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This "toughen up" sentiment sounds nice in theory but it's absurd in practice. Listen to writer Mindy West's story on This American Life about confronting one o

by apozem 11y ago

This "toughen up" sentiment sounds nice in theory but it's absurd in practice. Listen to writer Mindy West's story on This American Life about confronting one of her worst trolls [1]. Her troll made a fake Twitter account in the name of her dead father just to mock her. That's grotesque. Not being online or in a community not full of jackasses (what you derisively call a "hugbox") isn't an option for West. She's a writer who has to be on the internet and engaged with social media to do her job. Before you say "Well if you can't handle that, get another job," think about that statement. You're normalizing people being jackasses and blaming their victims for trying to be regular people doing their jobs. You are literally saying, "It's your fault for being on the internet, what did you expect?" West is a good example of how ridiculous this mentality is. We should all be able to participate in online communities without the fear of being stalked or harassed. Frankly, if the mostly white, mostly male tech community was less so, they might actually understand that. This kind of victim-blaming is absurd. I understand a lot of people in tech are fond of free speech principles (and rightly so, they're important) and edgy South Park libertarianism, but this is not the right hill to die on. [1]: http://www.themarysue.com/this-american-life-trolls/ http://www.themarysue.com/this-american-life-trolls/

theseatoms 11y ago
What options do well-intentioned people have to fight back? Doxxing the doxxers? Maybe someone will eventually form an online version of the Guardian Angels [1] to combat this issue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels
- CM30 11y ago
  Oh god. Trying to troll the trolls and fight back just tends to lead to a cycle of revenge and an online civil war. This sort of reasoning is partly why GamerGate blew up the way it did, because people (on all sides) were attacking the hell out of everyone who disagreed with them. What was a disagreement over a fairly minor matter soon exploded into people trying to find excuses to get their opponents fired/arrested/swatted/etc. The internet doesn't need more excuses to form social media vigilante mobs.
Sir_Substance 11y ago
>We should all be able to participate in online communities without the fear of being stalked or harassed. My priority is anonymity and freedom of expression. You're never going to be able to satisfactorily reconcile that with your priority of not making anyone feel uncomfortable. Doesn't it then make sense to stick to different kinds of internet communities? You stick to facebook and real names, I'll stick to twitter with freeform handles? Why try to force change on platforms clearly not made for you? Isn't that just naked greed? >Her troll made a fake Twitter account in the name of her dead father just to mock her. That's grotesque. How far does this go? Should we enforce 100 points of ID on letters to the editor of local newspapers, in case I pretend to be someone on the other side of the world and write mocking things? Surely at some point every sane person must learn to ignore things, or they'll have a heart attack trying to control every word spoken around them?
- apozem 11y ago
  I didn't elaborate on this enough in the previous post, but please do not assume I'm trying to make no one uncomfortable or enforce real names or remove anonymity. That's a pure strawman. Being uncomfortable is fine. Disagreeing is fine. Anonymity is fine. Living with people who say disagreeable things is part of life. I have issues with stalking, harassment and death threats. It's not anonymity or disagreement that are the problem, it's aggressive harassment that would get you a visit from the police if you did it in real life. Please don't think in simplistic, binary terms. We can have free speech, anonymity and argue all day without stalking and death threats. That's the happy medium I want. As for why be part of a platform "not made for you," I just explained why. Twitter is a useful tool that is indispensable for some jobs. I'd also ask you to flip your assumptions on their head. Why do you think Twitter shouldn't be changed? Isn't it more greedy of you to insist that certain people, usually women and minorities, continue suffering abuse? Isn't it selfish of you to not make a change?
  - Sir_Substance 11y ago
    I guess I don't agree that twitter is as mandatory as you think it is.
- 11y ago
beeboop 11y ago
I think you leave out some extremely relevant points in your comment and have mischaracterized the situation. Lindy West is one of the poster children for the "fat acceptance movement", a self described activist, cofounded a social media campaign called "Shout Your Abortion", and just released a book titled "Shrill" whose subtitle includes "Feminists don't have to be nice". She has extremely controversial views that she expresses in the most public way possible. Even if she is not deliberately trying to incite discord against her, I am not sure how she could possibly do it any more effectively. From what I can tell from my brief searching about her, she shoves extremely offensive (to many people) opinions in the faces of the public at large. She is just as complicit in creating an offensive environment on the internet as all the people who send her mean messages on Twitter. Just because she is on "the right side of history" in many of her viewpoints doesn't make it any more justified. Which is essentially my entire point - everyone offends everyone. You cannot stop it and it will never end. All you can do is insulate yourself from it. I think it's a pretty far stretch to call it victim blaming if I were to tell Lindy West to maybe not make a public, professional career out of advocating the most controversial opinions possible in the most public way possible if she didn't want to get called mean things on Twitter by people she's deeply offended.
- apozem 11y ago
  I don't especially care what she endorses. I've never read one of her articles. However, if you disagree with someone, you owe it to them to do it without death threats and faking their dead father. Also, you are absolutely blaming the victim right now. Endorsing left-wing opinions or writing opinionated books does not merit that level of emotional trauma. Saying her writing is equally as complimit in online toxicity as systemic harassment dodges the problem and blames the victim. Like I said in the other reply, I don't endorse a world where no one disagrees with each other. Don't put up a strawman for my position. Living with opinions you don't like is part of life. Harassment should not be.
  - beeboop 11y ago
    Death threats are already illegal, so that's beside the point. The line between "voicing an opinion someone disagrees with" and "harassment" is pretty vague, especially when from one person's perspective, thousands of people voicing disagreement to you sure looks like harassment, despite no single person necessarily being harassing. Her opinions that she voices publicly are just as traumatic, if not more so, than someone pretending to be her dead father. She literally had a "Shout your Abortion" social media campaign. Possibly one of the most traumatic things a woman will ever go through, and she's encouraging people to discuss it as much as possible, even implicitly (or explicitly) suggesting it be discussed with pride. I think you'd have to be pretty delusional to not understand how that's extremely traumatic to a lot of people. >Endorsing left-wing opinions or writing opinionated books does not merit that level of emotional trauma People aren't being mean to her because she's a liberal or writing books, they're mean because she's saying and writing things that are offensive and traumatic to them. She's essentially thrown the first punch and getting upset that they're punching back. This isn't victim blaming anymore than it's victim blaming to say she shouldn't attack someone bigger than her if she doesn't want to get her ass kicked.

by apozem 11y ago

theseatoms 11y ago

What options do well-intentioned people have to fight back? Doxxing the doxxers? Maybe someone will eventually form an online version of the Guardian Angels [1] to combat this issue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels

CM30 11y ago
Oh god. Trying to troll the trolls and fight back just tends to lead to a cycle of revenge and an online civil war. This sort of reasoning is partly why GamerGate blew up the way it did, because people (on all sides) were attacking the hell out of everyone who disagreed with them. What was a disagreement over a fairly minor matter soon exploded into people trying to find excuses to get their opponents fired/arrested/swatted/etc. The internet doesn't need more excuses to form social media vigilante mobs.

Sir_Substance 11y ago

>We should all be able to participate in online communities without the fear of being stalked or harassed. My priority is anonymity and freedom of expression. You're never going to be able to satisfactorily reconcile that with your priority of not making anyone feel uncomfortable. Doesn't it then make sense to stick to different kinds of internet communities? You stick to facebook and real names, I'll stick to twitter with freeform handles? Why try to force change on platforms clearly not made for you? Isn't that just naked greed? >Her troll made a fake Twitter account in the name of her dead father just to mock her. That's grotesque. How far does this go? Should we enforce 100 points of ID on letters to the editor of local newspapers, in case I pretend to be someone on the other side of the world and write mocking things? Surely at some point every sane person must learn to ignore things, or they'll have a heart attack trying to control every word spoken around them?

apozem 11y ago
I didn't elaborate on this enough in the previous post, but please do not assume I'm trying to make no one uncomfortable or enforce real names or remove anonymity. That's a pure strawman. Being uncomfortable is fine. Disagreeing is fine. Anonymity is fine. Living with people who say disagreeable things is part of life. I have issues with stalking, harassment and death threats. It's not anonymity or disagreement that are the problem, it's aggressive harassment that would get you a visit from the police if you did it in real life. Please don't think in simplistic, binary terms. We can have free speech, anonymity and argue all day without stalking and death threats. That's the happy medium I want. As for why be part of a platform "not made for you," I just explained why. Twitter is a useful tool that is indispensable for some jobs. I'd also ask you to flip your assumptions on their head. Why do you think Twitter shouldn't be changed? Isn't it more greedy of you to insist that certain people, usually women and minorities, continue suffering abuse? Isn't it selfish of you to not make a change?
- Sir_Substance 11y ago
  I guess I don't agree that twitter is as mandatory as you think it is.
11y ago

beeboop 11y ago

I think you leave out some extremely relevant points in your comment and have mischaracterized the situation. Lindy West is one of the poster children for the "fat acceptance movement", a self described activist, cofounded a social media campaign called "Shout Your Abortion", and just released a book titled "Shrill" whose subtitle includes "Feminists don't have to be nice". She has extremely controversial views that she expresses in the most public way possible. Even if she is not deliberately trying to incite discord against her, I am not sure how she could possibly do it any more effectively. From what I can tell from my brief searching about her, she shoves extremely offensive (to many people) opinions in the faces of the public at large. She is just as complicit in creating an offensive environment on the internet as all the people who send her mean messages on Twitter. Just because she is on "the right side of history" in many of her viewpoints doesn't make it any more justified. Which is essentially my entire point - everyone offends everyone. You cannot stop it and it will never end. All you can do is insulate yourself from it. I think it's a pretty far stretch to call it victim blaming if I were to tell Lindy West to maybe not make a public, professional career out of advocating the most controversial opinions possible in the most public way possible if she didn't want to get called mean things on Twitter by people she's deeply offended.

apozem 11y ago
I don't especially care what she endorses. I've never read one of her articles. However, if you disagree with someone, you owe it to them to do it without death threats and faking their dead father. Also, you are absolutely blaming the victim right now. Endorsing left-wing opinions or writing opinionated books does not merit that level of emotional trauma. Saying her writing is equally as complimit in online toxicity as systemic harassment dodges the problem and blames the victim. Like I said in the other reply, I don't endorse a world where no one disagrees with each other. Don't put up a strawman for my position. Living with opinions you don't like is part of life. Harassment should not be.
- beeboop 11y ago
  Death threats are already illegal, so that's beside the point. The line between "voicing an opinion someone disagrees with" and "harassment" is pretty vague, especially when from one person's perspective, thousands of people voicing disagreement to you sure looks like harassment, despite no single person necessarily being harassing. Her opinions that she voices publicly are just as traumatic, if not more so, than someone pretending to be her dead father. She literally had a "Shout your Abortion" social media campaign. Possibly one of the most traumatic things a woman will ever go through, and she's encouraging people to discuss it as much as possible, even implicitly (or explicitly) suggesting it be discussed with pride. I think you'd have to be pretty delusional to not understand how that's extremely traumatic to a lot of people. >Endorsing left-wing opinions or writing opinionated books does not merit that level of emotional trauma People aren't being mean to her because she's a liberal or writing books, they're mean because she's saying and writing things that are offensive and traumatic to them. She's essentially thrown the first punch and getting upset that they're punching back. This isn't victim blaming anymore than it's victim blaming to say she shouldn't attack someone bigger than her if she doesn't want to get her ass kicked.