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[TempAcc]

There are innumerable examples you can find on social media of people becoming targets and how their behavior after they realize they're a target greatly affects the outcome of the whole thing. Whats more surprising is that, at the end of things, it really doesnt matter how popular you are or how much ability you have of reaching out to the people who are attacking you, apologizing is almost aways the worst possible choice, because an apology, within the context of this sort of thing, is the ultimate demonstration of weakness. Its like the deer breaking its own leg in front of a hungry lion.

Hell, look at Emma Watson. She went from feminist icon extraordinaire to evil agent of the patriarchy within the span of a few days after posting on twitter about how she couldn't get out of bed after being criticized for her whole #heforshe thing which called for men to back feminism, and after being attacked on twitter, said she couldn't get out of bed for a whole day because of it. It wasn't exactly an apology, but it was everything the people harping at her wanted (hello world, look at how badly this is affecting me, i'm such a target), and now she's being hounded at every turn. Recently she got criticized for posing for a cleavage pic for some magazine. She's becoming a bigger target everyday, despite being Emma Watson.

Now lets look at a much less popular but far smarter example, youtube atheist Thunderf00t. Thunderf00t is a guy who generally made videos on scientific facts and other such things, and recently became famous for heavily criticizing what he considers to be bad science and scams (with reason, his opinions do tend to be very well founded). He's also kind of a massive critic of modern feminism, which kinda makes him a big target for a whole lot of people. Plus, he's kind of the ideal target for this sort of thing, being a tall white brittish man with shaggy long hair and beard and overall huge nerd with what seems to be a slight speech impediment.
So he gets a lot of smarmy video responses and even people emailing and calling his employer telling him that he's a literal nazi that hates women and attacks people. He was also apparently kicked out of a few online communities focused on atheism and science due to said attacks. After he found out about this, he gathered a good ammount of info on said efforts and then made a video responding to and dismantling all attacks against him. His chill never waned, he never stepped down on anything he said, and in fact just pressed on harder after that. Turns out his viewcount has spiked ever since and he now has more followers than ever.

You should never think of internet attack mobs as people, because they aren't. Like real life rioting mobs, people will do things when in groups that they would never do individualy, just due to crowd mentality. An apology is something that is directed at people, because individualy, people tend to actualy think and have morals, but mobs don't, so an apology is just an open door for a continous stream of attacks. This is specially bad if the attacks were completely unfounded at first, because at the moment you apologize, you create the implication that you did something that you should apologize for, meaning you've just made yourself into a much more valid target.

[birdy51]

I would argue the best response to critics if you're non-confrontational is to simply not respond to critics. Mobs cannot be reasoned with; and in those times it's best just to just smother the fire with a lack of new material. People who want to get angry will move on to more appetizing targets.

I'll usually do to ollie out of uncomfortable conversations on this site, where it becomes apparent I cannot agree with the other person, but also in no way have the strength to challenge their beliefs for any extended period of time.

[Sergarr]

I've experienced the same thing, and it's definitely really, really creepy when one thinks about it.

I dunno, I think it's a natural consequence of all argumentation being explicitly or implicitly based on axioms that are defined quite arbitrarily. It's why "pure rationalism" is not as good as some people try to portray.

[feelotraveller]

Hm, isn't the rabid internet outrage mob a right wing phenomenon? 

And isn't it also true that many (most?) conservatives/reactionnaries are decidedly lacking in moral courage...

My point was that we should be more forgiving and not hold people accountable for views they held years ago if they have changed their views.

Taking responsibility for your wrongs is one of the highest most admirable virtues that all must learn in life.

These are so much better.

Rather than playing by the rules of mob stupidity perhaps we should be thinking of ways to dismantle the apparatus and its weapons. 

[Sergarr]

Hm, isn't the rabid internet outrage mob a right wing phenomenon? 

It's extremist phenomenon. Extremists can be right wing, they can be left wing, they can be flying above and below, or suspended in vacuum.

[feelotraveller]

Internet mobs seem to have a distinct affinity with sexism and racism (for example) and so do the right - something that cannot be said, at least to anywhere near the same degree, of the left.

[Sergarr]

I think I've saw quite a few Internet mob outrages affiliated with the opposite of sexism and racism. In this very thread, there has been two examples of those, and I'm sure there's many more if you look at right places like Tumblr and the liberal-aligned parts of Reddit.

More powerful people have been killed by "sorry" without regard to how much you've done for humankind

Right-wing phenomenon, they're not. Trying to portray them as such is not going to solve the problem of extremists gaining power. In fact, one of their main self-justifications is that "we have to be violent in order to suppress other violence, which is surely much, much worse, as evident by the *insert selectively quoted evidence here*". If you want to demolish them, you have to demolish them everywhere.

[SalmonGod]

I spent a couple years in a debate sport. One of the first skills (and it is a skill) you have to acquire is the ability to basically drive yourself insane on the spot and believe whatever argument you're running. The alternative is to become really comfortable with lying, but believing is more effective. Do neither and you're sure to lose. Even after a lot of experience there was only one argument I could not mindfuck myself enough to believe or even lie convincingly about, that being contemporary panpsychism. I had no problem arguing in favor of human extinction or galactic conquest right after one another, though. Among some crazier things.

Or just genuinely understand the perspectives of people who actually believe those things and steer away from the counter-arguments that you would normally make yourself.  It doesn't even have to be lying.  Just being selective about what thoughts you choose to express.

The problem with people isn't stupidity or insanity or anything.  It's that they usually think rather reasonably about things up to a certain point, and then they just STOP.  Like "Whelp, that's good enough.  I going to just deny that there's anything worth thinking about on this subject beyond this point and be comfortable here."  This is my eternal frustration with humanity.  The thing I can't understand.  Why most people just seem to pick an arbitrary point and stop.

Of course, I won't deny that from most people's perspectives, I am probably seen as doing the same thing on my own convictions, so...

[Reelya]

Hm, isn't the rabid internet outrage mob a right wing phenomenon?

Yeah, that's not my experience at all. The archetypal example that always springs to my mind is that young girl who attempted suicide over the outrage about her Steven Universe/MLP fanart.

I mean, her attackers didn't explicitly state their voting intentions, true, but I don't think the 'right wing' give a shit about supposed whitewashing, ableism or transmisogyny in the fanart for children's cartoons. God knows I don't.

It was pretty fucking retarded this was the "fat shaming" fanart:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150827063158/http://zamii070.tumblr.com/post/127573571047/2014-2015

And here's the actual character
http://steven-universe.wikia.com/wiki/Rose_Quartz

Basically her version is like Size 18 and the original was Size 20. The character is still fat. Just not as fat. But they decided to fucking destroy her life over this. Then she got shit for being racist for e.g. "not drawing a Jewish character with a large nose". She drew the character with an average-sized nose. She also got shit for cosplaying as a Japanese character because "das raycis". And there were about 100 other minor-to-non-existent problems she got picked on for.

I don't really know how to parse this whole incident, it's frankly insane and makes no sense at all. All I can say is that the tumblr outrage machine needed someone to vent at, and there must be a lack of actual right-wing racists who make fanart on tumblr/deviantArt, so they picked on one of the weakest members of their own community and turned it into a shitstorm of nonsensical outrage.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I spent a couple years in a debate sport. One of the first skills (and it is a skill) you have to acquire is the ability to basically drive yourself insane on the spot and believe whatever argument you're running. The alternative is to become really comfortable with lying, but believing is more effective. Do neither and you're sure to lose. Even after a lot of experience there was only one argument I could not mindfuck myself enough to believe or even lie convincingly about, that being contemporary panpsychism. I had no problem arguing in favor of human extinction or galactic conquest right after one another, though. Among some crazier things.

Or just genuinely understand the perspectives of people who actually believe those things and steer away from the counter-arguments that you would normally make yourself.  It doesn't even have to be lying.  Just being selective about what thoughts you choose to express.

The problem with people isn't stupidity or insanity or anything.  It's that they usually think rather reasonably about things up to a certain point, and then they just STOP.  Like "Whelp, that's good enough.  I going to just deny that there's anything worth thinking about on this subject beyond this point and be comfortable here."  This is my eternal frustration with humanity.  The thing I can't understand.  Why most people just seem to pick an arbitrary point and stop.

Of course, I won't deny that from most people's perspectives, I am probably seen as doing the same thing on my own convictions, so...

One's ability to genuinely understand the perspective of another is limited by the conviction of their own beliefs. For debate as a sport, it's necessary to go beyond the logical extrapolation of another position for the sake of the performance. I can understand the logos of, for example, the anti-abortion position just fine. And I even already agree with the ethos, as I imagine most people who are against murder in general do. But without internalizing the outrage at baby genocide it isn't a complete painting, it is missing pathos (so many years, and finally a chance to use that outside of a forum joke).

I call it "insanity" in the Lovecraftian sense, that your whole orientation to the universe changes in a way that the average person finds incomprehensible once you've acquired enough introspection to freely reshape your rational and emotional beliefs on the fly to win a debate round. Which does, as I said before, have negative side effects.

It's also not a pursued thing like learning to juggle, it's the inevitable consequence of trying not to come off as so insincere and boring whenever a topic happens to not align with your personal opinion.

[feelotraveller]

I mean, her attackers didn't explicitly state their voting intentions, true, but I don't think the 'right wing' give a shit about supposed whitewashing, ableism or transmisogyny in the fanart for children's cartoons. God knows I don't.

Since when has voting been the touchstone to right/left?  More than that they are styles of behaviour, or ways to approach the world, an entire ethics...

Just because Joseph Stalin was a 'Communist' does not mean he was on the left any more than the KGB were radical cheerleaders.  Gulags, bullying, repression, denial of self expression, an entire apparatus of authoritarianism - I'm pretty sure you're getting the picture.

On Zamii:

I honestly feel bad for her.  Although I'm no great art connoisseur her work looks quite good to me.  And it's clear from the fact she was getting it out there that she is/was genuinely enthusiastic about it. And really the criticisms are petty, a dress size or two, a change of hairstyle, a different skin tone.  Without having more than passing familiarity with her work I can't honestly say if there is latent racism there or not (or at least whether the degree of it is any higher than the background count... if you prefer) but there is nothing blatant and no overt comments or sensationalizing to attract unwanted attention.  One comment I did notice was the claim that at 20 she definitely knew exactly what she was doing.  Um yeah, righto, would have thought that myself when I was 20... probably think it now (although I won't later  ).  But really the tumblr community was/is quite divided on the issue:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/an-attempted-suicide-forced-a-tumblr-community-to-open-its-eyes-about-bullying
The fallout split members of the Steven Universe fandom on Tumblr in two: those who claimed that Paz's artwork was regressive/problematic and believe that she deserves to be continuously policed, and those who support her brand of artistic freedom and believe that the community's aggressive brand political correction is shutting out potential and important voices in the community.

Continuous policing plus shutting down dissent vs artistic freedom and diverse voices, reminds me of right vs. left.  And a diversity of voices means all the voices.  Shutting down those you don't like is business as usual for reactionaries.

http://fusion.net/story/223425/zamii-steven-universe-fandom/
In the words of Tumblr user Stephan K
“You can say “hey, that made me uncomfortable” in a way that’s reasonable or, better yet, just don’t follow them. Abuse en masse is not the correct response. That’s the response of a bunch of over-reactionary assholes.”

Regardless of the flags waved, or the content of the positions (reputedly) held, there is the overarching form of expression, or way of interacting with the world.  To oversimplify - is the behaviour inspired by love and a desire for sharing and improvement or by hate and a desire for confrontation and destruction.  Opening things up or shutting things down.  Two very different styles of behaviour.

The case of Brendan Eich it is a whole lot murkier.  Firstly, regardless of political views he has/had done a whole lot of good for the world with his coding work - free open source software that has opened up access to many people (myself included) to the internet without the need for a dubious profit driven corporation as intermediary.  That Mozilla has itself become corporatized and is perhaps not so wonderful as it used to be is by the by.  Secondly although there was a mob of sorts it was (immediately, at least) instigated and led by a private, profit driven company, OkCupid, which definitely had a financial motive (8% of its business being from relationships that potentially could have become banned).  Sure they could have had other motives too.  Thirdly, and significantly there was no evidence whatsoever that he had discriminated against anyone at Mozilla becasue of their sexual preferences/orientation.  His only 'crime' was to have donated, 6 years previously, to a campaign fund for banning same-sex marriage.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/04/04/mozillas-brendan-eich-persecutor-or-persecuted/#70a4a5ea35cd
...Andrew Sullivan, the popular writer of the Daily Dish blog who is openly gay and an early supporter of gay marriage. “The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society,” he wrote. “If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out.”

Or again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
Conor Friedersdorf argued in The Atlantic that "the general practice of punishing people in business for bygone political donations is most likely to entrench powerful interests and weaken the ability of the powerless to challenge the status quo".

It is one thing to be at odds with people wanting to deny the rights to same-sex marriage but quite another to want their blood for holding the contrary position.  It is murkier still in the context of this thread since Eich refused to apologise and stepped down (=was forced out) as CEO of Mozilla instead and this only 11 days after the Mozilla board appointed him already knowing the full story of the political donation.  Oh, and should we mention the three high profile board members (2 former CEO's) who resigned in protest at the time of his appointment... um, yeah?  Still this is the world of corporations complete with image and media manipulation and all that goes with it; no sympathy for these shenanigans even or especially in an organization which prides itself on its progressive credentials.

So an advertisment driven, dating webiste embarked on a boycott campaign (but... why?) that, shock-horror-sensationalist-tabloidmedia, led to a shutting down of diversity.  So prospective CEO's should avoid all acts of moral courage well in advance?  Or better yet exclude themselves completely for expressing their political views?  Out damn moral courage, out.

The Matt Taylor shirt strikes me as a quite clever mobilization of the Space Amazon meme [sic: anachronism warning] and astounds me that it caused more than a passing comment.  (Yeah, quite appropriate to ask in passing if he thought it might be sexist, might even have got an intelligent reply or started him thinking.)  Totally (contra New York Post) so much more aesthetically pleasing than a suit and tie - clip on or otherwise - at least to me, and I genuinely dig the colours. [sarcasm] But the guy is clearly a fucking humanist.  Not one Giant Killer Robot anywhere on the shirt.  And he works for a Space Program, how is this even possible. [/sarcasm]  Honestly are the people who took task with him for this out there burning like 70 years of SciFi covers, in between overturning most of the stalls at the various Game Developers conferences.  Come on people priorities.  Oh wait [/sarcasm] really.    Deskbound geek guy wearing sexy adventure heriones - of course it has its haters but do they even stop to think?  But arguably worse are the hater of these haters:

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/nov/17/comet-scientist-matt-taylor-shirt-awful-what-should-wear-instead-rosetta
As generally happens when a subject takes a feminist turn on the internet, the idiots then turned up, with various lowlifes telling the women who expressed displeasure at the shirt to go kill themselves. (This is not an exaggeration, and there is no need to give these toerags further attention in today’s discussion.)

And in this game of strange bedfellows (oh wait is that doubly sexist, ha, ha):

Boris Johnson http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11234620/Dr-Matt-Taylors-shirt-made-me-cry-too-with-rage-at-his-abusers.html
I watched that clip of Dr Taylor’s apology – at the moment of his supreme professional triumph – and I felt the red mist come down.
He wasn’t weeping with sheer excitement at this interstellar rendezvous. I am afraid he was crying because he felt he had sinned. He was overcome with guilt and shame for wearing what some people decided was an “inappropriate” shirt on television. “I have made a big mistake,” he said brokenly. “I have offended people and I am sorry about this.”

So in all three cases there are more than enough people willing to defend these people who rightly/wrongly have been harassed by mobs, whether they have apologised or not.  But honestly the mob succeeds in shutting down views that it does not like in advance if we resort to creeping around with a lack of moral fortitude.  (Note that this is not an argument for painting a massive target on one's back either.) It also plays into the mobs hand if we join in their tactics of flagrant confrontation or harrassment, particularly when other avenues exist to be pursued.

I find it sad, in the way Turing was sad, that here we have three individuals that to varying degrees, and each in their own way, were contributing to the social commons being shut down by mobs.  Particularly because they had become targets precisely of the significant contributions they had already made - more than the vast majority of mobsters ever will, and that is no doubt part of the problem.  And all this without judgement on whether their 'transgressions' even were such or serious.

[As an aside back to Lout Whippers and debate/devils advocacy: 'It is not the Sleep of Reason that produces Monsters but its Ceaseless Vigilance' roughly Deleuze, somewhere I can't remember, cf. Goya.

As to the internet mob itself: hookers and blackjack - at least the secondary meanings I started trying to draw out a few months ago.  Hookers being the gross commercialization of the internet that started with the device of the p0rn industry back in the early 90's and Blackjack being the highly rarefied distillation of the skinner box deployed in 'cyber'-technology.  Back to the fondleslab.  ]

p.s.  Staring into the well of human misery is an unpleasant experience; got to hope it never looks back at me, or at least too closely...

[Reelya]

Continuous policing plus shutting down dissent vs artistic freedom and diverse voices, reminds me of right vs. left.  And a diversity of voices means all the voices.  Shutting down those you don't like is business as usual for reactionaries.

They are clearly reactionaries, but they also clearly self-identify with pro-LGBT, "black lives matters" and all that ilk. Yes we can say that they crappy attitudes mean "they're not really on the left", but that's not really an honest statement, and I myself am really pretty far on the left myself. Saying that people who are "anti-fat shaming" and labeling people as "ableists" are on the right is just the "no true scotsman" argument. We see some behavior on the left that's self-labeled as "left" and clearly not good and we say "no that's not really of the left!". Basic "no true scotsman" logic.

These people are clearly self-identified feminists, leftist, liberals, what-have-you. I mean, we have to be careful about basically saying that if there are scummy scumbags on the right, then that tarnishes the whole right, even ones who don't act like that. But when they're on the left we shouldn't then want to say they're not the left's problem because they're crypto-rightists. It's not a coherent position.

There's a dissonance here, and perhaps it's that there's nothing inherently pro-diversity and free speech about all the individual little "isms" that pervade the left.

[NJW2000]

I think that the real problem here is the Phillips Head side of the Phillips Head vs Hex screws debate. I mean there was that Hex enthusiast and collector whose life they just totally ruined for posting photos of his old-fashioned vintage hex screw heads in the Phillips pinterest, there was constant hate mail and shit. I'm pretty sure the guy took his own life after that.

Also, liek, Danial Radcliffe just said one thing for Hex as a joke, in some tweet, when he was thirteen and barely famous, and he got death threats in the mail from the Phillips Head people. It's little known, and has been covered up wuite a bit by the Phillips Head media, but they ruined his life for a few years, you know? It's scary shit, could happen to anyone brave enough to raise their head and challenge the Phillips Head consensus.

There was also this tech guy on Vimeo who did reviews and shit like that of hardware stuff, and he mostly just talked about power drills and especially DeWalt lines and stuff. But then he's also got massively into the whole Hex thing, and next thing you know the Phillips head guys were like, calling operation Yewtree on him and stuff like that, and mailbombs and shit, not that a Phillips head user could assemble a working mail bomb

Anyway, I totally agree with everything you guys are saying. But three's a lotta people out there who wouldn't, so keep it real.

[birdy51]

People are strange, strange things who hate nonconformity and will go to disturbing, though occasionally heroic lengths to correct it. It's one of our charms and curses, and it's most certainly found on both sides of the spectrum wherever one holds a non-conforming view.

Which is to say every moment of of our waking lives, someone, somewhere wishes we were dead for them. Yay!

[The Ensorceler]

Why would arguing as if you held a position without holding it yourself defend the right to argue that position? If one side of an argument is immutable, then the other side can either accept it or leave. There is literally no communication required, as long as both sides are aware that one will not change, and so you end up undermining the idea that argument is valuable. If you want to argue for the right to argue any position, just do that. Convince people that talking to eachother is valuable, if you really believe in it.

Free speech is meaningless if nobody talks and nobody listens. I honestly think that internet trolling and debate club insanity are the biggest existential crisis humanity will ever face. It's a bunch of people actively cultivating the ability to never learn, never change and that fucking terrifies me. Learning and changing are all that humanity is.

I'll even go so far as to say that all sane positions need exceptions. Fuck extremism and absolutism. Yes, even this position needs an exception, but I can't figure out what it is.

re equivalency between internet hate machine and muslim hate machine: They are the same, but it is very narrowminded to think this hasn't been a problem with all branches of humanity, all throughout human history. The Catholic church did a pretty good job of killing people for writing books criticizing them, too, if you need an example.