Kaitlin Bennett, a conservative gun-rights activist, visited Ohio University’s campus on Feb. 17 unannounced, only to be met by a crowd of frustrated OU students who protested her being there. Bennett eventually left, but claims that the protests led to students throwing hot coffee on her and her colleague’s car being vandalized. These claims are contrary to the report by OU police.

Bennett first gained notoriety from tweeting a picture of herself attending her Kent State graduation in 2018 with an AR-10 rifle. Her graduation cap was decorated with an image of a gun, and the words “come and take it” were written across it. She claims she was protesting against school policy that banned students from carrying concealed weapons on campus. 

Since then, Bennett has taken advantage of the virality and internet outrage and started working for Liberty Hangout, a Libertarian media outlet. She makes videos visiting college campuses and baiting students into answering questions about contentious issues such as abortion, gun rights and gender-neutral bathrooms. 

These videos aim to make the progressive students appear ridiculous or outrageous, but she frequently leaves in clips that do not help the narrative she is trying to promote. Many students will respond that they don’t care about the issue or don’t have an opinion on the topic she is asking them about, and walk away. Other people will call her out on something that she doesn’t know, like when she is discussing Australia’s history of gun control with an Australian man. He asks her to name the country’s prime minister and she is unable to do so.

This does not seem to deter Bennett’s supporters, as they eat up any video she posts or anything she tweets. They do not care if she gets something wrong or if someone rejects her. They are simply looking for content to prove that the left is intolerant and reactionary and their views are leading the country into communism.

Students are getting tired of Bennett’s antics, so it is unsurprising that they responded with outrage when she showed up on OU’s campus unannounced. She cannot go around harassing students to get clips for her videos with no pushback. She may complain about the OU students’ behavior, but she is frequently trying to elicit these kinds of angry and outraged responses from the people she interviews. The students gave her what she wanted, yet she is upset about it.

There is a point to be made that this kind of reaction gives her more attention on social media than she deserves, and it allows her to continue harassing people. The best plan of retaliation is to take a leaf out of the book from students who walk away when interviewed. If people stop engaging with her tweets and videos and giving her attention online, her popularity would dwindle until she is only known and cared about by her fringe group of supporters.

This is a somewhat hypocritical take, considering the Clarion is doing exactly what we suggested everyone else should not do—give Kaitlin Bennett attention by engaging with and covering her media presence. However, this is not the same as responding angrily to her tweets, or making YouTube compilations of “Kaitlin Bennett getting owned by liberals for 10 minutes straight.” Kaitlin Bennett’s behavior is starting to get coverage by actual news outlets, and that is something that never would have happened had she not been propelled to social media infamy by people who are outraged by her. She is not doing anything different than other provocative conservative media outlets—such as InfoWars—and giving her coverage just distracts from more important topics.

While it is a sort of schadenfreude to watch students push back against Kaitlin Bennett and beat her at her own game, it would be better to not give her the time of day at all. Make her irrelevant on Twitter and seem like the radical and intolerant person she actually is. Don’t give her ridiculous questions the courtesy of a response. She feeds off the outrage of those who disagree with her, and she uses it to support her arguments against the left. The best revenge would be to show her that she means nothing to the public—she is simply a troll trying to widen the divide that already exists in this country.