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A Japanese cyber-security expert who defended basic decency was stabbed to death

244 points by danso 8y ago

dasil003 8y ago
Often times I think we characterize trolls as normal people who just let out their anti-social side under the cloak of internet anonymity. Probably that is even true for the majority. But the scary thing we need to address is the number of isolated and devalued individuals subsisting in modern society, but without dignity. Under the veneer of societal abundance, the struggle to survive is replaced with the pursuit of abstract accomplishments (career, sports, fame, etc). When someone is not successful in these things, it's very easy to survive but not thrive, and in the absence of real survival pressure it's too easy to be left alone with ones thoughts and descend into a depressive downward spiral.
- smrtinsert 8y ago
  The most severe trolls I've had the misfortune of meeting online have actually been mentally ill and highly sociopathic. Some will look to harm others in real if they could whether it be socially, economically, or even physically. Doxxing is entry level stuff for them. I no longer find online gaming fun for this reason.
  - CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
    Trolls, stalkers, doxers, etc. are a serious problem. A recent example that comes to mind: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18049311 https://www.patreon.com/posts/18049311 This post raises a lot of questions that I don't have a good answer to.
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      It's worrying that while reading the article I was nodding along thinking "yep, sounds like 4chan" and it turned out to be tumblr. When both extremes of the political spectrum have groups of stalkers and trolls trying to ruin people's lives for committing some imaginary sin, you know things are screwed.
      - astrodust 8y ago
        It's not extremes of the political spectrum, but extremes of behaviour. If this is Kiwi Farms, though... https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
        beaconstudios 8y ago
        the two seem to have a form of magnetism.
        astrodust 8y ago
        It's not magnetism, it's attractiveness to abusive people. Some people don't really care what cause they get behind so long as they get to bully people and raise hell. They'd be anarchists, leftists, alt-right, whatever, so long as they get to beat up people and set things on fire. This is not to say both political extremes are identical, but that certain people will latch on to any group that will tolerate their behaviour.
        beaconstudios 8y ago
        absolutely, that's IMO the nugget of truth nested within horseshoe theory.
        tomrod 8y ago
        The internet is a dark place in some corners.
        astrodust 8y ago
        Those dark corners need a healthy dose of napalm.
      - joe_the_user 8y ago
        Edit: You are misread the post (and I didn't quite read it in enough detail myself). The post claims, Kiwi Farms, large alt-right-influence forum, is manipulating progressives to attack this person. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
  - ljm 8y ago
    I think you only need to look at Reddit and the ProRevenge/PettyRevenge/etc subreddits to see the mindset of a very large amount of people who find joy in completely ruining somebody’s life. The common theme being you suffered so you deliver 100x suffering in return in cruel and unusual ways. Redefining karma as cold revenge, being an innocent victim who is a victim but no longer innocent. This doesn’t even come close to healthy. It usually takes therapy to get there in such a case but when you revel in the pain...
    - learc83 8y ago
      It's no surprise when almost half of the voters in the country voted for a man who's personal motto is "get even". "Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it." "When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder."
      - leesalminen 8y ago
        Should you not stand up for yourself in business? Anecdotally, I was screwed once in a business. I didn’t retaliate. Same thing happened a second time because this person knew I wouldn’t react. I won’t let it happen again. Edit:: to be clear, I’m talking 7-figure screwed, not “this person was mean to me”.
        learc83 8y ago
        So you learned your lesson and you've made sure to devote a significant portion of your resources to getting your revenge? There's a difference between not letting someone take advantage of you and spending significant time repaying every perceived slight 10 fold. Even iterative prisoners dilemma shows that without forgiveness a tit for tat strategy dissolves into an endless cycle of vengeance.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    It is worth mentioning that the mentally ill are (sadly) fairly common in this society. Historically mentally ill people have not tended to be more dangerous than average people and it important not to assume that mentally equals dangerous today. That said, I think, historically, a substantially part of the reason mentally people usually are harmless is because they can see their grasp on reality is shaky. Others have generally not shared their delusions and so no one validates their desires to lash out at those who they imagine have harmed them. The Internet seems to have changed that - communities of people who share pathological illusions seem to have come together and produced a still small number of horrendous crimes - the "incel movement" being one very visible example. These folks might well in dangerous (to others) gray area between debilitating insanity and approximate sanity. Pathological enough to embrace problematic ideas and functional enough act on them.
    - GW150914 8y ago
      A lack of insight, denial of the very fact that they are ill is a prominent feature in a number of mental disorders, most notably schizophrenia. I think that what you’re saying about people getting together online to share delusions is a factor, but I don’t think it’s because they used to have a sense that they were deluded. Rather, they were isolated. Someone who thought that power lines were controlling their thoughts had very little ability to spread that belief. They could shout on a street corner, print and pass out pamphlets, and that was it. Unless you were nuts and rich, you couldn’t really spread the “word” far. Now that has changed, and everyone, however disorganized and deprived of resources, can publish their every thought. People who think they’ve been “gang stalked” and people who think that the government is behind contrails all have a megaphone to the world. As a “bonus” they also are able to just type their delusions into Google and find sites to confirm and expand them. The same network effect that connects hobbyists and enthusiasts of rare things around the world does the same for people with delusional frameworks. It also does the same for Holocaust deniers, and general shitheads.
      - joe_the_user 8y ago
        I think that what you’re saying about people getting together online to share delusions is a factor, but I don’t think it’s because they used to have a sense that they were deluded. It's hard to phrase these things. I wouldn't say people were less confident in the delusional beliefs. Rather, an isolated delusional person has less general confidence - the world is "against them" and their relative weakness relative to the world is fairly evident. Overall, success at doing horrible things requires some of the same mix that success at doing constructive things needs; confidence, support, plans and ideas. The process you describe and we all can see helps in all those things.
  - ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
    Same for me with respect to online gaming. Having worked in the games industry and made my own too it's a sad realization that a seemingly large minority of our own customers are abusive. Too many are just an unhappy bunch of people frustrated with life. Attacks extend beyond personal to companies too. For instance, games offer some of the best value for money entertainment and yet many 'gamers' just constantly complain about the price of anything even if it's low. I don't think a lot of these people understand how the general economy works. Some of this may be due to age or immaturity too.
- imbokodo 8y ago
  > societal abundance These might be times of abundance, but not societal abundance. Trump did not win speaking about there being societal abundance. It does not exist in the US, and certainly not in the third world. Just walk down to the Tenderloin in San Francisco or take an extended walk around Oakland, and you can see this for yourself.
- branchless 8y ago
  Society is far too rigid. We have people who are harmless, who can't cope with the horrible full time jobs we force people into via high land rent, who are kicked to the edge of society. We need a choice and that choice comes with cheap rent as a prerequisite. Yet our institutions strive for the opposite. I'd disagree that it's easy to survive. Many people in good jobs are now one bad week away from ruin.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  This will be the biggest struggle of post-scarcity economies. Some people need to be distracted with the struggle to survive to keep them from destructive thoughts.
  - sli 8y ago
    It's a bit disingenuous to put today's society in the place of a hypothetical society immediately before post-scarcity (or society before any major societal shift in the far future). They are in no way comparable. Society as it is could not handle post-scarcity, but a huge contributor is the simple fact that post-scarcity is a very long way away.
    - konschubert 8y ago
      > post-scarcity is a very long way away I'm surprised that you think that. What would you consider a scarce good in today's society?
      - Regardsyjc 8y ago
        Clean water is still a scarce basic need in many parts of the world and even in some parts of the United States even beyond Flint, Michigan. Many women do not have access to or can afford feminine hygiene products in the world or US. If high speed internet can be considered a good, it's a scarce utility in many parts of the world. I think there's still many basic needs or utilities that are scarce...
        konschubert 8y ago
        But isn't this more of a distribution problem than a general scarcity problem?
        opportune 8y ago
        Yes, globally. But many people individually live in a post-scarcity society. A young man with no job who has everything they need or even want (short of large-ticket items like expensive vacations, cars, house, etc.) provided by their parents arguably is living a post-scarcity lifestyle.
- baybal2 8y ago
  >Under the veneer of societal abundance, the struggle to survive is replaced with the pursuit of abstract accomplishments (career, sports, fame, etc). When someone is not successful in these things, it's very easy to survive but not thrive, and in the absence of real survival pressure it's too easy to be left alone with ones thoughts and descend into a depressive downward spiral. You grasped the idea very well. Life in the West gives you a lot of "false idols," way more than just plain income (in)security and social acceptance. A lot of very well doing people are insecure about what you call class attributes: "have you sent your kid to an Ivy league college? is your MBA still hip enough? have you launched a tech startup by 30? have you appointed trophy diversity hires of a current trendy ethnicity to your C-Suite? is an apartment you bought shares the floor with influential people A, B, and C?" and so on. I myself felt nearly crushed morally when my employer was unsuccessful extending my work permit in Canada after 6 years of my life there. I worked towards having "a perfect immigration case" since my mid-teens: from learning French, to having all and every pre-college education credentials that can benefit an immigration application possible, and yes, studying like crazy, wasting best years of life for a piece of paper. Now, I'm feeling more or less recovered from that. Not only I came back with a heavy bag of cash, I was still doing more than 99% of locals just from "insubstantial" freelance gigs, had solid resume, and tons of calls from recruiters offering jobs in every country imaginable, and finally, after nearly 9 years of my life I could wake up at a time of my volition, and not what was mandated by job or college. That last thing was near surreal for me at the time. But what was the best was not "prestige checkboxes" on the resume, nor an approving looks of female classmates from my highschool class, nor a trophy apartment I bought for pocket change when the Rouble was on its way to a seafloor. The best things from all of that were things of universal value: skills, life experience, being alive and well, fat rolodex, and knowledge "where to scratch fat cats" from places awash with cash. Now I'm happy working in engineering consulting with a Chinese company, netting more than 99.99% of locals, having nearly careless lifestyle in comparison to what I had, and living in a city without gloomy weather. I can't believe that just 2 years ago I thought of my whole life as failure. Another valuable thing, China has introduced me to was the entirely different, "BS Free," work culture centered on value: contract, payment, and CAD files in the morning — widgets ready in the evening, without any manager title holder in the loop.
  - 8y ago
- hinkley 8y ago
  Maslow's Hierarchy. Getting food and shelter is only the beginning of the process.
- noobermin 8y ago
  I will say that Japan is exceptional as far as I can tell (and I'm not Japanese), so the level of social isolation is a bit different in extent and even character compared to the US.
  - mattj1 8y ago
    Exceptional how?
some_account 8y ago
These are people who are so deep into their computer world, they forget there are real people behind the keyboards.
- CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
  They don't forget, they just don't care. A lot of people completely lack empathy, and our society hasn't done a good job at reducing that number. However, this is kind of a non sequitur for the article.
  - lightbyte 8y ago
    Are you and the OP intentionally victim blaming a person who was murdered for calling out an online troll?
    - some_account 8y ago
      No it's about understanding the reasons why this happened. To me, they are both victims and this wouldn't happen in a sane society. I'm looking at society and being happy I will only be here 40 more years. Because I'm not optimistic about the future. Humans are being led down the path of self destruction.
      - iooi 8y ago
        Goddamn, someone was murdered and you really think the murderer is a victim because he was called dumb on the internet?
        some_account 8y ago
        Yeah they are both victims. It's not a natural behavior of humans to act like this.
        CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
baybal2 8y ago
And I thought that having somebody whom you beaten in Counterstrike slamming at your door with baseball bat at 1am was bad enough. What terrible times we live in
dwags 8y ago
Is there a real solution to combat the hate filled and violent cesspool the internet has become today?
- some_account 8y ago
  Yeah. But it's not a tech solution. Society needs to change in the opposite direction we are going, but that will not happen. :)
  - dwags 8y ago
    apple watch injects soma when it senses our hatred flowing
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y ago
  One possible solution: Make the providers of web services liable for what their users post so they can’t ignore the problem for that sweet ad revenue. Possible downside: Providers become overly cautious and pro-actively delete more than necessary. Possible upside: Lots and lots of small, tight-knit (and healthy) communities crop up because Twitter, Tumblr & Co. die.
  - hh3k0 8y ago
    > Possible downside: Providers become overly cautious and pro-actively delete more than necessary. Exactly what happened in Germany when the new social media hate speech law (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz) was introduced. > He said that the NetzDG incentivizes social-media companies to “delete in doubt”—to remove any content that seems like it might be illegal […] The law leaves it up to companies like Facebook and Twitter, with their armies of moderators newly installed in Germany, to decide within 24 hours whether a post is “manifestly” illegal and remove it—a decision that would ordinarily take weeks in a German court. More: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/germany-facebook-afd/560435/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/ge...
sesutton 8y ago
>Should he Okamoto have been more careful? That depends on whether you think criticism of an internet troll ever merits a death sentence. This is a weird false dichotomy. Its possible to think someone should be more careful and still not think they deserve to die. If I saw someone texting while driving I'd tell them to be more careful but not think they deserved to die.
- weberc2 8y ago
  Yeah, this sort of thing is commonplace. Suggesting caution is often called out as “blaming the victim”. EDIT: as always, I’d love to hear from the downvoters. This seems like a pretty uncontroversial observation.
  - Ensorceled 8y ago
    The flip side is also true, many people believe incautious victims of crime got what the deserved. I don’t believe they are the same people but don’t have data to back that up.
  - watwut 8y ago
    Isn't suggesting caution here just polite version of "be silent ot else"?
    - weberc2 8y ago
      No. Suggesting caution is not any version of a threat.
  - JTbane 8y ago
    It is pretty ridiculous to suggest caution after the fact, in this case. "Be more careful if you decide to text and drive" makes sense "Be more careful in getting this notorious troll off a blog site" really doesn't
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    It is blaming the victim - it comes with the logical conclusion of "if you'd been more careful this might not have happened". In some scenarios, it's also effectively saying "make sure someone else is the one that gets raped/attacked/whatever tonight".
paulsutter 8y ago
The killer turned himself in to police. You see this in old Yakuza movies, the perpetrator will stand and wait for police after the killing (for example, "Pale Flower"). Japan has very little crime and a 98% conviction rate, it's so civilized. > a very pale and thin man with glasses parked his bicycle and walked into a police station in Fukuoka City’s Higashi ward carrying a large bag. He told the police there, “I’ve killed a man.”
- derefr 8y ago
  > a 98% conviction rate Quoting wikipedia: > In Japan, the criminal justice system has a conviction rate that exceeds 99% (Note that it includes guilty plea cases.), which has been attributed to low prosecutorial budgets impelling understaffed prosecutors to present judges with only the most obviously guilty defendants. This has ripples all the way back through the Japanese criminal-justice system. The police don't bother to even investigate crimes with merely circumstantial evidence, because such cases are unlikely to be prosecuted. So nobody bothers to even report such crimes, and so they're far easier to get away with and more prevalent. I wouldn't describe such an environment as particularly "civilized."
  - ALittleLight 8y ago
    For context, also from Wikipedia >For 2012, the US Department of Justice reported a 93% conviction rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate I agree the high rate is troubling. We'd need to find a good middle ground. Too low and it suggests prosecutors are bringing spurious cases. Too high and it means difficult cases are likely getting dropped or the process is just for show.
  - mehblahwhatevs 8y ago
    Agreed. Similarly I've heard that police will often juke the stats, labeling deaths that are circumstantial as suicides so as not to investigate or try to get a guilty? Or that once you're arrested rights are questionable when it comes to interrogation techniques and due process.
  - 8y ago
flyGuyOnTheSly 8y ago
I am reminded of why Abraham Lincoln decided to stop writing scathing reviews of his cohorts after one angry target challenged him to a duel which could have cost him his life. [0] [0] http://mentalfloss.com/article/12382/time-abraham-lincoln-and-political-rival-almost-dueled-island http://mentalfloss.com/article/12382/time-abraham-lincoln-an...
- keeler 8y ago
  Good read. Thanks for posting.
781 8y ago
There are a lot of crazy people in the world. The internet now allows you to reach and trigger them. This is not victim blaming, just like police advice to "not show valuable possessions when walking through the bad part of the city" is neither victim blaming, nor surrendering of their responsibilities.
- noobermin 8y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with this sentiment either. Crime statistics for violent crime have fallen dramatically in the US for example, so it's not like the internet makes us less safe, I think there's a bit of recentism there. It does, however, change the character of violence and harassment from previous generations.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    Many times actions on the internet are not considered a crime, while those same actions done in person, would. For example, stalking. Put another way, the crime statistics may accurately capture what they measure, but what they measure may not accurately capture the current topic of discussion.
macintux 8y ago
Almost 30 years ago I was active in online mudding. I managed to antagonize another young man who became convinced I was quite literally the devil incarnate. The particularly scary aspect to this was that he happened to live just a couple of hours from me. I was quite concerned he would take action on his belief; I don’t recall what threats he made, but he seemed quite serious. The internet is a tremendous amplifier for the mundane, the good, and the evil.
msie 8y ago
That's why I believe it was a mistake for Facebook, Twitter and Google to require people to use their real identities. How can trollhunters effectively fight trolls without fear of retaliation in the real world?
ezoe 8y ago
The headline shall be like "A Japanese person was killed by mentally unstable person". No more than that. The killer was infamous for spamming abusive words to anybody on the Hatena Bookmark(an online bookmark service like reddit or HN), among the many abusive words he used, somehow he always use 低能(teinou, low-intelligence) so he was called 低能先生(teinou-sensei). He blamed others for no reason. He probably spamming everybody commented on popular articles. So he was suspected to have some mental issues. Everybody immediately reported him for abusing and Hatena ban his accounts as soon as they found his another accounts. The victim was a famous blogger. He was an old time "net-watcher"(a person who find funny people on the internet). He mostly deal with those who intentionally cause self-flaming on the internet for pageview or pyramid-scheme. Once he mentioned about the existence of this infamous abuser, teinou-sensei, on this "net-watching" blog. He also hosted a event on Fukuoka and it so happens that this mentally-unstable killer was lived in Fukuoka. The connection of his "net-watcher" persona and cyber-security expert part of his life wasn't known beforehand of his death. You can't get any moral from this incident. It's just there are mentally unstable people in the world and many abusers on the internet are probably those people.

244 points by danso 8y ago

Often times I think we characterize trolls as normal people who just let out their anti-social side under the cloak of internet anonymity. Probably that is even true for the majority. But the scary thing we need to address is the number of isolated and devalued individuals subsisting in modern society, but without dignity. Under the veneer of societal abundance, the struggle to survive is replaced with the pursuit of abstract accomplishments (career, sports, fame, etc). When someone is not successful in these things, it's very easy to survive but not thrive, and in the absence of real survival pressure it's too easy to be left alone with ones thoughts and descend into a depressive downward spiral.

smrtinsert 8y ago
The most severe trolls I've had the misfortune of meeting online have actually been mentally ill and highly sociopathic. Some will look to harm others in real if they could whether it be socially, economically, or even physically. Doxxing is entry level stuff for them. I no longer find online gaming fun for this reason.
- CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
  Trolls, stalkers, doxers, etc. are a serious problem. A recent example that comes to mind: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18049311 https://www.patreon.com/posts/18049311 This post raises a lot of questions that I don't have a good answer to.
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    It's worrying that while reading the article I was nodding along thinking "yep, sounds like 4chan" and it turned out to be tumblr. When both extremes of the political spectrum have groups of stalkers and trolls trying to ruin people's lives for committing some imaginary sin, you know things are screwed.
    - astrodust 8y ago
      It's not extremes of the political spectrum, but extremes of behaviour. If this is Kiwi Farms, though... https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
      - beaconstudios 8y ago
        the two seem to have a form of magnetism.
        astrodust 8y ago
        It's not magnetism, it's attractiveness to abusive people. Some people don't really care what cause they get behind so long as they get to bully people and raise hell. They'd be anarchists, leftists, alt-right, whatever, so long as they get to beat up people and set things on fire. This is not to say both political extremes are identical, but that certain people will latch on to any group that will tolerate their behaviour.
        beaconstudios 8y ago
        absolutely, that's IMO the nugget of truth nested within horseshoe theory.
      - tomrod 8y ago
        The internet is a dark place in some corners.
        astrodust 8y ago
        Those dark corners need a healthy dose of napalm.
    - joe_the_user 8y ago
      Edit: You are misread the post (and I didn't quite read it in enough detail myself). The post claims, Kiwi Farms, large alt-right-influence forum, is manipulating progressives to attack this person. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
- ljm 8y ago
  I think you only need to look at Reddit and the ProRevenge/PettyRevenge/etc subreddits to see the mindset of a very large amount of people who find joy in completely ruining somebody’s life. The common theme being you suffered so you deliver 100x suffering in return in cruel and unusual ways. Redefining karma as cold revenge, being an innocent victim who is a victim but no longer innocent. This doesn’t even come close to healthy. It usually takes therapy to get there in such a case but when you revel in the pain...
  - learc83 8y ago
    It's no surprise when almost half of the voters in the country voted for a man who's personal motto is "get even". "Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it." "When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder."
    - leesalminen 8y ago
      Should you not stand up for yourself in business? Anecdotally, I was screwed once in a business. I didn’t retaliate. Same thing happened a second time because this person knew I wouldn’t react. I won’t let it happen again. Edit:: to be clear, I’m talking 7-figure screwed, not “this person was mean to me”.
      - learc83 8y ago
        So you learned your lesson and you've made sure to devote a significant portion of your resources to getting your revenge? There's a difference between not letting someone take advantage of you and spending significant time repaying every perceived slight 10 fold. Even iterative prisoners dilemma shows that without forgiveness a tit for tat strategy dissolves into an endless cycle of vengeance.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  It is worth mentioning that the mentally ill are (sadly) fairly common in this society. Historically mentally ill people have not tended to be more dangerous than average people and it important not to assume that mentally equals dangerous today. That said, I think, historically, a substantially part of the reason mentally people usually are harmless is because they can see their grasp on reality is shaky. Others have generally not shared their delusions and so no one validates their desires to lash out at those who they imagine have harmed them. The Internet seems to have changed that - communities of people who share pathological illusions seem to have come together and produced a still small number of horrendous crimes - the "incel movement" being one very visible example. These folks might well in dangerous (to others) gray area between debilitating insanity and approximate sanity. Pathological enough to embrace problematic ideas and functional enough act on them.
  - GW150914 8y ago
    A lack of insight, denial of the very fact that they are ill is a prominent feature in a number of mental disorders, most notably schizophrenia. I think that what you’re saying about people getting together online to share delusions is a factor, but I don’t think it’s because they used to have a sense that they were deluded. Rather, they were isolated. Someone who thought that power lines were controlling their thoughts had very little ability to spread that belief. They could shout on a street corner, print and pass out pamphlets, and that was it. Unless you were nuts and rich, you couldn’t really spread the “word” far. Now that has changed, and everyone, however disorganized and deprived of resources, can publish their every thought. People who think they’ve been “gang stalked” and people who think that the government is behind contrails all have a megaphone to the world. As a “bonus” they also are able to just type their delusions into Google and find sites to confirm and expand them. The same network effect that connects hobbyists and enthusiasts of rare things around the world does the same for people with delusional frameworks. It also does the same for Holocaust deniers, and general shitheads.
    - joe_the_user 8y ago
      I think that what you’re saying about people getting together online to share delusions is a factor, but I don’t think it’s because they used to have a sense that they were deluded. It's hard to phrase these things. I wouldn't say people were less confident in the delusional beliefs. Rather, an isolated delusional person has less general confidence - the world is "against them" and their relative weakness relative to the world is fairly evident. Overall, success at doing horrible things requires some of the same mix that success at doing constructive things needs; confidence, support, plans and ideas. The process you describe and we all can see helps in all those things.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
  Same for me with respect to online gaming. Having worked in the games industry and made my own too it's a sad realization that a seemingly large minority of our own customers are abusive. Too many are just an unhappy bunch of people frustrated with life. Attacks extend beyond personal to companies too. For instance, games offer some of the best value for money entertainment and yet many 'gamers' just constantly complain about the price of anything even if it's low. I don't think a lot of these people understand how the general economy works. Some of this may be due to age or immaturity too.
imbokodo 8y ago
> societal abundance These might be times of abundance, but not societal abundance. Trump did not win speaking about there being societal abundance. It does not exist in the US, and certainly not in the third world. Just walk down to the Tenderloin in San Francisco or take an extended walk around Oakland, and you can see this for yourself.
branchless 8y ago
Society is far too rigid. We have people who are harmless, who can't cope with the horrible full time jobs we force people into via high land rent, who are kicked to the edge of society. We need a choice and that choice comes with cheap rent as a prerequisite. Yet our institutions strive for the opposite. I'd disagree that it's easy to survive. Many people in good jobs are now one bad week away from ruin.
ggg9990 8y ago
This will be the biggest struggle of post-scarcity economies. Some people need to be distracted with the struggle to survive to keep them from destructive thoughts.
- sli 8y ago
  It's a bit disingenuous to put today's society in the place of a hypothetical society immediately before post-scarcity (or society before any major societal shift in the far future). They are in no way comparable. Society as it is could not handle post-scarcity, but a huge contributor is the simple fact that post-scarcity is a very long way away.
  - konschubert 8y ago
    > post-scarcity is a very long way away I'm surprised that you think that. What would you consider a scarce good in today's society?
    - Regardsyjc 8y ago
      Clean water is still a scarce basic need in many parts of the world and even in some parts of the United States even beyond Flint, Michigan. Many women do not have access to or can afford feminine hygiene products in the world or US. If high speed internet can be considered a good, it's a scarce utility in many parts of the world. I think there's still many basic needs or utilities that are scarce...
      - konschubert 8y ago
        But isn't this more of a distribution problem than a general scarcity problem?
      - opportune 8y ago
        Yes, globally. But many people individually live in a post-scarcity society. A young man with no job who has everything they need or even want (short of large-ticket items like expensive vacations, cars, house, etc.) provided by their parents arguably is living a post-scarcity lifestyle.
baybal2 8y ago
>Under the veneer of societal abundance, the struggle to survive is replaced with the pursuit of abstract accomplishments (career, sports, fame, etc). When someone is not successful in these things, it's very easy to survive but not thrive, and in the absence of real survival pressure it's too easy to be left alone with ones thoughts and descend into a depressive downward spiral. You grasped the idea very well. Life in the West gives you a lot of "false idols," way more than just plain income (in)security and social acceptance. A lot of very well doing people are insecure about what you call class attributes: "have you sent your kid to an Ivy league college? is your MBA still hip enough? have you launched a tech startup by 30? have you appointed trophy diversity hires of a current trendy ethnicity to your C-Suite? is an apartment you bought shares the floor with influential people A, B, and C?" and so on. I myself felt nearly crushed morally when my employer was unsuccessful extending my work permit in Canada after 6 years of my life there. I worked towards having "a perfect immigration case" since my mid-teens: from learning French, to having all and every pre-college education credentials that can benefit an immigration application possible, and yes, studying like crazy, wasting best years of life for a piece of paper. Now, I'm feeling more or less recovered from that. Not only I came back with a heavy bag of cash, I was still doing more than 99% of locals just from "insubstantial" freelance gigs, had solid resume, and tons of calls from recruiters offering jobs in every country imaginable, and finally, after nearly 9 years of my life I could wake up at a time of my volition, and not what was mandated by job or college. That last thing was near surreal for me at the time. But what was the best was not "prestige checkboxes" on the resume, nor an approving looks of female classmates from my highschool class, nor a trophy apartment I bought for pocket change when the Rouble was on its way to a seafloor. The best things from all of that were things of universal value: skills, life experience, being alive and well, fat rolodex, and knowledge "where to scratch fat cats" from places awash with cash. Now I'm happy working in engineering consulting with a Chinese company, netting more than 99.99% of locals, having nearly careless lifestyle in comparison to what I had, and living in a city without gloomy weather. I can't believe that just 2 years ago I thought of my whole life as failure. Another valuable thing, China has introduced me to was the entirely different, "BS Free," work culture centered on value: contract, payment, and CAD files in the morning — widgets ready in the evening, without any manager title holder in the loop.
- 8y ago
hinkley 8y ago
Maslow's Hierarchy. Getting food and shelter is only the beginning of the process.
noobermin 8y ago
I will say that Japan is exceptional as far as I can tell (and I'm not Japanese), so the level of social isolation is a bit different in extent and even character compared to the US.
- mattj1 8y ago
  Exceptional how?

some_account 8y ago

These are people who are so deep into their computer world, they forget there are real people behind the keyboards.

CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
They don't forget, they just don't care. A lot of people completely lack empathy, and our society hasn't done a good job at reducing that number. However, this is kind of a non sequitur for the article.
- lightbyte 8y ago
  Are you and the OP intentionally victim blaming a person who was murdered for calling out an online troll?
  - some_account 8y ago
    No it's about understanding the reasons why this happened. To me, they are both victims and this wouldn't happen in a sane society. I'm looking at society and being happy I will only be here 40 more years. Because I'm not optimistic about the future. Humans are being led down the path of self destruction.
    - iooi 8y ago
      Goddamn, someone was murdered and you really think the murderer is a victim because he was called dumb on the internet?
      - some_account 8y ago
        Yeah they are both victims. It's not a natural behavior of humans to act like this.
        CiPHPerCoder 8y ago

baybal2 8y ago

And I thought that having somebody whom you beaten in Counterstrike slamming at your door with baseball bat at 1am was bad enough. What terrible times we live in

dwags 8y ago

Is there a real solution to combat the hate filled and violent cesspool the internet has become today?

some_account 8y ago
Yeah. But it's not a tech solution. Society needs to change in the opposite direction we are going, but that will not happen. :)
- dwags 8y ago
  apple watch injects soma when it senses our hatred flowing
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y ago
One possible solution: Make the providers of web services liable for what their users post so they can’t ignore the problem for that sweet ad revenue. Possible downside: Providers become overly cautious and pro-actively delete more than necessary. Possible upside: Lots and lots of small, tight-knit (and healthy) communities crop up because Twitter, Tumblr & Co. die.
- hh3k0 8y ago
  > Possible downside: Providers become overly cautious and pro-actively delete more than necessary. Exactly what happened in Germany when the new social media hate speech law (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz) was introduced. > He said that the NetzDG incentivizes social-media companies to “delete in doubt”—to remove any content that seems like it might be illegal […] The law leaves it up to companies like Facebook and Twitter, with their armies of moderators newly installed in Germany, to decide within 24 hours whether a post is “manifestly” illegal and remove it—a decision that would ordinarily take weeks in a German court. More: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/germany-facebook-afd/560435/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/ge...

sesutton 8y ago

>Should he Okamoto have been more careful? That depends on whether you think criticism of an internet troll ever merits a death sentence. This is a weird false dichotomy. Its possible to think someone should be more careful and still not think they deserve to die. If I saw someone texting while driving I'd tell them to be more careful but not think they deserved to die.

weberc2 8y ago
Yeah, this sort of thing is commonplace. Suggesting caution is often called out as “blaming the victim”. EDIT: as always, I’d love to hear from the downvoters. This seems like a pretty uncontroversial observation.
- Ensorceled 8y ago
  The flip side is also true, many people believe incautious victims of crime got what the deserved. I don’t believe they are the same people but don’t have data to back that up.
- watwut 8y ago
  Isn't suggesting caution here just polite version of "be silent ot else"?
  - weberc2 8y ago
    No. Suggesting caution is not any version of a threat.
- JTbane 8y ago
  It is pretty ridiculous to suggest caution after the fact, in this case. "Be more careful if you decide to text and drive" makes sense "Be more careful in getting this notorious troll off a blog site" really doesn't
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  It is blaming the victim - it comes with the logical conclusion of "if you'd been more careful this might not have happened". In some scenarios, it's also effectively saying "make sure someone else is the one that gets raped/attacked/whatever tonight".

paulsutter 8y ago

The killer turned himself in to police. You see this in old Yakuza movies, the perpetrator will stand and wait for police after the killing (for example, "Pale Flower"). Japan has very little crime and a 98% conviction rate, it's so civilized. > a very pale and thin man with glasses parked his bicycle and walked into a police station in Fukuoka City’s Higashi ward carrying a large bag. He told the police there, “I’ve killed a man.”

derefr 8y ago
> a 98% conviction rate Quoting wikipedia: > In Japan, the criminal justice system has a conviction rate that exceeds 99% (Note that it includes guilty plea cases.), which has been attributed to low prosecutorial budgets impelling understaffed prosecutors to present judges with only the most obviously guilty defendants. This has ripples all the way back through the Japanese criminal-justice system. The police don't bother to even investigate crimes with merely circumstantial evidence, because such cases are unlikely to be prosecuted. So nobody bothers to even report such crimes, and so they're far easier to get away with and more prevalent. I wouldn't describe such an environment as particularly "civilized."
- ALittleLight 8y ago
  For context, also from Wikipedia >For 2012, the US Department of Justice reported a 93% conviction rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate I agree the high rate is troubling. We'd need to find a good middle ground. Too low and it suggests prosecutors are bringing spurious cases. Too high and it means difficult cases are likely getting dropped or the process is just for show.
- mehblahwhatevs 8y ago
  Agreed. Similarly I've heard that police will often juke the stats, labeling deaths that are circumstantial as suicides so as not to investigate or try to get a guilty? Or that once you're arrested rights are questionable when it comes to interrogation techniques and due process.
- 8y ago

flyGuyOnTheSly 8y ago

I am reminded of why Abraham Lincoln decided to stop writing scathing reviews of his cohorts after one angry target challenged him to a duel which could have cost him his life. [0] [0] http://mentalfloss.com/article/12382/time-abraham-lincoln-and-political-rival-almost-dueled-island http://mentalfloss.com/article/12382/time-abraham-lincoln-an...

keeler 8y ago
Good read. Thanks for posting.

781 8y ago

There are a lot of crazy people in the world. The internet now allows you to reach and trigger them. This is not victim blaming, just like police advice to "not show valuable possessions when walking through the bad part of the city" is neither victim blaming, nor surrendering of their responsibilities.

noobermin 8y ago
I'm not sure I agree with this sentiment either. Crime statistics for violent crime have fallen dramatically in the US for example, so it's not like the internet makes us less safe, I think there's a bit of recentism there. It does, however, change the character of violence and harassment from previous generations.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Many times actions on the internet are not considered a crime, while those same actions done in person, would. For example, stalking. Put another way, the crime statistics may accurately capture what they measure, but what they measure may not accurately capture the current topic of discussion.

macintux 8y ago

Almost 30 years ago I was active in online mudding. I managed to antagonize another young man who became convinced I was quite literally the devil incarnate. The particularly scary aspect to this was that he happened to live just a couple of hours from me. I was quite concerned he would take action on his belief; I don’t recall what threats he made, but he seemed quite serious. The internet is a tremendous amplifier for the mundane, the good, and the evil.

msie 8y ago

That's why I believe it was a mistake for Facebook, Twitter and Google to require people to use their real identities. How can trollhunters effectively fight trolls without fear of retaliation in the real world?

ezoe 8y ago

The headline shall be like "A Japanese person was killed by mentally unstable person". No more than that. The killer was infamous for spamming abusive words to anybody on the Hatena Bookmark(an online bookmark service like reddit or HN), among the many abusive words he used, somehow he always use 低能(teinou, low-intelligence) so he was called 低能先生(teinou-sensei). He blamed others for no reason. He probably spamming everybody commented on popular articles. So he was suspected to have some mental issues. Everybody immediately reported him for abusing and Hatena ban his accounts as soon as they found his another accounts. The victim was a famous blogger. He was an old time "net-watcher"(a person who find funny people on the internet). He mostly deal with those who intentionally cause self-flaming on the internet for pageview or pyramid-scheme. Once he mentioned about the existence of this infamous abuser, teinou-sensei, on this "net-watching" blog. He also hosted a event on Fukuoka and it so happens that this mentally-unstable killer was lived in Fukuoka. The connection of his "net-watcher" persona and cyber-security expert part of his life wasn't known beforehand of his death. You can't get any moral from this incident. It's just there are mentally unstable people in the world and many abusers on the internet are probably those people.