If You Don't Stop Online Harassment, No One Else Will

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Earlier today, Polygon's Brian Crecente ran what might be one of the most significant articles about gaming culture that you'll read in 2013, all about the effects of the vitriol that game developers and community members in general receive on a regular basis.

Normally this is not the kind of thing I would post on a Thursday. I like having meaty original content up on a Thursday to entertain those of you feeling that end-of-the-work-week malaise, and a simple link usually wouldn't make the cut. But this is more than a simple link. This is a vital piece of perspective for those of us interacting (and watching others interact) online.

... So, you know, basically everyone.

This has been a problem for some time now, but one Tumblr called GamerFury has done a lot to bring the issue back into the limelight. GamerFury was started to share the abusive Tweets that developer David Vonderhaar was receiving for modifying a virtual gun in Call of Duty, including threats to himself and to his family. As has been pointed out many times in the past, there are few jobs that involve absorbing so much harassment with so little available recourse as working in the games industry, especially for people in the public eye. You can't talk to HR, you can't kick them out of the store, the police often have nothing to offer, and most of the time you're left relying on mediation and disciplinary actions from 3rd party services that are swamped at best, apathetic at worst. Unfortunately on platforms like Twitter there's very little that someone can do when they're the target of a community's ire.

Now obviously this isn't just limited to gaming, either. Almost anyone working under the scrutiny of an audience online can find themselves at the heart of a campaign of abuse like the one highlighted on GamerFury.

It's fair to wonder if there's any point in writing an article like the one on Polygon, because the worst offenders probably won't read it or take its message to heart if they do. Maybe they're "different", maybe their target "deserves it", maybe this article is just "whining", maybe they need to "grow a thicker skin"... The usual dismissive bullshit. I don't think this article is meant for those people anyway. Much like schoolyard bullying it's not always just about the bully and the victim, but also the bystander. In online spaces there is often an audience, and they can choose to stay silent or speak out.

When you say nothing, you're really saying that it's okay. It's normal. It's just how people are online. But should it be? Should the internet be the one socially safe place for me to tell a stranger precisely how I want to murder them without my friends immediately disowning me? For this kind of behavior to become less prevalent, it needs to be seen as unacceptable, and that will never happen if the bystanders in these online spaces aren't willing to put their foot down.

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Iris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[chryblnd Scribe]

I have been on the web since 97, and I believe this is, at least in part, down to the invasion of the phone-in users. Once upon a time you had to have a computer to access the internet, and that ~generally~ meant the web was populated by a more literate user. No, it wasn't rainbowland. But it sure wasn't what we have now.
Then cell phones enabled access for spaces like facebook and twitter, and everyone had access. Including people whose opinions could be, and often for good reason, were, were ignored. I see a direct link between their access to platforms where they can be heard and the downturn in the quality of dialogue.
This doesn't quite explain the rise of the malignant gamer, but you could make a case that:
a) Those people are encouraged by the behaviour of others and
b) they may still not be computer users if their usual game platform is PS3 ect.
I don't know what the answer is. I don't often get trolled and I block fast when I do, because even "back in the day" the first rule was "don't feed the troll". It works for me, but I am not a high profile target. It must be really horrifying for the people who do have to live through this.

[Arioch]

So, you're basically telling us all to stand up to the likes of Pep Daniels and his fanboys and fangirls that run the "Crimes Against Convention" gang? Not gonna happen. SLusers LOVE to watch people get harassed.

Seriously now, great article. But don't expect it to do much to change the gossipy nature of most SLusers.

[NetDwarf]

Haha, it's a CoD community, you can't expect politeness from persons born after year 2000 xD

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I don't think anybody expects perfect civility. I've been known to get grumpy with people from time to time. But a flame war is a far cry from death threats. There's only so much "empty words" rationalization before you start to wonder exactly how crazy the people who say they want to rape and kill you (not necessarily in that order) are.

Because sometimes a stranger shows up on the doorstep and kills another person over something that happened in a game. It's EXCEEDINGLY rare, but it has happened. And that's enough to suggest that maybe the people making the threats ought to be, at the very least, disavowed by fellow gamers and probably subject to some investigation by law enforcement.

I advocate free expression, but some things cross the line. Threats of physical violence chill and repress the free expression and other rights of other people. They can't be tolerated.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I seriously hope that tweet up there is in the hands of police.

Twitter HAS come out recently and said that while they have an iron privacy policy, they DO hand over information on specific threats.

What we are looking at in the screenshot if a specific threat against the life of another - and that is a criminal action. Only from enough high profile prosecutions of such conduct will it begin to change.

I'm not going to be stupid and say its some teenage kid. That meme is outdated. It could be anyone. We've seen this kind of conduct from all age ranges and social demographics.

[NoDrama NoLlama]

The worst trolls are adults, usually pathetic, sociopathic, narcissistic (but also more inept IRL than basement-dwelling teenagers) has-beens with a failed professional and family life, who twist and turn things around to make their failures and flaws look like super-cool features.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Well the article notes a counter point. The Microsoft employee who's had juveniles call police to get SWAT teams to show up at his house...

Knowing that the job of American police is basically to murder people of color anytime the cops get nervous, and that the site of us tends to make them nervous..., that would scare the heck out of me... and unlike him I'd be moving the lawsuits the moment the Seattle police told me to just 'deal with it' because they're kids...

Those are NOT harmless kids...

He was right to leave Microsoft when they refused to hire security guards for him.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

Meh - one of the problems with the "saying nothing is saying it's okay" argument (or silence is the same as condoning) is that everyone will draw the line of trollism in a different place. The word troll is thrown around for every dissenting remark. What degree of vitriol do we put up with? Who decides how much of an ass someone can be? A person just being an ass online is different than a person threatening physical bodily harm.

So, I say nothing when a friend is being an ass. It doesn't mean I condone the behavior and I don't encourage it, but he/she has the right to be an ass if that is what he/she chooses. I personally would speak up if I thought someone was actually going to get hurt, but not for hurt feelings. One person is able to laugh off an insult, another flips out and screams troll and apply the ban-hammer!

You have brought up an extreme case, of course, but there are many gray places in the middle.

[NoDrama NoLlama]

Ah, don't you love it when people who befriend trolls offer up excuses for their support to the trolls?

No dear: when you befriend a troll, you offer them your support. And trying to redefine trolling in order to make your buddy's trolling pass off as a valid opinion is actually BULLSHIT.

[NoDrama NoLlama]

BTW Cinnamon, exactly why would you choose to befriend an ass? Don't you know that we are what our friends are?

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

Since you are assuming to know my motivations, I will return the favor. I will assume you are one of those people who invent a slight to continue the drama. The name says one thing, the response says another. I will also assume you are one of those personalities that inflate a small sliver into an amputation. Nice try though.

I reread my response to make sure I wasn't redefining trolling. I couldn't find what you saw. If anything, I asked for clarification and the realization that the definition is different for everyone.

[Arioch]

For someone who knows to be in the right, you are a tad too defensive.

[LeeHere Absent]

I run Crimes Against Convention. Thanks for the mention.