Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Thoughts on Online Interactions

Tags: cyberspace theory, networking
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  • 6 comments
just_the_ash

just_the_ash

August 17 2009, 18:13:01 UTC 11 years ago Edited:  August 17 2009, 18:15:03 UTC

Yeah, except she's trying to turn the conjoined cases of John C. Wrong and L. Jagi Lampdarkener into a sample case for all such large-scale disagreements, and shadesong points out why that fails. Lots of people may think I'm going to hell for the crime of existing while bi. JCW has restated his position that said state of existence puts me on a par with child rapists, and so I was happy to be among seven pages of (now-deleted) comments merely explaining that he would not be getting one Red (caps intended) cent of my queer dollars, ever, and leaving it at that.

L. Jagi went after karnythia for being, in her words, "terribly outspoken" -- that is, too much so for L. Jagi's personal comfort. To her credit, when I called her on that, she did see the dumbness of that phrasing, and apologize for it, but she still refuses to see why any Black person in the United States should be offended by the use of "girl" to refer to her when she is, in fact, an adult woman. She is willfully blinding herself to a long and painful history, which means that she intends to go right on reminding people of this history all over the place, and losing friends thereby.

Well! In a very short time, I'll be facing two sections of first-year freshman comp students, some of whom may complain that their/their parents' credit cards "got raped" by the process of buying textbooks. And I will have to remain very calm on the inside and explain that the comparison is both invalid and offensive, and I don't want to hear it in my classroom a second time, while suppressing flashbacks and rage.

And I will do this gently, because I know they don't actually support rape, and that intentional douchenozzles -- not merely people of differing opinions, but people trolling for rage on purpose -- like the willfully evil JCW and the willfully clueless L. Jagi -- are thankfully few and far between.

(Nota bene: karnythia is not "terribly outspoken." She is, in point of fact, wonderfully outspoken, so much so that she doesn't even fuck up apostrophes in the manner of L. Jagi. Edited to fix my own em dash, which Karn would not have fucked up.)
ysabetwordsmith

Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

August 17 2009, 21:18:06 UTC 11 years ago

The post I was pointing to begins:

>>Yesterday I came home from an afternoon out to find my post had accrued 70+ comments. I think it's because some people thought I was speaking of one specific incident—I wasn't, I was observing a trend not just on Livejournal but across the internet—and so got distracted. So I guess I'll clarify that now: This was not about a specific incident; even so, I don't think "He started it by acting like a jerk" is a valid excuse for "So I'm allowed to act like one back, he was asking for it!"<<

Based on that, I took this for a general comment on cyberspace theory. (At first I was wondering if it had to do with a particular thread, not one of those, but I'm willing to believe an author who says that she's writing about a pattern rather than a particular, because I do that too. Somewhere around 3-5 repetitions will usually make me post about a topic.) What specific thing(s) did haikujaguar say that made you feel the post referred specifically to those two threads with sufficient clarity to outweigh the opening paragraph's statement of general patterning?
just_the_ash

Re: Hmm...

just_the_ash

August 17 2009, 21:26:42 UTC 11 years ago

Inference from the comments, one of which called out JCW specifically, and MCA didn't disagree with that identification of the particular dogpile. Someone pointed out that JCW is sufficiently not-that-famous that his month-old post would likely have gone unnoticed had it not been for L. Jagi's one-woman RaceFail at Worldcon, which is a fair assessment. I'd never heard of him before the current kerfuffle, or her either for that matter. My recall of the seven pages of now-deleted comments to JCW -- and I have really damn good textual recall; it's how I got my master's degree and current job -- is that a lot of people said essentially, "Wow, I've never heard of you, but now you're on my list of Authors to Avoid."

I note that I did not see people calling him an immoral sadist on a par with necrophiles, child rapists, et cetera. The vast majority of those commenters, again from my own recollection, simply posted to say either, "Holy crap, I read your book/s but I'm not buying any more," or "I've never heard of you and now I'm not going to begin reading you." It wasn't pleasant discourse, but it certainly wasn't at the level of poo-flinging he stooped to.
haikujaguar

Re: Hmm...

haikujaguar

August 18 2009, 12:13:05 UTC 11 years ago

You're correct, I wasn't writing about any one specific incident. What the people leaving comments on the entry thought it was about was their extrapolation, and when I got home I didn't have the time or energy to wade into a 90+ comment thread to correct them all. Which is why I made the new post, so I could address everyone's misperception at once.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

August 18 2009, 18:19:02 UTC 11 years ago

I was fascinated by the fact that different people thought your post(s) connected to different origins. I think we were all mentally backtracking to the last time we disagreed with you, and of course that ended in different places. It's a reminder of how self-centered people can be. Sometimes you have to step back and say, "Hey, maybe this didn't have anything to do with me, after all." Which is a vital internet skill for avoiding flamewars.
raven_ap_morgan

raven_ap_morgan

August 17 2009, 18:17:51 UTC 11 years ago

I agree with the author's viewpoint - I am reminded of the phrase, "Reasonable people can disagree." For example, a person I am in association with is both a Christian and pro-life. While I am both not a Christian and pro-choice (both almost rabidly so), it does not behoove me to emphasize those differences between us. Instead, I find it more useful to focus on our common efforts, and in general, he is quite the reasonable person, so I don't find that difficult.

In the same way, I try to remain objective, evidence-based, and tolerant in my discussions with others online, even when my position is different than others. Sometime, I succeed...

Raven