Thread by @NGrossman81

Good piece on internet-driven harassment by ⁦@lyzl⁩ (with ⁦@chick_in_kiev⁩).
I have three thoughts.
1) Harassment is a very different experience for harassers, especially online. Toss some death threats in an email, click send, you’re done. lyz.substack.com/p/when-the-mob…

1 cont) But for the harassed, it’s an unyielding flood. Social media becomes hard to use, as normal notifications get drowned out. Email too. They go after family and coworkers, so even if you can take it, others in your life—who didn’t do anything—often have trouble with it.

2) “No one has to work in journalism.”
That’s true, of course. But we as a society don’t want journalism controlled by harassment mobs, where only the people they leave alone, or those with especially thick skins, can do it. Gives them too much power, bad for media and discourse.

3) “X has it worse, so stop complaining.”
True, but asinine. Someone always has it worse. Genocide exists, but that does not somehow make assault ok. Harassment is bad because it’s bad, even though some harassment is worse than others, and there are things worse than harassment.

In case it isn’t clear, this isn’t about me. I’ve gotten hate mail and mean tweets, sure, but I wouldn’t call that harassment.
A bunch of people sending death threats and threats against your kids with pictures of your house, however... That’s over the line.

Last thought: Many of the people who pooh-pooh stories of harassment cast themselves as victims and would scream “cancel culture” over a fraction of what some of the harassed experience, so take their attempts to dismiss these concerns with a grain of salt.
(END)