1123: Assholes with Nothing Better to Do

I don’t know if any of you reading this have ever been properly trolled by someone who really knows what they’re doing, but I have. Twice.

The first was during my GamePro days, and I believe I’ve mentioned it on this blog before. Basically there was this dude who frequented the GamePro Facebook page and was a bit of a nutcase, to put it mildly. He’d often come along and comment on updates, talking about how debit cards were somehow evil and various other ravings. He seemed mostly harmless, however, so he was tolerated, left alone and largely ignored by other members of the community.

That is, until I posted a news story about Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab’s interactive JRPG-style exploration of queer issues, A Closed World. Suddenly, nutjob went on the offensive, posting raving comment after raving comment and directly attacking me, accusing me of being a paedophile and all manner of other slurs. Apparently he was a big fat homophobe as well as a crazy person, it seems, so he got summarily blocked from the GamePro Facebook page, reported to Facebook and also blocked from the main GamePro site despite his best efforts to continue harassing me. This rapid response (largely from me, I might add, without engaging with him) meant that he went away pretty quickly, thankfully, but it was still a somewhat unpleasant experience to go through, even though I knew that none of the things he was saying were true.

Something very similar happened today. Yesterday, I received a bizarre tweet from a complete stranger that wasn’t a reply to anything which I had said, but which simply called me a “sick, sick man.” I took a brief look at this person’s profile and they appeared to be… not the sort of person you’d really want to associate yourselves with, let’s say, so I immediately blocked them and thought nothing more of it.

Today I received an email from Rob, the owner of Games Are Evil, informing me that he’d received a voicemail from someone — someone who neither he or I knew, I might add. Apparently they’d made some rather unpleasant allegations about me and had supposedly contacted the authorities. Much like the previous time I was attacked without provocation, my heart almost stopped, even though I knew there was absolutely no truth to these allegations whatsoever. It took me quite some time to calm myself down.

Calm myself down I did, though, and I did a little digging, as I was suspicious about a few things. So firstly I went back and looked at the Twitter account that had sent me the strange message last night. The location on it matched the location the caller was supposedly from, and the first name on the account also matched the Twitter account. Things were starting to fall into place.

I checked the WHOIS records for Games Are Evil and discovered that, as I suspected, Rob’s phone number and contact details were recorded alongside the site’s other information, which explained how this person was able to contact him by phone when the only information on the site itself is a selection of email addresses. The only question left was why someone would do all this.

And the best answer I can come up with is “because they had nothing better to do.” My attacker is, according to his Twitter profile, a member of an anti-blogger group with a spectacularly offensive name whom I’d never heard of prior to today, and it seems they have something of a habit of attacking people in this manner for reasons best known unto themselves. It seems that today, I was just unlucky enough to be the one in the firing line. I’m now not all that worried about this ridiculous turn of events, because frankly I don’t really see the “authorities” — if they were contacted at all, which I seriously doubt — trusting the word of someone who voluntarily chooses to associate themselves with a group called… well, this. (Wikipedia link, offensive name. You have been warned.)

Still, it sucks that there are people out there malicious enough to pull shit like this against complete strangers. May they all fall off a cliff and land arse-first on a sharp spike. Cunts.

So yeah. Happy Valentine’s Day and all that.

#oneaday Day 876: Gamers, Men, Everybody… Stop Being a Dick

I have mentioned these issues a couple of times over the past few days but I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re actually making me feel a bit depressed. I know that there’s little point in getting depressed or upset over “the way the world is” and there are far bigger problems in the world, etc. etc. but, I mean, wow. Something really needs to be done.

I am referring primarily to the treatment of Anita Sarkeesian, better known on the Interwebz as Feminist Frequency, the author of a number of feminist perspective critiques on popular culture. Sarkeesian recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund her newest piece of research and criticism, dubbed simply “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games”. The proposed series of videos Sarkeesian is intending to produce will deconstruct the most commonly-seen female character tropes in video games, highlighting recurring patterns and discussing them rather than simply pointing the finger and going “LOOK! THIS IS BAD.”

The response to Sarkeesian’s campaign was both good and bad. On the positive side, the campaign was fully funded in the first 24 hours, and since that time a number of “stretch goals” have been smashed, allowing Sarkeesian to produce a much larger amount of content than initially proposed.

On the negative side, this happened. And this happened.

I really shouldn’t be astonished by things that people say on the Internet any more, given that it is widely regarded as a wretched hive of &c &c despite all the lovely and intelligent people who also populate it. But these incidents really bothered me. They happened quickly and relentlessly… and they were clearly organised — likely by noted Internet cesspits 4chan and 9gag. This fabulous piece by Foz Meadows sums up the key aspect of the problem, I think: in attempting to defend themselves against accusations of sexism, misogyny and the promotion of a rape culture, those who deliberately and maliciously harassed Sarkeesian resorted to, you guessed it, sexism, misogyny and the promotion of a rape culture.

Sarkeesian’s suffering isn’t in any way the only time this has happened, of course, though it may have been the most high-profile one in recent weeks. The Hitman: Absolution trailer I mentioned a few posts ago stirred up plenty of controversy, and anyone speaking out against it tended to get shouted down by people who couldn’t see the problem with it in the most abusive manner possible. Disagreements and differences in taste; threatening others and calling them abusive names because of those disagreements is not.

Even princess of geekdom Felicia Day wasn’t immune to this bullshit. Her recent video “Gamer Girl, Country Boy”, released as part of her entertaining “Flog” series on Geek & Sundry, attracted a swarm of completely unprovoked hateful comments. The hornets’ nest had already been stirred up, so another target for their ire was just a happy bonus. Whatever you think of Day’s past work, it should be clear to most people that there’s clearly not a malevolent bone in her whole body, and the whole incident clearly upset her very much. I’m not “white knighting” here, it’s a clear and simple fact. Who wouldn’t be upset by an organised campaign to troll and flame something you’d worked hard on?

All of this is just a bit much to take. I’ve always been someone who likes to try and see the best in people — to a fault, really — but to see that some people hiding behind that ever-present veil of anonymity prove themselves to really be complete and utter cunts doesn’t make me feel great. Obviously my own take on the matter pales in comparison to what Sarkeesian, Day and anyone else who has suffered at the hands of these trolls must be feeling about all this, but it’s genuinely upsetting to know that there are people that vile and disgusting out there — people who supposedly share the same passions and hobbies as I do.

It needs to stop. That will only happen with concerted efforts from everyone involved, and it goes back to what school always told you about handling bullies. Be assertive, but not aggressive. Tell the bully that what they are doing is upsetting and unpleasant. And tell someone else. Don’t be afraid to talk about it. Don’t suffer in silence. Because while someone (or, indeed, a thrown-together Internet lynch mob) being a complete arsehole can utterly ruin your day, week, month, year, it’s infinitely worse if you have no-one to turn to for support.

Let’s stamp this odious attitude out. Freedom of speech is one thing; using said freedom to intimidate, harass and silence others is not its intention. I fully support and endorse Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter campaign, and while I won’t insist that you do so too, I would certainly like to encourage you all to stand up to bullying when (not if, sadly) you see it happening — even if it’s not directly involving you. Good Samaritan and all that.

Above all, don’t be a dick. And if it all gets a bit much, then pay this site a visit.

#oneaday, Day 6: Public Service Announcement

I should stop being surprised at this, but I still am.

People on the Internet are dickholes. Well, not all of them. I know a lot of very nice people who live in the Internet. Many of them are writing blogs like this one—hello!—but then there is another breed out there—the breed who thinks it’s appropriate to hurl unwarranted abuse at others. Others that they’ve never met or spoken to, in some cases.

Ever been on Formspring? It’s pretty fun. People can submit questions to you, either anonymously or under their username, and then you can answer them. That is the sole purpose of the site. I’ve had a lot of fun with it, thanks mostly to my very creative friends who are excellent with coming up with bizarre, thought-provoking questions. And somehow the questions are much more fun when you’re not quite sure who they’re from. It becomes a game in itself to work out who submitted the bizarre question about the robots and the cabbage.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen many times by now, the potential anonymity that the Internet offers causes some people to think that they can say absolutely anything. So it was earlier on when my lovely Twitter-friend @Cilllah was bombarded with violent and pretty offensive nonsense from some nutjob banging on about his “garden” and about how he was going to rape and kill her.

Now, given all the nonsense over the #TwitterJokeTrial a while back, I don’t for a second believe that this moron was actually going to do these things. But how is it in any way appropriate to say things like that to someone who’s just going about their business on the Internet? Hiding behind the veil of anonymity to throw out abuse to strangers? That’s kind of pathetic.

This sort of thing shouldn’t annoy me so much—it’s been going on for years after all. It doesn’t make it right, though. I’ve been using the Internet and related technologies since the early days—a 300 baud modem on an Atari 8-bit, then on the Atari ST, then CompuServe under Windows 3.1, up through various incarnations of the “proper” Web to the stage we’re at today. And at no point have I ever felt the need to pick on some poor person and be an asshole to them.

Perhaps I’m just too nice of a person to understand why people do the things they do. But I can live with that; I’d much rather be a person that the vast majority of people like and respect (and perhaps a few assholes think is a bit of a pussy) than someone who gets their kicks from threatening rape and violence on strangers.

The joke’s on them, of course. The mental image that springs to mind as soon as anyone starts trolling like that is one of a Jabba-esque freak in his (you know it’s a he) piss-and-cum-stained pants, probably with their semi-erect penis clasped firmly in their left hand (right hand is for mousing) and a folder called “HOTTYZ” on his desktop containing profile pictures of all the women he’s harassed.

And if you’re not that person? You can feel pretty good about yourself.