Troll sends strobing GIF to journalist with epilepsy, triggers seizure
On Friday, Kurt Eichenwald, a prominent liberal journalist and senior writer at Newsweek, announced that he would be temporarily leaving Twitter after a troll gave him a seizure.
According to Eichenwald's tweets, a "deplorable" troll seemingly aware that the reporter had epilepsy tweeted a strobe with the message, "you deserve a seizure." Shortly after, the reporter claimed that he did in fact, suffer a seizure. Eichenwald then claimed he would be pursuing legal action and only using his Twitter account to share copies of documents related to the crime.
In a series of tweets, Eichenwald decried the online anonymity that allows violence like this to happen.
Twitter account @jew_goldstein, which has since been suspended, appears to have claimed responsibility for the attack. A cache of the page exists here.
Eichenwald came under fire after a controversial interview with Fox's Tucker Carlson. He subsequently posted dozens of tweets about Tucker Carlson, many of which have been deleted.
While many epileptic seizures occur spontaneously, others are precipitated by environmental causes, including stress and lack of sleep. Dr. Nathan Fountain, Director of the epilepsy program at the University of Virginia, flashing lights can also trigger seizures in a subset of people:
"Some people have a predisposition to flashing lights . . . In general we ask people to avoid flashing lights," Fountain told Mashable. "I've never heard about it (sending someone a flashing GIF) happening as an attack, but the epilepsy community has a great concern that it could happen."
Previously, Fountain explained, some Japanese children had seizures after a watching a Pokemon episode t hat had too many flashing lights. While it may seem strange for someone to get a seizure from a GIF, it's within the range of possibility, Fountain said.
Heather was the Web Trends reporter at Mashable NYC. Prior to joining Mashable, Heather wrote regularly for UPROXX and GOOD Magazine, was published in The Daily Dot and VICE, and had her work featured in Entertainment Weekly, Jezebel, Mic, and Gawker. She loves small terrible dogs and responsible driving. Follow her on Twitter @wear_a_helmet.
