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Colleges Struggling With the Digital Bathroom Wall
theodp writes "Back in the day, anonymous character assassination was confined to permanent marker scrawl in bathroom stalls. But now, thanks to sites like the student-run CollegeACB.com (ACB=Anonymous Confession Board), which can get hundreds of thousands of hits on a good day, TIME reports that anonymous slander is going viral on campus. Even the most elite universities — normally the land of the politically correct — have been struggling with the problem of anonymous gossip sites and their very un-PC posts, which an Amherst dean likens to 'the worst of junior high.' If he thinks things are bad now, wait until the kids start getting creative with Google Sidewiki."
Soulskill has herpes!
4chan for Harvard?
Really, it's futile in the long term to try and ban "harassment comments" or whatever you want to call it, unless you want to really compromise free speech and become worse than China. Maybe instead stop being so bloody touchy about stupid things stupid people write? What is it we've told our children for ages - "stop caring, don't give it attention"?
Or perhaps people still don't like other people behaving like asses? We were raised (well most of us) to treat each other with at least civility. It grates when you read or see something like that. That's the whole idea of peer pressure.
I wish they'd do away with anonymous for trivial/unimportant information posts. It serves no purpose other than to bring out the juvenile in everyone.
The name "political correctness" implies the two bad attributes of the phenomenon: That it's political and that it claims to be correct (without justification and in a field with many differing perspectives). Politeness often also has these attributes, but the realization that a new behavior is in some way similar to an old behavior which one didn't question should not compel anyone to agree with the new behavior in spite of better knowledge. PC is a limitation on discussion and therefore a limitation on thinking, which is unacceptable. So fuck you.
Complaints about PC are generally not about any version of right or wrong. They are complaints about being required to use, or avoid, language, which it is claimed might offend someone.
I don't care what language you use and do not want to restrict your use of any particular words. You might care what language I use and seek to impose restrictions. Those two approaches are not equivalents and PC falls into the latter.
Just because two people disagree, it does not mean that both views are equal in some way.
Bill Cosby said some things about his community a while ago that was very un-PC, but he felt it needed to be said. White people have said the same things before (as well as less prominent Blacks) but were then called "racist" or "bigots", then ignored and in the meantime, the problems in the community continued. Of course, all of those problems were always blamed on others and never on the community - ex. not getting education because it was a "white" thing and then being angry and pissed when the only jobs they can get are janitors which then lead to more rancor and beliefs about being oppressed and what not.
And it's not only the African American community it's across all racial and religious lines . Although, it's just that it's PC to say anything about white males.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Political correctness is nothing but a bunch of random rules of communication setup as a system of traps for people who dare speak their mind. It doesn't make any sense except to derail communication from its intended purpose.
When you get white Americans calling European nationals who happen to be black 'African Americans' it's gone too far.
I'm so going to whore karma with this obligatory Penny-Arcade reference.
Mod redundant at will.
Political Correctness is just a new version of Politeness
Political Correctness is not polite. In fact, it is the opposite. PC speak at its core is about deception, and as such is one of the greatest forms of insult to any listener that can read between the lines.
It's a dilemma inherent in our choices of technologies.
If we allow anonymity, people will
(a) Use it for good: whistleblowing on evildoers;
(b) Use it for evil: anonymously libelling the innocent;
If we prohibit anonymity, people will
(a) Use it for good: standing by their assertions;
(b) Use it for evil: track every word you say, stifling whistleblowers and witnesses.
There is no right answer. There are only choices between problems.
-kgj
Haha, and sorry nothing citeable here because I'm going to post anonymously for this but I have a black African friend who punched an American who referred to him as "African American" [in UK btw]. What a day that was, sigh..
Hey, I'm an oversensitive pussy, and I find your post extremely offensive and wrong.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Have you been encased in a cement bunker for 20 years? "PC" is not just about avoiding overt insults or, say, the fact that we have condom ads on television now with a guy getting his junk buffed in a wind tunnel. When recent polls in the polls in the UK indicate that 80% of the population is tired of political correctness, you have a real problem, not a generation gap.
When people complain about PC, they mean the sort that causes valid or even scientific discussion from even taking place because some hypersensitive miseryshit somewhere might be offended.
It's the sort of PC that chastises a kid in a Halloween pirate costume for wearing an eye patch because it's offensive to the disabled. Oops, I mean differently-abled! Sorry! Don't sue me for causing emotional distress, please! It's curious they never seem to ask an actual other-abled person. No, wait, "other" sounds exclusionary doesn't it? Argh! The low seas of PC be treacherous, me mateys!
Political correctness also seems to be covering hypersensitivity to safety, so you have it applied to cases where trapeze artists are required to wear hard hats or the Army is told to make their training courses safer to the point of, well, pointlessness. That seems odd to me, but the street finds its own uses for words, much like hacker is used in place of cracker by the general population. Language evolves- deal with it.
Owner Peter Frank, a sophomore at Wesleyan University... runs ACB out of his dorm room. The 19-year-old English major... "I'm untouchable," he says.
You don't sound untouchable Pete, you just sound stupid. Especially after letting time.com publish your full name, picture, the city you live in, AND the school you attend. I am thinking that the next year is going to be very educational for you once your site slanders a couple of people to the point that they lose control and decide to take a trip to Middletown with your picture in hand.
I don't have a primary source for this because it was supposedly on TV, but apparently there was a conversation between an American reporter and black British athlete Kriss Akabusi that went something like this:
"So, Kriss, what does this mean to you as an African-American?"
"I'm not American, I'm British"
"Yes, but as a British African-American ..."
"I'm not African. I'm not American. I'm British."
So the supposed big gossip site Juicy Campus folded in February after existing for a whole year and a half. CollegeACB is some site run by an English Major out of his dorm room. If you actually GO to the site, you'll see a lot of old, outdated posts mostly people asking for gossip and very few actually providing gossip. So this is supposed to be the big problem Colleges are worried about?
This is just another lazy journalist creating a story out of nothing.
AccountKiller
"Politically correct" bullshit makes it a crime for anyone to speak out against queer sumbitches who want to get married, and take over the churches, schools, military, or whatever else offends them. Opposition to homosexuality becomes a "hate crime".
Don't ever confuse "polite" and "politically correct".
Polite pretends that the queer isn't a cocksucker. Politically correct demands approval of cocksuckers.
As an incorrigible cocksucking queer sumbitch myself, I would like to take this opportunity to offer to you my sincerest gratitude for your honesty. My partner and I have been denied housing by "polite" people here in Texas who are always be forced to go far out of their way to find some valid excuse to support their obviously bogus decision. Everyone in the room knows the truth, but for some reason, the mores of politeness demand that no one verbally acknowledge it.
Fuck that. It's much better when people just come out and say what they believe. I'm old enough and wise enough now that I truly don't give a shit what people think of me, but they should at least have the courage not to hide their feelings behind a veneer of "politeness." I can respect them for that.
Sounds like natural selection to me.
Oh wait, that wasn't the PC thing to say. I'm sorry, should I report to the Museum of Tolerance or skip that step and go straight to Tolerance Camp?
It doesn't sound like natural selection to you if the poor kid who hangs himself in a closet is yours.
:) People tried to bully me, but my sheer irony managed to turn their rather limited attempts against me, so most gave up. Exceptions were the (in)famous sports class guys, who used their punches where their wits were powerless. Classic story, yeah I know. Yes I managed to be fine. However, I might have more empathy in me for those who get bullied.
...And let me tell you another real-life story:
I know a couple who have a kid. Back when she was pregnanti woth this kid, she was involved in a car accident and the kid had some birth defects. Now I don't know exactly what happend or how the condition is called (it's not a nice thing to avidly ask them for details), but he can't walk properly, when talking he mumbles horribly (I don't understand a word he's saying, but his parents can; they learned the hard way) and will most likely never go out by himself, meet a girl and/or procreate. He can write but the letters look like crap and are very hard to decipher. He's 12 now.
Back when he was 8, his parents attempted to send him to a public school, and for about a week or two all was fine; but one day teachers found him tucked behind a garbage container; turns out some of his colleagues mocked him, prodded him, called him names and so on. Bullied him, in a word. And they finally dumped him behind that garbage container. He refused to eat or drink, his parents had to take him to the hospital, sedate him, feed him intravenously and pray he won't die. He eventually got better. By that I mean back to what is normal for him.
So what?, would you say. Natural Selection, he'd better be off dead. Okay, but he paints. He's a bloody ARTIST, my friend. He makes art like you or I can't, and he's good at it. I've seen him do it, it's amazing. Now he's no Picasso or anything and at some points his paintings are hard to understand (my guess is he sees the world very differently from us), but it's amazing nevertheless. His parents are not interested in showing his work, they're just glad this activity makes him feel better, but when I enter their house, the walls are literally covered in his drawings. So learn this, man: not all people who can't behave like us are bound to go silently in the night.
Now teens are living by their own standards. You're successful as a teen if you got the dough, the looks and the (sometimes chemically enhanced) sexual stamina. Whoever doesn't fit the pattern likely becomes a victim, no matter the size of his brain. When I was younger, I was respected during the IT classes/exams (because I could help all others) and at parties because I know a gazillion of jokes and I'm pretty good as an amateur stand-up comedian. That's it. I wasn't welcome to join the gang when they went to see movies or in clubs. I ain't good looking, don't have the dough and even if I'm okay in bed, I had to match first two prerequisites to be able to prove the third
When I was a kid, I had a classmate who was poor. I mean, dirt-poor. he only had 3 pairs of pants, and other kids noticed. One day, they threw some god damned substance on his pants (oily stuff, can't recall what it was) and the pants were ruined. He was so ashamed that later that evening his parents caught him attempting to commit suicide (he fucking hanged himself on the outside of the window). He managed to survive and later he earned a sponsored scholarship and became a doctor in the ER in a local hospital. He saved dozens of lifes. Hell, if you have a car crash near that town, he'd be the only one able to help you (small town, one hospital) and save your life. But hey, maybe you're right, maybe he oughta be dead...
You know, it's not always about the "rig
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Verbal aggression and physical aggression both have the same root and both have the same effects. Disregarding the effects of one leaves half of the problem unresolved.
I do agree there are worse things in life than bullying. But let's stick to the world seen from a teenager's perspective. They don't cope with an assholde boss. They will later, but not now. They also don't cope with aggressive drivers, not till they turn 16 (in US) or 18 or even 21 (in some countries). And here we don't talk about Facebook, we talk about dedicated school websites/areas, where the message target is your entire class/school, not a few friends you can block.
Now about that good-bye letter you mentioned. The Suicide rate because of such things amongst teens is surprisingly high. And whereas you can't help getting dumped sometimes, you can (or should be able to) do something against bullying and targeted verbal/physical aggression in schools. And by action I don't mean throw the offender in jail, but counsel the offender and at the same time silently remove the offending entry/post from the website. As for the seriousness of the offense and its implications, let me put an analogy together...
Let's say there's a corporate forum which all your co-workers access. And it's anonymous and unmoderated. Now I, covered by anonimity, go there and write "Shakrai has a small dick, finishes in 2 minutes and can't satisfy a woman ", you wouldn't like it. You could just go ahead and ignore my entry and even the forum altogether, but your co-workers won't. They will show each other this entry and some (most, from my experience) would assume it's true. And all of a sudden, you are going to be the lame hero of the company, the guy everyone makes fun of. People will cease to call you, you will feel isolated and so on; and when the poor soul who hasn't read my entry comes and sits next to you or talks to you, there's always going to be someone who will gladly (and viciously) point the uninformed guy to my entry. Gossip goes fast, gossip goes far. And before you know it, a large part of your life (that would be work environment) would shred to tiny pieces.
Now, you are entitled to sue my ass and get a large amount of money from my misdemeanor, but surprise!, you don't have anyone to sue, because Internet anonymity protects me, and the webmaster doesn't give a shit about your protests (forum outsourced to Vanuatu Islands, good luck reaching someone). OK, maybe you would find a solution, because as an adult you are resourceful, but what can you do as a 14-17 year old kid?
Finally, you say there are lots of help channels available. That's reactive thinking. You wait for the problem to happen and then attempt to fix it. How about being proactive for a change? Identify offenders, counsel THEM, remove the offending post. If cyber-bullies know that their entries are moderated and won't see the daylight if they are aggressive, they will cease doing it.
How about freedom of speech? Freedom of speech applies to identifiable people, to those who are ready to take the heat if they are proven as liars. Not to the so-called "anonymous cowards" (no pun intended) who hide behind the iron curtain of Internet to harm others, willingly or not. Therefore, if I could be identified in the above mentioned imaginary forum, then yes, that forum can be un-moderated and I would be held responsible for my actions.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)