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A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

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Re: A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

#101

Post by ncallaway »

silencio wrote: post #94
verroq wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also need to account for technical ability. There's way more technical male users who know how not only to harass, but to get away with it. On sites like Facebook where it's tied to a real life identity, I'd expect to see harassment drop significantly.

Identities don't change anything. I don't know what the solution is, but that's not it. My current, occasional stalker - someone in the tech industry, a fellow dev, someone probably reading HN, even - gave away his name, phone, address... and it checks out. Police won't take him as a serious threat though, so neither will anyone else (like Twitter). Police also won't just check on him because I think he's schizophren…

I'm really sorry you had to (and still have to) deal with that kind of harassment and threatening behavior.

The only question I'm left with is what can I do as an individual to help curtail it? I almost never see this behavior myself (presumably because bad actors intentionally hide their behavior) in real life so it's hard for me to call it out directly. How can I help out people that are being harassed in this way? Providing moral support doesn't feel like enough in the situation...

Re: A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

#102

Post by ncallaway »

Pxtl wrote: post #78
chiaro wrote: post #2

A shame the point needs to be repeatedly made. A five minute foray into the wasteland that is twitch chat will show some pretty stark differences between how men and women become targets for trolling and vitriol. While some of the concerns of the whole gamergate mess were perhaps reasonable at some point in time, the whole thing has disappeared under a huge number of people who see their any supposed righteousness as…

I tend to think Gamergate was a brewing culture war that was just looking for a spark to start the fire. Gamer culture has had a persecution complex for well over a generation, particularly with respect to the press - even the gaming press. Being repeatedly insulted and attacked by the media has made them circle their wagons instinctively. Combined with a substantial fraction of gamers that are intensely misogynistic…

I started seeing the phrase "Social Justice Warrior" used a lot as soon as #Gamergate happened. I have yet to see it well defined, though.

I realize it's tangential to your point, but I'm curious how would you define or describe a SJW?

Re: A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

#103

Post by Natsu »

andrewvc wrote: post #64
hug wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online harassment is not a small problem at all. It's a problem that definitely needs to be addressed, and women do see more of a specific type of harassment, which aligns nicely with what I said in my original post: "women clearly have it worse in terms of targeted sexual harassment." Like I said, it's interestingly overstated, though. Both you and andrewvc are engaging in the same type of cherrypicking I'm accused…

I think the thing you might not be aware of is that your posts are attempting to sidestep real issues. Instead of focusing the discussion around acknowledging and preventing abuse and discrimination, you're quibbling over whether women are harassed a whole lot, or a hell of a lot. Can you understand why that might seem like a diversionary tactic?

This is an article discussing a scientific attempt to quantify the levels of harassment. It seems odd to declare discussing the validity of that point as somehow off-limits in this particular context.

I'm no fan of abuse. I have faced harsh abuse and even been sexually harassed by a coworker in a fairly shocking manner. But that has nothing to do with the merits or statistics of the A/B test.

Re: A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

#104

Post by DanBC »

Pxtl wrote: post #78
chiaro wrote: post #2

A shame the point needs to be repeatedly made. A five minute foray into the wasteland that is twitch chat will show some pretty stark differences between how men and women become targets for trolling and vitriol. While some of the concerns of the whole gamergate mess were perhaps reasonable at some point in time, the whole thing has disappeared under a huge number of people who see their any supposed righteousness as…

I tend to think Gamergate was a brewing culture war that was just looking for a spark to start the fire. Gamer culture has had a persecution complex for well over a generation, particularly with respect to the press - even the gaming press. Being repeatedly insulted and attacked by the media has made them circle their wagons instinctively. Combined with a substantial fraction of gamers that are intensely misogynistic…

It's weird to see the term "sjw" used by someone who isn't a repellant fuckwit. It's been a reliable flag -at least on HN- so far. That's something you might want to be aware of.

Re: A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

#105

Post by Natsu »

silencio wrote: post #94
verroq wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also need to account for technical ability. There's way more technical male users who know how not only to harass, but to get away with it. On sites like Facebook where it's tied to a real life identity, I'd expect to see harassment drop significantly.

Identities don't change anything. I don't know what the solution is, but that's not it. My current, occasional stalker - someone in the tech industry, a fellow dev, someone probably reading HN, even - gave away his name, phone, address... and it checks out. Police won't take him as a serious threat though, so neither will anyone else (like Twitter). Police also won't just check on him because I think he's schizophren…

I'm really sorry to hear that. As someone who has faced sexual harassment at work, I feel for you.

Good luck shaking off the crazies.

Re: A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

#106

Post by ANTSANTS »

htns wrote: post #26
mesozoic wrote: post #14

Gamergate is leaking again.

Yeah, I've heard about Gamergate in a couple of wildly different contexts. What's the deal with it?

The bias is pretty clear in this comment thread, so here are some links from the other side to balance things out a bit:

GameJournoPros is a private mailing list of numerous influential game press members, from which numerous examples of corruption and collusion to choose the messages that the game press reports have surfaced, reminiscent of and literally named by its creator after the JournoList (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList) scandal from 2010:

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/17/Exposed...

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/21/GameJou...

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/18/The-ema...

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/10/GameJou...

Yanier "Niero" Gonzalez, owner of popular gaming news site Destructoid, colluded with GameJournoPros to blacklist a writer from the game journalism industry after a scandal:

http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/10/gamergate-destructo...

Clickbait sites and Youtube channels purposefully misrepresent games as sexist by abusing glitches and emergent behavior like ragdoll physics to portray the games in a negative light, purely to fan the flames of controversy for the ad impressions:

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/ngiujr

But it's all about sexism and hating women, right? A few bad apples aligned with the GamerGate movement spoil the whole bunch, right? It's not like anti-GamerGate bloggers would advocate bullying and violence:

http://gamergate.giz.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gawker-B...

http://gamergate.giz.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bring-ba...

...welcome the branding of the word "douchebag" as a racial slur against white men ("the racial slur we've all been waiting for," you can't make this shit up):

http://a.pomf.se/kblzcz.png

...call gay GamerGate supporters "fucking traitor scum to their people... that deserve nothing better than burning in hell for all eternity":

http://a.pomf.se/vrwobd.png

...compare GamerGate to the ebola virus:

https://twitter.com/fd1017/status/525512137234337793

...say that advertisers like Intel that pulled support over the controversy are "run by craven idiots... pusillanimous morons."

http://unvis.it/gawker.com/how-we-got-rolled-by-the-dishones...

...while using tactics like unjustified (and probably illegal) DMCA takedown notices to censor controversy:

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s4nmr1/

Re: A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

#107

Post by Natsu »

aptwebapps wrote: post #56
yummyfajitas wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tl;dr its all in the mind of the receiver (aka psychological). Though I suspect that by rephrasing the exact same thing you said, I shall be down voted to [dead] shortly.

"its all in the mind of the receiver (aka psychological)" Two points: 1) Except when it isn't. 2) Isn't that enough? What are we, robots? It's true that some people might be able to treat the two things the same and not be affected, but they're a tiny minority. Harm is harm, even if you think that everyone should have thicker skin.

@yummyfajitas - it appears that all of your posts are dead right now. I'm not clear if you've been banned after many downvotes or what, but the last several posts are all dead now.

Re: A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

#108

Post by meowface »

andrewvc wrote: post #64
hug wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online harassment is not a small problem at all. It's a problem that definitely needs to be addressed, and women do see more of a specific type of harassment, which aligns nicely with what I said in my original post: "women clearly have it worse in terms of targeted sexual harassment." Like I said, it's interestingly overstated, though. Both you and andrewvc are engaging in the same type of cherrypicking I'm accused…

I think the thing you might not be aware of is that your posts are attempting to sidestep real issues. Instead of focusing the discussion around acknowledging and preventing abuse and discrimination, you're quibbling over whether women are harassed a whole lot, or a hell of a lot. Can you understand why that might seem like a diversionary tactic?

I see no problem with discussing and analyzing this issue, especially given the clearly unscientific suggestions made in the linked article.

If it is true that women and men are both harassed "a whole lot" on average, then it changes certain details of the discussion. If women are harassed more on average, then that changes things as well. No one here is supporting harassment of anyone, regardless of gender or any other status.

Re: A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

#109

Post by meowface »

ncallaway wrote: post #102
Pxtl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to think Gamergate was a brewing culture war that was just looking for a spark to start the fire. Gamer culture has had a persecution complex for well over a generation, particularly with respect to the press - even the gaming press. Being repeatedly insulted and attacked by the media has made them circle their wagons instinctively. Combined with a substantial fraction of gamers that are intensely misogynistic…

I started seeing the phrase "Social Justice Warrior" used a lot as soon as #Gamergate happened. I have yet to see it well defined, though. I realize it's tangential to your point, but I'm curious how would you define or describe a SJW?

Traditionally, the term has been used to describe people who make comments like http://i.imgur.com/QMbGVLG.png or http://i.imgur.com/vJgiov8.jpg or http://i.imgur.com/fMcjKsg.png.

Essentially, radical social justice viewpoints taken to absurd extremes. Sometimes to the point of expressing highly racist, homophobic, or transphobic views in the course of supporting some other group they feel is even more persecuted than those groups.

Now, the term is being thrown around by some people to describe those who are left leaning and support a viewpoint they disagree with.

So-called "Social Justice Warriors" are indeed an actual and rather ridiculous (yet amusing) group on the Internet, mostly centered around Tumblr, but their overall population density is pretty low compared to progressives and feminists in general.

Re: A Natural A/B Test of Harassment

#110

Post by ncallaway »

DanBC wrote: post #4
dvt wrote: post #3

> It’s pretty easy to look at these messages and see young males acting out in hopes of attention. But what societal and psychological dynamic is at play that they target a female at such a disproportionate rate to a male? Could be a million things. How about testosterone, the sexualization of just about everything online and on TV, and the courage brought on by anonymity on the internet? Of course, asking what "soci…

Gamergate claims to be about journalistic integrity. I hear the names of women, but never the male journalists. > Maybe, but let's not forget what incident started Gamergate: Zoe Quinn; an entitled, unethical, and hypocritical developer (female or otherwise). You're spreading the same lies.

Edit: This comment assumes arguendo that the original claims of Gamergate are true. I do not necessarily make or agree with that assumption.

This is the portion of Gamergate that, too me, doesn't fit in with the claims of being entirely about journalistic ethics.

If the situation were a journalist and a developer went out on the town for an evening of fancy drinks paid for by the developer, followed by the journalist writing a positive review for the developer, we would be primarily be upset at the journalist for their breach of ethics.

Similarly, when a congressman takes a bribe, we are mostly mad at the congressman. When a doctor takes compensation to push certain pharmaceuticals, we largely get upset at the doctor.

In this specific instance, the vitriol seems to be directed primarily at the developer, and the journalist is largely ignored. What is the different, in this case, that causes us to fixate on the developer and not the journalist?

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