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A destructive French social media group known as the LOL League is finally being challenged — apologies won't be enough

Prominent journalists are being held accountable for the abusive behaviour they took part in as members of a group now known as the Ligue du LOL, which translates directly to LOL League

Clémence Michallon
New York
Wednesday 13 February 2019 10:55 GMT
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French journalism is having a watershed moment. Prominent journalists are being held accountable for the abusive behaviour they took part in as members of a group now known as the "Ligue du LOL", which translates directly to LOL League.

The name “LOL League” makes it sound like some sort of Avengers outpost, yet the group was anything but heroic. Its former members are accused of co-ordinating acts of online harassment, primarily targeting women as well as people of colour and members of the LGBT community, via a private Facebook group.

I could tell you their names, but if you didn’t try to break into online journalism in France around the year 2010 then they probably won’t ring a bell. I will tell you, however, that they were known, feared, and – insofar as their misconduct had yet to be exposed to the public – admired.

They were the wunderkinds, the social media whisperers, the trendy nerds who supposedly understood the inner workings of the internet better than anyone else.

Several victims of the LOL League have spoken out over the past few days, since a detailed investigation into the group’s activities was published on Friday by the French website CheckNews – an outpost of the French daily newspaper Libération, whose online editor Alexandre Hervaud has now been suspended pending an internal investigation.

The testimonies of the LOL League’s victims are tales of relentless insults, rape jokes, photoshopped pornographic collages using their personal pictures, and other kinds of personal attacks. Victims have described how their self-esteem was harmed, how they went to bed wondering what abuse the next day would bring, and how their careers were derailed as the LOL League cemented its control of the online world.

French journalist Mélanie Wanga said she left Twitter after being harassed on the platform. Her colleague Anastasia Levy said she was once offered a full-time job, but that the opening was eventually filled by a member of the LOL League after he and the editor-in-chief who had extended the original offer had “got drunk together until 5am”.

To contextualise, Twitter was created in 2006. As those things go, it took a bit of time to become popular in France. When the LOL League blossomed around 2010, young, eager French journalists were becoming painfully aware of how vital social media literacy would be for their careers. I was never personally targeted by the LOL League, but I remember the pervasive feeling that the internet wasn’t public property. That I had to be careful, lest I got on someone’s bad side.

I was 19 – still young enough to think that 25, the approximate age of some of the league’s members at the time, was old and experienced.

Here is, arguably, one of the most pervasive effects of the group: even if you didn’t know its name, even if you weren’t aware of its existence, it silenced you. It made you shrink. It stole visibility from those who needed it most. It kept you from developing a professional identity – the kind of online identity that results in full-time jobs and money, two commodities that, as you may have heard, are becoming increasingly scarce in journalism.

The men involved – they are, overwhelmingly, men – have started apologising, with varying degrees of apparent sincerity. But words will not be enough. The members of the LOL League didn’t just hurt their victims’ feelings and cripple their self esteem (even though that is already plenty to apologise for). They deviated the course of professional lives and contributed to shaping French journalism as we know it today.

As is often the case in those situations, the LOL League’s actions are reflective of a broader culture of abuse, harassment, and dismissal. We all have stories and mine don’t even reflect the worst of it. I could tell you about the male classmate who, in journalism school, told me to “go f*** myself” because he didn’t like what I was telling him. I could tell you about the male professor who told me the dress I was wearing wasn’t revealing enough to qualify as a “job interview dress”. I could tell you about the gazes and the comments.

You’ve heard it all before, and yet those stories bear repeating. No matter how familiar, they are a reminder that for years, countless women have had to do the same amount of professional work as their male peers while also fighting constantly for the right to be in the room and to be heard.

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How do we make things right? The answer fits in two words: jobs and money.

Sure, apologies are nice. One might argue they’re the bare minimum, given the circumstances. But those in charge need to make up for the many, many lost opportunities that stemmed from the LOL League’s actions and the culture they helped create. As prominent journalists remain suspended, have lost or are about to lose their jobs, several spots will likely open on the French journalism market in the coming days and weeks. Some have encouraged media outlets to publicise their job openings – a practice that remains too rare in France – to minimise nepotism, a valuable suggestion.

In the meantime, I (a French citizen who now lives in the US) keep thinking about the case of Matt Lauer, who was ousted from his position as co-host of the Today show in November 2017 following accusations of sexual misconduct. Lauer had been at his job for 10 years. After his firing, NBC News gave his position to Hoda Kotb, who had been involved with the Today show in various capacities since 2008. The decision was celebrated, though Kotb said she was “not even close” to making the same amount of money as Lauer previously had. Kotb and her co-anchor Savannah Guthrie made the Time 100 ranking of the year’s most influential people in 2018.

These two women’s careers, which were already in great shape, blossomed – and it felt like a small taste of justice.

There is a popular, if somewhat colloquial, saying in French. It is now so widely used it has ascended to the rank of meme, a staple in social media parlance. It’s a simple invective: Rends l’argent. Give the money back. And while it has often been spoken in humorous circumstances, it has never felt more serious, nor more relevant, than it does now.

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