A new campaign for LADbible, the digital publisher beloved of millions of youngsters, is leaning heavily into the little folk, asking us all to identify as leprechauns.
Half in jest but wholly in earnest, the imaginative campaign is designed to protect us from hate speech online. It arose as a brief given to Folk VML by LADBible last summer.
“LADbible has five million followers online and reach something like 73 per cent Gen Z, so they have a huge community. What they had started to notice on their platform was [increased] instances of hateful comments and hate speech,” explains Waters, who is chief creative officer of Folk VML.
Worried by the rise in such comments online, the publisher undertook research to scope out the extent of the problem.
The results were dispiriting. It found that 91 per cent of online users had witnessed hateful comments online, and almost half, 43 per cent, had personally been the victim of it.
“It was bigger than I thought and I’ve certainly seen it,” says Waters, pointing to the hail of hateful comments that rained on Irish Olympian superstar Rhasidat Adeleke last year as a case in point. “She was doing amazing things on the track, and getting hateful comments online and in social media,” he says.
“It’s not just celebrities or athletes, it’s actually everyone that’s getting it. Yet the research showed that of the 51 per cent of people who had been victims of hateful comments, and gone on to report it, 87 per cent felt that nothing had been done about it.”
That’s because Ireland’s hate speech laws simply haven’t kept pace.
“They predate the internet and social media, so whatever your views on Ireland’s hate laws, they are not fit for purpose for the online space. LADbible wanted to do something that protected their audience and raised awareness about this issue,” explains Waters.
“Our brief was to do something that would start a conversation, and could lead to some change.”
It decided the best way to tackle this particularly serious issue was in a lighthearted way, but one guaranteed to get people talking.
The idea of a having people identify as a leprechaun arose from Waters’s own research into the little-known fact that, since 2009, Irish leprechaun habitats are EU protected – at least in the Cooley Mountains in Co Louth.
It was originally a tourism wheeze dreamed up to attract overseas visitors, but no one could have anticipated that the EU mandates would have gone with it, but they did, apparently on the basis that the little folk’s existence couldn’t be disproved.
It’s an enjoyable piece of whimsy buried deep in bureaucracy, but Waters and his team seized on it to highlight a serious problem. “Leprechauns are protected in their habitat but people in Ireland who spend a lot of time online – their habitat – are not protected,” says Waters.
“So the campaign is simple: become a leprechaun and feel that level of protection that you deserve, online.”
The campaign, which is communicated almost entirely on LADbible‘s social media channels, aims to create a community of leprechauns to kick-start change from the ground up.
It includes an online petition that you have to be a leprechaun to sign. This has been followed up with an AI app filter which allows signatories to create a leprechaun version of themselves to share online.
There are also a number of street activations, including the world’s smallest law firm, which people can also go to declare themselves a leprechaun.
The entire campaign is designed to make you smile, then make you think. “Silliness is a great way into seriousness,” says Winterlich.
Right now the coarsening of political debate around the world, and in particular the conflation of free speech in the USA with impunity to insult, is exacerbating what was already a prevalent problem on the internet.
The next part of the LADbible campaign involves telling real stories of people’s experiences with hate speech, giving a voice to young people looking to lead change in relation to the updating of hate speech laws.
Currently the best you can do if you are subject to it is request to have the content taken down, which is at the discretion of the platforms.
“There is still no deterrent preventing someone doing that to you under our current legislation,” says Waters.
While a mob mentality can encourage, say, crowds at a football match to shout racist comments, typically such action is called out by the wider community, says Winterlich.
Online, it’s actually easier for people with extreme views to meet and reinforce one another, with anonymity emboldening.
“Since the beginning of the internet there has always been this version of people online. When it’s hidden behind a username or an avatar, people feel like they can express themselves in ways, possibly, that they wouldn’t do at home,” says Waters.
“When it comes to hate speech, it takes a dark leaning in that they feel there are no real consequences. If people don’t know who I am, don’t know where I work or live, I can say much more than I would if I was to meet someone face to face. Online, because there are less consequences, people feel they can get away with it.”
Right now, as the lines between free speech and hate speech are deliberately blurred by bad actors, legal consequences are perhaps more important than ever.
“Every democracy should have freedom of speech,” says Waters. “But individuals being attacked relative to their identity, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or race? I don’t think anybody can think that’s okay.”
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