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Trouble at the Koolaid Point

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Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#61

Post by tomp »

iherbig wrote: post #31
verroq wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>willingly allows to exist subreddits devoted towards domestic abuse and snuff Serious question: why does this even bother you?

I am not who you asked, but if I may step in? It bothers me for the same reason it bothers me that those things exist. They are terrible, and should not be given a platform. I don't feel that we, as a society, should tolerate terrible things in general, much less let them prosper.

> I don't feel that we, as a society, should tolerate terrible things in general, much less let them prosper.

You mean premarital sex, homosexuality, genital mutilation and women showing their faces? Hint: two of those things are still considered normal in much of the world.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#62

Post by pjc50 »

McDoku wrote: post #38

My take away from this article is simply raise your standards of people. Esteem should not be so fickle, it should mean something. Our culture has a very short attention spans and we exalt the wrong people. It creates a weird tension. Being a bad actor is an equal opportunity field and the doubt this creates grows until reasonable people are swallowed. We have no willingness to forgive and this puritanism has in the…

What do you mean by "exalt the wrong people"? People like weev?

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#64

Post by pmjordan »

gknoy wrote: post #47
pmjordan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Victim blaming/"they deserve it": "For the most part, high-profile "targets" from the troll's perspective are already known to the public anyway."

I think they meant more that it was the trolls' targeting critera ("Has lots of Attention, and 'doesn't deserve it" implies someone you can google, or who has a relatively large following), NOT that it was any implication that the target deserves such abuse.

I read it as "If you don't want to be harassed, you shouldn't have a public presence."

FWIW, immediately before that sentence, the thread-starter called into question the real danger of doxxing and calls to "action" based on the released information/misinformation.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#65

Post by cmdkeen »

kansface wrote: post #42
iherbig wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not who you asked, but if I may step in? It bothers me for the same reason it bothers me that those things exist. They are terrible, and should not be given a platform. I don't feel that we, as a society, should tolerate terrible things in general, much less let them prosper.

May I ask where you are from? Free speech - bigoted, hateful, maybe untrue, or otherwise, is perhaps the one enduring (sacred) tenet of American society.

Harassment isn't. One of the big points of the article is that when law enforcement doesn't act that is justification that the action is legal and thus "free speech". Except that law enforcement almost never acts against online harassment. There are plenty of laws restricting free speech when it harms others, and I'd hope you agree that some of the examples in the article crosses the boundary into things that should be criminal.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#66

Post by PhasmaFelis »

[deleted] wrote: post #14

[deleted]

> What I don't get is why people willingly go onto an online community (knowing that there exist a potential for harassment) and then cry about it when it happens.

> As before, downvoters should explain their reasoning.

All right. I'm downvoting you for (a) victim-blaming, because you're basically saying that anyone who participates in any online community should expect an organized campaign of social violence and have only themselves to blame for it, (b) because you seem to imply that staying anonymous is sufficient protection when there are trolls who specialize in uncovering identities, and (c) because you're pretending that not intentionally participating in a community makes you safe from that community. Right now, in Gamergate, we've got a bunch of dudes trying to manufacture a political movement based on hounding one woman out of her home because her ex says she cheated on him.

Basically, in your world, no one deserves to be safe unless they cut off all human ties and live like a hermit. And that's bullshit.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#67

Post by Niten »

jmduke wrote: post #3

This is an excellent, brave thing to write and I originally had a long comment highlighting a bunch of particularly poignant paragraphs that I deleted because really you should just read the entire thing. Neither I nor the vast majority of the people I know have ever been subject to online harassment and it makes me thankful that there are incredible people like Kathy out there. Lord knows I wouldn't have the courage…

I wouldn't call MetaFilter a particularly high quality community. Discussions there can have just as many trite and trollish comments as your average subreddit.

How MetaFilter differs is in that it features a rigid, hierarchical moderation structure, with gatekeepers who ensure posted content meets the stringent politically-correct tastes of its leadership. As a result I have seen legitimately interesting, good-faith discussion censored there, for no other reason than that it offended the sensibilities of some moderator. (This article was removed by a moderator, for example: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software)

It is a huge mistake to confuse enforced, intellectually sterile homogeneity for quality.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#68

Post by kartikkumar »

Yikes! What an incredibly brave blog to write. I can't even begin to fathom what life has been like for her over the last 10 years.

I don't know any of the backstory to this, so I'm taking the blog at face value. Even if only 1% of what she say is accurate (and I'm inclined to lean the opposite way), it's absolutely horrendous.

How is it possible that people behave this way? I don't understand what the line of justification can be. It's just cold-hearted, mean and vicious behaviour. I can't understand what benefit is drawn from treating someone like this.

Is there by chance a theory of sociopathy that covers this kind of behaviour?

I hope I never, ever make the terrible mistake of even unknowingly treating someone in this manner.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#69

Post by tomp »

scribu wrote: post #22
[deleted] wrote: post #14

[deleted]

I think there are several points: 1. Most people starting out online are not aware that "Your chances of being harassed increases linearly as your popularity." and most people that haven't been abused online themselves don't think it's a serious problem. 2. The ratio of harassment to popularity is not a universal constant; it can be improved. 3. By shedding light on the issue, there is at least a hope that the situat…

> By shedding light on the issue, there is at least a hope that the situation can be improved. If nobody talks about this, then there's no way things can get better. On the contrary, silence would probably make things worse, as trolls would learn that they can get away with it.

Are you sure about that? It's not like if you tell a thief that stealing is bad, they won't steal any more. Also, a counter point would be, trolls want attention, and the more we talk about it, the more attention, and hence satisfaction, they get. Of course, talking about it might also bring about changes in law, but in my experience, most of the laws about the internet are really about censorship/control, and only use "harassment"/"child porn"/"piracy"/whatever as a popular excuse.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#70

Post by pmjordan »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #45
valas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points, but they don't help much if you're active victim of trolling. E.g. try to sleep at night if they doxxed your children :-( Technology affects culture (and vice-a-versa). Trolling is/was rampant in blogosphere and Twitter, but I have impression that Facebook and Google+, who both enforce much hated real-names policies, have less of a trolling component.

I guess it's because Facebook and Google+ are built mostly around reinforcing meatspace relationships. It's harder to be an asshole if your family, friends and cow-orkers read your comments.

You'd be surprised how happily people will make abusive and hateful comments on sites with facebook comments.
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