Anti-Social and Criminal Behavior in Social Media

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 

      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 

      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 

      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.

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

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/google_witch_hunters.html

In Solidarity with John Schindler @20Committee

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2014/06/in-solidarity-with-john-schindler-20committee.html

__________________________________________

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.

Feminist Shaving Theory and Internet Porn

Warning: the following post is rated R and discusses sex on the Internet

Our research confirms that the sex drive is strong in mammals.   Even Steven J. Gould said so and he should know.   In its small way, the Internet has helped reveal this enduring truth by providing easy access to a vast amount of pornography of all types, as well as commentary on this porn deluge by outraged or not so outraged consumers.

Porn is one of the boom industries of our civilization.  It is international, multicultural, omnipresent and profitable beyond the wildest dreams of the most exploitative or idealistic of the pornographers. Very few industries can compete with it in scope and economic importance.

We recently came across a commentary on the phenomena of Internet pornography by two feminist authors on the New Statesman web site.   What particularly caught our attention was the free expression of commentary on the editorial by readers who felt the need to share their reaction and personal experiences with us.

That hussy!  Shaving again!  Has she no shame?

The authors, Rhiannon Cosslett and Holly Baxter of Vagenda Magazine, bring up a number of topics in their essay  "The Big Question that the Generation Raised on Porn Must Answer",   It begins with the provocative statement: 

        Porn often shows a submissive woman, stripped of all of her body hair, undergoing ritual
        humiliation in the name of sexuality, and twenty somethings must ask whether that has
        wider implications about how our peers view us socially, politically and professionally.

Apparently the whole issue of who shaves and who does not is an important feminist issue.   But we do wonder if the authors have looked at the broad range of porn that is out there, or perhaps have focused on one particular aspect of it.  But nevermind, the helpful Internet, with its social networking and online commentary, comes to their rescue.

One man wrote in response something along the lines of: he personally watches a lot of pornography on the internet and it generally involves big hunky men doing nasty things to other big hunky men and he absolutely guarantees that there are no women involved, shaved or otherwise.

Then a woman commented that she likes watching pornography of shaved women being used by big hunky men and so do a lot of her friends and is this editorial saying that they should stop watching it because that isn't bloody likely.

A second man wrote in to share with us that he felt that this editorial was absolutely correct and that men were being awful here and that if she wanted to step all over him with her boots in punishment or maybe spit on him, that would be ok with him because he certainly deserved it.  All men deserved to be beaten by women, he seemed to be saying.

But here is the coup de grace: many people felt that this last comment (on being abused by women) was "creepy" and made them uneasy. In other words, their sexual preference was ok, but his... well, not so much.

At Global Wahrman we want to go on record to say that we are happy to hear that people are enjoying themselves and want to encourage this type of behavior as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult and takes a shower afterwards.

For another more amusing slant on the issue of sex from what may be a feminist point of view, consider In Defense of Bad Sex by Laurie Penney

Linked In "Endorsements" Out of the Blue

Well, I don't exactly understand what is going on, but apparently LinkedIn automatically solicits my friends for "endorsements", which I think means that they are willing to say something nice.   I don't really know what to make of it, but it is reassuring given my horrible situation to get these nice emails that says that so-and-so has endorsed me.  It certainly couldn't hurt!

I have thanked most of these friends by email, but I thought I would also publicly say thank you here. Thanks  to Craig Reynolds, Bruce Borden, Maija Beeton, Robert Swanson, Dave Seig, Phil Zucco, Sylvie Rueff, Allan Battino, Jim Tucker and Bill Bishop for your endorsements.  I appreciate it very much.

The Container Garden in Hell and its Impact on Social Networking

You may ignore this post if you are interested in the larger topics of this blog. This post is in the "trivial issues of my pathetic so-called life" topic. It does have a social networking spin though, that I at least find interesting.

I maintain a garden here in Hell. I live in Escondido, Ca, which was originally known as Rancho Rincon del Diablo (or the Devil's Place, e.g. Hell). No one knows how it got that name but I suspect that they do know, they are just not saying. I am here for a variety of reasons, but the most important one is that it saves money. Its nice but inconvenient for anything I need to do other than sit and type, and I am very lonely down here.

I have a patio, so I started a container garden because I thought it would get me outside more, be economical, possibly improve the quality of my life (e.g. fresh herbs) and because I thought it would be fun. Well it is fun, it is also expensive, and educational.

The bottom line is this. If you have to leave your garden in August and there is no one to water it (and no money to set up an automatic watering system), then in fact putting the movable part of the garden in the shade will allow it to survive for a week. Anything in the sun doesn't have a chance.  I had to leave my garden to attend SIGGRAPH 2012 and thus this experiment was performed.   

Container gardening has an interesting social networking story to tell, I think. There are a lot of gardening forums out there and there is a lot of useful information. There is also a tremendous amount of crap. Anything you read about gardening on the Internet, you can find an authority spouting advice saying the exact opposite. Frankly, its a little pathetic. Why do people say these things, when they have not tested them, or do not know whether they work or not ? Why shouldn't they ? Its really all about their ego and the size of their virtual, umm, well, you know, "member", virtually speaking that is. I think. Maybe. But what I am describing is very real, its not at all subtle. You can read an answer to any topic, and quickly find the opposite answer somewhere, equally authoritative, without any trouble. It is probably a decent topic for a masters or PhD thesis to gather some numbers on the phenomenon. This might mean picking N topics at random. Pick M answers to the N topics. See what percentage of the answers contradict each other in either subtle or overt ways.

One more thing, if you do think about a garden, I can save you a lot of time and money. Just do a fresh herb garden, it is inexpensive, it works, it is not much trouble. Plant it serially (e.g. replant it regularly, say every 4 months) and you will have a continuous supply. We are mostly talking about fresh basil here. You might also look at some leaf lettuce, a little harder than herbs, but not much harder. Once you try to scale up from there, e.g. tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, then the space, time and work required goes up significantly. And if you are like me, you will be amazed at the number, variety, camouflage and cleverness of the biological enemies of your garden, just waiting, lurking, ready to pounce.

So keep it simple and move on.

Too bad about those forums, though.