The Effects of Online Bullying

[Pappa]

I sent her an email stating my support of her decision and she was kind enough to reply. I don't always agree with her, nor would I expect to, but she's always been an interesting blogger, brought Boobquake into our consciousness, and has been daring enough to challenge. She's one of the less reactionary Skepchicks IMHO. Shame to see her bullied off the scene, but she did tell me she will be back after a long hiatus and some navel gazing.

Needs more boobs.

[Bella Fortuna]

I sent her an email stating my support of her decision and she was kind enough to reply. I don't always agree with her, nor would I expect to, but she's always been an interesting blogger, brought Boobquake into our consciousness, and has been daring enough to challenge. She's one of the less reactionary Skepchicks IMHO. Shame to see her bullied off the scene, but she did tell me she will be back after a long hiatus and some navel gazing.

Needs more boobs.

We've got pawiz, how many more do we need?

[HomerJay]

Oh fuck, I find myself agreeing with cowiz. There really is no excuse for turning an ideological disagreement into personal harrassment and insults.

If you don't like what somebody says, then ignore them - the interwebz is big enough for everyone.

I must confess...

Over at RatSkep I called Richard Carrier a precious little wanker.

It was after reading his supposed apology and his statement that anyone who mocked or ridiculed Atheism+ was an asshole.

Although I would defend it on the grounds of fair comment.

I also said I considered Atheism+ and by implication, Jen McCreight neophytic.

Again, I would defend it on the grounds of fair comment.

Quite what sort of people or motivations send hateful messages across the web that contain threats of death we can only speculate about, I've never encountered anyone who has admitted it.

I don't think it's automatically unsympathetic to McCreight's problems to look at things from a wider, more sceptical vista.

Claiming to create a movement that was superceding Dawkins and Hitchens and gnu atheism was a huge ask. No one at FtB was/is up to the task. Someone there should have taken McCreight to one side and told her to put the brakes on. It seems instead of this, she was encouraged to put an ill conceived idea out there in a big way. And she was encouraged to do this by older, more experienced players who may well have had some knowledge of her personal circs too.

Some of the FtB regulars have been silent on the whole A+ debacle, so perhaps McCreight was surprised not to find more support for A+ from within FtB itself.

The claims of bullying and harassment have been exaggerated and distorted to a point beyond reasonable comprehension. McCreight didn't help this by podcasting that RW was receiving daily rape and death threats, which one might reasonably expect would lead to huge police resources dedicated to catching the perps, although RW didn't retain or provide evidence and the evidence that McCreight provided of her own messages, by reading them out, meant it wasn't clear which ones were harassment or disagreement etc and totally obscured the scale of the issue.

I cannot be sure what quantative values we can put on different elements of mix and I don't think anyone else can not even McCreight. I hope she sorts it out.

[HomerJay]

Hmm...

Jennifer McCreight ‏@jennifurret

Don't worry. This is just a vacation so I don't burn out completely. I'll be back, hopefully with a shiny new book for you to read!

https://twitter.com/jennifurret/status/ ... 7706323968

[Audley Strange]

I agree with most of what you say and I've yet to see much evidence of this bullying but to be fair to pissy mires and his gang of yahoos if they had tried to get involved they would have probably just been accused of white knighting and the like. They are in a position of damned if they do, damned if they don't.


However you do raise an interesting point about concern. I said before I did not think that women's issues are genuinely that much of a concern to the proprietors FtB and in fact it does seem they are exploiting vulnerable young women for controversy, for the sake of market share. I mean if your friend publically announced they were so crippled by fear by the responses they didn't like, why would you encourage them to promote a splinter movement rather than saying "Stop fucking blogging then you idiot. It's not doing your mental health any good and is distracting you from your life. This isn't bullying you're enduring, it's masochism."

I guess that I am lucky enough to have better friends than she does.

[Robert_S]

At least they weren't portrayed on South Park as fools taken in by the wascally wiles Mr/s Garrison.

[Audley Strange]

That's because outside this fun but trivial brouhaha they are utterly inconsequential.

The internet: Here be dragons.

[Pappa]

Oh fuck, I find myself agreeing with cowiz. There really is no excuse for turning an ideological disagreement into personal harrassment and insults.

If you don't like what somebody says, then ignore them - the interwebz is big enough for everyone.

I must confess...

Over at RatSkep I called Richard Carrier a precious little wanker.

It was after reading his supposed apology and his statement that anyone who mocked or ridiculed Atheism+ was an asshole.

Although I would defend it on the grounds of fair comment.

I also said I considered Atheism+ and by implication, Jen McCreight neophytic.

Again, I would defend it on the grounds of fair comment.

Quite what sort of people or motivations send hateful messages across the web that contain threats of death we can only speculate about, I've never encountered anyone who has admitted it.

I don't think it's automatically unsympathetic to McCreight's problems to look at things from a wider, more sceptical vista.

Claiming to create a movement that was superceding Dawkins and Hitchens and gnu atheism was a huge ask. No one at FtB was/is up to the task. Someone there should have taken McCreight to one side and told her to put the brakes on. It seems instead of this, she was encouraged to put an ill conceived idea out there in a big way. And she was encouraged to do this by older, more experienced players who may well have had some knowledge of her personal circs too.

Some of the FtB regulars have been silent on the whole A+ debacle, so perhaps McCreight was surprised not to find more support for A+ from within FtB itself.

The claims of bullying and harassment have been exaggerated and distorted to a point beyond reasonable comprehension. McCreight didn't help this by podcasting that RW was receiving daily rape and death threats, which one might reasonably expect would lead to huge police resources dedicated to catching the perps, although RW didn't retain or provide evidence and the evidence that McCreight provided of her own messages, by reading them out, meant it wasn't clear which ones were harassment or disagreement etc and totally obscured the scale of the issue.

I cannot be sure what quantative values we can put on different elements of mix and I don't think anyone else can not even McCreight. I hope she sorts it out.

Excellent post HJ.... on a few levels.

[SteveB]

http://skepchick.org/2012/09/misandry-a-how-to/

More examples of bullying/threats/vitriol. This time directed at Rebecca Watson.

Almost feel kinda bad for them. They put themselves on the bulls-eye with all their stupid A+ crap and whinging about nonsense though. So I'm mostly indifferent.

[Audley Strange]

I don't feel any worse for them than I do any other group promoting their horseshit on the net. Don't do it if you cannot take negativity. It's like those fuckwits on talent shows that are dreadful but flail about when they are finally told that because everyone all their lives has been too polite to say "you're rubbish."

To promote a crazy brand of victim feminism was always going to bring up detractors.

Should we all form a hugging circle for Seth? He's had a lot of abuse for promoting his crazy brand of rugged individualism. I'm sure the poor bastard must be multi-suicidal by now.

Or maybe he, like most reasonable adult humans accept that disagreement is not harrassment.

[Jason]

The bullying/threats/vitriol Richard Dawkins receives on a regular basis is well known and yet I don't see the bleeding heart brigade forming ranks behind him. I have to wonder why Jennifer McCreight or Rebecca Watson don't follow the same pattern. They've made themselves into public figures. They may have had traumatic/abusive childhoods, but so did Dawkins. So why the deferential treatment of their apparent inability to handle internet trolls? Is it because they are *gasp* women?

[Audley Strange]

Heroes love a damsel in distress.

[Robert_S]

Knighted Whitey love a damsel in distress.

[Audley Strange]

So post-modernism's reliance on Derrida's non method of deconstruction in literary criticism that was not to be applied but has been applied to all sorts of things like race and culture erroneously in essence leads us to a reconstruction of what? Chivalry and romanticism? Yeah how thoroughly anti-patriarchal that is.

[orpheus]

Bullying on the internet? Don't know nothin' about it.



(Uncle Orph'sTM popcorn - "Buy Uncle Orph's, and nobody gets hurt." )