Another Voice Lost, Cultural-Construct Damn It

We see with regret and sympathy that online harassment has recently driven atheist speaker Jen McCreight to withdraw from blogging 'for an indefinite period of time.' This is the kind of thing that should not happen. What can be done?

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The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



Comments

[picklefactory]

Oh man! I hope you guys have the troll-hitting stick ready to go.

[Froborr]

We voices that remain can talk louder. Voice that until now were silent can speak up.

[J. Random Scribbler]

We need more ways to spread the burden of management, I think. When one individual or a small group has to deal with mass nastiness by themselves, that's a recipe for burnout. There's no magic-bullet technology, of course-- but maybe we can develop better tools to let more people help do the routine chores without getting in each others' way.

Regardless of any technical systems, though, we need more people to speak up instead of being silent. Trolls are generally a minority in any community, and certainly in the online world as a whole; it just seems otherwise because most people never speak up at all. I'm not saying that everybody needs to be an activist, or that people should feel guilty when they simply don't have enough spoons to deal with something-- just that speaking up even occasionally is better than never saying anything at all.

[Nenya]

This seems like a very broad question ("What can be done?") and the only answer I have is Froborr's: all the rest of us keep speaking up.

[thebewilderness]

There is nothing that can be done about the behavior of others, but I think the advice for people being stalked in "The Gift of Fear" is appropriate for this kind of situation on the interwebs or in meat space.
1, do not respond
2, have someone else filter out the hate before you see your messages or mail
3, set aside all direct threats and if possible IP addresses to provide the local police
4, Advise friends and family that you are being stalked
5, Call it what it is! Abuse

I wish there were more that could be done. Although the man who was incarcerated for making rape threats to his customers gives me hope that people are finally beginning to see the size of the problem.

[Andrew Glasgow]

Hopefully there is something that can be done, long term, about the behavior of others, otherwise we're all doomed. Doomed I tell you, doomed!

Those 5 things don't work for someone running a popular, high-traffic blog solo.

[Froborr]

Oh, everyone and everything is always doomed. You carry on anyway.