6 ms·
Targeted smearing and destroying of one's reputation is quite an old endeavour. Works amazingly well online, too. Don't give up Internet anonymity like some gov
by jotm 8y ago
Targeted smearing and destroying of one's reputation is quite an old endeavour. Works amazingly well online, too. Don't give up Internet anonymity like some governments want you to.
- yifanl 8y agoI don't think Internet anonymity is a thing though. Even if you make a fully unrelated identity, smearing that identity is enough to discredit your ability to engage online. Sure, you can make another and another, but starting over with zero online credibility is the same thing as losing all your credibility.
- tomatotomato37 8y agoOne of the components of online anonymity is having different identites for different communities. That way if your expiremental political blog goes horribly wrong it doesn't take your professional life or hobby group with it
- yifanl 8y agoWell sure, you can treat being online as an advanced form of roleplaying, but then that just limits your ability to really engage in serious discussion, because you're just talking to other roleplayers. And that's fine for most topics, but when you talk about certain issues, I feel that speaking in an honest manner (and assuming everyone who isn't obviously trolling is doing the same) is the only way to really have a discussion, otherwise it just makes all online discourse totally meaningless.
- tomatotomato37 8y agoI'm talking more about different pseudonames and siloing personal information rather than full on different identites. I'm as authentic here as I am on my Reddit or professional GitHub accounts, and yet it still will require corporate level shenanigans to find and link them all together
- canhascodez 8y agoExperimental political blog? What an interesting euphemism.
- ch4ck 8y agoVide Judge Kavanaugh.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoNeither of us knows if he was smeared or just outed.
- learc83 8y agoSome of the later accusations could have been targeted smears, or they could have been true. But if Dr. Ford was intentionally lying in an attempt to smear Kavanaugh, she was laying the groundwork for her accusation all the way back in 2012. That's a pretty far reaching conspiracy.
- paulddraper 8y agoIt could have been sincere yet wrong on her part, and an urgent targeted smear by others.
- learc83 8y agoSure it could have been, which is why I said "if Dr. Ford was intentionally lying". If you believe that she was sincere though, I think it's much more likely that Kavanaugh was lying to protect himself than it was that an assault victim randomly mixed him up with her assaulter. From her story she knew him and had fairly prolonged close contact with him. It wasn't like she just caught a glimpse of him from a distance. The mistaken identity defense was just a way for people to say they didn't believe the story without calling her a liar.
- paulddraper 8y agoThere's the identification during the event, and there's the identification many, many years later (even 2012 was still 30 years after the event). > I think it's much more likely that Kavanaugh was lying to protect himself than it was that an assault victim randomly mixed him up with her assaulter. I agree. And if it were 1982 that would weight heavily. On the other hand, delaying charges for multiple decades, then bringing them out within a narrow several-week window that happens to have the greatest possible maximum political effect...what are the probabilities of underlying motivation? Unfortunately, either way there are some incredulous events.