

The End of Kindness: Weev and The Cult of The Angry Young Man - gregd
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindness-weev-and-the-cult-of-the-angry-young-man

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dictum
Nastiness appeals to some because it's

\- Rare

\- Sensational (treat someone well and nobody notices, treat someone badly and
it will be news somewhere)

\- A facet of pure human freedom: you can hate jerks, but you can't reconcile
the desire to silence them with the desire for freedom of speech

\- An easy way to fake confidence and power; diplomacy is better than the
stick, but the stick requires less effort and planning

\- A shield against attacks from other people: when you're known as someone
who won't spare any effort to put other people down, they will be less
confident in counter attacking you for fear of what could happen if you're
caught

\- An easy way to make something happen when you don't have much power or you
don't want to be punished: for whatever reason, you're obsessed with the idea
of killing someone or making them suffer. What do you do—anonymous, borderline
legal psychological manipulation until they kill or maim themselves, or a
physical crime?

I think there's a conundrum: should we talk more about trolls and their
victims so people can avoid falling for their attacks and keep trolls from
doing them—giving them airtime and feeding into their desire for attention and
repercussions, or do we ignore them so they don't get rewarded with popularity
and more power, but keep people in the dark about them and leave their actions
unpunished?

> Immediately, there was a call in the tech sector to rally around
> Auernheimer. Tech pundits predicted that his prosecution would prevent
> security analysts from exposing vulnerabilities. Lawyers from the Electronic
> Frontier Foundation, the group that advocates for internet users and tech
> companies, jumped in to help with his defense.

> “I have this beef with a lot of organizations, including EFF,” Aurora said.
> “This is another case where they’re saying, ‘The cases we care about are the
> ones white men are interested in. We’re less interested in protecting women
> on the web.’”

You can despise or hate someone and still want justice for them. Someone can
be in the wrong on some subject and still be right (or almost right) on
another subject. That's why prison rape is unacceptable even if the prisoner
is a murderer, for instance. I can't speak for the EFF, but I assume they want
to protect the freedom of both people who are victims of trolls and trolls.[1]
Freedom is messy.

> There were plenty of techies who criticized Auernheimer and said he was
> getting his due. He should get his due _where his due is_. Punishment by
> proxy isn't justice. To get him in jail for his attacks as a troll, he
> should be persecuted for his attacks as a troll, not for an unrelated
> situation.

[1] At the risk of sounding like an apologist for men who attack women on the
web, I should note that men are victims of trolls (male and female) too. So,
the division of men as trolls and women as the victims to be protected seems
like a facile argument made to defend an otherwise good point.

~~~
olliej
In response to [1]: Men are victims of trolls, but there is huge difference in
the volume and type of trolling that men vs. women experience.

There is a gaping chasm between the bullying experienced by men vs. the rapid,
ongoing rape and murder threats are the _normal_ "trolling" that women
experience.

We can't talk about the "plight" of men until we deal with the extremes - and
that means as a community we have make people realised that threats of rape,
violence and murder are never, ever acceptable. That being a creeper isn't
funny, it's unhealthy and threatening. The guessing their social media
passwords and defacing and defaming them is unacceptable.

Until the current attitude of men on the net changes there is nothing facile
about the argument made in this article.

