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The Inevitable Death of the Internet Troll
HughPickens.com writes James Swearingen writes at The Atlantic that the Internet can be a mean, hateful, and frightening place — especially for young women but human behavior and the limits placed on it by both law and society can change. In a Pew Research Center survey of 2,849 Internet users, one out of every four women between 18 years old and 24 years old reports having been stalked or sexually harassed online. "Like banner ads and spam bots, online harassment is still routinely treated as part of the landscape of being online," writes Swearingen adding that "we are in the early days of online harassment being taken as a serious problem, and not simply a quirk of online life." Law professor Danielle Citron draws a parallel between how sexual harassment was treated in the workplace decades ago and our current standard. "Think about in the 1960s and 1970s, what we said to women in the workplace," says Citron. "'This is just flirting.' That a sexually hostile environment was just a perk for men to enjoy, it's just what the environment is like. If you don't like it, leave and get a new job." It took years of activism, court cases, and Title VII protection to change that. "Here we are today, and sexual harassment in the workplace is not normal," said Citron. "Our norms and how we understand it are different now."
According to Swearingen, the likely solution to internet trolls will be a combination of things. The expansion of laws like the one currently on the books in California, which expands what constitutes online harassment, could help put the pressure on harassers. The upcoming Supreme Court case, Elonis v. The United States, looks to test the limits of free speech versus threatening comments on Facebook. "Can a combination of legal action, market pressure, and societal taboo work together to curb harassment?" asks Swearingen. "Too many people do too much online for things to stay the way they are."
According to Swearingen, the likely solution to internet trolls will be a combination of things. The expansion of laws like the one currently on the books in California, which expands what constitutes online harassment, could help put the pressure on harassers. The upcoming Supreme Court case, Elonis v. The United States, looks to test the limits of free speech versus threatening comments on Facebook. "Can a combination of legal action, market pressure, and societal taboo work together to curb harassment?" asks Swearingen. "Too many people do too much online for things to stay the way they are."
The definition of harassment, at least where I live, is "unwanted sexual advances", meaning the distinction between flirting and harassment is purely based on subjective experience. Good luck trying to find a girlfriend without "harassing" anyone!
As the old saying goes "We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias..."
But that's not true anymore is it? These "women" now exist on the internet, and as long as they keep trying to be "women" on the internet, people will call them out for it. People call "women" skanks because they fill their profiles with pictures of themselves looking like skanks. People harass "women" because they keep pointing out how unfairly they're being treated because they're "women".
There are now "women" in gaming, "women" in business, "women" fighting for "women" and more power to the "women". Why? If these "women" would just stop trying so damn hard, then there would be room for everyone.
But that'd mean having to compete with everyone else on equal terms, wouldn't it? The "women" wouldn't be able to rely on their pretty looks and the empowerment of other "women", and they'd receive no special attention from all the nerds on the internet. We'd all be equals, each anonymous entity carrying its own weight, relying on words to enforce their ideas. But we can't have that. Only "women" can be equal.
Actually, it seems women have it relatively tame. Sure, they get a lot of random messages asking for cyber sex, but they also get a LOT of benefits for being a women, especially in a geeky place with mostly male audience. Sometimes I'll even register as a woman on for example tech forums because it really does make my question get answered faster and better (by some geek hoping to impress the "chick"). Now compare this treatment to how blacks get treated online. N-bombs and racism everywhere and constant stereotyping, and almost no positive treatment at all. It's also quite bad for gays (although everyone gets called a faggot these days) and Arabs/Muslims. Thought about posting this anonymously, but I guess I really have nothing to lose by attachimg my name to it.
"Social justice warriors" do everything they can to actively censor anyone they choose to target. They attack, and attack, and attack some more.
I remember reading a little while back that the YouTube "Star Wars Kid" had become a lawyer and was working for some sort of culture ministry in Quebec. I thought "Good for him! He made it through a negative part of his life and now he's doing some good in the world!" But then a Canadian responded to the story and pointed out that "language and culture" in Quebec has a much more ominous meaning than it does in most other places. Essentially, this kid was purportedly working, not to promote arts & culture, but as a legal bully for some Quebec nationalist/separatist types who want to harass anyone not putting their signs in only French and to threaten anyone who didn't put "French culture" ahead of English culture.
That was sad to me. It seemed that the bullied had become the bully. Sometimes you can think you're doing something good. But even if you are pursuing a noble cause at first, you can cross over a line to the point where you start seeing your critics as evil and wanting to silence them by force. When you cross that line, you're no longer pursing a noble cause. Any merit in your cause goes out the window the second you decide to impose it at sword-point. At that point, you're just another asshole in a power struggle.
SJW's may think they're doing good. But to me they're just another bunch of assholes in a power struggle. And I would much rather live in a world where there are some internet trolls than a world where I have to walk on eggshells on the internet and watch everything I say, lest I be booted off for inadvertently offending some new group of victims that I wasn't even aware existed.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
When you want a particular solution, you continue to claim a problem exists over and over and over again until people believe it and demand the solution you want to provide. Hegalian dialectic 101, and in this case they (the State and the cronies putting people into offices) want Internet Censorship.
In fact the Government owns their own Troll armies, provides them play books, and pays them YOUR money (collected in taxes) to Troll. If we know that the US and UK Governments are doing this, we should assume that other Governments are doing the same. We also know that large corporations have hired trolls, and paid them to troll as well. What is constantly overlooked in discussions of "Trolling" is whether or not a Government/Corporate paid troll campaign is involved. It's a fair question, but our state controlled media does not ask the question.
In no way is this an attempt to claim that shitty people don't exist. The issue is, that the shitty people are not the majority and a good number of shitty people happen to be in the Government. "SJW"s are often co-opted by the Government (see COINTELPRO/Mocking Bird), and the Dunning-Kruger effect means that many of these SJWs are unwittingly behaving as agent provocateurs.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
That's not the problem. The problem is that the subject paints this article as an article about the death of trolling, but what it's really talking about is misogyny which is only an absolutely tiny fragment of online trolling.
Hence, if what the author is talking about comes true, the death of misogyny online, then it will not in any way even be close to the death of the internet trolling because every other type of trolling will still be present.
Thus this story deserves a big slapping down, it's purposefully misleading about a large widespread issue to push a much more focussed agenda than that it's dressed itself up as. People only do that when they don't have an argument that stands by itself, they only sensationalise when they don't have much to say about the actual specific point they're talking about, but perhaps most importantly, it's fucking offensive to the victims of every other type of trolling out there which can be equally as serious - it says "Hey, you guys aren't victims of real trolling because you're not female, or not victims of misogyny, that's the only real trolling"- tell that to the kid bullied to suicide for being overweight, being poor, having no friends or whatever else. It happens.
I would describe it as differing distributions based on both genetics and social indoctrination. A person might be physically inclined towards a particular trait but actively discouraged from it based on how their gender is socialized.
An obvious caveat being that you can't attribute any characteristic universally (genetic or socialized).
This is how you end up with female members of Gamergate. They view the hysterical nonsense associated with their own gender as intolerable as many guys would.
They will also provide nice insights into the "enemy camp".
Not all women agree with these SJW ninnies and that's a very good thing. A number of us personally benefit from that fact.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You can ask that, but you won't get a sensible answer. What will happen instead is that they pick some other part of your post, only respond to that, and call you a misogynist, racist, or some other name. Or they'll give a generic like "When full equality has been achieved and women aren't harassed anymore. Are you opposed to equal treatment and ending harassment? Why do you hate women?" You can't even win if you are a member of the minority they are pretending to help; they'll just say "The reason you disagree with me is because society has treated you so badly that you have internalized all this self-hatred, so in addition to suffering over harm, you have clearly also suffered psychological harm."
You need to recognize that these people have spent their whole lives on honing their propaganda and debating skills; that's what political science and social science majors do. They plan strategy, they have entire books about how to raise an issue, discredit opponents, and get things done. They know every single point and strategy you might use and how to respond to it most effectively. They don't have to be logical or truthful, they just have to score debating points. And that's all it takes for them to succeed in politics and get lots of donations to their causes. And money and power is what this ultimately about: this is how they make a living and succeed.
These people are professionals. As a technology person, you have about as much chance of success against them as challenging a heavyweight champion to a boxing match.