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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

#71

Post by songrabbit »

Cushman wrote: post #33
buu700 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you go from "bears have no moral responsibility" to "it's okay to shoot bears"?

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.

> basically, moral responsibility is commutative

oh dear. this is scary

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

#72

Post by ktizo »

dmix wrote: post #67
andreasvc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think empathy is more of an experience you feel when confronted with a situation or story, rather than something you grant to people after a process of logical judgement.

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

#73

Post by theorique »

kaonashi wrote: post #7
Ensorceled wrote: post #2

"I think I will poke this bear with this pointed stick I'm holding ... what could go wrong?" Not defending 4Chan here but, wow, this is "walking alone in the bad part of town at midnight" type of stupid.

That's not even dangerously close to blaming the victim; that is blaming the victim.

It absolutely is blaming the victim.

But what are we supposed to do when the victim bears some responsibility (obviously not all) for the process of their victimization?

Most people have some concept of a moral ladder ranging from "totally innocent bystander" to "criminal who deserved what they got". For example: a person who dies while standing on a NYC sidewalk and gets hit by a falling air conditioner is essentially blameless; a person who dies by being shot by a police officer while robbing a store at gunpoint earned their just reward.

Most situations, including this one, are less clear cut. She's not 0% responsible. She's not 100% responsible. But the correct number is somewhere in between. 5%? 10%? 20%? I don't know, and since I'm not presiding over a courtroom where she's suing 4chan, it's not my business to decide either.

In any case, to suggest that a person who freely chooses to venture into one of the seediest holes on the Internet, and then actively taunts and trolls the inhabitants (who are known to be vengeful, technically capable, and gifted with a lot of free time and tenacity) is absolutely and completely free from responsibility? ... Well, I'm not sure how to answer that.

Did /b/ overreact like a bunch of immature, possibly criminal, jerks? Of course they did. They played their part perfectly, living up to their terrible reputation. And if any of them have broken the law, then it's right that law enforcement get involved and the responsible parties be punished.

Does this young woman deserve this? Of course not.

But to ask the question, "what the hell was she thinking?", and to judge her partly responsible for the situation, is perfectly legitimate. She didn't deserve what happened, but she's not completely from responsibility for the outcome either.

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

#74

Post by dmix »

ktizo wrote: post #72
dmix wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think empathy is more of an experience you feel when confronted with a situation or story, rather than something you grant to people after a process of logical judgement.

I disagree that empathy can only be the result of an emotional response and not rational thought.

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

#75

Post by huggah »

marshray wrote: post #42
mcantelon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Spoken like someone who has never been slut-shamed. Or had his/her leg blown off by a landmine. Lord knows it ain't easy being a slutty amputee.

But wouldn't it be awesome if one showed up and made an insightful contribution to the conversation? If I were a woman who had lost a limb in combat and had had a higher than average number of boyfriends, I think I would probably feel quite insulted that people were assuming I was unable to reason logically about the OP's premise.

In this case, wasn't the poster assuming that you (the slut-shamed landmine victim) were unable to avoid reasoning correctly? Without taking sides here, it seems as if the poster was saying "you're wrong about X, therefore you couldn't be part of group Y that would know about X".

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

#76

Post by andreasvc »

dmix wrote: post #67
andreasvc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ethical and emotional matters are typically seen as separate from rational concerns. Empathy is not something that healthy people have a short supply of. Time and energy is another thing, but a person being eaten generally makes people feel bad.

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

#77

Post by theorique »

wam wrote: post #48
marshray wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like someone who has never been slut-shamed. Classic ad hominem. People don't actually get maimed because they stupidly walked into a minefield. The operative term here is 'hypothetical analogy'. By insisting on the accuracy of the morbidity statistics of real-world minefields you're intentionally confusing the point and trying to derail the discussion.

I don't know. The only rail I see in this discussion is "wow, she should have known better." Nothing about how pathological the response was, nothing about the culture that encourages that community to retaliate with such vengeance and mirth. All of that is in the story, and in the background, but we're not talking about that... we're talking about whether or not she should have known better. That's the rail.

OK, let's talk about that:

"4chan /b/ is immature, toxic, stupid, and destructive"

In other news, water is really quite wet. Seriously, what else can be said about this that is not just repeating some variation of the above?

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

#78

Post by dmix »

andreasvc wrote: post #76
dmix wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ethical and emotional matters are typically seen as separate from rational concerns. Empathy is not something that healthy people have a short supply of. Time and energy is another thing, but a person being eaten generally makes people feel bad.

But I didn't say I don't feel bad when people get killed by bears in a general sense. Context is really important.

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

#79

Post by macchina »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #50
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…

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.

The bad news is this started a month ago and this type of media coverage unfortunately restores their interest.

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

#80

Post by 3143 »

andreasvc wrote: post #58
3143 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's to say that 4chan users, too, are not simply motivated by instinct, knowing neither malice or conscience?

No, because it's bloody obvious that they're doing things specifically to hurt people. Humans don't desecrate graves by instinct, that requires malice, I'd say.

Hurting other people is an instinct.
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