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Sticks and stones…

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Ladies and gentlemen, my favorite tweet. I don’t know much about Mr the Creator, but he’s a rapper so I’m going to apply stereotypes and assume he’s at least a little bit ghetto. Bullying in his old haunts prolly involved blood loss.

It isn’t much fun to be the target of online abuse. I have been, long ago, not as Stoaty Weasel. But if you get shit on a blog or a forum or Twitter, you have the option to not fucking go there for a while. Not counting having your nudes or your name and address published, which I do see as actual real-world harm, nothing that happens to you in cyber space is real. It’s an essential social skill in [current year] to learn to walk away from, not get wadded up by, strangers in cyberspace trying to get under your skin.

I know, it’s a not-politics week, but I had to mention Milo Yiannapolis’ Twitter permaban, because I’m not sure what the small fry should do about it.

Backstory: Milo got into a slanging match with that black chick from the new Ghostbusters movie. The way I read it, she was ruder to him than he was to her, but because other people went after her with crude racial stuff, he got blamed for incitement. Good writeup of it here, if you care.

In response to the whole business, people were re-tweeting some hair raising things other Twitter users had said without getting banned. Like, advocating cop murder and recruiting for ISIS. All of the obvious pushback is against the right.

For those of you not on Twitter (most of my readership, I think), when a topic is discussed a lot, it appears in the sidebar as “trending”. The #FreeMilo hashtag was trending so hard, it was number three or four (it’s different in different locations) for hours. And then it was just gone. People were still tweeting about it in enormous volumes, but Twitter plucked it off the list and invisibilized it.

Now, I’m not much of a Twitter user. At all. So the obvious thing to do is walk away and hope enough others do so to make an already tanking business model tank harder. But social media have become a beloved crutch for lazy journalists everywhere. Whole tracts of the Daily Mail are just tweets from nobodies now. So what happens when all the nobodies are SJW nobodies?

Comments


Comment from Skandia Recluse
Time: July 21, 2016, 10:52 pm

It is difficult to walk away from the internet when walking away means not only losing the battle, but losing the battle field, and losing the war.

If all conservatives went all Amish, and turned off electricity, the left would still be there, and would be better organized than they are now, and we (conservatives) would be blind, deaf, mute, and isolated, even more than we are now.


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: July 21, 2016, 11:10 pm

Having lived through the pre-Web era of USENET flame wars, I’m glad to have a certain layer of insulation that keeps me from taking negative comments to heart. I’m also glad to have the experience that lets me frequently turn the tables and make the other guy/gal drop out first. I can appreciate that what this guy Tyler is saying is good advice, even for a non-Nigga.

As for the current societal focus on Twitter, all I can say is that Jack Dorsey, whom I have met, is very bright and very creepy. Think The Einstein of Slime Molds and you’re in his techno-ecological niche.


Comment from Steve Skubinna
Time: July 21, 2016, 11:37 pm

That GQ journalist who tweeted he’d like to beat Pat Smith to death. Still on Twitter, right?


Comment from QuasiModo
Time: July 22, 2016, 12:15 am

I deleted my Twitter and Facebook accounts a while back…not worth the risk that some SJW mob is going to object to what you say and try to get you fired from your job. They’re enemies of free speech, so are enemies of freedom.


Comment from Veeshir
Time: July 22, 2016, 1:08 am

So what happens when all the nobodies are SJW nobodies?

Our fine media betters will just have fewer other nobodies to weed their way through to get to the SJW nobodies they want to use.


Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: July 22, 2016, 1:19 am

If an oppressed minority shames the victim of bullying, which white cisgender male is at fault, or do we just blame global warming in general…but I repeat myself.


Comment from AliceH
Time: July 22, 2016, 1:34 am

I’m all for whatever push back, social pressure, complaints and protests people want to make regarding unfair, high handed, biased, authoritarian actions taken by twitter, facebook, google, newspapers… so long as it never, ever extends to government legislation or legally enforcing “fairness”. Because then only the powerful choose whose rights are respected and whose are deemed revoked “for the public good”.


Comment from Gromulin
Time: July 22, 2016, 2:04 am

So is this thing working? I didn’t hear any dial up squeal, kinda forgot how to use this “internet” thing. Here’s what I did today – http://imgur.com/a/KpoDq
I highly recommend the Heavenly Valley gondola if you find yourself in Tahoe. Not cheap, but worth it. If you have spawn in-tow, then the multi pass covers zip lines, tube rides and a mountain roller coaster (that looked freakin COOL). We got there too late to justify the whole package, so just did the gondola. Very cool, topped out around 9000′.
Anywhooo…had this WEIRD dream last night. Something about an election, or a circus sideshow. Can’t remember. Tequila. Nome sane?
Oh yeah, tequila. And Brats. yeah, back to reality.


Comment from SpongeBobSaget
Time: July 22, 2016, 3:56 am

The marketplace is likely to create less liberal social media sites. Did I join AARP? No, because there is AMAC.


Comment from AliceH
Time: July 22, 2016, 2:48 pm

I stumbled over “less liberal” for a while there, SpongeBobSaget, before figuring out you meant “liberal” in the (regrettable, upside-down) American sense of “left/progressive/democrat/big-government” vs. Classical Liberal. And I’m American, so not sure why I did that!


Comment from bad cat robot
Time: July 22, 2016, 2:55 pm

*giggles at the thought of Gromulin having a Multi-Pass* What, you don’t love The Fifth Element? These days I feel like I’m living in it…


Comment from Formerly known as Skeptic
Time: July 22, 2016, 3:57 pm

“Anyone else want to negotiate?”


Comment from tomfrompv
Time: July 22, 2016, 7:43 pm

Liberal??? What does it mean in the UK?

I hear that Lady May is “conservative” yet supports govt run healthcare, staying with the EU, bigger govt, global warming – basically everything Bernie and Hillary want. And those two are normally described as “liberal”.

Oh well, Lady May was good in that Rotherham mess. Maybe she agrees with Trump and American “conservatives” on law enforcement?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 22, 2016, 8:41 pm

Tom, the equivalence is pretty good between the Tories and the GOP: establishment squishies who believe “getting things done” is more important than moving the country to the right. And, of course, getting things done involves cooperating with the other side.

May is a Tory, emphatically not a conservative.


Comment from tomfrompv
Time: July 22, 2016, 9:20 pm

SWeasel,
So when I read the Daily Mail or similar and they say “conservative” I should picture Paul Ryan or Jeb Bush. I think of them as very squishy.

But again, confusion. I’m sure Edmund Burke invented the term conservative, and was a big Brit. Shouldn’t the country that invented the term know how to use it properly?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 22, 2016, 9:37 pm

When they say big ‘C’ Conservative, yes. There are genuine conservatives here, though I’m tempted to say most of them are UKIP these days.

We haven’t seen a Tory of Maggie’s stripe in a long, long time (not counting those of her deputies that are still alive).

They also have a similar split on the left, between establishment Labour and genuine leftists. Much like the Dems.

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