What a terrible experience, yet I'm not surprised to know such things happen. I hope it's theraputic for her to get these out, and if she can turn the intimidation into some financial gains then so be it. Is there a way to discourage the behavior? It's a tough problem.
As an anecdote, I just had a discussion with a female community college professor, PhD, one who had plenty of bench science experience before teaching. We are both born and raised in the US. Without naming specifics here, we both agreed that while US culture has made attempts - and is making attempts - to grow past gender subujation, there are numerous other cultures which aren't even trying.
We noticed the cultural issues regarding women can be very obvious in a US educational environment. As in, for a woman to be in a position of authority, certain cultures behave in ways which do not acknowledge the earned, official status. I believe the phenomenon is real, and is a day-to-day reflection of what the violinist was exposed to in private. Also, it's one thing in person - but the internet allows for all sorts of 'border crossing' and people from all over the world are capable of reaching out and harassing someone, male, female, or otherwise.
In summation, I think US culture is attentive to a lot of 'weak points' that need to be addressed (gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, handicaps), as difficult as they are for a diverse society...while some others are, well, really lacking in this arena. Like I said, I'm not going to name any one particular one or five, because it's not my place - it's up to the members of those cultures to enact their own change.
Thanks, I think the biggest surprise is, well, people in the US assuming other cultures are willing to change (or mentally prepared to change) upon arriving in the US. It's not that simple. Out of sight, out of mind is one thing, but when one-on-one, it's something that takes strength and confidence to address. Not all people are comfortable in the face of intimidation or just flat-out disrespect.
I like that she doesn't censor the 'authors' of the messages. Public shaming might be the only remedy against this creepy shit. But that may very well be naive thinking: if these guys would think they were doing something wrong they would probably have used an alias.
Glanced over quickly, some are more crude attempts to "flirt" than to creepy, but I guess that just goes with the status quo given the complaints girls get on dating sites like Okcupid.
I had a conversation with a friend after finding pictures of his girlfriend on OK Cupid. I was like, "Hey either your girlfriend is trying to cheat on you, or someone is stealing her identity." He laughed, and said (paraphrased), "No, she kept complaining about how she didn't feel attractive, so we posted an account there for her to get some more attention. We read the comments together and she gets a confidence boost knowing people find her attractive."
As some others have noted, this will keep on increasing as more people use the internet. As internet proliferation amongst less 'inclusive' societies (yes, even less than HN!)increases, online threat, intimidation and violence against women and minorities will increase.
The 'social media'/internet presumes a certain 'accepting', inherently socially liberal order amongst its users. As more and more people who don't fit that use the internet, there will be greater hate and rudeness and intimidation in the internet, and the happy-go-lucky we-are-all-one destroy-the-borders liberal dream will end. The internet will start reflecting the extremes of our behavior, and it will be ever the scarier for women and minorities.
It'll be interesting to see the evolution, and how it's handled.
I read that (deep) learning algos can decide if a message is positive or negative.
Could they learn if a message is a harassment so we could implement a automatic filter for such things?
-- Edit --
I mean this is really bad and we should get these dudes to stop somehow. But it greatly reduced my anger looking into my inbox, when I stopped seeing spam in there. The spammers did never stop...
That would be a great idea if all messages were not harmful in reality.
Unfortunately, some of those threatening messages are from real world stalkers. Those need to be seen because the message might be the only clue that the person has been targeted.
Such threatening messages must not be automatically deleted, rather seen, saved, and forwarded to the appropriate authorities.
Messaging between people is a complex dynamic system. If stalkers knew their messages never got received, they'd quit sending them (and perhaps stop stalking in that way). Obsessing over the messages in sort of feeding the stalker game.
Wow, that's a genius idea, you must be a very smart person. Last week I heard on BBC Click that Google has open-sourced their deep learning algorithm, so now even people like me can code AI apps. It's actually such a good idea that I am going to start working on it right away for my personal usage as a userscript to hide negative comments and keep only the positive ones on sites like HN, because too often people respond to my comments with nothing but disdain despite my honest intellectual efforts.
Heh, before my comment gets downvoted to oblivion: the apparently too subtle point was that for the foreseeable future machines will be unable to detect this kind of passive-aggressive comments, and that trolls aren't dumb, they will just (deep) learn to be more subtle in their trolling (and so more damaging).
This is a phenomenon I see a lot on social media honestly.
Go to any tweet of Emma Watson and try to read the replies without cringing. It's sobering enough to never, ever, ever! wish fame on anybody you love, let alone yourself.
The internet is a platform of speech for all with no restriction and it only takes 0.01% of the crazy, batshit or just fanatical people to make it seem like there is no hope for humanity.
I feel bad for her, being a female may make you feel somewhat less secure (I can't speak for woman-kind so I could be way off base), while male stars get the same kind of treatment- they're more likely to feel pretty sure that they can fend off any depraved attack when their body guards are not around.
For people that are not super rich but have a reasonable amount of spotlight, this can be the worst of both worlds.
As is well known, there are lots of people who get some sick pleasure from announcing their vile and chauvinist thoughts.
"Real names" don't seem to help. I would guess that the senders of these type of messages are socially isolated enough to not see any real social consequences of openly harassing people, women in particular.
So, what's the solution? There doesn't seem to be a proportionate response that life more difficult for online tormentors. Further, any legal response would be justifiably difficult to reconcile with freedom of speech.
It's just unacceptable in my mind that the current balance of power is so skewed towards people who harass others online.
The only solution I could think of would be for confirmed cases of online harassment (however you determine something to be confirmed, I don't know) to be sent to the offender's employer, or for something along those lines be a part of background checks/E-Verify.
You're right, it does seem like the status quo heavily favors abusers and maligns the abused. I'm sure there are several flaws with my idea. I just can't think of much else that could change anything without being extraordinarily invasive or punitive.
Readit News
As an anecdote, I just had a discussion with a female community college professor, PhD, one who had plenty of bench science experience before teaching. We are both born and raised in the US. Without naming specifics here, we both agreed that while US culture has made attempts - and is making attempts - to grow past gender subujation, there are numerous other cultures which aren't even trying.
We noticed the cultural issues regarding women can be very obvious in a US educational environment. As in, for a woman to be in a position of authority, certain cultures behave in ways which do not acknowledge the earned, official status. I believe the phenomenon is real, and is a day-to-day reflection of what the violinist was exposed to in private. Also, it's one thing in person - but the internet allows for all sorts of 'border crossing' and people from all over the world are capable of reaching out and harassing someone, male, female, or otherwise.
In summation, I think US culture is attentive to a lot of 'weak points' that need to be addressed (gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, handicaps), as difficult as they are for a diverse society...while some others are, well, really lacking in this arena. Like I said, I'm not going to name any one particular one or five, because it's not my place - it's up to the members of those cultures to enact their own change.
Yeah, the whole vendetta thing certainly is "funny" /s
That's exactly how people defending "righteous causes" end up being trolls and harassers themselves.
Yes there is, the first thing would be to not attempt to dismiss it
> "of course there will be some bad apples."
Or to victim blame
> Perhaps people facing consistent harassment like this should try something similar?
People facing similar harassment are all women, telling them to hide certainly isnt the answer
(apologies, was supposed to be a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10425590, I cant internet)
Kinda cool to see it all at once I guess?
I had a conversation with a friend after finding pictures of his girlfriend on OK Cupid. I was like, "Hey either your girlfriend is trying to cheat on you, or someone is stealing her identity." He laughed, and said (paraphrased), "No, she kept complaining about how she didn't feel attractive, so we posted an account there for her to get some more attention. We read the comments together and she gets a confidence boost knowing people find her attractive."
Here is another one. http://theslot.jezebel.com/canadians-elect-guy-named-justin-... Just imagine the outcry in the feminist community if the genders were swapped and this had been written by a man about some female politician.
The 'social media'/internet presumes a certain 'accepting', inherently socially liberal order amongst its users. As more and more people who don't fit that use the internet, there will be greater hate and rudeness and intimidation in the internet, and the happy-go-lucky we-are-all-one destroy-the-borders liberal dream will end. The internet will start reflecting the extremes of our behavior, and it will be ever the scarier for women and minorities.
It'll be interesting to see the evolution, and how it's handled.
Could they learn if a message is a harassment so we could implement a automatic filter for such things?
-- Edit --
I mean this is really bad and we should get these dudes to stop somehow. But it greatly reduced my anger looking into my inbox, when I stopped seeing spam in there. The spammers did never stop...
Unfortunately, some of those threatening messages are from real world stalkers. Those need to be seen because the message might be the only clue that the person has been targeted.
Such threatening messages must not be automatically deleted, rather seen, saved, and forwarded to the appropriate authorities.
Go to any tweet of Emma Watson and try to read the replies without cringing. It's sobering enough to never, ever, ever! wish fame on anybody you love, let alone yourself.
The internet is a platform of speech for all with no restriction and it only takes 0.01% of the crazy, batshit or just fanatical people to make it seem like there is no hope for humanity.
I feel bad for her, being a female may make you feel somewhat less secure (I can't speak for woman-kind so I could be way off base), while male stars get the same kind of treatment- they're more likely to feel pretty sure that they can fend off any depraved attack when their body guards are not around.
For people that are not super rich but have a reasonable amount of spotlight, this can be the worst of both worlds.
"Real names" don't seem to help. I would guess that the senders of these type of messages are socially isolated enough to not see any real social consequences of openly harassing people, women in particular.
So, what's the solution? There doesn't seem to be a proportionate response that life more difficult for online tormentors. Further, any legal response would be justifiably difficult to reconcile with freedom of speech.
It's just unacceptable in my mind that the current balance of power is so skewed towards people who harass others online.
You're right, it does seem like the status quo heavily favors abusers and maligns the abused. I'm sure there are several flaws with my idea. I just can't think of much else that could change anything without being extraordinarily invasive or punitive.