Letters to the Editor
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The Real Implications of Listening to Angry Bloggers
...that we reflexively compose our own hate mail, and sometimes type and retype to try to avoid it? I can honestly say it's probably made me more precise and less glib. That's good. But it's also, for now, made me too cautious.
Honestly, this is what worries me the most...that people, to avoid attack, begin to censor themselves and/or try to avoid topics that might trigger some psycho's emotional baggage.
In my opinion, this is what has totally f***ed up media in general. The fear of being called "liberal" comes to mind. There is such a tide of hate in large segments of the population, and everyone is afraid of these people due to the large amounts of venom they spew with seemingly no intention towards self-control or real communication. It's making the rest of us, the "silent majority," unwilling to speak out about a lot of things, at least not without being sure of our audience to some extent.
It strikes me that these people who are conducting these attacks are *not* in any way the majority p.o.v. Yet we're all changing our behavior to lesser or greater degrees to accomodate them. Whether it's editing a piece more carefully to avoid the more virulent attacks, it amounts to a form of behind the scenes censorship that I find very troubling. I honestly don't believe the country is as "conservative" (i.e., radical right-wing) as people think it is....they are just the most vocal and angry, and therefore easier to accomodate.
The majority just seem to be saying less and less, in the hopes that they can avoid conflict...socially, politically and otherwise. I don't think this is only a problem on the web. I think it's a human problem, the same one that let GW steal an election, that allows the war to keep escalating, that allows the world to get more and more dirty and unlivable.
Those of us letting the fear-driven, angry, emotionally unbalanced vocal minorities scare us (and I do include myself as having been guilty of this) need to rethink whose opinion really matters.
I guess it's up to every individual to decide how to deal with the personal safety issues that may or may not come up around this. Because of course some of these crazies act on their craziness. You'd have to live in a total dream world to think otherwise.
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Good Grief
This...
I truly believe misogynist trolls are only a tiny sliver of the Web population. But I can no longer say they don't matter, or they do no real harm.
...was truly dumb, Joan, and that has nothing to do with the fact that you have a vagina rather than a penis. With that second sentence you empowered every mysoginisst troll on the Internet, let alone those who write to Salon.
Nevertheless, when that loon posted Sierra's address, he crossed a line. I too feel Sierra is over-reacting, but she is wise to be cautious from now on.
The reason the "women writers" of Salon get beat up in these threads so often is because they more or less stink. So do most of the men (King Kaufman comes to mind). If you want the critical letters to stop, start taking some of that Site Pass and advertising swag and spend it on REAL writers, like Barbara Ehrenreich, Katrina Vanden Huevel and, if she were still with us, Molly Ivins. And STOP publishing pseudo-intellectual blow-hards like Camille Paglia and Farhad Manjoo. Censoring the letters isn't going to solve this problem, but better editorial policy and management will.
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It's not what you express, but the sense of grievance with which you express it. Chip on your shoulder
If having this characteristic disqualified what women say from being heard women wouldn't be heard from much, at least on certain subjects. Hmmm. I think it all may be starting to make sense. It's one thing to say that people shouldn't make threats, but you need to be careful that the definition of what is abusive doesn't get expanded to the point where anything you don't want to hear is considered abuse.
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Just Sayin'
It's been my experience in my limited time reading the blogs and comments that most of the biting, sometime vicious satire comes from one side of the blogosphere and most of the really nasty personal attacks come from the other and most of us see ourselves as the middle of the spectrum.
Most of the personal stuff comes from people who lack the facts on their side to propel their argument and position forward. For instance most of the virulent homosexual attacks come from self-hating closeted homosexuals who can't come to grips with their own personal reality because they would be abandoned by their fellow travelers.
The satirists operate from a position of assumed superiority,real or not because the other side usually is only capable of hurling insults and either don't have the ability or won't take the time to be clever about it.
Where people fit in is left for others to judge, but I know I'd rather Will Rogers than Andrew Dice Clay.
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Thank you.
I'm pretty unsophisticated in all this on-line stuff so about the most I've seen is Salon letters. It has been fairly astounding to encounter the rude bullying fools. I realized I could turn them off or their volume down and listen to the great bulk of insightful civilized people. Since I'm a man and, I assume, retain unferreted-out sexism - or am not so hurt till it's aimed at me - I hadn't realized that what you say is true, that the rude boys find especially sick ways to go after women.
The massive Bushie backlash, the great turd on our lives the past several years, illustrates how gravely upset many have been by the 1960s. By progress. They cannot regain their comfort till the world is again a segregated '50s homophobic sexist Andy Griffin Show; which is not gonna happen.
But since many of the sexist fool bullies are not even politically conservative, I see that 1) resistance to any aspect of progress can affect those of all political stripes, and, 2), addiction/attachment to sex is real and pathologically magnetic to some. And to power. And to not healing. To being unhappy.
Also, a derogatory Salon post about a Salon post of mine taught me that the rude bullying fools can't really read and think. "How'd they get that from what I said?" I thought. And what I'd written really was penetrable. A recent Glenn Greenwald column in Salon turned me on to Bob Altemeyer's book "The Authoritarians," free to read on the web. Followers are not as smart as they are. Other-direction dumbs you down, and if one is slave to one's private parts and to resentment over old wounds, it can result in a bunch of malicious crap.
We move on. We know when freedom turns to license. Maybe we tweak posting. And so on.
Best,
Monty
(more, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")