Allie v. Law School

(Alternative Title: Bullying in the Time of New Media)
(Alternative alternative Title: Allie Is an Emotional Eggshell During Finals) 

It’s not surprising that the internet is a mean place when law student types get involved. Law school forums especially create this sort of perfect storm where empowering anonymity meets the misdirected hostility of self-loathing and/or aspiring law students.

It’s also not particularly surprising (if you know me and my propensity to have a lot of feelings) that I find this behavior between law students to be unacceptable or, at the very least, just plain gross. 

Why write about this now? Well, (1) I have a final tomorrow that I’m blatantly ignoring, and (2) I read an Above the Law article yesterday that snarked out some of my classmates and I made the mistake of reading the comment section.

The article itself was innocuous enough, calling out some students for camping out in the law school and owning a pizza-warmer among other things, but then it took a turn for the gross. The “tipster” who sent in the picture (and who I’m assuming must have been Facebook friends with one of the pictured individuals in order to see it) referred to them as “epic tools.” Then the comment section became a free-for-all, where other anonymous law students mocked my classmates in the picture about unrelated things like their weight, their outfits, the status of our school. 

Admittedly, comment sections are not intended for the faint-hearted and thin-skinned (and I am both of those things) but there has to be a line drawn somewhere. I will be the first to concede that, as a whole, the stress of school can lead to misplaced aggression, but: Can’t we at least think through the fact that our fellow law students are going through the same shit we are? And, if we can’t be nice about it, can’t we at least be civil?

This is where it (sigh, oh lord, here she goes with the feelings) gets personal. I’ve been steadily throwing myself at the internet (via Tumblr, YouTube, Twitter) for a few years now, and I’ve been forthcoming about my choice not to attempt to conceal my identity. I don’t regret that choice, but I had a strange crisis of confidence a while ago when a friend tipped me off that a Google search of my full name and school turned up a pretty…”colorful” set of pre-law forum discussions about me.

I’d never been one to use pre-law forums, but based on what I’d posted on various other sites, creepy commenters had added me to a “Rate this 1L” thread. They managed to cobble together a lot of information about me and had some strong opinions on me as well. (Mind you, they called me worse than “epic tool”. My favorite being that I was an “annoying bitch” who’s “big tits must have cut off the circulation to her brain” because of what they had perceived as my bragging about my LSAT score. Because, if you know anything about me, it’s that I love to brag about academics.)

I hadn’t intended to share this, but it now seems important for a few reasons:
(1) Again, everything is more important than my final tomorrow.
(2) The internet feels like a consequence-free wasteland, but it’s worth remembering that there are real live human beings that read what you write.
(3) And I can say from experience that, regardless of how much self-esteem you have, and how likely it is that the commenters passing judgment on you live in their parents’ basement, it feels hurtful and invasive to read mean things about yourself.
(4) This Tumblr/Lawblr community is full of some of the funniest and most supportive people I’ve encountered on the world wide web, and if any group can help shift the attitude of the law school community online, it’s you guys.

Thanks for putting up with my long-form seriousness. I promise that, in exchange for even one person taking this to heart, my next post will be a video of puppies or something equally cute and fun.