Letters to the Editor
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We dislike them too.
Ms. Walsh: Reading this article made me sad and angry. Sad that these simple minded, frightened and powerless individuals share my gender, and angry that I can do nothing about it. Robert David Clark
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The lynch mob never went away
The lynch mob never went away. It's still here with us under hood and robe barefingered on the keyboard in our new places for social discourse. Threats are threats and have to be treated as such especially when home addresses are given out. It's not a case of bad manners or weak intentions or political liberty. All message boards need moderators. All letters to the editor need, well, an editor.
Thugs need to be put in their place.
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Is Salon.com being hypocritcal?
I find it interesting that when people make the same caliber of comments about Ann Coulter on your website, you have nothing to say. People on your own website have called her a cunt and a cooze and threatened all manner of physical violence against her.
I also find it interesting that when I pointed out the irrationally anti-female hate speech by posting a comment, my comment disappeared.
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Misogyny & Online Disinhibition Effect
Why are there so many "haters" online? All Internet commentary is affected by aspects of the Online Disinhibition Effect. Why not investigate this "new" psychological disorder from journalistic and managerial perspectives? Many questions now vexing Salon's readers (as expressed in Letters to the Editors) and its editorial staff could be unpacked and addressed in a more useful way if ODE became integrated in your understanding of this site's platform...
Until online sites and forums find a way to acknowledge and actively address these contributing psychological factors in all Internet communications (including asynchronicity, anonymous dissociative syndrome, etc.), censorship and/or filters in public forums will just be band-aids.
For more, read Sayler's essays:
http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/disinhibit.html
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I encounter this a fair amount.
In real life I've seen this quite a bit. There are some men, who when women aren't around just turn into these complete mysoginists. Many of them are married which I cannot understand. And it's one thing to tell them their comments are innappropriate, but it's very hard to relate to someone who just does not see women as being in any way equal, despite all evidence. Maybe we need to study how to retrain mysoginists. It doesn't seem to work like racism. Most people find it hard to be racist when they have lots of positive encounters with members of a given race. I don't think the same can be said about mysoginists, and that leaves me questioning how to help these people change.
That would probably make a good salon article.
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none
I read somewhere the equation:
"Normal person + audience + anonymity = Total fuckwad"
Though I do completely agree with what Joan Walsh said here, and I usually relish any opportunity to
point out hypocrisy or irrationality in any kind of 'men vs. women' debate. She's completely right.
Bottom line, personal attacks and vitriolic spewing with no reasoned argument don't have any place
in the letters column.
But good luck trying to get rid of them - I imagine they will be like cockroaches, but at least recognize
those letters and semtiments for what they are - cockroaches? Ech, too early to be eloquent. Just wanted
to say I agree.
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-- LenEdgerly
You seem determined to prove Liberals are becoming the new Social Conservatives due to a kind of paranoid, media hyped, political correctness. You've got misogyny and pornography, what hot button are you missing? Why not just go all out and mention that the columbine shooter had played a violent video game for the trifecta?
It amazes me that in this age, internet savvy people with access to technology and data can still be such sloppy thinkers and conflate issues so easily. Everyone is eager to obsess over these vague cultural issues, while major issues go right over people's heads.
All the world's scientists have been saying in journals for decades that global warming is real. They finally broke down and practically lit a fire under the public's collective ass before people noticed.
The dot-com bubble was obvious, yet every business program urged people to get in the market while it was hot, till it collapsed and blew out the economy and the savings of millions.
The housing bubble was written about extensively for years, going back to 2001, and the possibility for recession compounded by China and other nations holding our debt. Now it's bursting, people in the MSM are finally seeing the recession danger, maybe too late.
I could go on. Suffice to say there are a 101 important issues that most people are largely ignorant of while they continually obsess over trivia, diddling while rome burns.
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...
I missed this whole saga until this article. It's ironic though that Salon would choose to put a photoshopped photo of Kathy Sierra in a cross-hairs on the top of its homepage for an article about Kathy Sierra going into seclusion as a result of threatening photoshopped images popping up in blogs.
Anyway, I wish her the best and hope that we can get past the bickering over whether or not this sort of thing is "protected speech" and come to a consensus that it is not acceptable human behavior and not part of a genuine conversation.
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"No Name Given" i am more *abstract* than you, that's all
i find that realm the more agreeable (by the way, i read your post - twice - and i found it too *literal* for my taste. it's a question not of style, not of temperament but of essential brain encoding. not making any judgements (well i guess i *am* i like my own way of thinking better, we all like our own ways better. the world needs both types, just more of yours than mine. too many "literals" and it's a boring world (my take) but too many "abstracts" and it's a disaster! ideology! social engineering! communism! fascism! jihadism! the ills of mankind - but also the joys) i only *wish* i could have the bucks to smoke dope (when i was a boy, a lid cost $10, now the $35 i'd have to have to get my own name registered at salon would by what? a joint? a puff? a smell? ah me.) and thanks for the "shout out", i love the attention, and yours was playful. (you must be a guy)