscilla herself understands that people write this out of emotion from losing, but she says that this stream of hate is affecting her career. During matches, she constantly thinks about what people will say about her on social media and can’t concentrate on her match.
According to her, the saddest thing is that the amount of abuse does not depend on how she played the match. People bet on both winning and losing, so there will still be dissatisfied people in the end.
By the way, history already knows of cases where Internet trolls have received real punishment for online insults. In 2019, a federal court in Boston in the United States sentenced a California resident to 18 months in prison for making death threats against professional athletes.
Surprisingly, this user created more than 45 social media accounts to make it harder to detect. The perpetrator was a regular at betting shops and casinos, and he took out all his frustrations over his losses on the athletes who had supposedly caused him to lose.
Of course, the punishment for the California resident was an isolated incident, and you can’t prosecute everyone who insults other people online. Nevertheless, Priscilla is going to file a police report to have law enforcement deal with the commenters.
The problem becomes that not all of commenters live in Australia, which means that finding them will be difficult.
Not only professional athletes but also other celebrities are harassed and insulted online. As a result of scandals, divorces, and misdemeanours, many celebrities are threatened on social media. Therefore, many of them close comments or entrust their accounts to their managers.
