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Over the last few days, I've been reading up on the developments in GamerGate, trying to puzzle out whether I'm missing something and there are some legitimate grievances behind all the mobbing and abuse. All it's done is bring down my faith in humanity another notch.
It also makes me eternally grateful that I got my youthful anger out of my system when I did, back when the stakes were so much lower. The worst that ever happened to me in terms of abuse was one forged email from "God" berating me for my misbehaviour and fake news clipping plugging in my name as the suspect. The only time I had to deal with an email bomb, it was on a work account that I never use and, thus, a more-or-less random attack.
It also makes me more baffled than ever at young people's seeming indifference to online privacy issues. I never worried about anything more than upsetting a friend by betraying a confidence or tipping off a boss to how much private posting I was doing from work. The idea that I could have hundreds of enraged anonymous haters bombarding my workplace with hatemail and even DOS attacks because of an opinion I expressed never crossed my mind.
It makes me more thankful than ever that I've found such quiet eddies of the Internet to hang out. And it makes me more sceptical than ever about the latest Internet jihad. Yeah, it felt good to see Cook Source taken down over the haughtiness of its copyright-clueless editor. But even at the time, the thought occurred to me that this same tactic could be deployed against...well, anyone. All the characteristics which made the online world so enticing to me when I discovered it over twenty years ago are turning out to have terrifying drawbacks. I wonder if it's really possible to fix them and still keep what's good about this mode of communication. I certainly have trouble seeing how to balance anonymity with answerability or empowerment with responsibility.
It also makes me eternally grateful that I got my youthful anger out of my system when I did, back when the stakes were so much lower. The worst that ever happened to me in terms of abuse was one forged email from "God" berating me for my misbehaviour and fake news clipping plugging in my name as the suspect. The only time I had to deal with an email bomb, it was on a work account that I never use and, thus, a more-or-less random attack.
It also makes me more baffled than ever at young people's seeming indifference to online privacy issues. I never worried about anything more than upsetting a friend by betraying a confidence or tipping off a boss to how much private posting I was doing from work. The idea that I could have hundreds of enraged anonymous haters bombarding my workplace with hatemail and even DOS attacks because of an opinion I expressed never crossed my mind.
It makes me more thankful than ever that I've found such quiet eddies of the Internet to hang out. And it makes me more sceptical than ever about the latest Internet jihad. Yeah, it felt good to see Cook Source taken down over the haughtiness of its copyright-clueless editor. But even at the time, the thought occurred to me that this same tactic could be deployed against...well, anyone. All the characteristics which made the online world so enticing to me when I discovered it over twenty years ago are turning out to have terrifying drawbacks. I wonder if it's really possible to fix them and still keep what's good about this mode of communication. I certainly have trouble seeing how to balance anonymity with answerability or empowerment with responsibility.
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