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Trouble at the Koolaid Point

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Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#251

Post by sqrt17 »

pjc50 wrote: post #159
sqrt17 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the article linked is exactly that: separate out the misogyny from the trolling. Expose how the trolls (or that particular troll) use any kind of story that they can construct, be it misogyny, misandry, censorship, whatever people at large hate or fear, to construct polarizing narratives aimed at damaging individual people. I response to your implied question why this is perceived as much more interestin…

I don't think you can separate ideology and morality entirely from this. Even the statement "it's wrong to harass people for entertainment" is ideological.

The statement "it's wrong to harass people for entertainment" is much less ideological to the extent that (i) you do not immediately jump to conclusions such as "you must be a pro-peace rather than a pro-lulz person then" or (ii) people do not make statements such as "any person who cares for [important thing X] must support the case of [entertainment rather than boredom || giving people peace of mind]"

Ideology starts when you automatically view an instance of a decision on a particular topic as a person's disposition towards that topic, and automatically view a person's disposition towards one topic as a reason to put a label on them and ascribe to them dispositions towards totally unrelated topics.

A non-ideological stance can consist in noting that, while many occasions have shown a co-occurrence of sexism-related idiocy and trolling, they are not the same thing (see Lennart Poettering being harassed for non-sexist reasons), and hence we have multiple angles of attack: combating the trolls through effective lawful action (which is a bit tedious, but still what OP thinks should be done when the guy in person has a well-known track record of harassing people in ways that frequently go beyond what's funny or harmless), combating people's willingness to act on behalf of trolls (e.g. reddit and 4chan's ban on personal-army type posts), as well as acting on the polarizing issues that make people more prone to get drawn into these astroturfing-initiated conflicts (which is a hard thing to do).

Do we have a moral common ground to do any of this? Absolutely. Even if we suspend contentious arguments and ideological blame-shifting.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#252

Post by mkr-hn »

tedks wrote: post #239
mkr-hn wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the violent neo-Nazis? Where are the Baptists going out gaybashing after Sunday service? I don't see it. You said a lot of airy, high-minded things without actually supporting your position.

In France, lighting fires outside synagogues and chanting "Jews to the gas": http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/07/antisemitism-... On the Mexican-American border with assault weapons, picking off migrant workers trying to find work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuteman_Civil_Defense_Corps In Greece, leading a prominent political party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_%28political_party... And i…

> This isn't the greatest part of white supremacy or homophobia but it does exist and to claim it doesn't is either ignorance or (now that you don't have that excuse) willful complicity.

Wait, back up. Who said they don't exist? Your claim was that letting people be bigoted makes it worse, not that it creates the problem in the first place.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#253

Post by mkr-hn »

cbd1984 wrote: post #249
tedks wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France, lighting fires outside synagogues and chanting "Jews to the gas": http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/07/antisemitism-... On the Mexican-American border with assault weapons, picking off migrant workers trying to find work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuteman_Civil_Defense_Corps In Greece, leading a prominent political party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_%28political_party... And i…

> And in America, dressed as police, shooting any black man they care to. False equivalence is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

This country is pretty bad about race. It's a struggle getting the average person to even acknowledge that racism is still a thing. But I don't agree with tedks that banning racism (or other bigotries) is going to solve anything. People are still going to be bigots. They'll just hide it better.

Making them hide their bigotry will seem like a solution in the short term, but it never ends well. And on a personal level, I would rather the bigots be open about it so I can avoid them. As long as they're not voting away my rights or being violent, the psychological harm is manageable.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#255

Post by ijk »

zyx321 wrote: post #244
ijk wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Kain's article is a description of the exact kind of harassment campaign described in the original article. So the first sense I meant is that the contents of the article are the exact thing talked about. For the DMCA: "unverifiable" is probably a better description than "unsourced", but the part I wanted to highlight was how this whole thing followed the exact playbook described in Kathy Sierra's essay. Second…

So just let me just get this right... You believe that an article that describes both sides' claims without judging either is "harassment" and that instead of something that "can be used [...] against either side" we should be looking at articles and authors that are directly and openly associated with Kotaku/Gawker or Polygon/Vox for a more "even-handed" look? Is that correct?

No, I didn't say that article itself is harassment. Just that it isn't as even-handed as it tries to appear.

I just grabbed to Vox link because it was one of the more even-handed summaries from the more general news sites, regardless of association. Read both and come to your own conclusion if that makes you feel better.

I suppose I can dig up something by someone with absolutely no association with any of this, but those people generally aren't writing about this at all. That's part of the problem with that particular mess: everyone who can talk about it already knows each other and have probably already been attacked by one side or the other.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#256

Post by golgappi »

rturben wrote: post #185
zzzeek wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though I haven't followed any of this person's journey that she's recounting and can't simply trust her retelling of what happened (based on the fact that I really don't know anything about weev or Kathy or their online presences), saying this is so unnecessary. The harassment Kathy has received is widely documented, for years. Do a little googling up front instead of unnecessarily dishing out assorted seeds of dou…

The intent of the sentence was to point out that her article is important because it speaks out about something that's outrageous, regardless of if the reader knows who is writing it. I did google both of them, and read some of her other blog posts. I'm not going to proclaim though that I really understand what's happening after 25 minutes on google. It's irrelevant to her deeper point.

Like you, even I was unaware of her and the incidents in the past. I read this post last night and thought its just another post by a woman in tech seeking attention. However, saw the comments here and decided to read more about her, and now I feel sad.

I think it makes more sense to know who whom this is coming from, what she has suffered rather than someone who was never a victim writing about it.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#257

Post by swandriven »

wpietri wrote: post #237
swandriven wrote: post #230

Why is it the only time I hear about Kathy Sierra is when she's talking about being harassed? The world is full of all types of people who get their kicks in all types of ways. Unless you propose monitoring everybody so that any offensive speech can be punished, there is always going to be a contingent that will capitalize on any chink in psychological armor just to get someone's ire up. When someone's image primaril…

> And finally, if this article itself is about harassment and speaking truth to power, then why do I feel compelled to use a throwaway account to post this comment? Because you show all of the sympathy and concern of an albino crocodile? Because you indulge in blatant victim-blaming? Because after (maybe) reading about the horrific campaign of calculated abuse, all you can care about is yourself? And, of course, beca…

That's an awful lot of ad hominem. I made some other points too, you know.

You're right that other people would think less of me, for the same reason I could never hope to refute your attacks - the narrative for this topic has left the domain of logic, and is based solely on hysterical feelings.

Now that nerds have achieved societal glamor through VC money and social acceptance from selling their mothers and friends to Apple and Google, they've eagerly formed the same oppressive mob as everyone else.

At least the jocks ran on a shallow strategy that was easy to understand and avoid. This new set of bullies exerts endless brainpower fooling everyone (most importantly themselves) that they're "making a better world." Alas, we all know how that turns out - same shit, different day.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#258

Post by magicalist »

pjc50 wrote: post #154
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great attitude. But I wonder if 'refuting trolls' is the same as feeding them. What else is there to try?

The key thing is to break down the vague word "trolling" into specific bad actions. Threats. Verbal abuse. Inciting harm. Doxxing. It's fairly easy to get people to agree that these are bad and use the existing antispam machinery to get rid of them. You don't refute death threats, you delete them, ban the user, and if they're persistent enough report them to the police. The older sense of troll (posting controversial…

> You don't refute death threats, you delete them, ban the user, and if they're persistent enough report them to the police.

This is the same as ignoring them, unfortunately, and the article goes on at great length at how that's not sufficient. A blocked user makes another account, and can still goad others into joining them. Meanwhile the police do nothing in nearly all cases. From the article:

> You’re probably more likely to win the lottery than to get any law enforcement agency in the United States to take action when you are harassed online, no matter how viscously and explicitly. Local agencies lack the resources, federal agencies won’t bother.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#259

Post by dragontamer »

wpietri wrote: post #240
dragontamer wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, removing anonymity has made things worse over time. Facebook and Youtube now have open racists who push their malignant opinion upon everyone now, and are proud enough to sign their name next to it.

I think this is, to put it mildly, undemonstrated. The KKK wore hoods for a reason. Sure, there were plenty of racists willing to be open about their views. But letting people be anonymous assholes greatly increases the awfulness. Even gamers know it: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Your viewpoint is similarly "undemonstrated".

Weev's public identity is known. That didn't stop him from trolling or harassing the subject of the article.

-------

EDIT: also, the Penny Arcade comic you linked was from 2004, literally 2 or 3 years before the invention of youtube and long before Twitter and Facebook existed.

The opinion contained in the said comic does not, and cannot apply to the modern internet, where Anonymity is beginning to be stripped away and yet the trolling / harassing problems are clearly remaining.

Indeed, it has only gotten easier to get doxxed online and humiliated by the trolls, now that we communicate through Facebook and our names are attached to us in Google / Youtube / everything.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#260

Post by magicalist »

swandriven wrote: post #257
wpietri wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And finally, if this article itself is about harassment and speaking truth to power, then why do I feel compelled to use a throwaway account to post this comment? Because you show all of the sympathy and concern of an albino crocodile? Because you indulge in blatant victim-blaming? Because after (maybe) reading about the horrific campaign of calculated abuse, all you can care about is yourself? And, of course, beca…

That's an awful lot of ad hominem. I made some other points too, you know. You're right that other people would think less of me, for the same reason I could never hope to refute your attacks - the narrative for this topic has left the domain of logic, and is based solely on hysterical feelings . Now that nerds have achieved societal glamor through VC money and social acceptance from selling their mothers and friends…

> That's an awful lot of ad hominem. I made some other points too, you know

Given the content of both your comments here, this response is ludicrous.

Without engaging with any of the content of the article you say the author's behavior of objecting to harassment was itself a necessary cause for that harassment, you attack those calling for less anonymity without actually arguing why that would be a bad thing, you appeal to your own standing in the HN community as if that number means something without being willing to back that up, you claim to be unable to refute any attacks because those attacks are only based on hysterical feelings, and then you name the nerds "selling their mothers and friends" as the new bullies because a single person rightly pointed out why your original comment was shit.

I'd say take your own advice: drop the hysteria and try to make an actual argument next time.

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