Thursday, October 8, 2009
Media / Phillips 'Someone Really Needs to Teach You a Lesson'
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:15 AM
A good troll can comment in such a way that you and he both know what he means, but he's left himself plausible deniability. A great troll can encourage others to do his dirty work for him.
Take what's been happening to GoldnI over at Post Politics recently. Some guys have taken to calling her "The Paris Hilton of the Nashville blogosphere." This is really brilliant, just objectively. They get a short-hand for dismissing GoldnI as a vapid, inconsequential whore and, if anyone objects, they can just say that they were trying to call her young and rich.
Shoot, even when someone follows their lead, but takes it too far, saying--
--they are the first guys to spring forth with comments about how inappropriate it is. As if their own "Paris Hilton" label isn't just a coded way of calling her an "idiotic bitch." As if dropping reminders about knowing where she is aren't round-about ways of saying "someone really needs to teach you a lesson."What? No response Goldeneye? Too busy kissing ass, you idiotic bitch?
Someone really needs to teach you a lesson.
They've also taken to calling Sean Braisted "Perez Hilton," which we all know is their way of trying to impugn his manhood in polite company. But no one who's read Braisted for any length of time takes those comments seriously, and I haven't read any comments with the implicit "I could get to you" jibe.
It just feels different. With Braisted, it's obvious that the commenters are harmless jackasses. With GoldnI, though? I don't know. Sometimes I'm creeped out for her.
Comment
sections make for some weird dynamics. On the one hand, there's a lot
of knowledge out here on the Internet, and comment sections can be a
great mechanism for conveying and delivering it. And when it works well, it's ideal for fostering a community that
has a stake in your website and your organization. It's also pretty populist: Anyone who has
a computer can participate. You don't have to know the right people to be heard or be powerful to have influence. You just have to
show up and say something that adds to the discussion.
On the
other hand, it's not like the Internet magically makes people better
than they are. So the threats people face when they speak
in public are magnified. Name-calling, reputation-impugning and harassment reach levels that would end in fisticuffs in real life.
And I'm no saint, believe me. I've done my fair share of it and will do more in the future, I'm sure.
But the threats of violence, implicit or not, really bother me. And the "teach you a lesson" form of intimidation is one that many women are unpleasantly familiar with, both online and off. I asked GoldnI about how it feels to be attacked by people she doesn't know in such weirdly personal ways.
"When faced with comments like that, it's an impossible choice between wanting to respond and defend yourself, but at the same time knowing that getting a reaction is exactly what they want," GoldnI says. "I was always taught that the bullies on the playground will stop if you ignore them, but the Internet allows them to be much more persistent."
Comments (16)
Showing 1-16 of 16
Having read the thread you're talking about, it was obvious that someone made that comment in order to make "Harrison" look bad.
That's the oldest trick in the blog-o-book. Take someone's name and make asshole comments so that everyone gets pissed at them. I use "OG Ben" now because several other people kept using "Ben." Of course, now that I've written this, someone will use "OG Ben."
Stealing someone's name is a definite dick move, but it's part of the internet. Not much can or should be done about it.
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hey've also taken to calling Sean Braisted "Perez Hilton," which we all know is their way of trying to impugn his manhood in polite company.
Is that what they were doing? I thought it was because we both like to dye our hair funky colors.
Someone said that Sean called himself "Perez Hilton" first. As a joke, I'm sure. True or not?
We humans are a murderous race. That's why manners matter. The anonymity possible on comment boards really draws out the Id in some folks, and I see no good systematic way to stop that from happening. If I were responsible for a blog, I would consider it proper to delete comments that are threatening or clearly defamatory, but plenty of mean and hurtful verbiage could still get through that filter.
All of us have better manners when people who know us are watching. That's why I would like to see blogs adopt a mechanism akin to amazon.com's "Real Name attribution" for book reviewers. Allow commenters to authenticate themselves in some way so they can take public responsibility for their postings. The system could be entirely optional. Trolls could still do their thing, but over time, those fighting with an open mask would command more attention. And spoof postings under someone else's handle would not be so easy.
I'm sure many others have had this idea, though I have not seen it elsewhere. Do any techies out there know whether such a widget exists for any of the major blog platforms?
Ben, I responded over at Post Pol, but in a nutshell, it really doesn't matter much to me who made the comment, whether it was a "real" troll or a copycat. The precedent for threats like this was set long ago (the "Paris Hilton" thing has been going on for awhile now), and just winked at by certain bloggers who like to stir up controversy in order to get more page views.
I still don't understand how the Paris Hilton analogy fits. If I had Paris Hilton's money, I wouldn't need to go to fancy-pants elitist law school, now would I? And I hope there aren't any "tapes" out there I need to be aware of.
I'm not aware of comparing myself to Perez Hilton before...but then again, I do comment while under the influence sometimes.
Having been the target of trolls for more than a decade, in and out of various mediums I've worked, I have never seen people so troubled over trolls as much as I've seen right here in Tennessee. I mean, I've seen people quit their jobs in tears over trolls and dedicate post after perennial post pondering their motives, identities and how to deal with them.
Who really cares?
Sometimes the people you instinctively try desperately to shun or distance yourself from are the very people you ought to have sitting right next to you at the tea party. The old old cliche "keep your enemies closer" has stood the test of time for a reason.
1. I'm not entirely convinced that anyone is impersonating Harrison, regardless of his claim to the contrary. That comment seems perfectly in line with his character so far.
2. If someone is impersonating Harrison, it's ACK's responsibility to ban and/or out that person for trying to perpetrate that kind of fraud and abuse.
3. None of those jackass trolls would dare say that kind of garbage to someone's face, because they know damn well that they'd get a fat lip for it. That's why they're saying it on the internet. Like all conservatives, these people are cowards at heart. They pose about as much real danger to anyone as a pillowcase full of wet noodles.
Agree completely on #3, autoegocrat, but that's the nature of the internet. I think the anonymity allows some people to say positive things that they wouldn't say face to face because they are too shy or whatever. On the negative side, it allows assholes to be assholes. You take the good with the bad.
Martin, I don't say this lightly, but you should thank your God that you have been spared knowing who Perez Hilton is. You're better off not knowing.
Unless, for some reason, you feel like you've been deprived of crudely-drawn penises.
Grantham, don't start that wizened elder of the internet crap. For better or for worse, you're just like the rest of us.
It's called blogging while female. You get used to it. I've been threatened with violence once or twice, but mostly it's just a hamfisted attempt to undermine my reason and opinions because I'm a stupid bitch who doesn't know shit about shit.
In every other form of human communication, you're responsible for the truth or falsehood of what you say. Whether spoken or written, if you defame someone anywhere else, you can be held accountable in court.
Not so on the internet. Thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, some courts, including Tennessee courts, have ruled that all state laws (including libel laws) are preempted, and that a posting on the Internet, no matter how false or vile, is immune from state lawsuit.
I learned this the hard way few years ago, when a client's libel lawsuit was dismissed in Davidson County Circuit Court. My client had been accused online of numerous crimes (which would have been libel per se in any other context)by anonymous posters on a web site whose California webmaster refused to disclose the posters' identities.
I understand that Congress wanted to offer some protection to expression on the then-fledgling internet in 1996. Given the amount of vitriol and bullshit on the web now, I think it's time to withdraw some of that immunity and make people responsible for their own words again.
Did someone make a libelous statement here? Best I can tell you've just got people operating at various levels of dumbassery. We've learned from Bill Hobbs, and even this Scene site, that there's an abundance of dumbassery on the web but that doesn't mean it should be punishable by law. Sounds like Mark would prefer Internet-regulated China.
Nope, Floyd. I just think the internet is robust enough to do without any special exemptions from the responsibilities that we all accept everywhere else as a matter of course.
Libel laws wouldn't prevent name-calling. They do help prevent the dissemination of false and defamatory statements. I believe the same laws that apply everywhere else ought to apply to the web as well.
Nice try with the China bit, though.
Almost every blog I read has a faction of repeat commenters who troll every post, by being inexplicably hostile either to the individual writers (e.g. "another stupid post from Goldeneye, that stupid bitch"), or the very premise of the website they have chosen to read (e.g. "another liberal screed from you idiotic liberals here at Liberalpolitics.com!"). These comments tend to eat into what might otherwise be interesting discussions. Readers who might have things to add tend to waste an inordinate amount of time "defending" the original poster, setting the record straight, explaining why there's no such thing as White History Month, etc.
They tend to be misogynists, and the practice of threatening or attacking women who venture out into the public sphere has a long and shameful history. Also, I think that this trolling tends to discourage intelligent debate. If I read an interesting post & there's nothing but Idiocracy-like blathering in the comments, I'm unlikely to comment, since I'd assume there was no intelligent discussion to be had. In the long run I might be less likely to visit that website.
The solution, of course, is for sites to have people register for an account before they could comment. Then the mods could ban people for trolling or making ad hominem/ad feminam attacks. This would take some extra effort, but it would add value for readers by keeping discussions on track and vaguely literate.
