That’s how it works when you’re a woman on the internet
lyz.substack.com
lyz.substack.com
Imagine the cross-section of thoughts you would hear all the time. Most of it mundane - work, family, food, shopping, day to day life. Some stand out through the noise - strong emotions like love, lust, happiness, pain, hatred. Some beautiful, some terrifying, some outright vile. A true cross-section of humankind's deepest thoughts.
Now imagine the loudest ones start finding others like them, and start to aggregate and cluster - mentally, not physically. Feeding and amplifying each other and getting louder and bigger. And they start to look outward, and find the thoughts they hate, and feed on those. There are no physical restrictions, no limits on distance or speed, just thoughts bouncing around and searching and filtering each other.
And imagine that once groups hit a critical mass, they also start to gather physically. And it's no longer just thoughts, but physical actions, encouraged by the entire group.
Of course - the Internet is not telepathy, there are filters, and not everyone participates. But it's the closest we've come to it as a species so far. And this is who we are...
This is what we became after being optimized for engagement.
We’ve had atrocities and violence throughout history. Usually in the context of war, but not always. Usually localized, but sometimes large scale. Sometimes condemned and opposed by the rest of society (whether it is a village, country, or continent), sometimes hushed and hidden away, sometimes openly supported.
The impulses and thoughts behind it have always been there, but limited and moderated by geography, time, and social norms.
Now for the first time(?), those limits are starting to blur out and disappear on a global scale. And the impulses and thoughts are visible in their raw form.
This is who we are.
In the world you describe with telepathy, we would know instantly who was thinking hate speech, and be able to identify them and protect those they hate from them, and prevent them from congregating into cancerous hate mobs. Some would argue that this is thoughtcrime enforcement, which is an expected outcome from granting telepathy to all. That is, in a nutshell, correct: peer enforcement of group morality in a telepathic society would, by definition, put the “thought” in “thoughtcrime”.
However, in today’s non-telepathic world, we cannot easily identify those who use hate speech online and protect others from their hate. This is presenting many difficulties not addressed by your telepathic example, and is the core of the problem that must be addressed.
“A bunch of haters grouped together and started hating on people that they hated; the non-haters said “stop that”, and when the haters refused, the non-haters violently stopped them.”
This describes a variety of wars in human history, for example World War II. The non-haters aren’t “pure”, they don’t always succeed, sometimes they attempt non-violence first — but the tendency of societies to act in alignment with that description remains consistent across human history.
(ps. Humanity’s skills at balancing cognitive dissonance come into play quite strongly here, as being in the position of “non-hater” while also hating “haters” is definitely at tension with itself. I suppose the dissonance is balanced by over the tipping point of societal benefit versus personal benefit, but that’s not an area I’ve studied as closely yet; individual psychology is less interesting to me.)
Martin Luther of Christianity's Lutheranism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism
He was German and went on the influence people for centuries to come which inevitably formed the Nazi's objectives. Though obviously taking 400 years to do so, obviously Lutheranism is a thing that still exists today.
What's being described is really akin to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist
The irony is that censorship works in reverse. It inflames the zeitgeist and makes it stronger. This is why racist words like hate speech isn't a problem. That freedom of speech rights cannot include exceptions for hate speech.
What's a racist term for white people that you absolutely cannot say? There are tons of ethnic slurs against white people but there isn't really 1 you aren't allowed to say. There isn't really any super harmful slurs against white people.
What's a racist term for black people that you absolutely cannot say? Oh ya there's many here. The N word is an obvious first choice. However, it's the censorship and disallowance of saying the word that gives it the power. So as long as there are people who disallow the use of the N word, the racism continues. Want to end racism against black people? Stop trying to stop it.
Moreover, I'm pretty sure people know this. I find that the people who are most opposed to racism are often the most racist. They are doing this to continue racism. The only way forward to end racism is to drop the subject altogether.
Plus, part of her hate is from her "broader work". The comic that the Proud Boy guy targeted.
If you are a notable public figure that calls out election fraud without much to back it up you might face removal from professional organizations or other loss of opportunity but your fame will be enough to crowd fund your continued comfortable lifestyle. If you're a pleb that does the same thing, and gets caught, you'll feel the full force of the law and while some doors in life might open to you out of shared sympathy a lot more doors are going to be closed either over an opposing view point or simply not wanting to pull someone who may be volatile again into close proximity of your company. So I think if anonymity was withdrawn from the internet a lot of these small fry folks would be a lot more cautious about throwing hate speech out so casually since it could significantly impact their lives - and hateful organizations would have a harder time recruiting and growing since people would be a lot more motivated to keep a pleasant outward appearance up. I think there's a fair amount of proof in this from how much more extreme the elderly tend to get as keeping up appearances to maintain your income gets removed from consideration.
And, as mentioned above, there are a whole lot of negatives that come along with removing anonymity - again, I don't know what the right answer here is, I just see that there are obviously problems on each end.
This is empirically falsified. Look at the stuff people write on Facebook - lack of anonymity is no barrier. There are of course people who are expected to "keep up appearances", but they're a rare and self-selected bunch.
Meanwhile, lots of people (especially women and minorities) in non-authoritarian countries on the Internet are being threatened, harmed, or killed (for example, by SWATting) by anonymous people in the Internet.
What arguments exist that support non-accountable anonymity online in today’s world, now that we’ve seen the outcomes of endorsing those argument three decades ago and the resulting harm to societies?
I’m arguing that it makes no difference whether the admins and law enforcement are working for an authoritarian regime; either way, the regime will just as readily be able to identify its citizens, voiding the theoretical protection that Internet anonymity supposedly offers their citizens.
So, then: Setting aside the theoretical value of “protecting citizens of authoritarian regimes”, what other reasons underpin the continuing support for prioritizing anonymity over the accountability of legally-protected privacy of identity, as I propose upthread?
I don't have good solutions, but that certainly isn't a good solution.
Those people really need to stfu and sort their pathetic lives out.
My curiosity is piqued though. What was the comic that set this all off? It's mentioned several times in the article and the comments, but did I miss the link to it?
Perhaps it's this one (because it deals with women's empowerment)? Interesting life satisfaction graph in there.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/13/20959863/women-...
This seems to say "comics" to mean more than one. So maybe it's just the common theme that she talks about (women's issues) that they hate?
https://thenib.com/forever-alone/
Looks like YouTube must have taken down the video. A weird side note is that it looks like there's a video of the guy doing a Tedx talk. I didn't know they let people like that do those.
4chan.. I mean, it seems like the only reason 4chan would still be allowed to exist is to make it easier for the FBI etc. to monitor the kind of garbage that goes on in 4chan in one place.
I'm not a woman, but I do have experience being doxxed by groups on the far right. Me and a few other friends/organizers (~4-12 in total with varying degrees of severity) had our pictures plastered on 4chan. Someone really close to me got labelled "the president of antifa" and I can promise you most of 4channers are really dumb enough to think that's a thing.
The main people who outed us were clearly a joke. They paraded around our IP addresses as if it was our GPS coordinates. They threatened to turn us into the FBI (this was when Trump tried to label antifa a terrorist org). [PS none of us considered ourselves members of antifa lol].
Mostly we made jokes about it and printed out the 4chan comments calling our friends soyboys or whatever. But my close friend, the president of antifa, had her name out there and someone used a people finder website to find her mom's home address, phone number, etc. We all had to close down our social media for a while to protect each other's privacy and safety.
I know to most people 4chan is a joke. But just look at January 6th as an example. These people are stupid enough to believe that some tiny as group of students protesting climate change could be the leaders of antifa, but they're also stupid enough to act on that.
I don't think most people really understand what it means to have your name, face, and other personal information out there with the types of people that got radicalized enough from pizzagate memes to walk into a pizza store with a rifle
Incels might be a tiny group. And that could give most people the reassurance that they'll never win an election or whatever. But when it's the case of something this individualized, the very fact that they exist is a big threat to your safety
So a little bit of everything
The issue is not about the gender, the issue is about the violence of people disagreeing with some point of view, unfortunately I would have no sympathy for your point of view as described in this article even if I of course would not be as raging and repressive as the people reported
maybe less generalisation would help?
but would not be click-baity enough I guess.
Is it that you don't agree with this person's politics why you are so dismissive?
The tweet was not a comic, just a tweet. I don't see how that connects to the comic. If they were already known to the hate group, then I think they're using that as an excuse. If it predates the notoriety, then that's different.
That's what I thought too. But I didn't see a link to the actual comic in the article.
Which is literally called 'Men Yell At Me'.
She's thrown her hat into the realm of public opinion taking sides on issues.
This is not a 'random person' so it's at least a tiny bit disingenuous for the author to represent themselves as 'nobody' when their own substack headline trails with 'trying to raise hell'.
I would imagine this was a milquetoast tweet that got picked up by the algorithm, or shared in the feeds of dumb trolls.
The best way to evaluate how often this happens would be to look at the various tweets of various people and see which one's hit, and why.
It might very well be that women are more likely to be victims but I think it's probably more or less even between genders, whereas men are more likely to be trolls. But that's just a guess.
Trolling happens for any, even mild opinion, the more popular the voice, the more trolling.
That is the essential nature of the trolling which I believe is misrepresented in the thesis.
Some women certainly avoid it by just not going to those neighborhoods of the internet, but if that neighborhood is somewhere you'd like to go (if, for instance, you like video games) you have to choose between receiving that abuse or just not accessing the same entertainment services as men.
The #1 predictor in a US Presidential Election is the height of the candidate.
Men who are small, short, effete, high pitched voices, who appear 'chubby' as opposed to 'big boned' are not seen as 'real leaders'.
We are not all like that obviously, it's just a tertiary effect, but it is absolutely real and pervasive.
If Hillary Clinton had the appearance of one of those blonde female lawyer types on Fox News, she might have received more votes (which is arguably sexist), but if Pete Buttigieg were a little taller, square jawed, not gay, and slipped in a few slightly nationalist statements and could maybe throw a football ... he'd have a real shot at being president. I'm not positing that any of this is good (or bad), I'm just indicating that I believe men and women are judged on their posture and appearance.
I believe it would be harder for women in certain circumstances (male dominated situations, of which there are many) to gain credibility however.
No, it's their gender.
You can always find something if you try.
I'll bet that this trend continues, and that that every US Presidential election featuring a male and female candidate, there's little or no gender differentiation.
We have dozens of elections to test our height thesis and other data as well such as income.
I searched for the data (it was on BI some years ago) sorry I couldn't find it, but I remember distinctly seeing for that females, they were paid more if they were taller and thinner (and punished for being heavy) whereas men were paid more if they were taller and bigger (i.e. 'girth / total mass').
Both can be true at the same time.
Maybe believing women would help?
How would you begin to gather statistics and estimate risk for something like this, for example?
When the video from the Proud Boys’ founder made its way into my Google alerts, I didn’t know who he was at first. I was so distracted by the strangeness of someone making a takedown video about me that I didn’t think to look into who was actually behind it.
...
I took a closer look at the video. It had 24,000 views already. Some of the commenters were talking about the city I lived in. I was alone in my house, sitting in front of my computer, thinking, Oh no. Maybe this isn’t a funny story. Maybe this is a scary story.
The FBI tracks hate crimes. That could be a starting point. Various federal agencies provide protection and investigation of threats for political/judicial figures. It seems their analysis of what percentage are credible, and which ones are attempted, could provide good data.
We also have to view the risk as seen by the other commenter. They might not be outraged about this due to them not being a target by not becoming notorious on the internet and engaging with hate groups. This is largely the same as someone in a city saying the city is safe, but never going to the bad area. Is it a problem - yes. Is it one that directly affects them - no. Is it something they will take action on - it depends on their other priorities.
What do you mean by pseudoanonymity? You can't hide the fact that you're a woman on the internet if you're writing about the experience of being a woman, for instance. And the author here got her share of anti-semitic and anti-trans hate, despite not actually being either of those things.
As for hiding the fact, you don't have to write in first person, you could write about a fictitious person, or could change identifiable information and disclose that. It clearly doesn't matter what you say, people will assign what they assume anyway, ie trans or jewish.
I'm particularly curious about how those efforts compete with showing sympathy to someone talking about their experience with this
Not to mention that she makes a living online and has to have an online presence.
Death threats and hate speech on the internet cause a serious amount of societal harm - extreme censorship also causes serious harm... I don't know what the answer is but I know that anyone who is absolutely fanatically devoted to either end of the spectrum to the point of "knowing they're right" is wrong.
Second question: even if the statistics are that only 1 in whatever people actually is dangerous. If you get 100s of hate messages a day, how do you know that one of them isn't a physical threat. Because that is the intent create fear, torture can be pretty effective just through threats of violence.
Maybe you should reconsider the line between "real" and "perceived".
Her story... She's at a party and doesn't know anyone but happens to be sitting next to someone who is an expert in white supremacy, who knows her extensively including her work, and is aware of criticism of her work? This story is swiss cheese at best. Clearly a fabricated story that's casting shadow on the rest of the story. Then again the rest of the story is nothing but anonymous comments from random open forums on the internet? There's no credibility here.
Why is literally everyone is made out to be white supremacists? If you live in a world where everyone around you is a white supremacist; you're either a white supremacist or you have done something to create it. I'm leaning toward the author being a white supremacist. Hence why the white supremacist expert knew her so well.
It’s any woman with a decent profile online - a year or two ago a bunch of women in the tech space posted the Twitter DMs they received every day for a week or so - a tsunami of crap saying they’re ugly, they’re stupid, they’re going to be raped/killed etc.
> Why is literally everyone is made out to be white supremacists?
She didn’t say that, but did post screenshots of a bunch of slurs based on her surname.
I dont wish to disregard this possibility that a visible female on the internet may be mistreated. Absolutely the case I can see this. However, this political activist provocateur very clearly is sticking their nose deep into the hornets nest. Their experience is certainly not even close to being representative of 'women on the internet'
>She didn’t say that, but did post screenshots of a bunch of slurs based on her surname.
She did say this. Her story literally starts how she meets a 'white supremacist expert' in person. Which is not a thing in reality, she's either stupid and was being mocked or the story is just fabricated. Which is my take on it in OP. She's clearly just faking much of it.
I suppose that is your point; that someone like her has no right to interact with the world.
Can you be more specific about the "example after example" where you expect men would get similar levels of vitriol?
Are you referring to the bit where a man told her something and she agreed with him? That's what you are calling deliberately antagonistic?