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What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich
- 89a 14y agoNo idea what she was thinking. She must have known about "Jessie Slaughter" and that they would see through a pathetic attempt to promote her porn site. Shame they took it so far with her though
- Ensorceled 14y ago"I think I will poke this bear with this pointed stick I'm holding ... what could go wrong?" Not defending 4Chan here but, wow, this is "walking alone in the bad part of town at midnight" type of stupid.
- posabsolute 14y agowell it's more than that, Its walking alone in the bad part of town at midnight having a student skirt with a sign that is saying rape me" type of stupid. What can go wrong?? huh...
- pavel_lishin 14y agoMore akin to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ko6uV83V1s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ko6uV83V1s (Skip the family guy bit, and be aware that there's NSFW language.)
- kaonashi 14y agoThat's not even dangerously close to blaming the victim; that is blaming the victim.
- corin_ 14y agoAt what point is it OK to blame the victim? Blame on the victim doesn't have to mean the attacker(s) are blameless, or that they aren't complete assholes. She attempted to provoke a reaction out of a group of strangers some of whom are known for reacting this way, surely there's no way of looking at this without thinking her somewhat naive/idiotic?
- nathanb 14y agoYou are conflating two independent ideas: was it wise to behave as she did, and was 4chan's response OK. The answer to both is "no". It was unwise for her to do what she did, but that does not justify the response. Don't accuse people of blaming the victim for pointing out her unwise behavior. If I go for a walk in a minefield, it sucks that my leg got blown off...but I could have perhaps exercised better judgment regarding the location of my evening constitutional. That doesn't make it OK to deploy land mines, that just makes me an idiot for walking into the minefield.
- wam 14y agoSpoken like someone who has never been slut-shamed. Or had his/her leg blown off by a landmine. People don't actually get maimed because they stupidly walked into a minefield. They get maimed because someone put a minefield where they live and grew up, and they can't live life at all without being in constant danger. Women don't get slut-shamed because they did something to deserve it, they get slut-shamed because they live in a culture where our first reaction to anything having to do with women and harassment is to look for a reason why she had it coming. Someone doesn't have to say "I blame the victim" to blame the victim. Usually what they say is something along the lines of "I'm not blaming her, but..."
- awj 14y ago...how again is someone who (according to the article) has been part of 4chan for some time fundamentally incapable of poking that particular bear? I understand and agree with your logic (at least so far as "judging people for their participation in unavoidable situations is wrong" summarizes it), but I don't think it applies here.
- commandar 14y agoIn this case, I think it's kind of a stretch to suggest the victim doesn't hold some level of culpability. She wasn't randomly targeted just for going about her business; she was targeted because she repeatedly posted calling /b/ "fags," "jits," "[/b] ain't shit," etc. Suggesting that she doesn't have any responsibility for what happened doesn't make any more sense to me than condoning how /b/ responded.
- Ensorceled 14y agoBlaming the victim involves some variation of: "the stupid bitch deserved it" I don't think she deserves any of this, just observing that it's a predictable outcome and she was stupid not to foresee.
- jamesaguilar 14y agoI dunno, it seems like the most changeable cause of her distress is her choice to taunt a bunch of known . . . bad elements of internet society. That doesn't make it good that this happened to her, but it's also a true observation.
- macchina 14y agoIn this instance, I do blame the victim for creating this situation (assuming she wasn't set up). She taunted /b/. (If you read her sign, it says "you will never reveal my true identity.") This is not a case of a person going about their own business and being arbitrarily targeted. Of course, I don't condone what 4channers did, but she asked for it by taunting a well-known group of trolls.
- kstenerud 14y agoSo if I were to walk up to the huge guy with tree trunks for arms who is notoriously ill-tempered and violent, and then proceed to call him names, would I be a blameless victim who had his teeth knocked out for no good reason?
- mikeash 14y agoSometimes, a victim deserves blame. If you run through the bad part of town shouting racial slurs at the inhabitants and calling them cowards, you can certainly be blamed for provoking what likely happens afterwards. Note that blame is not a zero-sum game. Blaming the victim does not diminish the blame assigned to the attackers, nor does it in any way justify what they do.
- kmm 14y agoPlease, take that feminist rapeculture nonsense out of here. Nobody is holding her responsible for all she's going through and nobody is the blame but the anonymous people on /b/. But she really should have known better. It's interesting how quick people jump on shaming the victim blamers when it's a women being harassed but nobody is there to reassure me it is not my fault when I stick my hand in boiling water. You people seem to not be able to make the distinction between deserving something unpleasant and getting what's coming to them. She absolutely didn't deserve what happened to her but she did provoke it.
- roguecoder 14y agoBoiling water holds no culpability. Soldiers shouldn't get blamed for being shot, drag queen's aren't asking for harassment, police officers shouldn't be blamed for getting killed in the line of duty. Victim blaming puts the onus on someone who didn't make the decision to act in the entirely inappropriate manner. We can even condemn behavior without justifying or excusing extra-judicial violence. We just have to do it not in the context of discussing the violence they later suffered. We can discuss the injustice of an invasion, but the funeral of a fallen soldier isn't the place for it.
- kmm 14y agoThis is different from drag queens. Drag queens can reasonably expect to be able to prance around (I'm sorry, I can't find a more respectful term) in women's clothes. Women can reasonably expect and have to full freedom to dress however they want. I have a lot less sympathy for the action of harassing /b/ for the intent purpose of driving more visitors to your site. That's not to say the punishment is a billion times harsher than the "crime" warrants, I just believe there's a difference between walking around in certain clothes and lying to a group of people, no matter how depraved these people are. In the same way, although I believe I should be able to shouts slurs at people without being beaten up, I think I'd earn less sympathy than if I were beaten up because of my sexual orientation. Also, no one is really blaming, I'm actually just curious. Anyone who knows /b/, knows what they're capable of, especially if you give them your name and what you look like. In 99% of the cases, it just fizzles out, but was she really betting on not being the 1%?
- lwat 14y agoIf someone pokes an alligator and gets into trouble, is that blaming the victim?
- theorique 14y agoIt absolutely is blaming the victim. But what are we supposed to do when the victim bears some responsibility (obviously not all) for the process of their victimization? Most people have some concept of a moral ladder ranging from "totally innocent bystander" to "criminal who deserved what they got". For example: a person who dies while standing on a NYC sidewalk and gets hit by a falling air conditioner is essentially blameless; a person who dies by being shot by a police officer while robbing a store at gunpoint earned their just reward. Most situations, including this one, are less clear cut. She's not 0% responsible. She's not 100% responsible. But the correct number is somewhere in between. 5%? 10%? 20%? I don't know, and since I'm not presiding over a courtroom where she's suing 4chan, it's not my business to decide either. In any case, to suggest that a person who freely chooses to venture into one of the seediest holes on the Internet, and then actively taunts and trolls the inhabitants (who are known to be vengeful, technically capable, and gifted with a lot of free time and tenacity) is absolutely and completely free from responsibility? ... Well, I'm not sure how to answer that. Did /b/ overreact like a bunch of immature, possibly criminal, jerks? Of course they did. They played their part perfectly, living up to their terrible reputation. And if any of them have broken the law, then it's right that law enforcement get involved and the responsible parties be punished. Does this young woman deserve this? Of course not. But to ask the question, "what the hell was she thinking?", and to judge her partly responsible for the situation, is perfectly legitimate. She didn't deserve what happened, but she's not completely from responsibility for the outcome either.
- Cushman 14y agoActually, I kind of like this analogy. If 4chan are bears, that means they don't have any moral responsibility, and it's okay to shoot them.
- buu700 14y agoHow did you go from "bears have no moral responsibility" to "it's okay to shoot bears"?
- Cushman 14y agoWell, it's not a direct causal connection -- that's how we use "and" in English -- but basically, moral responsibility is commutative. Bears don't have a responsibility towards us: they're bears, they don't realize it's wrong to eat hikers. And accordingly, we don't have a responsibility towards bears: If there's a bear that's eating hikers, we don't try to have a conversation with it, we shoot it and move on.
- andreasvc 14y ago> moral responsibility is commutative That's nonsense. A baby doesn't know right from wrong, but parents are obliged to care for it. Just because a bear doesn't have responsibility doesn't mean we can shoot it wily-nily, there has to be some justification such as in the example you mention. And commutativity is a property of operations, you probably meant that moral responsibility is a symmetric relation.
- Cushman 14y agoInfants have no ability to care for their parents. Do you truly argue that a child, when they become able, has no responsibility to take care of their parents, when they become infirm? And metaphor need not hew closely to semantics, but having is, linguistically, a ditransitive operation-- technically stative, but the difference isn't important here. I may have responsibility, and I may have responsibility toward you. Responsibility may commutatively have me toward you, if that made sense, or you might commutatively have responsibility toward me, which is the more sensical. In any event, the metaphor is clear.
- ihuman 14y agoReminds me of a quote by Stephen Colbert (at 1:35): http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/375428/february-24-2011/corporate-hacker-tries-to-take-down-wikileaks http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/37542...
- JackFr 14y agoFlorida Golf Coast University?
- Kopion 14y agoI think they mean 'Gulf'
- Kopion 14y agoPardon my naivety, but what is this '/b/' they cite?
- logn 14y agohttp://boards.4chan.org/b/ http://boards.4chan.org/b/ (most def. NSFW)
- macchina 14y agoboards.4chan.org/b/ [nsfw] 4chan has different boards which pertain to different subject matter. For example, /mu/ for music, /sp/ for sports and /v/ for video games. /b/ is the "random" board where essentially anything goes. It is also the most popular board on the 4chan. /b/ is sometimes referred to as "the asshole of the internet" proceed there at your own risk.
- rjzzleep 14y agoit's a board on 4chan. a massive piece of random stuff, some find it entertaining, some everything but that.
- halfwit 14y agoI think if you go around calling people "fags", you probably shouldn't expect a positive result nor much sympathy. She's an asshole for that, but the rest of the blame goes to 4chan obviously.
- sharkweek 14y agowithout looking too much into this... she runs a porn channel, has an understanding of how /b/ works, and is now getting a ton of publicity? am I missing a detail here or is she getting exactly what she wants
- insane_man 14y agoTrue, this isn't 14 yr old Jessi Slaughter. However, spreading her paid porn videos around for free must make a dent in all of this. I don't know if the publicity will be worth it if they're desecrating graves now.
- eurleif 14y agoShe might be hoping to make money by exchanging messages with people (MyGirlFund charges for that), or by doing live webcam sessions. The free videos might help as marketing for that
- rulesofwriting 14y agoI've been reading the threads and one of them said something about there being no graves because the person was cremated.
- rizla 14y agoI think you are missing a massive detail here, quite a few. What concerns me a little more than how the poorly developed people on /b seem to be deciding that targeting people just by association is acceptable for retaliation, is whats going to happen when they annoy someone that's living in a less digital world.. Ergo, someone that actually isn't afraid of using the virtual ante and responding physically
- macchina 14y agoThat was clearly her initial intention - "If you want to see more, come see me at *.com." But it would appear she "misunderestimated" how far /b/ would take this.
- THE_PUN_STOPS 14y ago
- saxamaphone69 14y agoThere is more to 4chan than just /b/. Yes, /b/ seems to be the only reason people hear or know about 4chan. But /b/ has done this sort of stuff in the past for massive 'lulz', and they have also stopped stuff like animal cruelty, or even that one kid who decided to post a pic of his feet in people's salad (which got him fired). Good times here, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tom-green-raids http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tom-green-raids There's another 50 boards on 4chan ranging from animals to papercraft. Explore.
- 3143 14y agoSure, there are other boards, but /b/ is bigger than all of them combined, and is the primary reason for 4chan's fame. It's not entirely accurate to assume that they are one and the same, but it's mostly accurate.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoYeah, it's crap to be cruel to animals, but people? Do whatever you want to 'em! 4chan as a whole may have redeeming value (I'm not involved, so I can't say), but to the rest of the world, 4chan == /b.
- 89a 14y agoTo be fair the animals didn't hurt anyone and were tortured and killed She was trying to shill her porn site and knowingly poked a hornets nest Bit of a difference
- NotaFingah 14y agoWhy would I want to explore a place that hosts a filthy cesspool crawling with loathsome sloths and immature rejects from all walks of life? Thanks for your great advice, but I think I'll just stay as far away from that place as possible. I'm sure I'll be able to read about it somewhere else, the next time these mindless children decide to go too far.
- icebraining 14y agoBecause it's interesting.
- veb 14y agoI remember when this started happening, something trickled over to Reddit and so I investigated to get the full story. Needless to say, it was rather quite horrible and I really did feel for the girl. At the same time, I was utterly confused as to why on earth she tried to poke a hornets nest... It's a shame that people are still trying to ruin her life more. It's almost like some people think if something is done over a computer, it's not "real".
- dmix 14y agoI didn't feel bad for Timothy Treadwell when he got eaten by a grizzly bear as covered in the film, Grizzly Man. It was almost expected given his actions.
- ktizo 14y agoI felt bad for him, but not surprised at the outcome. But when grizzly bears ate Timothy Treadwell, they were not deliberately trying to be malicious, at least as far as we know.
- 3143 14y agoWho's to say that 4chan users, too, are not simply motivated by instinct, knowing neither malice or conscience?
- younata 14y ago... I'd love to read this, but there does not appear to be a way to read the full article on an iPad.
- awakeasleep 14y agoI feel that somewhere in the progress of western civilization, our culture lost track of some of the important but nasty sides of human nature. We censure them, and to an extent refuse to believe they exist. I hope that the 'wild internet' reintroduces society to the fact that people have a tendency to lash out and hurt others, and that reintroduction serves to help us put value back on thoughtful and caring behavior.
- andreasvc 14y agoThis is a perverted view of history. In fact, in small hunter-gatherer tribes it was easier to keep track of each other and hold each other accountable, so crossing someone would be risky. Today, with large societies that are increasingly anonymous, one can more easily get away with screwing people over--you can always move someplace else. So I don't think being nasty is particularly natural for humans, it just comes out in the right conditions where people are likely to get away with it.
- sltkr 14y agoOn the other hand, when people have nowhere else to go, they are extremely vulnerable to exploitation of those in power. (Go watch Dogville for an exploration of that idea.) I think it's a bit naive to suggest that if people lived in smaller communities, nothing nasty would happen to anyone.
- andreasvc 14y agoOutcasts are vulnerable, yes, but that's why you try to prevent becoming one. I have seen Dogville, but I don't see why this fictional anecdote would refute my thesis which is based on what I believe is the consensus in modern anthropology. I didn't imply that 'nothing nasty would happen to anyone', that's a straw man. I merely pointed out a contrast between small close-knit groups vs. large anonymous crowds.
- andrewflnr 14y agoIf nastiness wasn't natural, it would take more than being able to get away with it to bring it out.
- nvmc 14y agoSo some little camwhore decided to try and viral her porn site and it backfired? I'm struggling to find any sympathy.
- rulesofwriting 14y agoHey guys, I'm a journalist for a smaller news organization. If anyone has info or wants to comment, I'm trying to do a story on this. My e-mail is rulesofwriting@yahoo.com. I've seen 4chan in the news before, and I actually go on there for images since I do photography and film for fun. In any case, hit me up.