It's really easy, you just change human nature. Oh wait, that's actually pretty tough to do. Maybe you strap on your big boy pants and deal with it. People are pricks, don't stick a spoon in your eye over it.
How do we realistically stop harassment online?
- Thread starter Inglorious891
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If Anita wants to stop receiving death threats then perhaps she should stop writing death threats, sending them to herself, and then posting them on the internet to get attention. Of course, that's her entire business model so I seriously doubt she would do that. Then she wouldn't be able to put out a press release that she's going into hiding, the inconspicuous master of stealth that she is. Maybe she can get another 150,000 dollars donated to her to make a handful of videos whining about princess peach.
That's a tough question to really answer, and I doubt there's anything that can be done to totally stop online scum from being, well, scum outside of just getting rid of online. As individuals, however, we can choose to stand up against it when it occurs. We need to stop sitting back and saying that "it's just part of the internet." It may not be something we can totally eradicate, but it is something we can stop from condoning or taking part in.
Do I have to even say it?Plunkies said:
This only proves 3 things:
1. The person making the threats has really good syntax.
2. Anita takes screenshots of threats quite quickly given how fucking scary they are.
3. You have yet to prove anything aside from you are sorely misguided and indulge in bizarre delusions.
How about we all become better people?
Is that option off the table now?
Oh wait; we could encourage each other maybe. You know, when you see someone being Boss you message them and be like ?GG. You?ve earned my respect for being a good sport.?
And then they can be like ?you know, you?re not have bad yourself.?
You don?t even have to police people! And everyone can stay anonymous! EVERYONE WINS!
Is that option off the table now?
Oh wait; we could encourage each other maybe. You know, when you see someone being Boss you message them and be like ?GG. You?ve earned my respect for being a good sport.?
And then they can be like ?you know, you?re not have bad yourself.?
You don?t even have to police people! And everyone can stay anonymous! EVERYONE WINS!
We chip away at it bit by bit. People always think situations like this can only be won with one big battle. It's not. It's gonna be a million small ones. Taking stands in minor situations to stand against it.
Also we stop saying "Well it's the internet, what do you expect" every single time it happens. Stop making it acceptable.
Also we stop saying "Well it's the internet, what do you expect" every single time it happens. Stop making it acceptable.
So you don't find any of it suspicious? Knowing when the threats will start? Knowing when they'll stop? The typical, silly, Twilight fantasy nonsense? The timing to coincide with her video release while Zoey Quinn is taking her spotlight? The fact that she logged out for some inexplicable reason? The request for donations shortly after so as to immediately profit off of these "scary" threats? Which, by the way, she posted on the internet instead of shutting up and letting law enforcement investigate. You'd think someone with so many "threats" would know SOP for receiving a death threat. Almost like it was all done for her benefit, isn't it?Quadocky said:
There are two kinds of people in this world, carnies and rubes. Anita has been fleecing rubes since the first day she showed up in the gullible gaming community.
Plunkies, speaking as a trained historian, I think you really don't understand the difference between innuendo and evidence. Permit me to demonstrate the difference.
What you have is innuendo. There is no direct link to Anita Sarkeesian, besides the fact that the threat is directed at her. There is no smoking gun, where Sarkeesian brags about a false flag attack on herself, or makes any suggestion that it is anything but legitimate. Every single incongruity in the picture can be explained in any number of different ways, with nothing actually balancing it towards your own interpretation.
Now, here is undercover work by Zoe Quinn with members of 4chan in a chat channel discussing how to engineer #gamergate: https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate
Here is a chat log with further members of 4chan directly discussing tactics against Quinn: http://archive.today/Ler4O
Please note how these provide a direct link between 4chan and what happened to Zoe Quinn. THAT is evidence of a conspiracy.
You may take it from a trained historian with a defended MA thesis.
What you have is innuendo. There is no direct link to Anita Sarkeesian, besides the fact that the threat is directed at her. There is no smoking gun, where Sarkeesian brags about a false flag attack on herself, or makes any suggestion that it is anything but legitimate. Every single incongruity in the picture can be explained in any number of different ways, with nothing actually balancing it towards your own interpretation.
Now, here is undercover work by Zoe Quinn with members of 4chan in a chat channel discussing how to engineer #gamergate: https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate
Here is a chat log with further members of 4chan directly discussing tactics against Quinn: http://archive.today/Ler4O
Please note how these provide a direct link between 4chan and what happened to Zoe Quinn. THAT is evidence of a conspiracy.
You may take it from a trained historian with a defended MA thesis.
I don't want to get too much into this particular point, but there is WAY farther anyone can go then sending a few 150 characters or less threats to people. Again, I don't think anyone should spin it as being the end of the world when the stark reality is that the troll specifically acted in that manner specifically so you would act this way. It took no time investment on his part to make those threats, so when you act as if they have all the power against you, then you've completely and utterly lost the mental battle against trolling. You're just laying down and letting them walk all over you, and you shouldn't be. You should realize that twitter is a two-part communication medium. And if you don't participate, there isn't much more the troll can do to harm you without committing a felony. And if he had the option to hurt you in that way in the first place, would he really be using twitter to pick on you? You can usually safely assume no.Robert B. Marks said:
Considering that is the extent of their ability shown so far, one could conclude that is their only method of recourse and they are therefore toothless as long as you don't pay attention to them. Anita has done herself the biggest disservice of all because she's the one who put her life on hold because of the actions of a sock puppet account that someone made in less than a minute and tweeted a series of tweets that took ten minutes to finish in total. Twenty minutes of effort on a troll's part has taken away weeks of Anita's life, all because she just couldn't look away from the screen, call the police, and let that be it. By publicly acknowledging that this troll has damaged her life, she has painted a big target on herself for anyone else who now knows how to push her buttons and make her run fleeing into the night.
So, should you feel sorry for her? Should you feel pity for her? The answer to these, if you think Anita is a grown adult capable of making her own decisions, should be neither. Shame on the troll for what he did, but he's a troll, this is what he specifically wanted to do. He wanted this reaction from not just Anita, but you too for getting so frustrated at him and his actions. He is the happiest person out of all of this because of how much attention he is getting.
At the same time, anyone who wants to abandon their life because of a few mean internet postings has done a poor job analyzing their opponent and determining what the realistic response should be for the amount of effort invested by the troll.
Let's do a bit of threat analysis on one particular post in this thread,
This is perfect, it's a post that I'm not even sure is meant to be taken seriously. It's Poe's law in motion that a person takes internet words so seriously that they believe them to be like a hacker movie in the 90's where the internet text is coming from inside the house. I'm going to assume it's a serious post for the purpose of this demonstration of threat analysisQuadocky said:
What is the threat: Harassment on twitter.
Okay, twitter has a lot of mean, nasty, ugly people. All of them can bombard you at once. This particular posting seems to take people on twitter as being a kind of eldritch god of hacktivism, so we'll go with that assumption that is the threat we're dealing with.
So for the analysis, let's ask ourselves a small question: If people on twitter, a public message space, were seriously able to cause harm to you or really be the all-seeing hackers with unlimited resources that you believe them to be, would they really waste their time threatening you in the span of 150 characters on a public forum?
We can assume the most obvious answer is probably the right one and say no. The reason they threaten on twitter is because it's a very simple site that people take very seriously. The reason it's day-in day-out harassment is specifically because it is so easy to make harassment that is taken seriously. So going overboard and trying to mentally treat them the same as someone who is calling your phones or stalking you is only letting them win. You're letting people who you should be looking at as your opponent get inside your head because you take twitter so seriously.
Really I think twitter should have a page dedicated to the teachings of good threat analysis against the trolls to determine who is or isn't a threat against your personal safety. There used to be an adage on the internet: Don't believe anything you read.
And again, I hate to reiterate points I made in another thread, but you're also making the same mistake people in that other thread were making AND the same mistake the person you were quoting in making in trying to tie two unrelated people together on an assumption that is impossible to prove.Robert B. Marks said:
4chan and that chat room had no links to one another. The chat channel is hosted in Rizon, no 4chan moderators or staff participate in #gamergate or #guysandfries (I think that's the name?) and Rizon isn't owned or funded by 4chan staff in any way, shape, or form. Therefore, 4chan is as much to do with that channel as /r/4chan on reddit has to do with 4chan. It's arguable if that channel even originated on 4chan, again, assuming that it must be 4chan and Zoe 'infiltrated' them is a series of assumptions that everyone framing it has jumped to conclusions on without a shred of proof. Zoe Quinn really only has her words that it's related to 4chan, and she's obviously not being an unbiased source of evidence any more than that chat channel is because they're both fighting on two opposing sides.
Really, making that assumption that the people in there speak for 4chan is the same kind of assumption the person your arguing with is making. Not trying to bust down your argument, but it's a pretty poor assumption to assume those two places are one in the same when the mediums have nothing to do with one another. And to top it off, you throw in two appeals to authority at the end which doesn't actually add to the conversation or rebuff your argument at all. Though I do congratulate you on having defended an MA Thesis, it just doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand.
I agree that phasing out death threats and the like is going to take time more than anything, but there are situations where I feel saying, "Well it's the internet" is appropriate. Those situations are like the example I gave in the OP, where the law isn't being broken and where no one is getting treated particularly poorly and the abuse is just someone being a dick in-game/being obnoxious by calling people faggots, for example.erttheking said:
Most of the "trolling" I do isn't with the intent to just piss people off. Some yes, but most is just dicking around in situations where I feel I'm not being too abrasive, and where I feel it's ok to do so (for example, endless 2fort games). It just so happens that some people get really pissy reall quick, but what are you gonna do about them? And generally speaking I do try to be clever about it. Don't succeed most times but I at least try.[/quote]CpT_x_Killsteal said:
Hey now, I wasn't honestly recommending we do any of those things. They were just ideas that I had but dismissed because they're all awful. I'm just curious to see what ideas people have to end harassment since when the topic gets brought up all I hear are cries to end it but no solutions. That's the main reason why I'm against harassment but don't get involved with people who cry for its end. If you want me to support a cause I will, but you have to give me logical reasons to support that cause and you have to give me solutions to the problems you're bringing up, otherwise the whole thing will be just a massive waste of time, and I don't feel like wasting my time.insaninater said:
We can't. Plain and simple. We're all humans and if nothing else the internet has proven that deep down, the majority of us will take the opportunity to be assholes if there are no consequences. Best we can do, I imagine, is accept it as part of human nature. It will eventually become a part of our lives and lose all it's meaning. To be honest, I thought it already had. But then you get stories like this.
NateA42 said:
Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like going back to a time where everything online was fractured. Maybe it's the old man inside of me speaking, but I do occasionally pine for the days where everything wasn't interconnected and it was like having your own tribe on the edge of the internet where everyone knew who you were and you knew everyone else.
Oh yeah, it had a LOT of downsides, but it also had a lot of upsides. Like for one, controversies wouldn't spread like wildfire unless someone actively brought the controversy to their own little internet tribe. Trolls were a LOT easier to spot and they were usually outed pretty quickly. And even if they weren't outed, there wasn't much of a 'public venue' that everyone went to for them to spit their rambling and venom onto everyone.