#oneaday, Day 299: The Internet Hits Me… But It Loves Me

The Internet is, as I’ve said a number of times on this blog, a fabulous invention. I certainly wouldn’t be without it and the friends I’ve found because of it, the things I’ve learned from it, and all manner of other good stuff.

Paul Chambers, he of the #TwitterJokeTrial, certainly wouldn’t be without it either. Because today has been a pretty remarkable demonstration of solidarity and support for him, with huge proportions of Twitter reposting his original “menacing” tweet in full, coupled with the hashtag “#IAmSpartacus”. The story even made The Guardian earlier. The principle behind the thing, if you haven’t worked it out for yourself anyway, is that if everyone was posting the exact same thing that Chambers posted and was not, in fact, getting arrested for it, then clearly his conviction and the failure of his appeal is utter nonsense.

And so far, there have been no reports of anyone getting a friendly knock on the door from their local bobby. Which is good.

It was actually quite heartwarming to see Twitter—a community of, essentially, strangers—coming together to show an enormous amount of unified support for someone who is still technically a stranger to most of us. The vast majority of people posting the #IAmSpartacus tweets don’t know Chambers personally. But they understand what his plight represents—a pretty serious threat to not only free speech, but the British sense of humour as well. Whatever will be the eventual conclusion to the whole fiasco is still shrouded in mystery. But in the meantime, Chambers is doubtless sleeping a little easier at night knowing that to many people, he’s a hero of sorts.

So that’s all very nice, and one of many examples of how The Internet is clearly a Force for Good. (Of course, some might, at this stage, point out that if there was no Internet Chambers wouldn’t have got into this situation in the first place, but let’s just leave that argument to one side for a moment, shall we?)

And then we get this:

Source

Good old 4Chan, cesspool of the Internet, originator of some of the funniest and/or most irritating (depending on your outlook) memes to do the rounds on the Web. There they are, genuinely proposing to flood Tumblr with gore, porn, child pornography and “the worst [they] can offer”, which probably means “all of the above”.

Now granted, Tumblr is a bit of a hipster hangout that is full of people who do nothing but post pretentious photographs, “inspirational” quotes and tame pornography. But there are also plenty of people out there who use it as their blogging platform of choice. With good reason—it’s a simple system for sharing text, photos, video and audio that is mobile-friendly. There’s no extraneous features or plugins to worry about, it’s just type, post, go. Couple that with the built-in community features and, to some, it’s like an extended Twitter with no character limits. Not just for hipsters, see.

Whether 4Chan will actually go through with their threat or not is kind of beside the point. The fact that the possibility of such a campaign was even considered is the thing which makes me want to invest in an expansive hammer collection. According to Urlesque, earlier today there wasn’t a huge amount of traction for the plan. Which is kind of encouraging, I guess, but it still sucks that there are a bunch of a-holes out there who feel the need to wave their e-peen around at every opportunity.

Whoever came up with the campaign seems genuinely affronted that Tumblr, as a community, is trying to “imitate” 4Chan. Now, there are many things to aspire to in life. But to aspire to being 4Chan is not something that most people would say with pride. And it’s pretty likely that a considerable proportion of Tumblr’s users aren’t even aware of what 4Chan is in the first place. So the particular “Anonymous” who has his (you know it’s a “he”, and likely a “he” who has never known the touch of a woman/man, depending on preference) panties in a bunch over Tumblr’s “imitation” of 4Chan is clearly just looking for an excuse to wipe his dick on everybody’s curtains.

Still, as ever, it comes back to the Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, which I’ve posted links to on this blog more times than I care to remember. I guess once more can’t hurt.

Basically, Internet, you’re capable of showing the very best and/or worst the human race has to offer at a moment’s notice. So it should hopefully go without saying by now that the words you should live your life by are very simple: always follow Wheaton’s Law.

Don’t be a dick.

#oneaday, Day 298: Did You Hear The One About The [REDACTED] And The #TwitterJokeTrial?

If the name Paul Chambers doesn’t mean anything to you at the moment, then take a moment to read this summary of the day’s proceedings, courtesy of The Guardian.

The TL;DR version (God, I hate that phrase and wish it, and everyone who uses it unironically, would die in a f… would, err, live a long and happy life filled with kittens and/or puppies, whichever they preferred, really, because it’s up to them how they live their lives and I love them, whatever they decide) is this: Chambers made an (arguably) ill-advised joke on Twitter about blowing Robin Hood Airport “sky high”. It was a throwaway comment that got blown (pardon) out of all proportion and, thanks to some very, very silly people, has been treated as something roughly approaching a mid-level terrorist incident.

The conclusions of the judge today were that Chambers’ original comment was “obviously menacing” and that any “ordinary person” would “be alarmed”.

Funny, then, that Twitter itself has been full of bomb threats, incitements to violence, discussions of inflicting bodily harm on individuals, and no-one else (save Conservative councillor for Birmingham, Gareth Compton, who made some similarly ill-advised comments, got bollocked and then promptly released on bail) has been arrested for it.

The long and short of it, though, is that Chambers’ appeal was unsuccessful, meaning he is now lumbered with a mounting legal bill and fine which—bless him—Stephen Fry has offered to pay, but members of the public have been generously donating to, also. (Find out how you can help too here).

Chambers has lost his job as a result of one silly comment on Twitter that clearly wasn’t intended to be “menacing” in the slightest. What sort of incompetent terrorist hatches their plans via social media anyway? Everyone knows they still use cassettes and VHS tapes. But the fact stands; this poor chap has had his life pretty much destroyed as a result of an almost total abandonment of Common Sense.

I like to think of myself as a fairly ordinary person, and I certainly wasn’t menaced by Chambers’ tweet. I wasn’t even aware of it until this whole legal fiasco started—but I follow plenty of people who make comments which could, according to Judge Jacqueline Davies, be interpreted as “menacing” and “alarming”. Are they all going to be arrested now? Or was Chambers set up to be made an example of? Certainly if the authorities are intending prosecuting everyone who has made mock “bomb threats” on Twitter today, they’d better get started now, because it’s going to take a good long while, and lots of courthouse space to get it all sorted.

Or perhaps they could, you know, focus on some actual crimes. Perhaps they could take some steps to deal with kids carrying knives, youth gangs, burglaries, assaults, murders, even fucking traffic incidents carry more weight than a ridiculous comment on Twitter.

Or even—here’s a thought—they could invest some resources into tracking down actual, genuine terrorists and foiling their plots before they happen. But perhaps that’s too difficult, and it’s much easier to make a scapegoat of a poor fella who was simply excited to spend time with the love of his life, and was frustrated by the fact that the airport’s closure was making that look more and more unlikely.

So, moral of the story, kids? Be careful what you say. Otherwise Big Broth—

[THE REMAINDER OF THIS BLOG POST HAS BEEN REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND. PLEASE DIRECT ALL ENQUIRIES TO [email protected]]

#oneaday, Day 114: Social Peril

My good friend Mr George Kokoris had this to say about people and social media earlier. Go read it. He has some very valid concerns, especially in light of Facebook’s increasingly cavalier attitude towards personal privacy.

I used to like Facebook. I used to like it because it wasn’t like MySpace – I remember saying this to several people. I tried MySpace and didn’t really get it. It seemed to be a friend-collecting competition with some of the most hideous web design you can possibly imagine. Facebook used to be different, though. It used to limit you to people you actually know. In fact, you used to have to say how you knew the person you were adding as a friend, much like immensely boring but practical professional networking site LinkedIn still does. As a result, it became a great way for keeping in touch with family and friends. Everyone felt confident and secure in the fact that your information was yours, and that the only people you were sharing it with were people you had specifically approved. In short, it felt like a secure means of communication. I liked it for this.

As time passed, we all know the story. Groups. Applications. Pages. A dwindling sense of security. Employers using employees photographs of drunken nights out as grounds to mistreat them. Until we reach today, when a large number of people I know are seriously considering ditching their Facebook accounts altogether in favour of alternative, more secure means of communication. Or, ironically, Twitter, one of the most open and public means of communication there is.

But at least on Twitter it never claims to be anything other than public. Your profile on Twitter consists of your avatar, your username and 140 characters of “bio”. Your conversations are public (unless you specifically choose to protect your tweets, which kind of defeats one of the main objects of the service) and anyone can chip in at any time. It’s a simple, effective means of asynchronous communication which means that people speak frankly, briefly and candidly.

This gets people in trouble. Sometimes, a lot of trouble. Paul Chambers found this out the hard way.

“Robin Hood airport is closed,” he tweeted as his trip to Ireland to meet a girl he’d been talking to on Twitter looked threatened by the UK’s complete inability to deal with a bit of snow. “You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

A flippant, offhand remark. But a flippant, offhand remark that recently landed him with a thousand-pound fine and a criminal record on the grounds that his message was “grossly offensive, or of indecent, obscene, or menacing character”. A flippant, offhand remark that gave him the dubious honour of being the first person ever to be convicted of a “crime” (and I use the term loosely) in connection with remarks made on a social networking site.

I mean seriously. His comments weren’t in the best taste. But by successfully prosecuting this case, it sets a dangerous precedent that has made everyone rather more conscious of what they say. In effect, it’s stifling free speech, a concept the Internet is built upon – not to mention the fact that the life of Chambers, who was training to be an accountant, has now been devastated.

See also: Gizmodo’s behaviour with regard to the new iPhone that was left in a bar. Gray Powell, the engineer who misplaced the phone, lost his job, perhaps understandably, given that he left an immensely valuable trade secret just lying around. Gizmodo reported on the new iPhone. They ripped it open and looked inside it. Perhaps not the best thing to do when Apple were already pissed off. Then they ripped open Gray Powell’s life, using information from his entire Internet presence to make him a global laughingstock. Was it not enough that the guy fucked up and lost his job because of it? Apparently not.

George points out that there are people out there who hate success and will do anything to destroy the efforts of people with ambition. It makes me sad to think that in a world where our exchange of information should be free and open that incidents like the above can happen. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. The fact that we can communicate instantaneously with anyone in the world should be a wonderful, life-affirming thing that brings the global community closer together, builds bridges and draws us closer to a peaceful sci-fi utopia. But instead, shit like this just gets people paranoid and worried, until we’re going to find ourselves even more closed off and isolated than we were before the whole social media thing started. And that’s sad.

Is it just human nature to use things that should be positive for evil, deceitful purposes?