I think you’re right that it’s hard. But I think you’re implying that it could be less hard if we just behaved better à la “be the change you want to see”, and I believe you’re wrong about that. The people that send death threats do not read your advice, nor do they care enough to take it to heart. The people that _will_ listen were not sending death threats to begin with. And getting 500 thankyou-messages does not outweigh the handful of death threats
The people who send death threats, call peoples employers, etc largely view themselves as very normal people that are fighting a just fight. Social media has had plenty of these folks, IRC before it, and probably BBSs before that.
They probably do read that message, but they say to themselves, "Well when I did it it was for a good cause."
I think it does. Internet death threats are upsetting but you also learn they tend to be toothless 99.9% of the time. Most of it is just internet tough guys hundreds or thousands of miles away.
A lifetime of small positive outcomes can easily offset that for many people.
Also 90% of the time when you finally manage to get someone to quote one of these "death threats" it turns out to be something like "I hope you die of cancer" or "You deserve to get shot" which are horrible but are not threats in any sense whatsoever.
This is why when you see yet another article about someone getting "death threats" they don't actually say what the threats are: most of the time they aren't threats at all.
On the other hand, sometimes people really do actually threaten people and if someone actually threatens you, the likelihood that he is 1000s of km away isn't particularly reassuring let me tell you.
That is harmless 99.9% of the time until you get swatted. Takes a one phone call in the US to get you at gun point of a very trigger happy people.