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It's the internet, strange that the author didn't face abuse like this before. He doesn't seem too young to have experienced such abuse online growing up. I wi

It's the internet, strange that the author didn't face abuse like this before. He doesn't seem too young to have experienced such abuse online growing up. I wish I could say that everyone should be exposed to some aimless and unfair adversity while growing up, it helped me grow some thicker skin. But I've met people who really can't handle it, and exposing them to even a bit of it would be unethical, it wouldn't help them in any way. Some people are really sensitive, on the edge of mental stability, with crumbling self respect, or whatever other issues. Abuse like this does affect them significantly. Such people are the perfect victims for these immature trolls, and I really don't see a way to help them. I remember hanging out on forums as a teen, and there was this script kiddie who would hound users on some local forums and IRC servers, both plainly insulting and/or threathning them, and trying to 'hack' them. He was annoying, but I was so used to these edgy insults and such that I never took them seriously (just a bit of roughhousing among teens)... Yet he was really successful in pissing people off and made a significant number of them leave. He was banned many times, but would just re-join with new account(s) (the joys of dynamic IPs every time you dial in). Took him years to quit. If you're offended by things like this to be affected significantly (we're all affected a bit), don't be fooled, you're worse off than people who aren't. It's not your fault by any means. But finding a way to care less about things like this, if possible, will improve your wellbeing. You can ignore and / or react (which might make it worse), but there's not much you can do against assholes without ushering in censorship, surveillance, or making everythign worse otherwise. You can't fix other people, but you can at least try fixing yourself.

dmbche 2y ago
You know, not everything is an opportunity to better yourself. It's perfectly valid to leave when boudaries are crossed - it's weird that you argue the person should "work on themselves" and keep getting deaths threaths over maintaining random stuff.
- cue_the_strings 2y ago
  Of course it is valid to leave, especially if it's prolonged abuse, but it's a two-edged sword. If you have some bored idiot on the other side, you leaving might encourage them to abuse you even more. If you yield further, then you've allowed yourself to be shut out from the public Internet, depriving yourself of the satisfaction of contributing to projects. My point is that you need to try to be rational in these (emotional) situations, and think about the consequences of your decisions. Sometimes the best solution will affect you more than the abuser, which feels really unfair, but the alternatives are simply worse.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  > You know, not everything is an opportunity to better yourself. You're wrong, everything is an opportunity to better yourself. It's up to you whether or not you choose to take advantage of opportunities. Certainly you can chose not to, you can choose to tap out and quit, but as it is a choice so also is it an opportunity.
  - m0rde 2y ago
    > You're wrong... Lol, HN... you never cease to crack me up.
olliej 2y ago
You don't know that they haven't faced abuse like this before, you're just assuming this is the first/only case, maybe this is just the final straw. But that's also moot - people don't have a right to abuse others, people have a right to not be subjected to this kind of abuse. If a person is not allowed to halt a project when they receive abuse, then you're saying that they are required to accept abuse as part of their (typically) unpaid labor. There is a huge difference between "I am willing to put up with this" and "You are required to put up with this". You are saying that because the former applies to you, that therefore the latter applies to everyone. I get that this is the long term outcome of the "don't feed the trolls" concept, which is tacitly the message "being a troll is a-ok", which has led people like this ass to think that just because they can send this kind of shit, that it's ok to.
- cue_the_strings 2y ago
  Of course they can leave. Not just that, everybody can leave for any reason whatsoever, including being bored of the project. But if you're leaving because of abuse, you're both letting the troll win and potentialy opening yourself to more abuse. If you're sufficiently enraged by trolls, you may overreact, and start supporting policies that are more damaging than the trolling itself, like supporting surveillance or forcing KYC on everything. Let me qualify this by saying that I support reporting people for abuse to the authorities if that's a thing where you live, but I don't support asking for more surveillance just to catch trolls. I see this pattern every day, on every level: "I'm being victimized and something needs to be done about it". I hope that people will think about what "something" is and make sure it's not making things even worse.

dmbche 2y ago

You know, not everything is an opportunity to better yourself. It's perfectly valid to leave when boudaries are crossed - it's weird that you argue the person should "work on themselves" and keep getting deaths threaths over maintaining random stuff.

cue_the_strings 2y ago
Of course it is valid to leave, especially if it's prolonged abuse, but it's a two-edged sword. If you have some bored idiot on the other side, you leaving might encourage them to abuse you even more. If you yield further, then you've allowed yourself to be shut out from the public Internet, depriving yourself of the satisfaction of contributing to projects. My point is that you need to try to be rational in these (emotional) situations, and think about the consequences of your decisions. Sometimes the best solution will affect you more than the abuser, which feels really unfair, but the alternatives are simply worse.
lupusreal 2y ago
> You know, not everything is an opportunity to better yourself. You're wrong, everything is an opportunity to better yourself. It's up to you whether or not you choose to take advantage of opportunities. Certainly you can chose not to, you can choose to tap out and quit, but as it is a choice so also is it an opportunity.
- m0rde 2y ago
  > You're wrong... Lol, HN... you never cease to crack me up.

olliej 2y ago

You don't know that they haven't faced abuse like this before, you're just assuming this is the first/only case, maybe this is just the final straw. But that's also moot - people don't have a right to abuse others, people have a right to not be subjected to this kind of abuse. If a person is not allowed to halt a project when they receive abuse, then you're saying that they are required to accept abuse as part of their (typically) unpaid labor. There is a huge difference between "I am willing to put up with this" and "You are required to put up with this". You are saying that because the former applies to you, that therefore the latter applies to everyone. I get that this is the long term outcome of the "don't feed the trolls" concept, which is tacitly the message "being a troll is a-ok", which has led people like this ass to think that just because they can send this kind of shit, that it's ok to.

cue_the_strings 2y ago
Of course they can leave. Not just that, everybody can leave for any reason whatsoever, including being bored of the project. But if you're leaving because of abuse, you're both letting the troll win and potentialy opening yourself to more abuse. If you're sufficiently enraged by trolls, you may overreact, and start supporting policies that are more damaging than the trolling itself, like supporting surveillance or forcing KYC on everything. Let me qualify this by saying that I support reporting people for abuse to the authorities if that's a thing where you live, but I don't support asking for more surveillance just to catch trolls. I see this pattern every day, on every level: "I'm being victimized and something needs to be done about it". I hope that people will think about what "something" is and make sure it's not making things even worse.