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What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

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Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#61

Post by icebraining »

jackpirate wrote: post #55
icebraining wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a ridiculous example, and in fact it proves the opposite. Notice that we only shoot bears that are actually eating hikers, even though no bear actually have moral responsibility toward us; that's because we as a society do feel moral responsibility towards bears (and animals in general), and therefore avoid shooting them except when required. We certainly don't feel anywhere near the same moral responsibility…

Notice that we only shoot bears that are actually eating hikers Not true. Bears are a popular animal to hunt in every state in the US that has them.

Right, I was speaking as a non-US citizen.

That said, there are various animals which we do not hunt; bears were just the given example.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#62

Post by noahc »

icebraining wrote: post #49
Cushman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 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.

That's a ridiculous example, and in fact it proves the opposite. Notice that we only shoot bears that are actually eating hikers, even though no bear actually have moral responsibility toward us; that's because we as a society do feel moral responsibility towards bears (and animals in general), and therefore avoid shooting them except when required. We certainly don't feel anywhere near the same moral responsibility…

Michigan[1], Maine[2], and Minnesota[3] to name just a few states have a bear season.

[1]http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-10363_10856_57530_5...

[2]http://maine.gov/ifw/hunting_trapping/hunting/bear.htm

[3]http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/hunting/bear/index.html

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#63

Post by awakeasleep »

I 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.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#64

Post by andreasvc »

dmix wrote: post #45
veb wrote: post #34

I 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 ov…

I 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.

That's a pretty callous thing to say. How do you get from a person was being misguided to they deserved their horrible fate?

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#65

Post by andreasvc »

awakeasleep wrote: post #63

I 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…

This 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.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#66

Post by andreasvc »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #59
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news is Anonymous, representing the hive mind of the most primitive human desires before they've been filtered out by one's conscience, has a set attention span. They will eventually stop in about a week or two. It will get old to them and they'll move on.

I would bet their attention span is more like a power law distribution. While the vast majority will taper off over a couple of weeks, the long tail will be there to make sure the victim gets whats coming for an "appropriate" amount of time. My assumption is that it is just like "real life" where something might be big drama in the family for a week or two. After that, only one or two people will still talk about it,…

Indeed, stalkers can obsess over people for years. It is not unlikely that such people could be attracted to a commotion such as this.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#67

Post by dmix »

andreasvc wrote: post #64
dmix wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

That's a pretty callous thing to say. How do you get from a person was being misguided to they deserved their horrible fate?

I try to evaluate things rationally.

Just as I give both Timothy (who had spent 13 summer living among bears) and this girl (who as the article says was an old time /b/ user) the benefit of the doubt, that they rationally knew the extreme dangers that existed.

There's already enough tragedy that happens in this world - due to pure circumstance and things out of our control.

I only have a limited amount of energy and time on this planet. My empathy is better spent on the latter individuals than on those who knowingly put themselves in direct danger of being harmed.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#68

Post by noahc »

icebraining wrote: post #49
Cushman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 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.

That's a ridiculous example, and in fact it proves the opposite. Notice that we only shoot bears that are actually eating hikers, even though no bear actually have moral responsibility toward us; that's because we as a society do feel moral responsibility towards bears (and animals in general), and therefore avoid shooting them except when required. We certainly don't feel anywhere near the same moral responsibility…

I think you're actually mistaking religious for urban. In the Bible we talk about dominion over all animals, that is certainly a part of western culture, but few people actually believes that one should walk around randomly kicking puppies and shooting kittens in the head because they can.

Instead, I would argue that this is a function of urbanization and removal of a connection between humans and animals. Animals, which provide meat, eggs, and milk are removed as the providers as such and instead these things come from the grocery store. Because of this disconnect, animals undergo a process of anthropomorphism, which can clearly be seen in the form of lolcatz.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#69

Post by icebraining »

noahc wrote: post #68
icebraining wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a ridiculous example, and in fact it proves the opposite. Notice that we only shoot bears that are actually eating hikers, even though no bear actually have moral responsibility toward us; that's because we as a society do feel moral responsibility towards bears (and animals in general), and therefore avoid shooting them except when required. We certainly don't feel anywhere near the same moral responsibility…

I think you're actually mistaking religious for urban. In the Bible we talk about dominion over all animals, that is certainly a part of western culture, but few people actually believes that one should walk around randomly kicking puppies and shooting kittens in the head because they can. Instead, I would argue that this is a function of urbanization and removal of a connection between humans and animals. Animals, w…

I'm not mistaking anything, I'm drawing from an actual study[1]. Feel free to provide evidence discrediting it.

And you point out as evidence of the disconnect between the urban people and farm animals, by giving the example of the anthropomorphism of cats, which happen to be one of the few animals that actually live with people in urban environments? I can't even comprehend such logic.

[1]: http://www.animalsandsociety.org/assets/library/745_s3.pdf

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#70

Post by georgebarnett »

veb wrote: post #34

I 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 ov…

I wonder how much of this issue is aggravated by the fact that we are unable to identify children on the internet. In regular society, we would not dream of putting up with anti-social behaviour of this type but online we seem only too fight for their right to do this, with what seem to be rather drastic consequences.
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