Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young is the latest politician to step into the world of comedy, reading aloud insulting messages in a YouTube video.
“As a Federal Senator, I receive a lot of correspondence. Today, I’m going to share with you some of the more heartwarming messages,” she says at the beginning of the video.
While some comments leave her puzzled, Senator Young spends most of the video laughing at the childish insults directed at her.
"I could eat a can of Alphabet soup and crap more sense than she makes. Stupid cow," she reads out, laughing. "And fix up your eyebrows COW HEAD!"
"Your brain seems to be in sync with your surname, it has a split in the middle. I know you won’t read this, but at least it makes me feel better!"
To highlight the amount of online vitriol women receive, digital publisher Mamamia recently released a video of famous Australian women reading out vicious and abusive tweets directed at them.
Last month, NSW Premier Mike Baird also posted a video of himself reading out mean tweets with “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. and “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift playing in the background. The clip was pulled offline due to a copyright claim by Warner Chappell, the company behind the hits.
The 'mean tweets' trend was started by US comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who would invite celebrities to read out nasty tweets about themselves on his TV program.
The segment recently included US President Barack Obama, which attracted more than 18 million views on YouTube.
