Andrew Siribohdi said:
One thing I can agree on is that online harassment is unacceptable. It does not contribute and it doesn't put the gaming community in a positive light. But the question on my mind is how to respond to it, if we should respond at all.
Here's a video from a TedxToronto talk.
Here's what I don't understand. There have been accusations of the gaming community of 'standing by and doing nothing' while trolls harass other players. But, what is meant by doing 'nothing'? If I see violence on the street, I would call the police. If I were to encounter sexist, racist, homophobic slurs on a forum, such as this one, I would report it to the administrator. If I were to play on Xbox Live and the opposing player was being rude, I would file a complaint, ignore said player, and give them a bad review. The question being do these methods work and does it help?
Sometimes, other activists go one step further and post the offensive tweet and attempt to tell other Twitter users to acknowledge this person. Other times, people post Youtube videos about offensive behavior and the user in general. From my perspective, it seems a bit much and giving unwarranted attention to someone who doesn't deserve it.
What do you believe is the right way to approach harassment and trolls?
Well, the issue is of course that "troll" tends to be subjective. I myself for example would point out that roughly 50% of the population in the first world and 80-90% of the people globally are hardly supporter of gay rights. In the US it waffles back and forth on single digit percentages, and becomes a divisive issue because supporters of gay rights like to try and pass laws on "moral principle" while not having the intended level of support to do so, or make them stick. Hence why in the US you even see things going back and forth in the most liberal states like California. The term you just used "homophobic" is by definition trolling as it's an offensive statement intended to imply something wrong (via unreasonable/insane fear of homosexuality) with those who don't support gay rights. Especially on a divisive issue like that, those who have the opposite opinion arguably have the right to express it.
I point this out largely to point out how subjective the standard is, because a lot of communities of course wouldn't agree with me, but others would. In a neutral forum however the wise thing to do is to take neither side, which means that as things go on, people get upset simply by having to listen to people who express the opposite viewpoint. Right now we're starting to see some nasty battles going on over harassment by the pro-gay movement, with attacks/blacklists/etc... being aimed at people who simply exercised their right to vote in the way the pro-gay movement disagreed with. Interestingly undermining the entire process because when handling things within the system increasingly does not work and leads to harassment, it encourages people to take things outside of the system. I expect things to get worse rather than better... but really those specifics are neither here nor there as far as this point goes. The point here is that the reason why so much trolling isn't policed is because it's connected to something like this (if not this issue) and really the people screaming "troll" are actually looking for censorship to be enforced on behalf of whatever they happen to think.
*most* forums and channels that try and remain game-centric try and impose a complete and total ban on politics, religion, and ethics, including such things like "human rights" topics related to racism, sexual orientation, or whatever, except as they might apply to the material in question (ie Orcs and Elves hating each other, or whatever). This has mixed results, as it requires moderators who are themselves willing to basically bite their tongues when it comes to their personal beliefs and enforce things evenly, say moderating someone for speaking in favor of gay rights and transgenderism, just as much as they would someone speaking against it. Some sites (like the Escapist actually) tend to be pretty good about it, others not so much, and when it comes to channels it varies greatly. For the most part if your in say an MMO, or a FPS lobby, nobody wants to hear about politics, no matter what yours happen to be. Depending on the situation this may or may not become more complicated when the subject the channel is dedicated to covers material that involves political aspects. In such a general "anything goes" environment the proper way to do it, is generally to define a troll "classically' as being someone whose sole intent is to cause chaos and division, someone expressing a viewpoint or "showing the flag" for it, is not a general trouble maker. If one side is allowed to speak, so is the
other (so to speak), otherwise it's not truly allowing general discussion.
To put things into perspective of this video, beyond the general issue (for those who read this far) what she's saying is that anyone who disagrees with feminism must be "a misogynist troll", and that women pretty much have the right to be loud, obnoxious, opinionated and troll themselves, and should not expect retaliation because they are women. To actually take a strong hand back with women, is effectively wrong, because they are women. She starts out by going on about how she has all these death threats collected which apply to her, or women involved in Toronto politics. That has nothing to do with being a woman actually, it has to do with being an opinionated politician. No matter what side your on your going to wind up with thousands upon thousands of people disliking you. All politicians get death threats, is it right? Well not really, but it has nothing to do with being a woman. Guess what, personal attacks are also going to use anything they can as well. When it comes to a video of a public person getting beaten up, raped, or put in disturbing situations, that's also par for the course. There have been tons of little games about "shooting so and so politician", both Bush and Obama got plenty of those. Check out a site like say "Encyclopedia Dramatica" and you'll see artwork of people like Obama having sex with furries (which is why they allegedly support him) and stuff like that. There was actually a comic book ("The Authority") where The President (drawn pretty much as Bush) was lobbed through a gateway to be ripped apart by rioting Muslims if I remember. Another comic ("Supreme Power") portrayed him as a letch having BDSM fantasies about one of his female interns (who I believe was drawn as a sexed up Condi Rice). No offense but if you can't handle that, you don't belong in politics, and whining about it actually undermines feminism. Especially nowadays you can't even say there is a sexual spin on it that only applies to women, because there isn't, both Bush and Obama have inspired many "nasty jokes" that end with them getting prison raped after going to jail for crimes perceived by the joker. When it comes to Anita Sarkeesian, she is a troll, so you can't really use her as a good example of "problems with trolling", she's kind of the person you want to be able to shut up so it doesn't turn into the three ring circus that's been built around her. As many critics of her videos have pointed out, she really doesn't have a single valid point behind her, and even arguably contradicts herself in going after whatever the biggest chunk of attention she can get is. The more people try and legitimize her, simply because she's a woman and throws around the term "feminist" the more intense the hate grows because she's not even the real deal, she's a trouble maker.
To put this into overall context, when you look at the claims made in this video, it arguably defines trolling itself, especially given the way it starts. It's designed to create controversy, and isn't even promoting much in the way of a valid or popular position. To use my initial point about "gay rights" (which I will not argue in detail here) it's a big issue, it goes back and forth every day, we have laws waffling in places about whether it's legal for gays to marry or not almost every week, and all kinds of associated messes. Whether you agree with one side or another it's a big issue and serious business, with a lot of people on either side. When a video starts with "I'm in politics and I get death threats... and it's obviously misogynistic" followed by trying to use Anita Sarkeesian of all people (who even if you don't think she's a troll, is someone who is so divisive she cannot be used to ground or reinforced), it seems almost like "Ted X Toronto" is standing their going "lookit meeee! I want attention! I'll offend people and stir up a hornets nest until I get it!". Trolls come from all ends of the socio-political spectrum, hers just gets called on it a lot less, and amusingly seems to be getting pretty meta by using trolling as a reason to troll.
