5 ms·

Female violinist exposes 10 years of lewd, fetishizing messages from men online

96 points by jimsojim 11y ago

joopxiv 11y ago
I like that she doesn't censor the 'authors' of the messages. Public shaming might be the only remedy against this creepy shit. But that may very well be naive thinking: if these guys would think they were doing something wrong they would probably have used an alias.
- mulander 11y ago
  Would be funny if they experience harassment out of being exposed as a harassing person. This seems something that could happen on the internet.
  - aikah 11y ago
    > Would be funny if they experience harassment out of being exposed as a harassing person. This seems something that could happen on the internet. Yeah, the whole vendetta thing certainly is "funny" /s That's exactly how people defending "righteous causes" end up being trolls and harassers themselves.
    - benten10 11y ago
      >That's exactly how people defending "righteous causes" end up being trolls and harassers themselves. When one misuses their abilities to harass/intimidate others, some of their liberty should be taken away, wouldn't you agree?
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - bargl 11y ago
      It's part of human nature. It's the old idea of an eye for an eye (which was originally intended to say if someone takes your eye you can't take MORE then an eye, but has been misrepresented as if someone takes your eye you have the right to take theirs. Society has to be built on some form of punishment for harmful behavior, the issue is what is that punishment? Should these people go to jail? I don't think so, should they be punished in some way as a method to teach them a lesson. If they should be taught a lesson, the favorite of most people is, "see this is how it feels." Steal and we'll take something from you, bite and be bitten, hit and be hit, eye for an eye. The main issue is that this often (IMO) doesn't actually teach what you want. It teaches that if you bit this person they'll bite you but it doesn't address the deeper issue with the original action. Which would require therapy and a support network. All of which is time consuming. And why would we waste our time on someone who is being punished, lets just throw them in jail because hitting people in public is wrong. </soapbox> In the end it's human nature to want to teach a lesson in the least amount of effort to make themselves feel better, and the easiest way to get your bang for your buck it to punish people with the same punishment they received, often times things are more complicated then that. Sorry I went way overboard, but I've seen this time and time again, and as I have a biting, kicking, hitting 19 month old kid now, I've been looking at how do you address this without becoming a troll and in my case a toddler... I want my kid to grow up not for me to become less mature.
passwordis 11y ago
She's such an ass.
k__ 11y ago
I read that (deep) learning algos can decide if a message is positive or negative. Could they learn if a message is a harassment so we could implement a automatic filter for such things? -- Edit -- I mean this is really bad and we should get these dudes to stop somehow. But it greatly reduced my anger looking into my inbox, when I stopped seeing spam in there. The spammers did never stop...
- leppr 11y ago
  Wow, that's a genius idea, you must be a very smart person. Last week I heard on BBC Click that Google has open-sourced their deep learning algorithm, so now even people like me can code AI apps. It's actually such a good idea that I am going to start working on it right away for my personal usage as a userscript to hide negative comments and keep only the positive ones on sites like HN, because too often people respond to my comments with nothing but disdain despite my honest intellectual efforts.
  - leppr 11y ago
    Heh, before my comment gets downvoted to oblivion: the apparently too subtle point was that for the foreseeable future machines will be unable to detect this kind of passive-aggressive comments, and that trolls aren't dumb, they will just (deep) learn to be more subtle in their trolling (and so more damaging).
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Yeah even 12-year-olds can put swear words into their online names by using slang, special characters etc. If deep learning can be outwitted by a 12-year-old...
    - k__ 11y ago
      So it was a meta-joke about being passive-aggressive?
      - leppr 11y ago
comrh 11y ago
The comments I've seen on social media surrounding this article have to be some of the worst ever, even for internet comments.
6stringmerc 11y ago
What a terrible experience, yet I'm not surprised to know such things happen. I hope it's theraputic for her to get these out, and if she can turn the intimidation into some financial gains then so be it. Is there a way to discourage the behavior? It's a tough problem. As an anecdote, I just had a discussion with a female community college professor, PhD, one who had plenty of bench science experience before teaching. We are both born and raised in the US. Without naming specifics here, we both agreed that while US culture has made attempts - and is making attempts - to grow past gender subujation, there are numerous other cultures which aren't even trying. We noticed the cultural issues regarding women can be very obvious in a US educational environment. As in, for a woman to be in a position of authority, certain cultures behave in ways which do not acknowledge the earned, official status. I believe the phenomenon is real, and is a day-to-day reflection of what the violinist was exposed to in private. Also, it's one thing in person - but the internet allows for all sorts of 'border crossing' and people from all over the world are capable of reaching out and harassing someone, male, female, or otherwise. In summation, I think US culture is attentive to a lot of 'weak points' that need to be addressed (gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, handicaps), as difficult as they are for a diverse society...while some others are, well, really lacking in this arena. Like I said, I'm not going to name any one particular one or five, because it's not my place - it's up to the members of those cultures to enact their own change.
- bsenftner 11y ago
  Great comment, not sure why it was down voted. Cultures outside the US are often surprising.
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    Thanks, I think the biggest surprise is, well, people in the US assuming other cultures are willing to change (or mentally prepared to change) upon arriving in the US. It's not that simple. Out of sight, out of mind is one thing, but when one-on-one, it's something that takes strength and confidence to address. Not all people are comfortable in the face of intimidation or just flat-out disrespect.
  - 11y ago
dbg31415 11y ago
Look so many things wrong with this. 1) The guys. 2) There is nobody there to verify the guys. I mean... nobody is making sure the person who posted those pics are the actual people, so now, "Oh hey that looks like my neighbor, Joe." But we don't know if it was Joe, or someone pretending to be Joe, or who just looks like Joe, or someone who hacked Joe's account as a prank. And why this is important... lives get ruined on these sorts of accusations. 3) The message it sends that "all guys" are just pervert sex monsters who want to rape cute online girls. If not "all guys" most, or many... anyway the point is really just that this woman set up a highly public profile, and we have no idea what percentage of guys who looked at it were douchebags. I'm guessing it's sub 1%. So look, anecdotally, some guys on the internet are douchebags. Sure, no question. But is this the right way to combat it? Meh. Not really. SOLUTION for reducing the number of comments like these. After midnight add a drunk captcha to the forms. "You must do math to proceed." Or, "You must use proper spelling and grammar to send messages to someone you don't know."
szukai 11y ago
Glanced over quickly, some are more crude attempts to "flirt" than to creepy, but I guess that just goes with the status quo given the complaints girls get on dating sites like Okcupid. Kinda cool to see it all at once I guess?
- dbg31415 11y ago
  Let me throw this out there too... I had a conversation with a friend after finding pictures of his girlfriend on OK Cupid. I was like, "Hey either your girlfriend is trying to cheat on you, or someone is stealing her identity." He laughed, and said (paraphrased), "No, she kept complaining about how she didn't feel attractive, so we posted an account there for her to get some more attention. We read the comments together and she gets a confidence boost knowing people find her attractive."
  - dvdgsng 11y ago
    Thanks for posting this. The whole debate needs a lot more counter-perspectives and this is a pretty good one. Here is another one. http://theslot.jezebel.com/canadians-elect-guy-named-justin-as-their-leader-1737554573 http://theslot.jezebel.com/canadians-elect-guy-named-justin-... Just imagine the outcry in the feminist community if the genders were swapped and this had been written by a man about some female politician.
bglazer 11y ago
As is well known, there are lots of people who get some sick pleasure from announcing their vile and chauvinist thoughts. "Real names" don't seem to help. I would guess that the senders of these type of messages are socially isolated enough to not see any real social consequences of openly harassing people, women in particular. So, what's the solution? There doesn't seem to be a proportionate response that life more difficult for online tormentors. Further, any legal response would be justifiably difficult to reconcile with freedom of speech. It's just unacceptable in my mind that the current balance of power is so skewed towards people who harass others online.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  The only solution I could think of would be for confirmed cases of online harassment (however you determine something to be confirmed, I don't know) to be sent to the offender's employer, or for something along those lines be a part of background checks/E-Verify. You're right, it does seem like the status quo heavily favors abusers and maligns the abused. I'm sure there are several flaws with my idea. I just can't think of much else that could change anything without being extraordinarily invasive or punitive.
ben_bai 11y ago
She may be a violinist but she tweets like a sailor. https://twitter.com/mia_matsumiya https://twitter.com/mia_matsumiya
- whatok 11y ago
  why is that relevant
  - ben_bai 11y ago
    it's not. but it's also not relevant that she is a violinist.
JDDunn9 11y ago
Title should read "female violinist".
jbob2000 11y ago
There's nothing we can do. Her music reached hundreds of thousands of people, of course there will be some bad apples. As more and more people start using the internet, this is only going to increase. There's going to be 3.5 billion people on the internet soon, nobody can stop that tide. Celebrities have solved this problem by moving a step away from the population by using publicists and assistants to communicate. Perhaps people facing consistent harassment like this should try something similar? Or work under a pseudonym?
- phkahler 11y ago
  >> Perhaps people facing consistent harassment like this should try something similar? Or work under a pseudonym? Perhaps we need to get rid of pseudonyms. A lot of this behavior would stop if people had to be identifiable. Although that doesn't seem to stop them all - you see some real names and email addresses in there.
  - mason240 11y ago
    Then post your name and address.
    - phkahler 11y ago
      >> Then post your name and address. I almost do. You should be able to locate my real world postal address inside of 10 minutes. Probably 5. I'm not saying there should be no anonymity online. I think the default should be identifiable, and sites and services can strip that info and provide locally anonymous environments. That way you can't get anonymous attacks unless you're participating in those places. It's easy to strip ID, but hard to verify it if it's not built-in.
      - mason240 11y ago
        So you would require all online activity be done through "identity verifiers" such as Facebook? You have probably seen how many issues Facebook's Real Name policy has caused, and that doesn't even come close that level.
daleharvey 11y ago
> There's nothing we can do Yes there is, the first thing would be to not attempt to dismiss it > "of course there will be some bad apples." Or to victim blame > Perhaps people facing consistent harassment like this should try something similar? People facing similar harassment are all women, telling them to hide certainly isnt the answer (apologies, was supposed to be a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10425590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10425590, I cant internet)
dijit 11y ago
This is a phenomenon I see a lot on social media honestly. Go to any tweet of Emma Watson and try to read the replies without cringing. It's sobering enough to never, ever, ever! wish fame on anybody you love, let alone yourself. The internet is a platform of speech for all with no restriction and it only takes 0.01% of the crazy, batshit or just fanatical people to make it seem like there is no hope for humanity. I feel bad for her, being a female may make you feel somewhat less secure (I can't speak for woman-kind so I could be way off base), while male stars get the same kind of treatment- they're more likely to feel pretty sure that they can fend off any depraved attack when their body guards are not around. For people that are not super rich but have a reasonable amount of spotlight, this can be the worst of both worlds.
benten10 11y ago
As some others have noted, this will keep on increasing as more people use the internet. As internet proliferation amongst less 'inclusive' societies (yes, even less than HN!)increases, online threat, intimidation and violence against women and minorities will increase. The 'social media'/internet presumes a certain 'accepting', inherently socially liberal order amongst its users. As more and more people who don't fit that use the internet, there will be greater hate and rudeness and intimidation in the internet, and the happy-go-lucky we-are-all-one destroy-the-borders liberal dream will end. The internet will start reflecting the extremes of our behavior, and it will be ever the scarier for women and minorities. It'll be interesting to see the evolution, and how it's handled.
devit 11y ago
This looks like a publicity stunt. If you selectively present anything you could possibly present in a negative light and do so without context, you can make anything look bad. If one were to look at the ratio of such messages to praise and neutral messages, that would probably paint a very different picture. Just numerically one can see that 1000 messages over 10 years is only 3 negative messages per day, and someone famous might get hundreds, meaning the negative ones are a few percent... It's a bit like collecting all the [dead] comments on HN, presenting them all at once and then claiming that HN is a terrible community.
- thehoff 11y ago
  Have you read any of the messages she got? Hard to see how many of those were taken out of context. I guess getting 3 of those messages a day that she got (over 10 years) is acceptable? What's the cutoff for being acceptable here so I know when I should take her seriously. What about the ones that seem like threats? What about the ones from the person that was arrested for stalking another woman? When do those count?
- commentzorro 11y ago
  What ... what? How many messages per day from some random person saying they want to fuck you until it becomes unacceptable?
microcolonel 11y ago
I don't have any public presence, and yet I get creepy messages as well. I suspect the volume, ~100 creepy messages per anum, owes to being more visible. A few of these messages sound aggressive, but most of them seem like lonely dudes without outlets. Maybe they think they are the first to compliment the lady. And, although I'm sure I'll catch flak for saying this; there are in fact women who get off on all these things[0]. They make up a large part of the population. I'm not sure about the strategy, but the demographic for these messages exists. [0]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsm.12734/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsm.12734/abstrac...

96 points by jimsojim 11y ago

I like that she doesn't censor the 'authors' of the messages. Public shaming might be the only remedy against this creepy shit. But that may very well be naive thinking: if these guys would think they were doing something wrong they would probably have used an alias.

mulander 11y ago
Would be funny if they experience harassment out of being exposed as a harassing person. This seems something that could happen on the internet.
- aikah 11y ago
  > Would be funny if they experience harassment out of being exposed as a harassing person. This seems something that could happen on the internet. Yeah, the whole vendetta thing certainly is "funny" /s That's exactly how people defending "righteous causes" end up being trolls and harassers themselves.
  - benten10 11y ago
    >That's exactly how people defending "righteous causes" end up being trolls and harassers themselves. When one misuses their abilities to harass/intimidate others, some of their liberty should be taken away, wouldn't you agree?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - bargl 11y ago
    It's part of human nature. It's the old idea of an eye for an eye (which was originally intended to say if someone takes your eye you can't take MORE then an eye, but has been misrepresented as if someone takes your eye you have the right to take theirs. Society has to be built on some form of punishment for harmful behavior, the issue is what is that punishment? Should these people go to jail? I don't think so, should they be punished in some way as a method to teach them a lesson. If they should be taught a lesson, the favorite of most people is, "see this is how it feels." Steal and we'll take something from you, bite and be bitten, hit and be hit, eye for an eye. The main issue is that this often (IMO) doesn't actually teach what you want. It teaches that if you bit this person they'll bite you but it doesn't address the deeper issue with the original action. Which would require therapy and a support network. All of which is time consuming. And why would we waste our time on someone who is being punished, lets just throw them in jail because hitting people in public is wrong. </soapbox> In the end it's human nature to want to teach a lesson in the least amount of effort to make themselves feel better, and the easiest way to get your bang for your buck it to punish people with the same punishment they received, often times things are more complicated then that. Sorry I went way overboard, but I've seen this time and time again, and as I have a biting, kicking, hitting 19 month old kid now, I've been looking at how do you address this without becoming a troll and in my case a toddler... I want my kid to grow up not for me to become less mature.

passwordis 11y ago

She's such an ass.

k__ 11y ago

I read that (deep) learning algos can decide if a message is positive or negative. Could they learn if a message is a harassment so we could implement a automatic filter for such things? -- Edit -- I mean this is really bad and we should get these dudes to stop somehow. But it greatly reduced my anger looking into my inbox, when I stopped seeing spam in there. The spammers did never stop...

leppr 11y ago
Wow, that's a genius idea, you must be a very smart person. Last week I heard on BBC Click that Google has open-sourced their deep learning algorithm, so now even people like me can code AI apps. It's actually such a good idea that I am going to start working on it right away for my personal usage as a userscript to hide negative comments and keep only the positive ones on sites like HN, because too often people respond to my comments with nothing but disdain despite my honest intellectual efforts.
- leppr 11y ago
  Heh, before my comment gets downvoted to oblivion: the apparently too subtle point was that for the foreseeable future machines will be unable to detect this kind of passive-aggressive comments, and that trolls aren't dumb, they will just (deep) learn to be more subtle in their trolling (and so more damaging).
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Yeah even 12-year-olds can put swear words into their online names by using slang, special characters etc. If deep learning can be outwitted by a 12-year-old...
  - k__ 11y ago
    So it was a meta-joke about being passive-aggressive?
    - leppr 11y ago

comrh 11y ago

The comments I've seen on social media surrounding this article have to be some of the worst ever, even for internet comments.

6stringmerc 11y ago

What a terrible experience, yet I'm not surprised to know such things happen. I hope it's theraputic for her to get these out, and if she can turn the intimidation into some financial gains then so be it. Is there a way to discourage the behavior? It's a tough problem. As an anecdote, I just had a discussion with a female community college professor, PhD, one who had plenty of bench science experience before teaching. We are both born and raised in the US. Without naming specifics here, we both agreed that while US culture has made attempts - and is making attempts - to grow past gender subujation, there are numerous other cultures which aren't even trying. We noticed the cultural issues regarding women can be very obvious in a US educational environment. As in, for a woman to be in a position of authority, certain cultures behave in ways which do not acknowledge the earned, official status. I believe the phenomenon is real, and is a day-to-day reflection of what the violinist was exposed to in private. Also, it's one thing in person - but the internet allows for all sorts of 'border crossing' and people from all over the world are capable of reaching out and harassing someone, male, female, or otherwise. In summation, I think US culture is attentive to a lot of 'weak points' that need to be addressed (gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, handicaps), as difficult as they are for a diverse society...while some others are, well, really lacking in this arena. Like I said, I'm not going to name any one particular one or five, because it's not my place - it's up to the members of those cultures to enact their own change.

bsenftner 11y ago
Great comment, not sure why it was down voted. Cultures outside the US are often surprising.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  Thanks, I think the biggest surprise is, well, people in the US assuming other cultures are willing to change (or mentally prepared to change) upon arriving in the US. It's not that simple. Out of sight, out of mind is one thing, but when one-on-one, it's something that takes strength and confidence to address. Not all people are comfortable in the face of intimidation or just flat-out disrespect.
- 11y ago

dbg31415 11y ago

Look so many things wrong with this. 1) The guys. 2) There is nobody there to verify the guys. I mean... nobody is making sure the person who posted those pics are the actual people, so now, "Oh hey that looks like my neighbor, Joe." But we don't know if it was Joe, or someone pretending to be Joe, or who just looks like Joe, or someone who hacked Joe's account as a prank. And why this is important... lives get ruined on these sorts of accusations. 3) The message it sends that "all guys" are just pervert sex monsters who want to rape cute online girls. If not "all guys" most, or many... anyway the point is really just that this woman set up a highly public profile, and we have no idea what percentage of guys who looked at it were douchebags. I'm guessing it's sub 1%. So look, anecdotally, some guys on the internet are douchebags. Sure, no question. But is this the right way to combat it? Meh. Not really. SOLUTION for reducing the number of comments like these. After midnight add a drunk captcha to the forms. "You must do math to proceed." Or, "You must use proper spelling and grammar to send messages to someone you don't know."

szukai 11y ago

Glanced over quickly, some are more crude attempts to "flirt" than to creepy, but I guess that just goes with the status quo given the complaints girls get on dating sites like Okcupid. Kinda cool to see it all at once I guess?

dbg31415 11y ago
Let me throw this out there too... I had a conversation with a friend after finding pictures of his girlfriend on OK Cupid. I was like, "Hey either your girlfriend is trying to cheat on you, or someone is stealing her identity." He laughed, and said (paraphrased), "No, she kept complaining about how she didn't feel attractive, so we posted an account there for her to get some more attention. We read the comments together and she gets a confidence boost knowing people find her attractive."
- dvdgsng 11y ago
  Thanks for posting this. The whole debate needs a lot more counter-perspectives and this is a pretty good one. Here is another one. http://theslot.jezebel.com/canadians-elect-guy-named-justin-as-their-leader-1737554573 http://theslot.jezebel.com/canadians-elect-guy-named-justin-... Just imagine the outcry in the feminist community if the genders were swapped and this had been written by a man about some female politician.

bglazer 11y ago

As is well known, there are lots of people who get some sick pleasure from announcing their vile and chauvinist thoughts. "Real names" don't seem to help. I would guess that the senders of these type of messages are socially isolated enough to not see any real social consequences of openly harassing people, women in particular. So, what's the solution? There doesn't seem to be a proportionate response that life more difficult for online tormentors. Further, any legal response would be justifiably difficult to reconcile with freedom of speech. It's just unacceptable in my mind that the current balance of power is so skewed towards people who harass others online.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
The only solution I could think of would be for confirmed cases of online harassment (however you determine something to be confirmed, I don't know) to be sent to the offender's employer, or for something along those lines be a part of background checks/E-Verify. You're right, it does seem like the status quo heavily favors abusers and maligns the abused. I'm sure there are several flaws with my idea. I just can't think of much else that could change anything without being extraordinarily invasive or punitive.

ben_bai 11y ago

She may be a violinist but she tweets like a sailor. https://twitter.com/mia_matsumiya https://twitter.com/mia_matsumiya

whatok 11y ago
why is that relevant
- ben_bai 11y ago
  it's not. but it's also not relevant that she is a violinist.

JDDunn9 11y ago

Title should read "female violinist".

jbob2000 11y ago

There's nothing we can do. Her music reached hundreds of thousands of people, of course there will be some bad apples. As more and more people start using the internet, this is only going to increase. There's going to be 3.5 billion people on the internet soon, nobody can stop that tide. Celebrities have solved this problem by moving a step away from the population by using publicists and assistants to communicate. Perhaps people facing consistent harassment like this should try something similar? Or work under a pseudonym?

phkahler 11y ago
>> Perhaps people facing consistent harassment like this should try something similar? Or work under a pseudonym? Perhaps we need to get rid of pseudonyms. A lot of this behavior would stop if people had to be identifiable. Although that doesn't seem to stop them all - you see some real names and email addresses in there.
- mason240 11y ago
  Then post your name and address.
  - phkahler 11y ago
    >> Then post your name and address. I almost do. You should be able to locate my real world postal address inside of 10 minutes. Probably 5. I'm not saying there should be no anonymity online. I think the default should be identifiable, and sites and services can strip that info and provide locally anonymous environments. That way you can't get anonymous attacks unless you're participating in those places. It's easy to strip ID, but hard to verify it if it's not built-in.
    - mason240 11y ago
      So you would require all online activity be done through "identity verifiers" such as Facebook? You have probably seen how many issues Facebook's Real Name policy has caused, and that doesn't even come close that level.

daleharvey 11y ago

> There's nothing we can do Yes there is, the first thing would be to not attempt to dismiss it > "of course there will be some bad apples." Or to victim blame > Perhaps people facing consistent harassment like this should try something similar? People facing similar harassment are all women, telling them to hide certainly isnt the answer (apologies, was supposed to be a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10425590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10425590, I cant internet)

dijit 11y ago

This is a phenomenon I see a lot on social media honestly. Go to any tweet of Emma Watson and try to read the replies without cringing. It's sobering enough to never, ever, ever! wish fame on anybody you love, let alone yourself. The internet is a platform of speech for all with no restriction and it only takes 0.01% of the crazy, batshit or just fanatical people to make it seem like there is no hope for humanity. I feel bad for her, being a female may make you feel somewhat less secure (I can't speak for woman-kind so I could be way off base), while male stars get the same kind of treatment- they're more likely to feel pretty sure that they can fend off any depraved attack when their body guards are not around. For people that are not super rich but have a reasonable amount of spotlight, this can be the worst of both worlds.

benten10 11y ago

As some others have noted, this will keep on increasing as more people use the internet. As internet proliferation amongst less 'inclusive' societies (yes, even less than HN!)increases, online threat, intimidation and violence against women and minorities will increase. The 'social media'/internet presumes a certain 'accepting', inherently socially liberal order amongst its users. As more and more people who don't fit that use the internet, there will be greater hate and rudeness and intimidation in the internet, and the happy-go-lucky we-are-all-one destroy-the-borders liberal dream will end. The internet will start reflecting the extremes of our behavior, and it will be ever the scarier for women and minorities. It'll be interesting to see the evolution, and how it's handled.

devit 11y ago

This looks like a publicity stunt. If you selectively present anything you could possibly present in a negative light and do so without context, you can make anything look bad. If one were to look at the ratio of such messages to praise and neutral messages, that would probably paint a very different picture. Just numerically one can see that 1000 messages over 10 years is only 3 negative messages per day, and someone famous might get hundreds, meaning the negative ones are a few percent... It's a bit like collecting all the [dead] comments on HN, presenting them all at once and then claiming that HN is a terrible community.

thehoff 11y ago
Have you read any of the messages she got? Hard to see how many of those were taken out of context. I guess getting 3 of those messages a day that she got (over 10 years) is acceptable? What's the cutoff for being acceptable here so I know when I should take her seriously. What about the ones that seem like threats? What about the ones from the person that was arrested for stalking another woman? When do those count?
commentzorro 11y ago
What ... what? How many messages per day from some random person saying they want to fuck you until it becomes unacceptable?

microcolonel 11y ago

I don't have any public presence, and yet I get creepy messages as well. I suspect the volume, ~100 creepy messages per anum, owes to being more visible. A few of these messages sound aggressive, but most of them seem like lonely dudes without outlets. Maybe they think they are the first to compliment the lady. And, although I'm sure I'll catch flak for saying this; there are in fact women who get off on all these things[0]. They make up a large part of the population. I'm not sure about the strategy, but the demographic for these messages exists. [0]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsm.12734/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsm.12734/abstrac...