What to do when people attack you on the Internet? There are many techniques possible including revenge, laughter, threats of violence (which are illegal by the way) and so forth.
One solution is to help your enemies by telling them what has already been tried so that they do not waste your time. That is the technique of Ms. Fitzpatrick who has written a letter to her attackers describing what has already been tried and what effect it had.
The kind of behavior that she is responding to is amazingly bad. We are talking juvenile, delusional, psycho-pathological, paranoid, vindictive, violent, anti-social, hateful, racist, sexist, vicious, obsessive and criminal.
Just an average day on the Internet, I suppose.
Here are the first three paragraphs of her post:
Did you come to my blog because you saw something I wrote on an Internet forum or Twitter
which you didn't like?
Are you now frantically Googling my name and trying to "come up with something on me" so
Are you now frantically Googling my name and trying to "come up with something on me" so
you can try to discredit my ideas along with me?
Let me help. Save yourself some time, and realize that you don't have to spend hours
Let me help. Save yourself some time, and realize that you don't have to spend hours
Googling and drilling needlessly on the Wayback Machine, because there's no scandal here.
If you're trying to silence my legitimate speech and criticism by trying to "come up with
If you're trying to silence my legitimate speech and criticism by trying to "come up with
something" on me, give it up. Use words, if you have an argument against my blogs, and don't
try to harass me with "doxing," vilification, smearing, etc. It's not going to work.
Ms. Fitzpatrick's advice to her enemies is very long but worth reading if you have the time.
I come from the period of early online communities. I remember programs like Talkomatic on Plato, and I have used various text based MUDS or whatever they were called. I participated in early email lists on the ARPAnet like everyone else until I got tired of the flames and the time it took to participate. I helped test an early version of the Warner Bros multi-person online game "The Palace". I sponsored and helped implement one of the early versions of a networked-multiperson game, Mazewar. I screwed around with Second Life and once had a very pleasant makeout session with a beautiful virtual woman. Unfortunately my browser got caught in some sort of infinite loop while we were smooching and nothing ever came of it.
It all seemed to me to be playful, entertaining and certainly not harmful beyond the usual problems of distracting young people from their homework or household chores.
But obviously the world has changed and from the slime pits of online social networking we have real-world groups such as Wikileaks, Anonymous and the delusional and narcissistic actions of would-be freedom fighters who work to destroy their country on behalf of the most oppressive governments of the world. (1)
In fact most of the attacks on Fitzpatrick stem from her non-politically-correct opinions about Snowden and his collaborators.
In fact most of the attacks on Fitzpatrick stem from her non-politically-correct opinions about Snowden and his collaborators.
You may also wish to examine the case of the XX Committee and the actions taken to destroy the reputation and career of its author because of his very literate and compelling posts on the Snowden Operation. The link for that is also at the end of the post.
This shit isn't funny anymore.
Advice to Google
Witch Hunters
In Solidarity with John Schindler @20Committee
http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2014/06/in-solidarity-with-john-schindler-20committee.html
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1. This is just reality, kids. You may not like it, but nothing Snowden or Greenwald has exposed was against American law. You may disagree with the policies that led to those activities that were exposed, and if so I recommend you elect different representatives to Washington. All of it, and I mean all of it, was under control of the President, the national security apparatus and the courts. It was thus all under the control of your legally elected representatives. If you believe in changing our government by illegal means, Snowden and Greenwald may have value. They have certainly collaborated with foreign, hostile intelligence services, independent of whether or not those services sponsored and controlled their activities from the beginning. They are certainly in the service of foreign intelligence today. Do not think for one moment that the activities of Snowden and Greenwald was legitimate whistle blowing because it wasn't. They are pursuing a radical political agenda of their own and using illegal means. There is another discussion that one can have about whether illegal means are legitimate in the context of such events as the Bush coup d'etat of 2000, but that is a separate discussion and even if we decide that they are legitimate, and I do not necessarily do so, I still would not agree with or approve of the Snowden Operation.
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