Comment by byerley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by byerley | Hacker News Reader

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Boy am I gonna regret this,

I know these are polarizing issues, but please take a moment to consider the credibility of the individuals involved and their respective economic incentives. I think that, given objective consideration of the facts, it's clear that Anita Sarkeesian is intentionally fueling controversy for financial gain.

Her claims of life-threatening danger have been repeatedly refuted by law enforcement officials. From the article,

"USU police, in conjunction with several teams of state and federal law enforcement experts, determined that there was no threat to students, staff or the speaker, so no alert was issued."

Meanwhile, her Kickstarter campaign raised roughly $160,000 with meager deliverables - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-wom...

and she's presumably being paid well for appearances.

There's a lot of misinformation involved in twitter battles, but one needs only follow the money if you'll pardon the trite reference.

I am a bit open minded to all of this, and I am trying to hear both sides in the debate.

Some of the critique that she receives is good, and is asked by intelligent people. But then she goes on to this event and only answer the assholes and trolls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah8mhDW6Shs

She would win a lot of respect to me if she answered some of the constructive critique rather than disabling comments on YouTube and only answer assholes. I can understand why she disables comments on YouTube, because YouTube comments are horrible, but she can address it in a video our an article, I think her videos are interesting and to the point but silencing good questions are bad in my opinion.

And since it have to be mentioned: Deaththreats are never acceptable, and criminal behaviour should be punished.

I don't understand why Youtube comments even exist. It's not a forum where you could have an intelligent discussion about a topic.

With how much bullshit she's already getting, why'd you think that if she had youtube comments enabled, there'd be anything but more abuse and harassment there? She doesn't owe it to anyone to let trolls make her videos' comments a platform for further abuse.

I'm sure she's dealing with ~critique~ she receives appropriately, she just doesn't make herself available as a target to trolls quite as much as the gamergate crowd might like.

This looks like a pretty weak attempt to try to turn around the harassment she's facing and portray it as a fault of her own.

Is it your contention that the large number of death threats, rape threats etc. being posted online are manufactured by the speaker for her own benefit?

I don't care to conjecture about the frequency or origination of the threats because I don't think there's enough information and, frankly, it's not that important.

I can tell you I'd happily endure electronic harassment for that much money, especially with experts telling me there's no risk of physical harm.

Really? $158k, minus kickstarter's cut, minus a bunch for the physical backer rewards, minus the production costs for the videos, probably minus some more for taxes, seems like that good a deal for a project that's been occupying years of her time already and basically forever ruined her ability to do things online without getting swarmed by abusive trolls?

I think you're understating the effects of continuous harassment and repeated death threats and so on against her, and overstating the certainty with which anyone can say there's no physical danger.

So $159k - $16k (kickstarter cut) - 738 sticker packs ($2k?) - 216 postcards ($0.2k?) - 51 DVDs ($0.2k?) - production ($6k?)

That's still $135k

Seems like a pretty decent chunk of change (especially considering that she's still taking donations on http://www.feministfrequency.com/ and getting paid for speaking - both hinging on her continued relevance in the media)

I also think you're forgetting that she can simply change identities online if she wishes (anonymity protects the good guys too!).

Anonymous death threats made against celebrities aren't new (twitter is just a new, highly public, medium). No one can say with certainty she's not in physical danger, but no one can say with certainty she's not going to be struck by lightning either.

I love Internet logic. "She can always just change identities online." The flip side of anonymity everywhere: nobody is actually entitled to their identity anymore. How utopian.

The idea that I'm supposed to find more credible those people comfortably hurling innuendo from anonymous hidey-holes, rather than a person who actually signs their name to what they write. I don't even know how to end the sentence.

If I unwittingly hurled innuendo I sincerely apologize and ask you to point it out so I can avoid doing so in the future.

However, your other contentions don't make any sense to me. Everyone is entitled to their identity; rather, the contention was that devaluing her internet identity wasn't worth the financial gain. The internet makes new identities trivial to acquire and Sarkeesian's wasn't of any particular value before the controversy so I don't think there's any logic there.

Similarly, no one suggested that you should find credibility in anonymity. I tried very hard to make my argument stand on its own by excluding any evidence not verifiable through third parties.

That objective consideration you’re talking about? It’s not objective. How could the police have known there was no threat? A threat was issued.

If a threat was issued, did nobody tell the police? Per the quote above they don't appear to know.

I think threatening someone is vile. Our society is based on free speech, and free speech is most key when it is unpopular speech: popular speech doesn't need defending by its nature. That's why flag burning is legal.

However if the police are really unaware of the threats made, I wonder if this is another "Meg Lanker-Simons" incident[0] (feminist false-flag).

[0]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/03/meg-lanker-simons-h...

intentionally fueling controversy for financial gain

There are people that do this - rightwing talk radio and the goldbugs are the usual examples - but whipping up a hate campaign against yourself? That carries a risk of people believing it and murdering you? This is not a plausible thing.

People can spend what they want on kickstarter. Star Citizen has raised $55m and so far not delivered anything.

Are you suggesting "rightwing talk radio and the goldbugs" don't get similar death threats? As far as I can tell they do.

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