How Celebrity Social Media Managers Handle the Alt-Right Abusing Their Clients

The alt-right became a household name when its members tweeted racist, sexist comments at Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones in July. She briefly stopped using Twitter, though she returned to the platform a few days later.

Other celebrities have also been on the receiving end of racist attacks. Just last month in August, Fifth Harmony member Normani Kordei found her mentions clogged with racist comments and imagery, including pictures of lynchings. The attacks caused her emotional distress; she quit the platform shortly afterwards. (Both Kordei and Jones's representatives said they were not available for comment.)

Now, social media managers are tasked with considering how to handle the growing online abuse of celebrities—especially celebrity women of color.

Internet abuse wasn't always this rampant. Consultant Wynter Mitchell has been managing celebrities' social media accounts for over seven years, but she first noticed online harassment of stars growing in 2008. "The 2008 election pivoted towards abuse," Mitchell says. "But it coincided with how successful technology came: the advent of smart phones, Twitter, Facebook expanding." The alt-right has amplified the problem, though it isn't just the alt-right—other groups have also targeted stars.

"If you [as a celebrity] can get a huge contingent and community on your side to agree with what you say, and you can push back on views or things in society that are becoming more, I wanna say, 'normal' or 'accessible,' you're going to have a loud contingent of people that is against that," she explains. "They're going to find means and ways to push that voice out."

In Mitchell's experience, stars have handled the problem in different ways. Older performers and directors are more likely to brush trolls off. "Some are more vocal than others, and a lot of them have been in Hollywood a long time and have dealt with different [forms] of abuse and hate," she says.

Younger clients might ignore the abuse, but other members of young Hollywood suffer emotionally. Some even want to address the trolls and turn to their social media managers to devise a strategy. "I'm very empowered by those who want to face it head-on, but it's exhausting," Mitchell says. "It's abuse."

Mitchell and other employees of the celebrity publicity machine that Broadly spoke to have identified several other solutions. First, social media managers advocate for clients to never delete an account. Even if they take a break, they may want to return. Instead, they recommend what Mitchell describes as a "mental health day."

"A lot of times clients take a break, and I'm wholly supportive of that," she says. Social media managers also use the systems provided by Facebook and Twitter to report abuse, which Mitchell says have been great tools for celebrity clients to manage online hate. But most importantly, they encourage stars to ignore trolls and refuse to reply to their comments.

Trolls see celebrity engagement as a way to boost their notoriety. Mitchell remembers a troll whose Twitter background bragged about the celebrities who had blocked him. "It's the equivalent of putting a bear's head on his wall," she says. "There are known trolls and abusers and they want and thrive on the attention… This is what gets them all the high fives in those other worlds, where they are plotting."

Look at Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos. After Leslie Jones accused him of leading the barrage against her (he denies encouraging fans to attach her), he found himself in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. "Leslie Jones had been arguing with trolls for hours before I tweeted her, and doing so in an increasingly hysterical and nonsensical manner," Yiannopoulos says. "If she had kept her wits about her and not immediately claimed victimhood, it would have turned out better for her."

Hollywood thinks ignoring Yiannopoulos and his ilk is the best way to handle the alt-right problem and avoid creating another Milo. Ironically, Yiannopoulos agrees with Hollywood's approach. "The first rule of the internet is to not feed the trolls," he says. "Unfortunately celebrities never seem to grasp this, since even claiming trolling is abuse is feeding [trolls'] behavior."