[Sir Thursday]

Morgoth, on 31 August 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

Yeah, if you don't want to be harassed you shouldn't join Twitter on facebook. If you don't want strange men to grope you on your way to work you should just buy a car, or find another job closer to home. If you didn't want to be treated like a lesser human being for being black you shouldn't have moved to Bumfuck, AC.

It's all about sucking it up and being a man.

The situation is deplorable and there should be controls in place to prevent it from happening. I agree very strongly that what should be happening in cases like this (or in any of the ones that you describe) the people whose behaviours need to the change are the ones perpetrating the abuse. However, until that happens it is not unreasonable to suggest that people take precautions for their own well-being. In the same way that you might, for example, decide to take a taxi rather than walk through a bad neighbourhood on your way home.

worrywort, on 31 August 2012 - 01:33 AM, said:

Yah, but that's verging on talking about a different subject. What happened in the OP wasn't public criticism of someone with thin skin. You're not the first to make that comparison, but it's simply not analogous.

It was an incredibly nasty personal attack, far beyond anything you would reasonably expect to be subject to. But I don't think it's completely different, just an incredibly extreme case of the same thing. We have, on the one hand, comments that are designed to hurt, and on the other hand someone who did something they otherwise would not have done because of the comments.

ST

[worry]

Even if one grants that it's an incredibly extreme case of the same thing, the incredibly extreme case is the kind we're talking about...I mean, it's precisely the one Shiara introduced the thread with. It was others (like I said, not just you) who took it into the opposite, minimized extreme in order to make a different point. Where exactly did the impulse to do that come from? If someone made a thread about a woman who got beat to death by a man with his bare hands, would your first impulse be to comment about how tickling isn't that bad, people shouldn't overreact? I doubt it.

Maybe you guys are skipping right to the one guy who told her to hang herself (sure, awful, but big whoop, one small blip on the radar) and missed the whole part about 9gag making a concerted, coordinated effort to bombard her with harassment? Cuz I'm pretty sure that's the predominate issue here. That said, I'm not arguing that a much smaller group of people (or one person) can't cause havoc in another person's life this way either, as anyone familiar with the Kathleen Edward/Jennifer Petkov case can attest.

Besides all that, there's the fact that "man up" might be the stupidest sentiment conceived by man or beast in all of history, but that's a different issue.

[QuickTidal]

WW: The topic of the thread is "Twitter Trolling" so THAT's what it's about on the whole...the example of the death threats and concerted attack is terrible and those people ought to be caught and charged for that...but I feel that (and she can correct me if I'm mistaken) Shiara was opening the floor up about Twitter (or social media) trolling in general, from all aspects.

This is the discussion board after all...are we meant then only to talk about the specific example Shiara noted? I think it's probably going to be across the board agreement on the fact that those 9Gag people ought to be caught and charged for such crimes...but the floor should be open to talk about the whole can of worms no?

[worry]

No, I don't think Shiara's specific example is the limit, but I do think reducing it to one-off trolling (even really mean trolling) is besides the point, it's almost a different subject matter from harassment and "cyberbullying" (as I said above). I'm not gatekeeping the topic or trying to put words in Shiara's mouth, I'm explicitly saying as part of the discussion that those analogies don't hold up , and I think Morgoth's post posits several great examples along those lines. If trolling doesn't rise to the level of otherwise criminal behavior (that happens to be protected by anonymity), then how is it comparable? Why would you (generic you, not you QT) choose the polar opposite level of trolling to make your point, if you weren't being glib or just more naively surface-level on the subject? To my knowledge, there's no police investigation being conducted on the guy who made this:



It's a different beast.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 31 August 2012 - 04:44 PM

[QuickTidal]

Morgoth's post/examples assumes that the someone on the other side of the world typing on a keyboard affects someone physically. The analogy kind of falls apart for me there, since probably 98% of the time it simply can't affect you physically (I'm allowing 2% for mental anguish for those who really allow word-bullying to get to them and therefore it could feasibly affect their mental health) like Morgoth's examples can. AKA being physically harassed on the subway, or discriminated against in a redneck racist town and being typed at on Twitter aren't even in the same ballpark.

And remember that the post topic is Twitter Trolling. "Trolling" is the word Shiara chose to use and both you and Macros have made the argument that the content of the OP and example is NOT "trolling".

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 31 August 2012 - 05:08 PM

[worry]

I grant you that the topic of "trolling" has a wide span. That's just not what I'm arguing against. "Trolling" is an inherently harmless, playful term on it ssurface...but things that rise to the level of harassment or whatever else can and are dismissed as "mere" trolling until it goes too far. And when you add mob mentality to those situations, it is a lot more likely to go too far. And even then, as is evident, it's still dismissed and minimized as thin skin.

2%? I think you're massively underestimating the level of "mental anguish" caused by verbal bullying, frankly, as well as how it can manifest physically or health-wise. As Shiara mentioned above, you never know what's inside the person you're dealing with. I've never seen a cyberbully be so polite as to offer a trigger warning just in case there's an abuse survivor on the other end. And I don't think the glut of LGBT suicides is a sign that people can't take physical pain.

And Morgoth's point wasn't about equating physical attacks with verbal ones anyway, it was about the logic of the argument that "If you don't like it or can't hack it, just don't use _______" which is not only bad logic (Morgoth pointing out the parallel logic in all those cases), it's victim-blaming.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 31 August 2012 - 05:32 PM

[worry]

Like I'm sure you've heard the joke: A man visits his doctor and informs him, "It hurts when I do this." The doctor replies, "I see. Well then, don't do that." Sure, it's an answer, but is that the logic you'd want?

This post has been edited by worrywort: 31 August 2012 - 05:46 PM

[QuickTidal]

worrywort, on 31 August 2012 - 05:32 PM, said:

And Morgoth's point wasn't about equating physical attacks with verbal ones anyway, it was about the logic of the argument that "If you don't like it or can't hack it, just don't use _______" which is not only bad logic (Morgoth pointing out the parallel logic in all those cases), it's victim-blaming.

If you walked up to a police officer and asked what the best way to stay safe in your city was...what would they tell you? Would they tell you, "Don't worry about that. We've got this covered, no one can harass you while we are on the case"?

I bet you the first thing out of their mouth would be to avoid areas that are known to be bad, be aware of your surroundings and don't do things that will get you in with the wrong element or into bad situations. Is that victim blaming? I don't think so, and the same thing is true of the internet. Be aware of where you are going, what you are doing/posting, and who the people are who are interacting with you and IF you wish them to.

That's all I'm saying.

That doesn't mean that I feel that if someone is attacked in a dark corner of the city it's THEIR FAULT for going there to begin with. I'm saying that there is give and take in the conversation. An equal amount of "I should be safe and able to walk where I like" and "I need to make sure I'm safe to an extent myself" is in the equation, and perhaps that's where we are getting stuck at loggerheads of the argument. As there is definitely sense in what you're saying as equally as there is sense in what I'm saying.

I will say this WW, you always know how to make me think about shit hard...

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 31 August 2012 - 06:16 PM

[worry]

I get the immediate practicality of that comparison....you're talking about the idealism of what shouldn't happen vs. the realism of what might happen to you in the real world, and how the latter in a practical sense is probably more helpful, self-protective information. And as a film buff, you may have seen Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky and been infuriated by the protagonist's actions in a number of scenes, and rightly so. I would say that I wouldn't categorize that advice directly alongside the toughen up/get over it/walk it off mentality, which barely recognizes there is a problem, let alone offers an astute answer.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 31 August 2012 - 06:29 PM