Ew. Michael Nugent tweeted a link to an article about how to deal with online harassment a few hours ago.
Michael Nugent @micknugent
How the Irish police helped a victim of online harassment and abuse http://bit.ly/1v81OqE
The article is by “Doctor DooM.”
I am the only person who writes for this website regularly who uses a pseudonym. I do so for reasons that are my own, but there are many valid reasons why someone would want to do this.
They may express opinions that would be unpopular at their workplace. They may be well known by an alternative name, professionally or personally. They may have had something happen to them that legally they can’t appear to talk about. In the case of one person I know, they may be a potential new public figure, and their online output might be tightly controlled by their management.
Some people might say – and this is the argument that Ophelia Benson seems to be making in a discussion with Michael Nugent online – that all of the above is irrelevant. People who are nasty online should be exposed. Abusers should be dragged into the harsh light of day. Perhaps other people’s civil liberties are less important than that?
No, I don’t say, and no, the argument I’m making is not, that all of the above is irrelevant. I understand that people have reasons for remaining anonymous online. What I say, and the argument I make, is that people shouldn’t use anonymity as a tool with which to harass and threaten other, non-anonymous people in complete freedom from any kind of consequences. That’s what I say, that’s the argument that I make. And no, I don’t say that “people who are nasty online should be exposed.” But people who carry on sustained campaigns of abuse, under the shelter of anonymity? Yes: they should not be able to do that. That’s what I say.
Doctor DooM has received a lot of harassment.
So when we see people like Rebecca Watson railing against the unstoppable tides of sexism and hatred being shunted their way and playing the victim, I have to ask a question.
What are you doing about it?
When it happened to me, of course, there was initial upset. It’s not easy to deal with the fact that people can have that much hate in their hearts. It’s even harder to deal with the fact that it is aimed at you. What have I done to deserve this? Is it my fault? I have untempered sympathy for people in this situation.
After I passed this initial shock though, I went to the Gardaí.
After all, if there are threats of violence and death being made in comments, these are actual crimes. It should be reported. All of it.
And you know what? According to Doctor DooM, the Gardaí dealt with it. Problem solved!
That’s very nice, but Rebecca doesn’t live in Ireland, and neither do I. What happens when you go to the Gardaí to report online harassment has no bearing on what happens when you go to the US police to report online harassment. Also, threats of violence and death are not all there is to online harassment, and that should not be the standard. We should not be expected to put up with harassment that’s not threats of violence and death.
I actually think this is important: why are people writing blogs about this, going on and on about the abuse they receive? The first rule of the internet is don’t feed the trolls. The endless articles discussing and highlighting that vitriol and now even a Senator bringing it up- it’s all fuel. It is, at this point, jaw dropping that people don’t know how to deal with this. Ignore them. It starves them of oxygen. All they want- their entire goal- is a reaction.
Perhaps, publicity trumps the desire to actually help yourself and others.
There you go. We do this for “publicity.”
That’s what Michael “civility” Nugent saw fit to flag up on Twitter.
Is he under the impression that no one receiving threats is reporting them? Was he just not paying attention during the protracted saga of the Canadian bloke threatening atheists for years before police could be persuaded to act on the copious evidence provided to them (and who then promptly reverted to threats and harassment even after action was taken)? (Who I’m not naming because I forget whether there’s an issue with doing so drawing down more harassment – not to be cute.)
If the only threats and harassment it’s okay to talk about are the cases where going to the police was sufficient, then of course it’ll seem there’s no need to talk about them otherwise because you’ve excluded the contrary data from the analysis.
You know what would be really civil is to ask victims of on-line harassment what they have tried. Dr. Doom makes a lot of assumptions about victims of harassment. Does he really think he is the only one who thought of going to the police or “ignoring the trolls.” What a tool.
This comment was specifically about Michael Nugent, right? Because if there’s anyone who inserts himself into situations he doesn’t know squat about, it’s Dawkins. But after Dawkins, well, it’s Harris. But after Dawkins and Harris, it’s…shit, Coyne. But after that, it’s Michael Nugent for sure.
Or, more accurately, the “doing it for publicity/blog buck$/clicks” is about the dumbest thing somebody can write about people on the internet. If you don’t understand psychology, or sociology, or anthropology, then don’t fucking write about it as if you do. It’s no less anti-science just because you don’t believe in god while you do so.
So basically just STFU. But said in a civil way. So much more helpful and respectful… It’s actually not even civil but condescending and patronizing.
I can’t put precise figures to this but let’s see if it works as an outline hypothesis.
“For every person who goes to the police about harassment and ends up highly satisfied there will be several dozen left deeply unsatisfied – of those a handful will be further traumatised and every now and again there’ll be one who ends up dead.”
How does that read? It seems to go with the grain of experience.
I find it HILARIOUS (pronounced “actually pretty fucking depressing”) that nearly EVERY. SINGLE. ARGUMENT. made by the “Lie back and think of the movement, ladies” folks apply to the atheist movement writ large.
“Why are you arguing against creationists? You’re just feeding the trolls.”
“Why write about crosses on public land in your blog? Report the constitutional violation to the authorities and deal with it.”
“Why write books called ‘The God Delusion’? You’re just contributing to the perception of atheists as obnoxious, offensive-for-the-sake-of-offensive muckrakers, even as you line your pockets. Perhaps, publicity trumps the desire to actually help yourself and others.”
Morgan rightly mentioned the case of Dennis Markuze, the disturbed Canadian fellow who harassed and threatened dozens of people online for well over a decade, and who faced no actual consequences until he A) finally turned up at a conference where people he’d threatened were speaking and B) sent death threats to a Canadian citizen who had the wherewithal to document and pursue the matter.
And even after all that, he was back at it within a few months.
Also relevant is Rebecca Watson’s story about reporting harassment to the police and FBI. I don’t know why the good doctor had to wonder whether or not she’d gone to authorities, since that post wasn’t exactly hard to find.
Now, note here a major difference between kinds of harassment, and the responses thereto. To my knowledge, no one ever accused any skeptics of making up Dennis Markuze, of penning their own “goats on fire” posts and threats, of just fabricating harassment for attention, of exaggerating the danger he posed, or any of the other hyperskeptical responses that women routinely get in the same community. I don’t remember anyone calling Tim Farley or PZ Myers hysterical for reporting Markuze’s obsessive harassment. I’d be quite interested in seeing evidence if it ever occurred.
Note, also, the advice “don’t feed the trolls,” repeated as ever like a mantra. I admit, I fed Markuze every chance I got, and that was probably a poor choice. I thought ridicule might make him go a way. It didn’t. Neither did aggressively blocking all his accounts and IP addresses, or setting up filters to block his characteristic posts. We see this in other online harassment as well; look to Anita Sarkeesian, who doesn’t engage with trolls and blocks comments on her videos. Has that stopped the trolls? Obviously not. They just take to Twitter, to Facebook, to their own channels, and so forth. What trolls did Emma Watson or Jennifer Lawrence or Rihanna feed to warrant their violation and harassment?
Markuze was driven not by the responses from his targets, but by his own inner demons, and these other trolls similarly get their motivation from outside. Maybe “don’t feed the trolls” worked back in the days of Usenet and message boards, but today the trolls have set up their own parallel channels, the 4chans and Reddits, where they feed each other, goading each other on and rewarding ever-escalating behavior. Even if you were somehow oblivious to this fact after the last few weeks, it’s backed up by the research. Again, not exactly hard to find.
We’re supposed to be skeptics, right? People who care about research and evidence, who value expertise, and who question received wisdom and “common sense” because it’s often not backed up by facts? It’s getting harder and harder to remember if that’s the case.
In response to the dumbass question this writer asked in print but didn’t bother to ask me or Google before slapping his stupid hands on the keyboard and sitting back smugly to accept plugs from the likes of Michael Nugent:
Glaring how “Doom” just went to them and it all got better, did the Pooka round them up and kick em in the nuts? No explanation of *how* they helped or *why* it got better .. Very convincing there Nugent, not at all desperate!
@9 rebeccawatson…
I’m a pretty non-violent person in general, but I think you should take advantage of your 2nd Amendment rights. I don’t think you’d have any problem getting a concealed carry permit. I know someone who got one in New York City for far less-credible threats than what you’ve received (probably just since Tuesday).
And I hope the private detective gave you good photos of “Rick” so at least you can be on guard against that particular individual.
It’s not a good solution; but might be the only one for your particular situation. Even pacifists recognize the right of self-defense.
FWIW: For home protection, I have been told by the police that a 12-gauge shotgun is a far superior choice to any handgun. The mere sound of a round being chambered would be enough to make any intruder shit his pants — and if you do end up needing to use it, you’re 100% guaranteed to hit something, even if you’re shaking like a leaf. Makes a helluva noise, though. Probably burst an eardrum if used in an enclosed space like a bedroom.
It makes me sick that the knee jerk reaction to a woman saying, “This happens. It isn’t OK. It needs to change” about rapists and harassers is too call her a liar and claim she’s just “doing it for the attention”. But when men in the movement say “This happens. It isn’t OK. It needs to change” of charlatans and religious leaders is seen as heroic.
It’s actually become an ongoing joke at my house for my husband and I to accuse each other of doing things “just for the attention”. It’s funny because I see it said of women complaining about misogyny so often it is absurd. The survivors of abuse and sexual violence are especially victim blamed and told they are “doing it for the attention”. It’s as if the people making this claim are saying that giving a woman attention and trust is a bad thing or that if she wasn’t milking this whole “victim” thing, nobody would pay her attention because she’s clearly too inconsequential to notice otherwise.
Women in this movement speaking up for themselves at all, from “Guys don’t do that” to “Micheal Shermer raped me” are reacted to as if they are launching vicious attacks as well as making excuses to draw attention away from men where it rightfully belongs.
After all, according to highly regarded, not at all sexist famous skeptics, women don’t like to speak up. That’s more of a guy thing. (If she does speak up, scream and stomp your feet until she shuts up.) Women, always using rape to get attention amirite? It probably wasn’t even legit rape. I mean, if a feeemale passes out too close to a Steubenville football player or Michael Shermer, what does she expect? She’s like a drunk driver, right? That’s just what men do when they drink, right? She shouldn’t have left her wallet in the unlocked car or something. She’s like a drunk driver. Conviction or it didn’t happen! She shouldn’t talk about harassment if she doesn’t want more harassment.
What’s not civil about that?
According to several men in positions of considerable influence in this community we are not having a problem with sexism in this movement. We are having a problem with panicked, fuzzy ladybrained, radical, witch hunting viragos lying and making up offences to ruin men’s lives and steal their attention with victimhood powers, because logic.
Women should respond to that civilly?
Nugent can stick his civility where the sun don’t shine. This is not a civil conversation.
Kevin Kehres @11
WTF? Do we have a gunnut doing the “an armed society is a polite society” shuck and jive? Or is Kevin just clueless?
The advice of “go to the cops” is intended to silence. It is intended to remove agency from the victim: you don’t get to decide what to do about harassment, I/we decide for you. Naming/shaming can be much more effective in some cases than the threat of someone going to the police. Anonymity is not sacred. It has it’s place, but clearly it can be abused to engage in a sustained harassment campaign. People who do so should be outed. Using anonymity in this way is pure cowardice. It is similar to how many well-known hate groups operate. Those white hoods of the KKK are not a fashion statement!
If we can’t out anonymous serial harassers, then it will be impossible for ordinary citizens to engage in activism for causes that might be controversial in some (typically reactionary) circles, since activists can be silenced by sustained, possibly coordinated attacks by anonymous, typically reactionary harassers.
Anonymous “Freeze Peach” harassment needs to be recognized as antithetical to real free speech. Those who espouse it are working against citizen activism and true free speech. They are reactionaries. It is worth noting that, at least in my observations, members of the “Freeze Peach” pro-harassment brigade also show other signs of being right-wing authoritarian followers and reactionaries, such as hierarchical thinking, reverence for leaders, fear of change, need for control, etc, which can be readily observed in their postings.
@ Ophelia Benson
What gave Nugent the impression that you wanted to remove internet anonymity? I know that reading implications into things is a general part of both sides of this, but since accuracy in identifying intent is the issue… (assuming that it’s not deliberate misrepresentation of intent)
Very much agreed. Without some sort of tools to prevent such invasions there are few alternatives other then organizing people to counter such abuse in each place where they occur*.
*Difficult, but possible since people that resort to such tactics seem to universally be operating on rules that prevent actually addressing the issue they are attacking over. It’s seems to be nothing but inappropriately biased, fallacious reasoning that can be dealt with. But that involves interacting with in a deliberate and strategic way that changes depending on the issue, person under attack, and environment.
From the article,
Some people might wonder why I use so many words in comments. This is a reason why. Where did Doctor DooM get this impression? What parts of your writing, or speaking are they referring to? Or are they only getting this impression from communication with Nugent? It’s amazing how resistant people on the other side of the rift are to actually citing the portions they get draw their conclusions from.
In that resistance there is power if attention is focused on that resistance in the right way. It’s why I was so annoyed with Nugent when all he did was offer characterizations of what he thought of what people from FTB were saying (or he was just offering the characterizations from people like PZ which are summaries of larger arguments). It’s profoundly lazy and the complete opposite of what was and is done in opposing creationists and similar groups. What is needed is a specific focus on the reason and logic supporting the characterizations of others. Not a dishonestly childish case of exaggerated outrage or flawed implications drawn from the emotional content.
I sympathize, especially with the second part. I was also a moderator, of an imageboard in my case. I’ve seen the same dark, predatory parts of human nature. And I received similar attempts at harassment** because I was a solid supporter of feminism and Rebecca Watson during the elevatorgate situation.
But making you hide, or reduce your profile, or leave social interactions where you can communicate about what you want is considered a strategic victory for such predatory behavior. I’m not condemning Doctor DooM for making the divisions that they did what what they had available to them, but we need better solutions or we are letting predatory behavior win on a social level. Predators will keep doing things that achieve their strategic goals.
**I say attempts because I was a person experienced in online arguments, have a more aggressive personality by nature (which I try to tone down around FTB, people can feel free to let me know how I am doing), have a strong background in the biological sciences, and was moderating a serious discussion board. I was able to deal with them, but I’m trying to be aware of all the privileges I had when thinking about what others are dealing with.
DID YOU EVEN THINK OF ASKING REBECCA WATSON WHAT THEY ARE DOING ABOUT IT?
I can’t take this as seriously after that. This is becoming a study in willful ignorance disguised by rhetorical questions. So only one more point.
“Feeding the trolls” is a statement that can amount to so many things and covers up that complexity by it’s very nature.
Remember that article on CREDs that PZ posted? Think about how others learn from what they see and the possibility of a “negative CRED” where moral behavior that we would consider terrible is spread by similar means. “Not feeding the trolls” is letting inappropriately biased and fallacious opinions stand unchallenged from the perspective of an audience with widely varying education and experience. It’s also showing the audience that threats make people shut up and this can encourage more people to take that as a social tool.
Doctor Doom probably did what they had to in their situation, but I do not want that to be the solution we choose in the long term. To create a better solution we need to set ground work and that I what I see in how FTB and people like Rebecca Watson responded.
Kevin K,
Really? She should carry a gun? You think that’s helpful?
@13 and @16…
I didn’t say it was the optimal solution. The optimal solution would be for the FB fucking Eye to do their fucking job.
Even pacifists acknowledge the right of self-defense. Seems to me that credible threats have been laid at her and she’s gotten less than satisfactory results by going through channels.
No, I’m not a gun nut. Not even a gun owner (at present). But neither am I a Pollyanna who thinks that if we clap real loud, then Tinkerbell will sprinkle fairy dust on a predator and make him go away. Or that she’ll be safe from harm if she just doesn’t think about it too deeply.
You know, Kevin, the whole POINT of civilization is that ordinary people don’t have to arm themselves on a daily basis to ensure survival.
Offering guns as a solution to systemic sexist harassment is basically saying that the misogynists win: women don’t get to partake in the benefits of civilization.
Harassment got you down? No problem! Just become a cold-blooded killer! And probably go to prison.
Absolutely. Note their complete lack of interest in events that involve genuine abrogations of first amendment rights–the situation in Ferguson, MO, for example.
I don’t find the suggestion to get a gun offensive, per se, but I do find it misguided and I don’t think it’s the right solution for me, or for many other people. Having a gun wouldn’t make me feel safer – quite the contrary, having a gun in the house would only increase my chances of dying a violent death.
However, I do plan on getting a large dog as soon as I’m able, and until then I’ll have a home security system.
“She should carry a gun” is on the same level of victim-blaming bollocks as the roofie-testing nail polish and the toothed female condoms. Not helpful, and given the statistics on accidental shootings and guns being used on their owners (and cases like Renisha McBride’s, where even a warning shot against an abusive partner can land you in prison), not any more reasonably valid than “don’t feed the trolls.”
@Jackie #12:
I have to wonder if the unconscious genesis for this is the belief/assumption that women exist to be looked at. Everything a woman does (wear makeup, dress well, smile, have large breasts, etc.) is already often perceived to be for the benefit of (straight, cisgendered) men, so is it really surprising that people would assume that a woman speaking is just trying to get more men to look at her? It’s disgusting, but it’s unfortunately not surprising.
Tom Foss @8:
Sub-edited that for you! But you’re spot on – it doesn’t matter one whit whether you engage trolls or not, they’ll just come. Nugent’s endorsement of DFTT as sage advice is years too late (if it was ever valid at all) and your examples of Sarkeesian and other female stars display in stark relief that all you have to do to attract armies of virulent trolls is be a visible woman or make mostly undeniable cultural observations (which of course is all Sarkeesian is doing; she’s certainly not out to tar all video games as irredeemable cesspits of misogyny, remove all adult content from and turn them into Candy Crush clones, as certain Posterboys for Misogynist Stupidity appear to believe).
Perhaps for skeptics in general that is indeed the case. However, we’re talking about brand-name Skepticism™, not just skeptics, and as we’ve seen with some skeptic orgs who shy away from tackling religion, there are some topics that appear to be off-limits. Likewise it appears that in the hallowed halls of official atheism, there are also some topics that are verboten; in both cases it appears that making the movements more appealing to women (after first understanding why they currently aren’t) is not even a tertiary concern. There are bigfoots and creationists to debunk and ridicule, after all, and that’s critical academic rough n’ tumble manly work. Maybe once all the dowsers and delusionists are taken care of we can spare some time to coddle the womenfolk.
Also & anyway, everything that can possibly be known about women and how they’re different to Us is already known, e.g. why they don’t follow Sam Harris’ tweets or go to conferences (turns out it’s all totally a guy thing and they don’t like being critical, except when they do and ‘target’ Thought Leaders, but then they’re just being emotional and irrational so we should wait until they calm down so they won’t be as angry when they’re eventually dismissed), so listening to women about their own experiences is pointless mission-creep, detracting from the aforementioned important work of mocking idiots. But I’m sure you’ve worked all that out already.
—
rebeccawatson @9: well, I hope you duly tweeted that info to Nugent. As a good skeptic I’m sure that in the face of new evidence he’ll change his mind and modify or retract his endorsement of the article he linked to. Hm. Unless he’s a brand-name Skeptic™, in which case – good luck, sister…
A kind of nagging question/point I’ve had build up for some time: are there really still internet trolls? I mean I remember back in the day, where you’d log onto some chatroom and pretend to be a supersexy model or billionaire playboy and “troll” people by engaging in roleplay conversations. Or when trolls were people who explained to clueless noobs how the internet really works through a large portfolio of online pranks.. linking to The Complete World of Warcraft cheat package or numerous goatse derivatives. People didn’t know what a meme was. People were naive about who is who on the internet. I mean I bet in the early days of telephone there were people who phoned other people saying “this is the ghost of your grandmother!” And actually scared someone. Even the worst trolly converstations in early comments sections had to assume that the trollee had never seen someone behave like that online before, and was taking them seriously.
An internet troll was someone who made use of people’s ignorance of the internet and the broad scope of human experience. Nowadays however, you’ll only really be able to troll 1) children (and a true troll wouldn’t try to hurt them) 2) adults ignorant of how the internet works.
Over the years however, most people have learnt how the internet works. Learnt not to trust, to verify links, turn off sound, pre-google for memes, google nyms, identify, report and delete spam, close popups, check YT favourites..
So now a troll either has to be a highly knowledgable/crafty person trying to educate someone ignorant about a specific issue through clever speechhumanship, or someone willing to abuse: children, old/non-native speakers/emotionally vulnerable/minority people.
Today’s “trolls” aren’t what they were, because the culture of the internet isn’t what it was. Many of today’s “trolls” should now be called “harasser”, “abuser”, “stalker”, “fetishist” (not inherantly bad, but not good to foist on others), “fanboy”, whatever. True Trolling™ is more of an artform and occasional fun-prank time for everyone. It takes effort, good will and aknowledgement of the other person. Trolls aim for a reaction, for emotion, but not harm. When I’ve been an asshole online – that’s what I’ve been. When I’d say I’ve successfully trolled someone, it was a benefit or at least a point of realisation for most involved.
Hypothetical scenario here: let’s say someone well-known within a religious movement had been committing serial sexual assault. Their victims have done the right thing by filing reports, but the leaders of the organizations they filed them to have covered that up for years, and the person being accused is both rich and infamous for launching lawsuits. You, as luck would have it, have learned of all this through one victim who is willing to go public at long last, though well after any criminal court case can happen. Do you:
A) Do nothing, and let the serial offender continue to ruin lives, or
B) Privately file a report to the leadership, like so many others have done before you without any effect, or
C) Use publicity to shame these organizations into action?
Most people would choose C, in this case. But this hypothetical is also a non-hypothetical in the skeptical/atheist community: Allison Smith’s incident happened SIX YEARS AGO and was covered up by the JREF. We have others who have come forward with tales of inpropriety, enough to establish a pattern of systematic coverups by some of the named organizations we know of.
And this Doom character expects us to stay silent? Or thinks that by routing around this broken system by going public, we’re not helping other potential victims or calling for reform?
We’ve run out of all other options besides publicity to make things better. We have no choice unless we want to be complicit in harassment, abuse, and worse. That’s how bad this situation has become.
And also: when anyone writes: playing the victim, I’m going to have to assume “I’m blaming the victim”. That’s really what that statement is: Rebecca was “trolled” and her response is “trolling” therefore we can dismiss both? Nonsense! Some people pretend to be victims of X or hurt by Y or to have experienced Z – yes some people lie on the internet. But if you say someone is “playing the victim”, you’re essentially calling them liers and dismissing their emotions. If someone really “plays the victim”, people most often ignore, unfollow, unsubscribe them. They don’t start stalking, harassing and threatening them, because even if someone has been lying, is a hypocrite, whatever: by harassing, stalking and slandering them online, you are actually hurting them and making them a victim of your own abuse.
You know, these people who engage in so-called”road-rage” incidents of violence are not actually violent people.
What with their newfangled horseless carriages, they get into that whole horseless carriage mindset – it’s like a different world. Technology does that to you.
Just ignore it, or, if it really bothers you, stay off the roads. Don’t feed the trolls.
It’s not the real world, it’s the freeway.
Hang on. That’s much milder than what I get, and I’ve been getting it for far longer. So now I’m supposed to go to the police? I should pull up the block list on my site, dig back through my email archives, and pull a list off the twitter #ftbullies hashtag, march down to my local goddamn fucking police station, plunk the hundreds or thousands of names and pseudonyms down, and tell them to go FIX IT?
That’s simply insane. That is perhaps the dumbest advice I’ve ever gotten, and Michael Nugent is endorsing it?
Do these wankers really believe I have the right to demand that the slymepit be demolished and all of it’s asshole participants arrested for…what? Malicious photoshopping? Repetitive slyming? Being boring? Fuck me. You can’t do that. Not only would it be ineffective, it would be comical — it would be as nutty as the succession of crackpots who have threatened to sue me for laughing at them.
Rebecca Watson is exactly right in #9. I have also gone to the police when there have been credible and specific threats…or at least I used to. I quickly learned that they will do shit all. I get a threat that someone will come to my office on a specific date at a specific time and hack me to death with an axe, I give it to the police, and the officer modeled the perfect demonstration of a stupefied mannequin. “What do you want us to do about this, sir?”
At the height of the Dennis Markuze nonsense, I printed out a year’s worth of his harassment, a stack of paper 4 inches high, with death threats on just about every page. I plopped that down on the counter at the police station. Told them he’s been doing this since 1993. “Uh, I guess we’ll start a file.” They contacted the FBI. “Uh, that’s not our jurisdiction.” They contacted the RCMP and Montreal city police. Silence.
I haven’t even bothered to go through the police about the non-stop email and twitter hatred. I know it will accomplish nothing, and that virtually all of it is from bullying assholes who do this every day, all day, with never a worry that any action can or will be taken against them. All I know is that I could start a campaign of writing to this Dr Doom and Michael Nugent several times a day, describing in detail how I was going to carve them and their family up with my well-honed axe, and the police could do nothing about me…but they don’t have to worry about it, because I’m not that obsessive or sick and have no interest in harassing anyone.
These are not matters for the police. Most of us don’t do it because we have some basic human decency, and these people lack that. But I do have a special contempt for the marginal psychopaths who make excuses for the assholes, arguing that it is the police or nothing. They are enablers. Fuck ’em.
Folks should be reminded that in the Mabuse case, it wasn’t even that he finally threatened a Canadian but that he threatened the police that got the cops to take the matter seriously.
I don’t think these people are unaware that the cops will do nothing.
I think it’s just a form of saying “shut up.”
Nugent’s only one or two stupid stunts away from becoming a punchline.
Dude, shut the fuck up for a while. Seriously.
I’ve decided. It’s magic.
Nugent is the first person to demonstrate that it is possible to go through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole simultaneously.
(Not true, actually. He’s just decided to show us a side of himself he’s not given free rein to before. And we’re only now seeing what’s been there all along.)
that people shouldn’t use anonymity as a tool with which to harass and threaten other, non-anonymous people in complete freedom from any kind of consequences. That’s what I say
Put another way for the philosophical dudebros:
If harassing someone is wrong, then harassing someone anonymously is still wrong.
It’s not the anonymity that’s wrong, it’s the harassment.
That someone relies on anonymity in order to avoid the consequences of doing something wrong – something that would bring consequences if they were not anonymous shows that they know what they are doing is wrong and that they are not exercising “free speech” – they are being anonymous cowards.
Kevin Kehres@11: Others have addressed the social inappropriateness of your advice, but I’d also like to remind you that the law treats gun use very differently for men and women. Just this year a man was acquitted for shooting a prostitute in the back of the head as she tried to get into her car and drive away; in another case, a court saw fit to jail a woman for firing a warning shot to scare off her violent partner. To put it another way, carrying a gun is a good way to get yourself killed or jailed if you’re not the right kind of person (i.e. a white male).
Tom Foss@8:
Markuze’s harassment list stretched over a lot more than dozens of people — it must have been in the hundreds. Even I got Markuze mail for a brief time, which given my insignificant profile in the atheist community means he probably threatened thousands of people. He certainly had his harassbot algorithm down pat.
#9 Was the personal security guard you hired carrying any firearms, or is that something you’d not wish to reveal?
I don’t remember ever getting emails, but he definitely visited my site now and again. Dude was ubiquitous.
Marcus @34:
…more or less means that they are behaving like a criminal or, if I’m charitable (which I’m not, but just imagine I was), a mere spineless sack of crap.
Thusly and forsooth, I present to you Hank’s Law on Pseudonymity:
On its own, the fact that you have a secret identity doesn’t make you Batman; you must also not act like a douche.
Re: Markuze – he even hit me a few times back in my blogspot days. I had no idea who he was and just had fun ruthlessly mocking his comments – obv. in hindsight I shouldn’t have bothered.
crap, i tried to leave a response to kevin as a firearm owner, but i guess somwhere along the way the site doesbt like me
i will say in a briefer way, i do pay attention to opinions posted here. owning a firearm is a HUGE privilige/right and should be treated as such. We do a bad job of policing that rigjt in the US
It’s been noted that a lot of the tactics in the rapist-cheerleading camp seem to come from religious playbooks; this is one of them. Can someone point out a meaningful difference between this entire diseased line of argument and crying “Matt 18:15-17!” until people shut up?
Simon: yes, he was an armed, off-duty police officer.
Wow. I can’t even imagine having to do that. Apparently hiring an armed guard is all a part of your evil plan to make more money? Un.fucking.believable.
I don’t know what armed guards cost these days, but I’m going to go ahead and guess “not very fucking cheap”.
@ Ephiral
I think in both cases it’s about shutting down emotion, or creating emotinal reactions that prevent an individual or a group from being receptive to the ideas of other groups. It’s a bunch of things at once.
It depends on the specific example in “…this entire diseased line of argument…”. I’ve seen multiple levels and manifestations of motivated reasoning all over the place.
For whatever reason (and there are many), the people involved from Dawkins on down are very uncomfortable with being challenged on issues having to do with community behavior and gender, sex, race and similar. Finding the core emotional sensitivity is very challenging because people tend to protect and hide that as best as they can. The defense mechanisms that drive the resulting motivated reasoning are secondary phenomena and accurately following the patterns to the core sensitivity are challenging to work through fairly because it’s very much like work that a psychologist would do. Our community should be sensitive to doing something like this fairly (and probably is because of our makeup), but can’t really avoid having to do it because of the reality of social conflict.
*Projection paints your opponent with your own flaws to drive perceptual filters tuned to those flaws elsewhere.
*Victim blaming moves the effort in removing suffering from the population to someone other than the victim blamer (so the victim blamer is likely connected to the behavior on some level but that is hard to define fairly and may not be conscious)
*Fallacious reasoning allows one to avoid the arguments of another in terms specific to the kind of reasoning. (An ad hominem gives you clues about the fallacious reasoners specific sensitivities to groups of people).
*Simplifying the message and elevating the emotional tone is meant to push attention around in the conflict (this can be done fairly if the person doing this is willing and able to unpack the emotional characterization).
Repeating the same thing over and over like religious people with books do is a means of manipulating the Illusory truth effect (aka, the Availability cascade). A group’s cultural narrative gives the reasons for why they consider certain bits of information meaningful and to reinforce that meaning repetition works. One “benefit” is that it shuts out the meaning of other groups and in a group conflict can increase the signal of their message over the noise of every one else’s message. The shitty people in the atheist/skeptic community have their own narratives and they are mostly non-religious, but probably share the same core cultural sensitivities that connect may connect to biological needs at some level. (control of communication, control of reproduction/reproductive access, ally support, maintaining power/authority, threat reduction…)