Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment

I've met and engaged both Jake and Nick at various times during their visits to Europe, and I've been left, each time, with the sense that - in both cases - there is a huge desire to create a cult of personality. In Nicks' case, it seems relative benign and harmless - he is a loud, funny guy, very boisterous and entertaining. Jake, also: loud and boisterous, but not so entertaining. Jake seems to travel with a laugh track everywhere he goes (fawning sycophants whose job it is to fill in the gaps between Jake's sentences with laughter)..

The point is, these are the kinds of characters that our scene attracts. It should come as no surprise that they are locking horns .. imagine if we were somehow able to harness all the power which either personality cults' provide and somehow channel it for the good of the hacker scene. Jake could do whatever it takes to set himself up as the Hacker Messiah, and Nick could keep the Circus from burning down/feeding itself to the lions.

Alas, this won't be the end of it, I'm quite sure. This sort of public dissing is precisely the sort of thing few are really capable of dealing with sanely .. perhaps the mob will just eat itself.

You are just lending yourself to number of the many judges of the court of public opinion now, yes? Here, you may take up the torch and pitchfork of office. Wield them proudly. If you can't catch Jake, who do you think you will go after next, now that you are all dressed up and no where to go?

I'm not going to delete it. That would be ridiculous considering my history. People can go look for themselves and ponder what this process means in comparison to any other sort of process that would be sane, safe, and consensual -- and accountable -- for all the people involved.

That site talks a great deal about the failings of the formal systems, but it really doesn't particularly seem to me to account for thttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible

I am not impressed. I am so not impressed. Even if it is 100% true, I am not impressed. And I am sorry for the victims if that is the case, and I apologize if they are doing this in good faith but it's wrong, and it opens up such potential for horrible horrible things in the future that they just haven't properly conceived of yet.

I am a feminist, and I have been raped, as many women have. And I say that this is WRONG. And I am a woman with Asperger's and I was chronically bullied and manipulated by asshats when I was younger, and I believe this is wrong.

The places this leads are a very fucked up rabbit hole and series of rabbit holes that go to a place that is not Wonderland, and where the drugs are not as pleasant as Dodson's epileptic fancies.

So Jake, if Jake is this predator, and say he is. Who is the next person that this is used against, this Blair Witch Predator doxxing? How popular will it become? Will it become the next GamerGate trend? Will we find TLAs stirring up little Stasi sites like this?

Or maybe just creating them for fun. How about our friends in Italy, or any of the state sponsored hacker funhouses, this site is so stylish, they could throw something like this up in an afternoon, for any of us. Even me. Even you? Do you have any oppo research? Anyone at FSF? Eben Moglen? rms? Any of my old friends? I'm sure we all have something worth digging up. I've done oppo. We all do.

Let's make this perfectly acceptable in our community. Let's make it meaningful. Let some real HELL into our lives, Joshua. We can make our community hell on earth. All we have to do is let the provocateurs be us.

This is the fastest route away from nonviolence theory and the Beloved Community and straight down that primrose path.

So, people saying things on the internet, in the press, out in the world, in many ways are permitted to speak freely. Anecdotes and personal opinions are permitted in civilized discourse, when the context is not a legal court of law.

All this is just so much gossip, and it's people blowing off pent up steam, and airing out frustration. Big deal. Reputations are on the line, and not much else.

  this "creating facts on the ground"

The real world doesn't actually operate on justice and ratios. Shit floats by. People get over it.

Dialog is not transactional. Conversations are not permanent and destroying. Not all statements are clinical diagnostics. As a dippy-doo in the peanut gallery, I don't feel very polarized. The internet flops about, and flippity floops, and so what?

You are not the only person to come to that conclusion. The entire situation is bizarre. Usually highly rational people are suddenly acting like an angry mob. Requests for information and explanation are ignored or shunned.

> We can make our community hell on earth.

I've been watching major parts of free, democratic society crumble for several decades. Normally change is slow, but recently we seem to be accelerating the transition into hell. The transition isn't limited to just our community: the same attitudes that treat accusations as evidence and polarize people into ideological tribes resulted in violence at a recent political rally in San Jose. Tribalism is growing rapidly, and I am absolutely terrified that society is far closer to the breaking point than anybody realizes.

> All we have to do is let the provocateurs be us.

As Walt Kelly famously said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."