Why the Trolls Will Always Win 728
It turned out that a man named Andrew Auernheimer was responsible for having harassed Sierra. Known as 'Weev', he admitted it in a 2008 New York Times story on Internet Trolls. There, he spoke to the lengths which he and his cohorts went to discredit and destroy the woman. "Over a candlelit dinner of tuna sashimi, Weev asked if I would attribute his comments to Memphis Two, the handle he used to troll Kathy Sierra, a blogger. Inspired by her touchy response to online commenters, Weev said he "dropped docs" on Sierra, posting a fabricated narrative of her career alongside her real Social Security number and address. This was part of a larger trolling campaign against Sierra, one that culminated in death threats."
Now, seven years later, Kathy Sierra has returned to explain why she left and what recent spates of online harassment against women portend for the future if decent people don't organize. The situation has grown much more serious since she went into hiding all those years ago. It's more than just the threat of Doxxing to incite physical violence by random crazies with a screw loose. Read on for the rest of maynard's thoughts.
[While not photo-sensitive], I have a deep understanding of the horror of seizures, and the dramatically increased chance of death and brain damage many of us with epilepsy live with, in my case, since the age of 4. FYI, deaths related to epilepsy in the US are roughly equal with deaths from breast cancer. There isn't a shred of doubt in my mind that if the troll hackers could find a way to increase your risk of breast cancer? They'd do it. Because what's better than lulz? Lulz with BOOBS. Yeah, they'd do it.
And yet Auernheimer, the man who put her through all this horror, has for entirely different reasons become a kind of 'Net cause célèbre for Internet freedom. After having committed a hack against AT&T where he obtained the email addresses of thousands of iPad users, he attracted the attention of federal authorities. In due course he was convicted and sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for identity fraud and conspiracy to access a computer without authorization. Many thought his conviction and sentence egregious. Weev attracted support from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and prominent Georgia University Law Professor Tor Ekeland, and they worked together to craft an appeal and overturn the conviction. In April 2014, they succeeded. Auernheimer is now free.
Ekeland wasn't the only one bothered by the government's case. Even Kathy Sierra disagreed. Yet she's appalled that somehow she'd been dragged into supporting the very man who'd abused her.
But you all know what happened next. Something something something horrifically unfair government case against him and just like that, he becomes tech's "hacktivist hero." He now had A Platform not just in the hacker/troll world but in the broader tech community I was part of. ... But hard as I tried to find a ray of hope that the case against him was, somehow, justified and that he deserved, somehow, to be in prison for this, oh god I could not find it. I could not escape my own realization that the cast against him was wrong. So wrong. And not just wrong, but wrong in a way that puts us all at risk.
The lawyer Ekeland, in recent commentary at Wired, continues to defend Auernheimer as having been wronged by an overzealous prosecution, the precedent of which could have significant ramifications for 'Net freedom. "...the crucial issue here is not weev or his ideas but the future of criminal computer law in the U.S. You may think weev is an #@$hole. But being an #@$hole is not a crime, and neither is obtaining unsecured information from publicly facing servers."
Which leaves Sierra lamenting that Auernheimer still hasn't been charged and convicted for what she considers the real crime of harassment he'd committed, harming her and countless others. Where's the justice? Inciting violence and dissemination of "fighting words" are not free speech. Yet, as she admits, unless you're a celebrity, you're "...more likely to win the lottery than get any law enforcement agency to take action." So there is none. "We are on our own," she laments. "And if we don't take care of one another, nobody else will."
Thus, Sierra returned to push back — to push back against prominent journalists and members in the tech community who'd conflate prosecutorial violations of due process with the right to disseminate harassment and cruelty.
I came back because I believe this sent a terrible, devastating message about what was acceptable. ... To push back on the twist and spin. I believed the fine-grained distinctions mattered. I pushed back because I believed I was pushing back on the implicit message that women would be punished for speaking out. I pushed back because almost nobody else was, and it seemed like so many people in tech were basically OK with that.
Auernheimer, for his part, remains unapologetic. Responding to Sierra on Livejournal, he writes:
Yesterday Kathy Sierra (a.k.a. seriouspony), a mentally ill woman, continued to accuse me on her blog of leading some sort of harassment campaign against her by dropping her dox (information related to identify and location) on the Internet. ... Kathy Sierra has for years acted like a toddler, throwing tantrums and making demands whenever things didn't go her way. She rejects any presentation of polite criticism or presentation of evidence as some sort of assault on her. She was the blueprint for women like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian, who also feign victimhood for financial and social gain. Kathy Sierra is the epitome of what is wrong with my community. She had something coming to her and by the standards set by her own peers in the social justice community, there was nothing wrong with what she got.
Some people never change.
Auernheimer is now free. (Score:3, Funny)
Time for a Second amendment solution.
Re:Auernheimer is now free. (Score:5, Insightful)
The second amendment is not supposed to be the appeals court for the first...
Re:Auernheimer is now free. (Score:4, Interesting)
It is an appeals court for the rest of the constitution, but I hope we can agree that there is hopefully a lot of other options being tried first before reaching for it. I always considered the second the last resort item. Be willing to use it if need be, but only after every other possible option has been tried and failed. I'm a big fan of the Four Boxes of Liberty [wikipedia.org], but I consider two things important about them:
1. Be prepared to use them all if you start using them.
2. Use them in EXACTLY this order and do NOT skip a single one.
TFA isn't about trolls (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about anonymous online sexual harassment, particularly when it's done by packs playing the part of street gangs.
Trolling is like ranting about systemd in response to every single /. article.
Re:TFA isn't about trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about anonymous online sexual harassment, particularly when it's done by packs playing the part of street gangs.
Trolling is like ranting about systemd in response to every single /. article.
No, it's about online criminal harassment.
We have to face it, these things will get a lot more traction if we just treat the perps as what they are - criminals that need prosecuted, rather than people harassing someone soley because they are female. Once the dude started with her SS, fake CV, and death threats, welcome to skeeveland.
As for trolling - eliminating that will be like eliminating anyone who disagrees with you. Because that's how some people define trolling.
Re:TFA isn't about trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me define what real trolling is for you: Trolling is the attempt to get an emotional reaction out of a target by using social engineering. The primary goal of trolling is usually, but not limited to, getting targets to become less emotionally invested in online discussions.
You can use trolling to harass a person.
You could end up harassing a person while trolling.
But they are 2 completely separate activities.
Likewise, trolling is not chauvinistic or race related, but because those topics tend to elicit strong emotional reactions in people, they are obviously good subjects to use while trolling.
Re:TFA isn't about trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Technically, libel and slander are grounds for a civil suit, not criminal. Death threats and impersonation/identity theft are criminal but can be pursued civilly as well. Victims need to start lawyering up and getting rulings that bankrupt the trolls, and put them under restraining orders for their internet activity. If they persist put them under court orders barring them from accessing the internet, and throw them in jail for criminal contempt if they violate the court orders.
The standard of proof for civil suits is significantly lower than beyond a reasonable doubt, so the main barrier is getting internet sites and ISPs to release information that can identify the anonymous offenders.
And once again, this is not a feminist issue. Doxxing an SWATting are rampant against males as well. From Wikipedia:
* In the past, there have been swatting incidents at the homes of Ashton Kutcher, Tom Cruise, Chris Brown, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Clint Eastwood.
Brian Krebs has suffered various harassments for several years now, as documented here: https://krebsonsecurity.com/20... [krebsonsecurity.com]
Basically once you reach a certain level of fame or notoriety on the internet, you are likely to piss off someone who thinks it's fun to engage in these kinds of activities.
Anonymity == being a schmuck for a good number. (Score:4, Interesting)
I really wish we could just drop the sexism part of this right now. Both genders get attacked by these people.
The second issue is if you want Anonymity than you will have this issue a lot.
Third is the simple fact that it is just a small number of folks causing the issue. The trouble is that it does not take a lot of folks to cause a good amount of harm.
The issue is that some people make heroes out of the idiots that do this when they do it to someone they do not agree with or like.
It really needs to be a time where all attacks are looked down on and discussion takes it place.
Re: (Score:3)
Or you know, the majority of us could be actual good guys (and gals) and actually do something to fight back against this horrid behavior...
Re:Anonymity == being a schmuck for a good number. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sexism is just a tool that the trolls use where appropriate. It's all about personal power. For example, one of the trolls sent to jail for harrassing Caroline Criado-Perez [wikipedia.org] was a woman.
Re:Anonymity == being a schmuck for a good number. (Score:4, Insightful)
I really wish we could just drop the sexism part of this right now. Both genders get attacked by these people.
Both do, but it *is* sexist. It is far more widespread and vicious towards women. Ignoring that is not helping.
Re: (Score:3)
No, the choice of target is not necessarily related to gender. They choose a target based on any number of reasons, but it generally has something to do with their opinions or actions.
Once they've identified a target, they use whatever weakness they can perceive to inflict maximum psychological damage. For many women, that is rape threats.
They would target a man for the same opinions, actions, whatever, but they would use something he'd respond to, like threats against his family or his job.
The sexist langu
some thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
The following is all subjective, so be warned. :)
From what I've seen (admittedly second and third-hand) the people attacking women are generally doing so at least in part *because* they are women. On the other hand, attacks against men are rarely gender-based, but rather based on other factors like religion/ideology/actions.
If this is true, then even if the numbers of attacks are the same, it would not be unreasonable for the attacked women to feel it differently because they are being attacked for something they *are* rather than something they *think*. (And actually I suspect this same feeling may hold true for race-based attacks against people as well.)
Re:Anonymity == being a schmuck for a good number. (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed, I had to deal with these types on the Usenet forums. It seams no insult was too low for these types. They used 100's of aliases, I kept track of them and posted a list periodically.
When they started posting criminal confessions in my name.. I called the FBI office near the perp, that only slowed them down.. Even a threat of legal action didn't seam to phase them. Eventually they stopped when they could no longer get a response from me.
Being an asshole is not a crime (Score:3)
But acting upon it is.
Nobody really cares if you know a fool proof way to kill the prez (well, aside of some professional paranoiacs). As long as you don't act upon it, you're fine. If you DO, though, don't expect to remain free (or, for that matter, alive) for any measurable stretch of time.
Re: (Score:3)
But acting upon it is.
Nobody really cares if you know a fool proof way to kill the prez (well, aside of some professional paranoiacs). As long as you don't act upon it, you're fine. If you DO, though, don't expect to remain free (or, for that matter, alive) for any measurable stretch of time.
Being an asshole may not be a crime. But threatening to kill somebody (whether you follow through or not) or spreading fabricated stories alleging criminal behavior to destroy somebody's good name is a crime. And rightly so.
The "I only posted it, so it's all OK" meme is part of the problem here.
The more things change the more the stay the same. (Score:5, Interesting)
In any unmoderated discussion the loudest and most insistent voices win. This has been true since democracy started - "politic" meaning roughly in the original Greek "To shout down"
We see this in our current political system as well - wingnuts running the show in both parties because reasonable people won't speak up.
Time and again I've seen this on forums I've been on that have been unmoderated, such as the OkCupid forums. After awhile, only the rudest and the crudest remain there along with those willing to tolerate them.
Re:The more things change the more the stay the sa (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the reasonable people do speak up. The trouble is that the press doesn't cover their input to the discussions. We end up only hearing from the extremist crazies because that's what the press thinks will attack more ears and eyeballs and sell more advertising.
Re: (Score:3)
Politics comes from politeia, which comes from polis (city) and a suffix meaning person. It has nothing to do with shouting down.
Can't have nice things (Score:3, Insightful)
WHY are men trying to scare women away from gaming (Score:5, Interesting)
I truly don't understand this. When I was a young awkward geek with very specific interests, I would have absolutely LOVED there to be women around with those same interests. Us guys totally loved the few geeky girls that were around and always wished there were more.
Yet today we see guys trying to scare the women away. What the hell changed?
Re:WHY are men trying to scare women away from gam (Score:5, Insightful)
If they can scare the women away, they can preserve their illusion of superiority (in a mythical competition in a mythical world).
Re:WHY are men trying to scare women away from gam (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a mix of two things.
Firstly you have frustration and anger that women don't seem interested in these guys. Like that Rodger guy they really can't see what is wrong with them and vent that anger by attacking women, who must all be stupid evil manipulative whores because they only sleep with guys they can get something out of and never the poor troll.
Secondly the trolls are in serious need of some men's liberation. I bet you know exactly what a "real man" is. Masculine, strong, breadwinner, protects his woman, has loads of cool stuff. Now ask yourself what a "real woman" is. Not so easy to define.
It wasn't always that way. Back in the 1960s the ideal woman was the model 1950s housewife. A mother, good at cooking and cleaning, beautiful but homely, always trying to satisfy her man. Women's lib changed that. Women became free to break away from that model, be what they wanted to be, not get neurotic about their weight or finding a husband by age 25. Now they get to decide what matters to them, not what society expects of them. Men need that too. These trolls only feel threatened because they are so insecure, and see women participating in any traditionally male dominated area as a threat to the ideal they are trying to live up to.
Re: (Score:3)
When I was a young awkward geek with very specific interests, I would have absolutely LOVED there to be women around with those same interests... Yet today we see guys trying to scare the women away. What the hell changed?
Nothing but the volume. I loved geeky women back then, and some geeky men were hostile. Now, I still like geeky women, and some geeky men are still hostile.
Nothing has changed, except the amplification of the extremists on both sides. The extremists on both sides want to drive a wedge to c
Sociopath Ruins Lives, Film at 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sociopath Ruins Lives, Film at 11 (Score:5, Informative)
What I Learned from My Time in Prison [dailystormer.com]
Andrew Auernheimer
I have some new tattoos that mark the wisdom I gained from my time in prison, which happens to be the same as the wisdom of my ancestors. [...] My first tattoo is a 4.5 inch swastika on my chest featuring Odinn, Baldr, Freyr, and Ãzor. My second is a Jormungandr-wrapped Ãzorshamar flanked by Huginn and Muninn on my forearm.
There's also some comprehensive antisemitism in that article.
http://www.dailystormer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/weev.jpg [dailystormer.com]
This is not the hero you are looking for.
Re:Sociopath Ruins Lives, Film at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
His behaviour is extreme, but not as uncommon as you think. There is a lot of trolling and hate out there, and it can't all be a small number of sociopaths with sock puppet accounts.
More over there is a general problem with more low level stuff. Any technical video by a woman on YouTube is full of comments from social retards asking to marry her, or offering pathetic complements about her appearance in the vain hope she might respond. Stuff like the recently celebrity photo leaks are pretty bad too, when you see the number of guys egging them on or even demanding to see their favourite wank fantasy nude. Photos of Matt Smith appeared, but strangely there were not a similar number of comments from women demanding them to be posted.
Concentrating on extremes isn't always helpful because people dismiss them as just that, extreme and therefore not part of a more general problem. The question is are they just lone extremists with a mental illness or are they extreme but supported by a large amount of less extreme trolling. In a different environment would be have acted that way? If people didn't "like" his posts or watch the YouTube videos of other trolls in their hundreds of thousands would people like him be confident enough and feel supported enough to behave that way?
Re: (Score:3)
It all depends on what you mean by a small number. Even if it was only a fraction of a percentage of internet users that is still an unbelievable number of people and while they are making a concerted effort to ruin peoples lives there isn't really that much that decent people can do to stop them. I cannot somehow stop a sociopath from finding and publishing some poor persons social security number and I can't stop an asshole from posting a death threat and even a ton of people supporting someone does not
Kathy Sierra has contributed to the community (Score:5, Informative)
We really need a different word for this behaviour (Score:5, Insightful)
In the context of the Internet, the word "troll" used to mean, (according to Wikipedia):
"...a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion."
The campaign that Kathy Sierra was a victim of goes far, far beyond this. How does it make sense that one word is used to describe such a wide range of behaviour? It's like calling a violent rapist a 'cad'. Trolls, (in the original sense of the word), are assholes. Auernheimer and his associates exhibited obsessive, psychopathic, downright evil behaviour and attitudes. We should never equate mere assholes and psychopaths - doing so trivializes destructive psychopathic behaviour while making assholery seem much worse than it really is. And the latter is perhaps more dangerous; it gives authorities one more excuse for implementing draconian laws in response to minor social infractions.
Re:We really need a different word for this behavi (Score:5, Funny)
I agree with you. This is not trolling. Trolling is a art.
I used to troll slashdot under another account. It was great fun. I'd see a good target story and write a well-structure comment. The first paragraph would be something on topic and sensible. The second would introduce minor logical flaws, which in the third paragraph would explode into completely ridiculous conclusions that would incense slashdotters, like that the only way to ensure privacy is for the government to monitor all communications at all times or something. Then you sit back and watch moderators only read the first paragraph and mod you +5 insightful, and then people come along and actually read the post and get enraged and write 12 paragraphs about how wrong I am. Then it gets moderated down to +1 troll, then people realize it's funny and it winds up at +5 funny. It was good fun.
But sociopaths threatening and harassing people not just on the internet but spilling over into real life (phone calls, calling their boss, their customers, etc) is not trolling. It's...criminal. Online trolling can be ignored, but I think the only way to stop that kind of behavior is legal action.
not-completely-off-topic (Score:4, Interesting)
Listen the the podcast on 5x5 called "overtired" [5by5.tv]. In episode 15, the incredible Christina Warren describes the shit that she gets every day, and how she deals with it. I have some hope that a younger generation of women like Ms Warren will be able to react to attacking idiots without disappearing from the 'net.
Christian Weston Chandler (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow though, I have to be another one of those assholes and say that trolling is a big issue, but not solely a women's issue. If you want an example of trolling that reached an entirely new level and has most definitely contributed to the failing mental health of an autistic man, look up the story of Christian Weston Chandler.
Trolling isn't new, it's always been mind-boggilingly terrible, but we couldn't be arsed to do anything but laugh back when the victims were usually mentally ill and male.
One example doesn't make an "always" (Score:4, Informative)
Why the Trolls Will Always Win
They don't.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e... [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-2... [bbc.co.uk]
And sometimes they really don't.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-2... [bbc.co.uk]
Re:One example doesn't make an "always" (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK has laws that make it very easy to punish people for making defamatory, abusive, and/or libelous statements, without any need to prove how much actual damage they caused, if any.
The US has free speech.
Always the legal solutions first (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does it seem that the first response to these kinds of problems is always legal? To sue someone? Is it just because that's what is expedient to existing victims? Because it won't help future potential victims. Even changing the law or boosting enforcement won't get at the root cause.
The fact is that sadly, sociopathic behavior like this is socially acceptable. Every time a woman speaks up, half of the crowd chimes in to defend the sociopath. "It was her own fault", you say. "Women are such whiners; this happens to everyone", you say. And let's be clear: it's easy for a woman to think women are unfairly targeted when she's come to know so many others who have been targeted, and the harassment is often sexual. There's a point to be made that women are perhaps too often thin-skinned. But often this point is made regardless to the severity of the harassment (total destruction of career, made to feel unsafe and insecure even in her own home or the home of her family, made to fear for the safety of that family). And most of the people making this point, especially in a place like Slashdot that allows people to post anonymously, make their point with misogynistic slurs. It's only understandable that this position is almost always attacked as "blaming the victim" when there are only a couple of rational voices in the mob.
How can the law help us? Will it stop people from being sociopaths? Not any more than drunk driving laws made people stop driving drunk. Drunk driving used to be just as socially acceptable as wife beating and criminal harassment. What changed? MADD and systematic messaging from law enforcement and driver's education told entire generations of new drivers that it is not acceptable. Now drunk driving is the sort of thing only completely irresponsible people do, right? While that doesn't mean nobody does it, it does mean nobody defends the behavior. We need a single message to spread to every single child regarding harassment: this is not OK.
Sociopaths are bad for society, which means that even when they aren't attacking you personally, their assaults still hurt you. Every time a Kathy Sierra is harassed out of her comfort zone, we lose another intelligent perspective. We lose the voice behind javaranch.com. And to all you lonely nerds out there: we lose one more woman that understands and appreciates what you do. One more woman that might have shared your dreams and obsessions.
What can we do about sociopaths? First, we can learn to defend ourselves. My first rule of the internet is to use a pseudonym, and keep your pseudonym separate from your family and local friends. Never attach any pictures or personal information that could connect your pseudonym to you. Never, and I mean never take a nude picture of yourself.
Remember though that none of this is a guarantee. All it takes is more effort to uncover who you are and where you live. So the second step is to support the victims. Now, I understand some of you are a bit obsessed with fraud, and think these victims are just seeking attention. You attack the victim's credibility. Stop. You don't have to personally believe the victim, but it does no good to cast doubt. Victims don't even want attention, and they definitely don't want to be assaulted even more. So many victims don't report crimes against them because they don't want to relive the experience, or because they are afraid of people like you. What victims (should) want is for their life to go on as if nothing happened, while also making sure the same thing can never happen to anybody else. What you can do is direct your attention toward the problem instead of the victim. Attack the crime, even if you don't believe it happened. You might say, "Harassment is wrong, and I am appalled to think this kind of thing even happens." You might say, "I actually have trouble believing the story because it's so unthinkable that someone could be this much of a sociopath." You might say, "I though this sort of thing never happened, and it certainly never sh
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't try to play the sex card, that guy is an asshole. Do you think the reactions 'round here would be different if it had been a woman harassing a guy?
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
And, apologies for replying to myself, this actually is WAY closer to "News for Nerds" than a lot that has been posted lately. It's about someone teaching a programming language getting trolled on the internet, how detailed the trolling was and how she dealt with it, as well as the legal repercussions of the trolling. How much more "News for Nerds" does it get?
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
I think he's referring to the following:
"I came back because I believe this sent a terrible, devastating message about what was acceptable. ... To push back on the twist and spin. I believed the fine-grained distinctions mattered. I pushed back because I believed I was pushing back on the implicit message that women would be punished for speaking out."
I wouldn't be surprised if some of his "trolling" was gender based, but I don't know why she has to make some sort of connection between internet trolling and gender. Exactly as you said, had this been a guy it would have been exactly the same - up until the comment quoted above.
There is a convenience store near where I live where one of the cashiers is for lack of better words an asshole. A girl I know at work attributed that to racism. I think a lot of times if you consider yourself in some minority or group, and you meet an ass, you often jump to conclusions about bigotry etc.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised if some of his "trolling" was gender based, but I don't know why she has to make some sort of connection between internet trolling and gender. Exactly as you said, had this been a guy it would have been exactly the same - up until the comment quoted above.
There would have been one major difference, though: it wouldn't have happened. Trolls love to bully women. Women do visibly get the shitty end of the stick on the internet.
(FYI: I'm a guy.)
Re: (Score:3)
Don't try to play the sex card, that guy is an asshole. Do you think the reactions 'round here would be different if it had been a woman harassing a guy?
True enough. But why shouldn't everyone be protected against death threats and harassment? Why would women get special justice (anybody remember "equal justice")?
Kathy Sierra has returned to explain why she left and what recent spates of online harassment against women portend for the future if decent people don't organize.
Why not just say against people? "I was harassed and received many death threats" - "So, what, dude? Man up!"
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
More bullshit from the "people regularly threatening women in public is no big deal" crowd.
Nobody said women are "always victims" but you shits have absolutely nothing to attack unless you can craft fake arguments to dismantle. You're trapped in a room with straw walls closing in, and only you can dismantle, their evil insidious not wanting to tolerate misogynistic assholes in public spaces.
People are bigots to other groups too, and feminists, by and large are quite reasonable in their acknowledgement of that.
Who's not being oppressed? People who are being told that maybe they can't threaten the lives of women freely. Those people are meeting the boundaries known as "the law" and "common decency" and feeling just so oppressed by it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not a problem exclusive to women.
As a man you can also get your life disrupted by death threats, unordered pizzas/taxis/products and doxxing.
It's probably easier to get singled out for it as a women, but if you are subject to it as a man you'll get much less support to cope with it. This is reflected in the offline world too as a MUCH higher suicide rate for men compared to women. Trying to construct this as some purely misgyonistic issue is just reinforcing the gender bias of men as some disposable
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a problem exclusive to women. As a man you can also get your life disrupted by death threats, unordered pizzas/taxis/products and doxxing.
It's probably easier to get singled out for it as a women, but if you are subject to it as a man you'll get much less support to cope with it. This is reflected in the offline world too as a MUCH higher suicide rate for men compared to women. Trying to construct this as some purely misgyonistic issue is just reinforcing the gender bias of men as some disposable soldier caste and is likely to aggrevate misgyonistic tendencies overall in society.
And who do you think is out there telling men to keep their feelings bottled up until they explode? Women? Misogyny hurts men, too.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
We just had an article a few days ago where the male architect of systemd got similar hate. We all condemned that too, the difference is there was no one in that thread arguing there was some double standard.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not a problem exclusive to women. [...] but if you are subject to it as a man you'll get much less support to cope with it.
That's true, and an independent yet important problem as well. However, I think we can agree that when men get less support (or even suffer stigma from not being "manly enough" to cope with it, which is pure BS), women face an echo chamber of aggressive misogynistic a-holes, ready to take on a crusade against them on a scale that most men never face. Just read the first comments here. In short, the harassment of women is more intense (from more harassers) and is pandemic.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
In the fact that it specifically threatens them with bodily harm?
Oh.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Derpy do. You didn't threaten me. Everyone knows what "fuck you" means. The article on the other hand, mentions people photoshopping a woman's face with bruises and abrasions with the caption "Women are like grass, they need to be beaten and cut sometimes" after she voiced an objection to some torture porn.
That's a fairly targeted and overt threat.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
"What is the threat with squiggles on a piece of paper?"
"What is the threat of vibrations in the air?"
"What is the threat of someone pointing a metal tube in your direction?"
I hate to be rude, but that line of logic sounds quite sociopathic, and a good line of reasoning for offending someone and justifying the actions.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
People who don't think that is threatening, should post their own SS#, Address, Children's names on a picture on the internet and see what happens. I mean, if there is no threat, what are they afraid of?
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Kathy Sierra did no such thing. Making shit up just makes you exactly the like the OP I was chastizing for needing a straw-argument to dismantle, all the while feeling SOOOO oppressed.
As for the 1 in 5 women thing... well
The CDC just recently verified that number [smithsonianmag.com] that MRA types have been insisting is biased. Every study comes up with markedly similar results about that.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Once again I have the "obsessed with false accusations of rape" reality denier. Because you are a person who believes in an a world where women are serial liars, and you're inured to observational evidence about it by some mental block I don't get.
But here. Here's how wrong you are about false rape accusations [thenation.com].
False accusations do exist but those 2-5% of cases are for our justice system to handle, and not a widespread systemic issue(and there's all sorts of clues as to when an accusation is made up).
not false accusation, bad interpretation of survey (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe GP was saying that the particular study cited had a questionable definition of "rape", not that the victims were lying. The survey didn't ask if they were raped. The survey asked questions about if this happened or that happened, then the researchers call it rape, even if the "victim" was perfectly happy with what happened.
One question was if they engaged in sex while drunk or high to the point that they couldn't really give informed consent, or if their partner initiated sex while they were asleep. The researchers then called that rape, which is many cases it probably was. In other cases not - I recently spoke with a woman who didn't remember having sex with her husband one night when they were drunk. It just so happened that he videotaped about two minutes of it, and after he starts, then backs off she says "what are you doing, I thought we were going to have sex?" Upon viewing the tape, she wasn't bothered about it. Since she didn't remember it and was too drunk to really give consent, this study would call that rape. The woman doesn't think it's rape, but the researchers say it is.
I've actually talked to my wife about some of these situations ahead of time. I've told her I'd very much enjoy being awoken by her in a special way, and she said it's fine if I massaging her and such while she's asleep, waking her with sexual contact. The RESEARCHERS call that rape, we call it a great way to wake up.
The researchers also called it sexual violence if the partner did any of these things (quoting from the survey):
doing things like telling you lies, MAKING PROMISES ABOUT THE FUTURE WHICH THEY KNEW WERE UNTRUE, threatening to end your relationship,
or threatening to spread rumors about you?
wearing you down by repeatedly asking for
sex, or SHOWING THEY WERE UNHAPPY?
So letting my wife know I'm disappointed that our last two date nights were cancelled and I'd like to have a romantic evening is sexual violence, as defined by these researchers.
Sexual violence is an important issue. These researchers trivialize it and create more problems when they define "showing they were unhappy" as sexual violence.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not feminists or anti-feminists.
The problem is sociopaths, and sociopaths come in all genders and races.
Sociopaths are very good at mobilizing well-intentioned humans for their own purposes.
Humans tend to conform to the desires of sociopaths instead of confront them, because natural selection did not historically favor humans who opposed sociopaths.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes and no.
Sociopaths are a problem, but we're also facing people who think there shouldn't be consequences for how they attack others. That's not a symptom of anti-social personality disorders(they tend to know that what they do is condemned and lack the self control to stop themselves). That's strictly a matter of people who specifically think what they're doing is acceptable. Which suggests, as lots of people have said with various evidential justifications, that culture is part of the problem.
Anti-feminists, on the other hand, are only a problem in that they will cry "false flag" at literally every situation that implicates a culture hostile to prominent women, turning every discussion about solutions into long drawn-out dismantlings of their conspiracy theories.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not anti-feminist, but what I am about to say is likely something they might say. The problem with many Feminists (and others) , is that they cry wolf. And there is a whole group of people that follow after those claims, repeating them ad nausium, long after proven false. Earlier this week, there was a suggestion that we need more women in IT, and it was due to some sort of latent sexism or whatever in the industry. The reality is, IT might have all the women interested in it, and that women aren't really all that interested in IT careers. Crying "sexism in IT" is not helpful in the discussion, and quite frankly, tends to end any discussion. The cry itself is a kind of "troll" comment. It requires no thought, and causes great harm.
Is there sexism in IT? I'm sure there is. Is it endemic to IT? I'm pretty sure it isn't.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, so it's entirely genetic, and that's why 20 years ago, the field's gender mix was almost 60-40 and now 85-15. Because genetics change dramatically over short timespans.[1] [forbes.com] [2] [atomicobject.com]
Bio-determinism bites. And it's an easy, lazy, insufficient answer. I, and others, are prepared to accept that there exist biological gender differences. But, given human history, you can't say that gender differences are strictly biological without evidence. And you can [oxfordjournals.org] examine socioeconomic factors that influence gender-based occupation decisions. In the previous link, girls(and boys) with higher self-esteem are more likely to avoid gender-typical job roles. Rather substantially, if you can actually read the article, and not just the abstract. Primitivistic psychoanalysis suggests that people who fill gender-typical jobs are likely following social pressure, than innate instincts.
Sexism in IT is real, I mean, hell, ask a transgender person whose seen both sides [newrepublic.com]. But even if that were 0% of the problem, it wouldn't imply genetic determinism.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
cast it all the way back to the start of the industry
Here you go. Most computers were women. [wikipedia.org]
In 1943, the United States Army authorized a secret project at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering to develop an electronic computer to compute artillery firing tables for the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. The project, which came to be known as ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, was completed in 1946.
Previous to the development of the ENIAC, the U.S. Army had employed women trained in mathematics to calculate artillery trajectories, at first using mechanical desk calculators and later the differential analyzer developed by Vannevar Bush, at the Moore School. In 1945, one of these "computers", Kathleen McNulty (1921–2006), was selected to be one of the original programmers of the ENIAC, together with Frances Spence (1922– ), Betty Holberton (1917–2001), Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman (1924–1986), and Betty Jean Jennings (1924–2011). McNulty, Holberton, and Jennings would later work on the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer developed by the Remington Rand Corporation in the early 1950s.
Men originally saw computing as a "woman's job."
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Except you douchebags have been wrong every fucking time.
Like when you pretended there was no police report [wehuntedthemammoth.com] for the threats that made Sarkeesian move out of her house, without even a hint of investigating it.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this is an obvious manifestation of misogynistic stereotypes of women being manipulative liars, not any sort of rational consideration.
Re:More feminist bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it is, but your "just asking questions" is bullshit. The way you assume it's a likely situation is your problem.
She clearly didn't fabricate this fucking case, because the evidence made it onto the damn news, and faceboook has fucking records. Now you can "investigate" well established facts all you want, but the fact that you didn't even look at the article before "questioning" the threat is your fucking problem
Re: (Score:3)
Humans tend to conform to the desires of sociopaths instead of confront them, because natural selection did not historically favor humans who opposed sociopaths.
This is true. But this is why we have codes of honor (machismo, chivalry, etc.) in various societies. Courage, honor and a duty to defend the weak. Yes, these traditions were somewhat mysoginistic as well. But we can update them to suit modern society.
Natural selection dictates that we protect ourselves from harm. So we avoid violent sociopaths. Or leave them to law enforcement, the people who are paid to confront such threats counter to the laws of natural selection. But weev isn't a physically dangerous
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason, it's culturally acceptable for men to learn how to defend themselves from sociopaths (who, like all predators prefer soft targets to hard targets).
However if anyone ever tries to talk about teaching women any kind of self defense, the accusations of "victim blaming" start up immediately.
Which is exactly what you'd expect sociopaths to instigate. Of course they'd oppose any effort to turn soft targets into hard targets.
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely. Women tend to call for help or say comments hurt their feelings or otherwise give the EXACT reaction the trolls want.
They do the same thing to most men and... no reaction.
This is what is causing the focus on women. Not that the trolls are against women though I'm sure some are... but that the women often do not know how to deal with bullies.
Men are taught how to deal with bullies from a very young age. You toughen up or you're a weakling. The boys will literally call you "a girl" if you complain.
To not be "a girl" boys must hide their feelings and laugh off abuse. And then at some later date... taking some revenge is generally considered par for the course.
Women need to understand that they can't rely on men or society to come to their aid on the internet. They're going to have to take care of themselves and toughen up a bit. Crying foul just causes a troll feeding frenzy.
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:4, Interesting)
I thank God that my two boys live in a house where we've NEVER told them to toughen up or compared weakness to being a girl.
You realize that's a token indicator of a lot of what's wrong here? That men are seemingly most insulted by being called feminine slurs, and women by calling them feminine slurs. So we have people that intentionally or not reinforce the idea that being female is a problem.
That little tidbit, plus another one that's been passing around social media are so telling to me: (summarized) "When you send a girl out of class / home from school for 'inappropriate' dress you're telling her a dress code or preventing male distraction is more important than her education, and that the boys' distraction-free education is more important than theirs."
My boys are in high school now, but I also have a young daughter. I'm trying to ensure she lives in a world where equality (gender, sexual, marriage, etc.) is a goal if not reality. I want all of my family to live in that world.
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:4, Informative)
As to what you do in your home, my father and mother didn't say such things to me either. If you think you can control this you're deluded.
Your children will be subjected to this by their peers whether you like it or not. And if they cry, call for their mother, or otherwise show signs of weakness then they'll be seen as weak. This is instinctual. It is in the blood. You can pretend all you like otherwise... but pretend is pretend.
As to how your raise your family... that is your own business. But you are raising human beings. Homo Sapiens. You can pass on your values but just as your child can't help it if he's a homosexual... there are other instincts that we also can't help having.
We can suppress them. But the suppression of instincts requires conscious will. The kids in the school yard are going to be the kids in the school yard. They're consistent and predictable. You should know that.
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:5, Interesting)
For some reason, it's culturally acceptable for men to learn how to defend themselves from sociopaths (who, like all predators prefer soft targets to hard targets).
This has nothing to do with self-defence. Believe me, no respectable troll will ever attack you in any manner that you can fairly fight back. I got the full package once. Personal details published, implied threats to my family (nothing over the line to prosecutable of course), calling up my company and my company's customers in an attempt to get me fired, etc. Until you've had one come after you, you really have no idea.
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:5, Insightful)
You take basic precautions and do your best to avoid being a target. As to who is more or less likely to be a target? Anyone being obnoxious tends to get some focus.
I disagree. If a small group of trolls are being trolls, and you "do your best to avoid being a target", they've won. A small group of trolls have had a chilling effect. We need to do more to uncover and punish that kind of behaviour. And, was Kathy being obnoxious when she was targetted? I don't see any evidence of that, and even if she was, I don't care. That's no excuse for death and rape threats.
The thing that astonished me most about trolling is, there was a case over here (UK) where someone was targetted with rape threats for organizing a campaign to get a woman onto our banknotes, and one of the trolls sent to jail for it was a woman. Which tells me it's nothing to do with sexism, and all about personal power. Sexual threats are just a tool in the box.
Re: (Score:3)
Really? Then burn a Koran on national TV right now...
Oh wait... then the extremist muslims have won. Because you are so concerned about getting beheaded by some crazy person that you wouldn't dare burn a silly book.
Same thing on the internet. And I am not comparing the internet trolls to people that cut people's heads off. However, you don't go out of your way to draw their attention if you can help it.
Why? Because life is too short and it is a giant waste of time to deal with those people. I don't fear tro
Re: (Score:3)
Really? Then burn a Koran on national TV right now...
Oh wait... then the extremist muslims have won.
Where did that come from, and what does it have to do with women being attacked just for being women on gaming forums? "If you want to have the right to campaign to get Jane Austen on British banknotes, then you also have to be prepared to burn a Koran" is something of a non-sequitur.
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:5, Insightful)
Trolls of this nature are unusual and they don't just target women. They target everyone.
In a pinch, yes a troll will go after your default WASP male. I once saw a troll reduced to attacking someone for being Canadian. (!)
However, what they target is a perceived weakness. If they find out you've posted in nudist or drug forums, they'll go after that. But if you are a woman or a minority, they don't even have to do research to find your weak points. They can paint you as driven by your sexual urges and/or overly sensitive and emotional, and a large amount of the audience will be receptive to that message because that is the preexisting prejudice for those groups. So if you are female or a minority (or God help you, both) you will always be their first target of choice.
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:4, Interesting)
They'll go after anyone. Yes they are drawn to weakness. But being a woman isn't a weakness unless women are inferior to men.
I don't believe women are inferior to men. So I don't see why being a women is a weakness especially on the internet where strength is irrelevant.
Why would a man on the internet be more powerful then a woman? Are not women supposed to be superior at social dynamics? Social intelligence? Then if anything women should have an advantage.
So I don't see why men or white men are more able to fend off attacks.
I have fought a LOT of trolls. I am a battle hardened forum warrior. I have been called everything under the sun. I have been doxxed. I have had my sexuality questioned. I have had... anything else you and imagine really. But whatever I felt when that was happened, I showed no weakness. No reaction.
I laughed at them. I showed them contempt. I gave them nothing.
And I won every single fucking time.
On the internet... so... whatever that is worth. But if these women did what I did... they'd win too.
They're big girls. I don't see why this is so hard. Why is it that I can read harassment posts directed at me and respond with cold ridicule and these women can't?
Is it sexist for me to suggest that an equal sex should be able to deal with this? Because men deal with this crap all the time.
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:5, Insightful)
And they do that to men as well.
Ever been Swatted? A friend of mine was swatted twice.
The troll called the police, said there was a murder in progress, and men with machine guns showed up at my friend's house... kicked the door down, slammed him to the ground, handcuffed him, searched his home, and then questioned him in a hostile manner for about an hour before leaving.
So I know how bad this can get. But saying they go after women is just false. They do not. They go after everyone. You make it easy for them or you do things that annoy them or you show that they're getting to you... and they'll just keep doing it.
People need to learn how to deal with bullies and trolls. The answer is not some PSA talking about feelings and awareness. That is useless clueless bullshit. If you want to have a positive influence on this situation, then you need to get people that are reacting badly to trolls to react in a more effective manner.
Know what the troll wants and what the troll needs... and deny that troll both.
Re:Don't over generalize (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer is not some PSA talking about feelings and awareness. That is useless clueless bullshit. If you want to have a positive influence on this situation, then you need to get people that are reacting badly to trolls to react in a more effective manner.
I completely agree. We don't need our fucking awareness raised. 99.999% of us know it's wrong to threaten to rape somebody and call the police or their boss or whatever. When the vast majority of us who didn't do a damn thing wrong now get lumped in with the actual perpetrator and then lectured to, it has the opposite effect. I am now less likely to be concerned with the plight of [insert victim group] because they're accusing me of having all sorts of attitudes I don't have.
And I bet the trolls love it. Look at gamergame (I hate typing that). One deranged lunatic makes some not particularly credible threats against a woman who completely overreacts to what was purely online harassment at that point, goes full social justice warrior and starts attacking the entirety of "men who play video games" for the actions of one asshole. Those people get offended at being generalized as some kind of subhumans chafe and attack back, and the troll sits there gleefully watching thousands of people scream at each other for some tiny little words he wrote on twitter. At no point is the actual perpetrator punished. He is rewarded with a great show. And now people are more likely to dismiss harassment of women, because their experience has been this Sarkessian woman overacting to something and making ridiculous accusations against a bunch of people who didn't do anything.
Mod parent up. (Score:3)
Or Jewish. Or gay. Or black. Or of a different political party. Or with a different opinion on a subject.
"Trolls" (they aren't trolls, they're ass-holes) will attack anyone for anything that the ass-holes do not approve of.
Anything.
The ass-holes are not attacking women because the ass-holes are misogynists. The ass-holes are attacking because that is what ass-holes do. Their a
Re: (Score:3)
It is this kind of attitude that leads this behavior in the first place. Assuming you don't really mean "kill the bastard," but rather something more tame like "In a just world Weev would be laughed at his attempts to troll" I would still disagree with you. Vengeance is seldom a good answer. We can only hope that society will mature to the point where these antics are frowned upon, and end up having little effect.
Thank you for using GIFT, your opinion has been heard, filed, and will be forgotten.
Re:Never forget (Score:4, Insightful)
No, children, the trolls were not here first. Some of us remember that human beings inhabited the Internet before the Eternal September.
Re:Sadist (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a shame that his punishment was overturned.
From a karmic point of view perhaps, but the conviction was based on an insane reading of the law. The law was bad and fundementally anti freedom, and it's worth having a hundred trolls like him than a law like that.
However, he should be convicted for harassment.
Re:Sadist (Score:4, Funny)
Some people just like to see others suffer.
This explains Slashdot beta.
Re: (Score:3)
Worse, you seem to think that collusion between game journalists and game manufacturers is someone: 1) Being denied 2) Important
Let me set the record for you. Reviewers LIE about games. They get paid to do it. Not with sex, but with actual hard cash.
No sane person really cares about it. Game journalists are not important. I am GLAD they are corrupt We need insignificant jobs for corrupt
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure I understand your point.
Gamergate was all about mysoginy. As has been pointed out, hitching up with the gamergate guys in order to complain about journalist corruption is a bit like marching with the armies of Sauron because you don't like the feudal inheritance of title at Minas Tirith.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-... [cracked.com]
Gamergate is ans always was primarily abiut mysoginy and harassmet. Anything else has been a poor attempt to legitimise it afterwards.
weev is a fucking D-bag....but (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me stop and mention here that last week weev caused a storm when he wrote a racist screed for a white supremacist website. As usual I found out about it when my twitter timeline lit up with exhortations to do something about my client, the unpopular defendant. To me his bigoted viewpoint is just noise; the crucial issue here is not weev or his ideas but the future of criminal computer law in the U.S. You may think weev is an asshole. But being an asshole is not a crime, and neither is obtaining unsecured information from publicly facing servers.
Re:weev is a fucking D-bag....but (Score:5, Insightful)
It also is not cool the way the government went after him.
Or technically, it was not cool the way the government went after him for the wrong crime. If they had pursued his ass for the stalking and harassment, that'd be just fine.
Re:weev is a fucking D-bag....but (Score:5, Insightful)
If they had pursued his ass for the stalking and harassment, that'd be just fine.
But that's not what the government does. That's not whom they are protecting. You want law enforcement to protect you, go become a large corporation like Sony. Because that's whom our government fights for.
Re:weev is a fucking D-bag....but (Score:5, Interesting)
Sony? Really? The Justice Department bitchslapped Sony so hard the shareholders cried (they missed their quarter, by a lot, due to the fines and the CEO resigned) over the rootkit fiasco. There are real examples of corporate corruption of the justice system, but that's not one of them.
Re:weev is a fucking D-bag....but (Score:5, Informative)
Or technically, it was not cool the way the government went after him for the wrong crime. If they had pursued his ass for the stalking and harassment, that'd be just fine.
THIS!
Stalking, harassment, including "doxxing" which is a product of both, is not just uncool, courts have ruled it criminal. And in most places there are specific statutes against it.
Re:weev is a fucking D-bag....but (Score:5, Insightful)
Stalking, harassment, including "doxxing" which is a product of both, is not just uncool, courts have ruled it criminal. And in most places there are specific statutes against it.
Which unfortunately won't get prosecuted unless you have a pile of money or are famous enough for the police to bother caring about you. I've had similar death threats against me and zero action done against the perpetrator. There is literally nothing you can do about it in most cases other than pray and hope that the asshat on the internet won't actually act. If you or your child (which was what was threatened in my case... they said my kids wouldn't come home from school the next day) is dead, it is too late to act anyway.
While technically illegal, you can't get the police to act.
The only time I got any action was when I observed somebody making a death threat openly to the President of the USA. The Secret Service took that one seriously.
Re:weev is a fucking D-bag....but (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget libel and slander.
Libel and slander are civil offenses. The government does not prosecute them.
Re:weev (Score:5, Interesting)
The same technique is used by Marc Morano to silence climate scientists:
Whether one agrees with that message or not, there’s no denying that its tone is drastically different from much of the email Hayhoe has been receiving after Limbaugh’s denunciation, Gingrich’s decision to kill her book chapter, and the repeated publication of her email address by an influential conservative blogger who ceaselessly campaigns against climate science and climate action, Mark Morano. - http://texasclimatenews.org/wp... [texasclimatenews.org]
Morano has sicked his minions on her for the crime of publicly discussing her scientific findings. Here is an example of the vitriol she is now receiving: Nazi Bitch Whore Climatebecile [] You stupid bitch, You are a mass murderer and will be convicted at the Reality TV Grand Jury in Nuremberg, Pennsylvania. AGW has never been anything but a Rockefeller depopulationary eugenical scam. [] After the Grand Jury indicts you, I would like to see you convicted and beheaded by guillotine in the public square, to show women that if they are going to take a man’s job, they have to take the heat for mass murder, just like the men do when they get caught. If you have a child, then women in the future will be even more leery of lying to get ahead, when they see your baby crying next to the basket next to the guillotine.
Re: weev (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:weev (Score:4, Funny)
So you're saying That is the lesser of two weevils? :-)
With apologies to Paul Bettany in Master and Commander [imdb.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What is there to take his word over her word, or even to take either's word at face value? Exceptional claims require exceptional proof, and all that... The safest stance, without lots of corroboration, is for me to assume that they've both got serious issues. Sometimes the simplest explanation might be the correct one. I'd love to be shown otherwise, but whatever I could find online was just rather unconvincing.
Re:weev (Score:4, Insightful)
That's stupid.
People are vile and self-centered. They will take advantage of you given the chance. Even if they don't have any ill will, chances are that they will be careless and cause you trouble just out of ignorance and stupidity.
Then you've got entire industries filled with professional trolls.
You also have the possibility of people that are just annoying. That may be intentional or not. This was a well known problem back in the days when you had to troll someone personally. People (including the law) understood that a backlash could be triggered under various conditions.
Although once things get out of hand it really doesn't matter who the victim is. Anyone that's looking at this issue and fixating only on the female victims is probably an annoying trollish git.
If harassment and stalking are real problems then they should be treated as such and gender should not even be part of the discussion.
Re:weev (Score:5, Insightful)
If your purpose was to demonstrate how this cancer infects even Slashdot, then congratulations. +4 Insightful my ass.
Also, you're wrong. When weev dies, another will simply take his place. A hierarchy is basically institutionalized bullying, and we are still indoctrinated into hierarchies. Weev is operating from the axioms thought to him by the Pointy-Haired Boss from Dilbert, only the Internet has stripped away the facade of civility and revealed the dynamic as it really is: "Put up with my bullshit or get the choice between starving to death or going to pound-me-in-the-ass prison."
Re:weev (Score:5, Insightful)
It's so beyond pointless.
Worse (for him) is the fact that his identity is known now.
At some point he'll target the wrong victim, and he will end up dead - all "for lulz".
Re:Ahh, but karma (Score:4, Insightful)
Dying before being brought to justice only means you got away with it.