@tznkai @JimHenleyMusic @jsmooth995 Oh hey, thanks.
I’ve been fighting with trolls on the internet since almost before there was an internet to fight trolls on. In that time, the trolls have changed a lot, but our tactics really haven’t, and it has cost us.
I’ve been fighting with trolls on the internet since almost before there was an internet to fight trolls on. In that time, the trolls have changed a lot, but our tactics really haven’t, and it has cost us.
@tznkai @JimHenleyMusic @jsmooth995 Just ignoring the trolls worked great when they were individual people who were just looking to cause a ruckus, like a two-year-old kicking down someone else’s blocks. Eventually they would give up and wander off, no harm done.
@tznkai @JimHenleyMusic @jsmooth995 These days though, the trolls have goals, and they have allies. Now when we ignore them, we don’t win. We just cede ground. We move away into our own spaces and our own curated conversations and we leave the Default Internet to people with bad intentions.
@tznkai @JimHenleyMusic @jsmooth995 The trolls know it, and they have adapted. They saturate the liminal spaces and they define the discourse for anyone who isn’t already part of it. It’s a position of enormous power.
@tznkai @JimHenleyMusic @jsmooth995 We saw this with Gamergate in particular. The folks without much at stake largely ignored them, the folks who were targeted created their own spaces out of necessity, and then we got 4chan and 8chan and 8kun and Reddit and whatever happens on YouTube when you let Autoplay run.
@tznkai @JimHenleyMusic @jsmooth995 There is real value in making the Default Internet a contested space again. Because believe you me, when we ignore the trolls, we aren’t denying them attention, just rebuttal. They have *all the attention they want* from everyone who has just emerged into Online.
@tznkai @JimHenleyMusic @jsmooth995 This is kids. It’s young adults. It’s our parents — look at what happens with Facebook. It’s our peers. It’s everyone who didn’t do much with social media until the pandemic struck and now this is the only kind of socializing we can do.
It’s a problem.
It’s a problem.
@tznkai @JimHenleyMusic @jsmooth995 Obviously, I view all this through the lens of my own experience. I have been a lady on the internet a long time, and I am about as conflict avoidant as a sidewinder missile. But I’ve also seen first hand how effective it can be to push back on nonsense, even just as one person.
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