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from the Garbage-in-garbage-in-garbage-in-and-more-garbage-in dept.
At the The Verge:
Today, The Verge is publishing an interim edition of Sarah Jeong's The Internet of Garbage, a book she first published in 2015 that has since gone out of print. It is a thorough and important look at the intractable problem of online harassment.
After a year on The Verge's staff as a senior writer, Sarah recently joined The New York Times Editorial Board to write about technology issues. The move kicked off a wave of outrage and controversy as a group of trolls selectively took Sarah's old tweets out of context to inaccurately claim that she is a racist. This prompted a further wave of unrelenting racist harassment directed at Sarah, a wave of coverage examining her tweets, and a final wave of coverage about the state of outrage generally. This is all deeply ironic because Sarah laid out exactly how these bad-faith tactics work in The Internet of Garbage.
[...] The Internet of Garbage provides an immediate and accessible look at how online harassment works, how it might be categorized and distinguished, and why the structure of the internet and the policies surrounding it are overwhelmed in fighting it. Sarah has long planned to publish an updated and expanded second edition, but in this particular moment, I am pleased that she's allowed us to publish this interim edition with a new preface.
In that new preface, Sarah stresses that her original text was written from a place of optimism. But the years since have not been kind to internet culture. She writes that the tactics of Gamergate, so clearly on display during the harassment campaign waged against her over the last few weeks, have "overtaken our national political and cultural conversations." That new culture is driven by the shape of the internet and the interactions it fosters. "We are all victims of fraud in the marketplace of ideas," she writes.
I hope everyone with a true and sincere interest in improving our online communities reads The Internet of Garbage and contends with the scope of the problem Sarah lays out in its pages. We are making the entire text of The Internet of Garbage 1.5 available for free as a PDF, ePub, and .mobi ebook file, and for the minimum allowed price of $.99 in the Amazon Kindle store. Below, we have excerpted Chapter 3, "Lessons from Copyright Law."
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @04:34PM (13 children)
So it's not racist to satirize those satirizing racism either or is that still classed as racism? Is Ethanol-fueled a master satirist in your opinion?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 31 2018, @05:01PM (11 children)
That's almost funny. Doesn't quite make it though. No, EF seems to be a genuine racist.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @05:05PM
As do Sarah Jeong and half of blue-tick twitter.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday August 31 2018, @07:07PM (9 children)
I would say that he is just regular grandma racist, but turns it up to 11 online for trolling purposes.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @07:18PM (8 children)
Grandma racist is 100% genuine racism, it is just gets a bit of a pass because she's old we realize old bitches can't learn new societal norms. The level of shitty language doesn't change someone's racism so what is your point?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @10:33PM (6 children)
So it's OK to say things like "My Granny says njiggers are lazy drunken welfare cheats?" Thanks for the tip.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @10:52PM
I didn't expect you to have reading skills, I highlighted the section where you screwed up.
(Score: 2) by https on Saturday September 01 2018, @01:45AM (4 children)
You could, of course, choose not to be an asshole and simply say only, "granny is exceptionally racist; she lived through the civil rights era and decided to learn nothing from it."
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Saturday September 01 2018, @02:42AM (3 children)
If you weren't so intolerant toward your elders you might entertain the notion that Granny lived through that era and LEARNED something. We had a civilization that was the envy of the world, rapidly advancing and generally kick ass. Now we have endless debates about who should use which potty. Maybe change isn't always improvement? Maybe Granny has seen both and realizes we made a wrong turn? Do you ever even allow heretical thoughts like that into your closed mind?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 01 2018, @04:35AM (1 child)
So what prevents us from kicking ass and also making sure that there are enough different kinds of potty available? I don't see why it's one or the other?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 01 2018, @06:11AM
"One Size Fits All" is good enough for me. If whatcha gotta do involves stripping, use the stall.
Isn't it in France they have "pisseries" right out in the open? Or is that a pissoir?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 01 2018, @06:15AM
Most of you dipshits want me to use the female potty. Except when there is a proposal to make it so, and then suddenly you want me to use the male potty, because I am unable to go deep stealth and establish a new identity disconnected from my previous identity. And even if I did that (if you caught on), then you would begin accusing me of fraud, lest I rise to an impossible standard of avoiding implying in any way that my previous identity was either male or female, especially given your desire to use violence to enforce a gender caste system.
(The only way you would ever find out is through the ever-present and invasive data collection of the capitalist system. Additionally, your ancestors were not always capitalists, but you refuse to admit that implies there could be a better way of organizing society given the successive evolution of paradigm shifts this implies. If challenged, then you will redefine capitalism to imply that your ancestors were, in fact, capitalists. It goes on and on.)
This is a non-terminating process of tricks, lies, and intellectual sleight of hand. It all stems from your cognitive dissonance about the fact that you are unwilling to cope with reality which is more complicated than childish fairy stories, especially when those without power band together to upset a status quo that you wish would place power in your hands solely because of a circumstance of your birth and an appeal to times gone by, except that it very fucking clearly and presently does not.
You are one of the powerless. Just like us. Deal with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 01 2018, @09:41AM
Perhaps. But they can learn to shut up.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @07:41PM
No, EF is a master baiter. There's a difference.