Lindy West and her troll
January 25, 2015 9:58 PM Subscribe
Former The Stranger and now GQ writer Lindy West talks on This American Life with an abusive troll who pretended to be her dead father immediately after his death. Don't let the description put you off: he apologizes, for real.
Ars Technica covers the story with way more words than I have managed to put together here.
Ars Technica covers the story with way more words than I have managed to put together here.
[Thanks restless_nomad for adjusting my link to go directly to the Lindy segment instead of the whole episode!]
posted by librarina at 10:27 PM on January 25, 2015
posted by librarina at 10:27 PM on January 25, 2015
See also: FanFare.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:41 PM on January 25, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:41 PM on January 25, 2015 [2 favorites]
I remember a while ago engaging in an argument with a trollishly inclined acquaintance. His justification for what he did, or at least part of it, was that he didn't feel like the internet was real.
But it is. It is a tool for communication, and every person you encounter there is real. Even if you are putting on a persona, playing a character under a pseudonym, that is something you want to put out into the world. And if you use that adopted name, or no name at all, to hurt or frighten someone, even if that persona bears no resemblance to your analog self, that is still something that YOU did to another human being, and the pain and fear that they feel is real. Everything you do is real.
posted by louche mustachio at 11:04 PM on January 25, 2015 [16 favorites]
But it is. It is a tool for communication, and every person you encounter there is real. Even if you are putting on a persona, playing a character under a pseudonym, that is something you want to put out into the world. And if you use that adopted name, or no name at all, to hurt or frighten someone, even if that persona bears no resemblance to your analog self, that is still something that YOU did to another human being, and the pain and fear that they feel is real. Everything you do is real.
posted by louche mustachio at 11:04 PM on January 25, 2015 [16 favorites]
I was pretty shocked to read a number of Ars Technica comments accusing her of making up the whole thing, on the grounds that it was just too perfect a resolution or something.
posted by modernnomad at 2:53 AM on January 26, 2015
posted by modernnomad at 2:53 AM on January 26, 2015
Ars Technica isn't the site it once was; it's currently part of Condé Nast/Advance Publications, who also own Reddit.
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:59 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:59 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
modernnomad: "I was pretty shocked to read a number of Ars Technica comments accusing her of making up the whole thing, on the grounds that it was just too perfect a resolution or something."As also pointed out in the comments on Ars: while those assholes are there and commenting, they are also being downvoted into oblivion. They are not a majority.
posted by brokkr at 3:11 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
Reddit is a direct subsidiary of Advance Publications. Conde Nast is a direct subsidiary of Advance Publications. They are peers in the structure. Reddit seeks it's own funding and operates as an independent entity, as does Conde Nast. Ars Technica is a subsidiary of Conde Nast Digital and is a part of the Wired Group within that.
posted by disclaimer at 4:20 AM on January 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by disclaimer at 4:20 AM on January 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
His justification for what he did, or at least part of it, was that he didn't feel like the internet was real.
So many problems, historical and current, seem rooted in a fundamental inability to believe other people are real. Beyond a failure of empathy. It's biological, a flaw in our sense processing; solipsism has to be acknowledged, adjusted for, and overcome, like every other cognitive bias our overstrained ape brains show in our weird lives.
posted by penduluum at 4:55 AM on January 26, 2015 [16 favorites]
So many problems, historical and current, seem rooted in a fundamental inability to believe other people are real. Beyond a failure of empathy. It's biological, a flaw in our sense processing; solipsism has to be acknowledged, adjusted for, and overcome, like every other cognitive bias our overstrained ape brains show in our weird lives.
posted by penduluum at 4:55 AM on January 26, 2015 [16 favorites]
"a flaw in our sense processing"
Eh, I wouldn't go as far as calling it a flaw. I just think we're not biologically psychologically (as in the biologic effects that give rise to our psychology) evolved to the point to understand that we can now communicate to people that aren't physically present near us.
posted by I-baLL at 5:01 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
Eh, I wouldn't go as far as calling it a flaw. I just think we're not biologically psychologically (as in the biologic effects that give rise to our psychology) evolved to the point to understand that we can now communicate to people that aren't physically present near us.
posted by I-baLL at 5:01 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
You stand on a desk and you say, I’m Lindy West and this is what I believe, fuck you if you don’t agree with me.
I agree, but for me that is a reason to read her essays, not turn into a gross troll. This is a phenomenon that I don't really get, for all that it is obviously real and common.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:04 AM on January 26, 2015
I agree, but for me that is a reason to read her essays, not turn into a gross troll. This is a phenomenon that I don't really get, for all that it is obviously real and common.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:04 AM on January 26, 2015
Eh, emotions tend to make you want to DO SOMETHING because SOMETHING MUST BE DONE about this kind of thing, and if there's nothing to be done then you do whatever's handy. In this case it means using the tools the website in question gives you to express hatred.
posted by LogicalDash at 5:08 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by LogicalDash at 5:08 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
He admits it was misogyny in the piece, which actually seems to floor West -- she's interacted with trolls before, and none of them would ever cop to misogyny.
But it is. I was at the center of a protracted argument about rape comedy in Minneapolis, and while it was heated and often thoughtless, nobody treated me the way West gets treated daily. As far as I can tell, the only difference is that I am a man.
posted by maxsparber at 5:31 AM on January 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
But it is. I was at the center of a protracted argument about rape comedy in Minneapolis, and while it was heated and often thoughtless, nobody treated me the way West gets treated daily. As far as I can tell, the only difference is that I am a man.
posted by maxsparber at 5:31 AM on January 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
Other people on the internet: not real enough for empathy, but real enough for rape threats if thought to be female.
posted by rtha at 5:48 AM on January 26, 2015 [22 favorites]
posted by rtha at 5:48 AM on January 26, 2015 [22 favorites]
brokkr: "As also pointed out in the comments on Ars: while those assholes are there and commenting, they are also being downvoted into oblivion. They are not a majority."
This led me to, out of curiosity, read the comments, which led to me being 8 comment pages deep watching some people with a lot more patience than me trying to argue with an evo-psych guy who claims that criticizing someone's art is a restriction of their free speech and therefore Anita Sarkeesian is the same thing as Osama bin Laden and until feminists repudiate her he doesn't have to listen to them and also, and somehow this is a supporting point of the foregoing?, he likes prostitutes.
Ars Technica has some very, very patient feminist commenters who were very, very calm about this lunacy. I salute them!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:01 AM on January 26, 2015 [9 favorites]
This led me to, out of curiosity, read the comments, which led to me being 8 comment pages deep watching some people with a lot more patience than me trying to argue with an evo-psych guy who claims that criticizing someone's art is a restriction of their free speech and therefore Anita Sarkeesian is the same thing as Osama bin Laden and until feminists repudiate her he doesn't have to listen to them and also, and somehow this is a supporting point of the foregoing?, he likes prostitutes.
Ars Technica has some very, very patient feminist commenters who were very, very calm about this lunacy. I salute them!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:01 AM on January 26, 2015 [9 favorites]
I dipped into the comments section as well and it's interesting to see (again!) that it's not the women or the feminists who come across as particularly thin-skinned.
posted by rtha at 6:29 AM on January 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by rtha at 6:29 AM on January 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
Paul West sounds like he was an amazing father. I realize that's not really the point, though.
I guess I didn't entirely trust the guy, and I wondered if his contrition was, like the original trolling, some sort of narcissistic bid for attention. If I had done what he did and then realized how horrible and fucked-up it was, I don't think I'd go on national radio to admit to it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:40 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
I guess I didn't entirely trust the guy, and I wondered if his contrition was, like the original trolling, some sort of narcissistic bid for attention. If I had done what he did and then realized how horrible and fucked-up it was, I don't think I'd go on national radio to admit to it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:40 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
I was pretty shocked to read a number of Ars Technica comments accusing her of making up the whole thing, on the grounds that it was just too perfect a resolution or something.
I don't find it shocking anymore. A regular occurrence during Gamergate was watching an individual account tweet threats or hate, then insist within minutes or hours that the prominent targets were making it all up. I don't even think it's deliberate--I think that's just the level of cognitive dissonance in play here.
posted by almostmanda at 7:16 AM on January 26, 2015
I don't find it shocking anymore. A regular occurrence during Gamergate was watching an individual account tweet threats or hate, then insist within minutes or hours that the prominent targets were making it all up. I don't even think it's deliberate--I think that's just the level of cognitive dissonance in play here.
posted by almostmanda at 7:16 AM on January 26, 2015
I don't even think it's deliberate--I think that's just the level of cognitive dissonance in play here.
No, it's gaslighting and it's meant to be precisely as abusive as it is.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:48 AM on January 26, 2015 [8 favorites]
No, it's gaslighting and it's meant to be precisely as abusive as it is.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:48 AM on January 26, 2015 [8 favorites]
This is a phenomenon that I don't really get, for all that it is obviously real and common.
A certain sort of person can only see another person who is strong and/or tough in terms of their own weakness and vulnerability, since to them it's all a zero-sum game. There's a line in The Dark Knight Returns (yeah, I know, Frank Miller, but he hadn't quite gone over to the dark side then) in which someone--Superman, I think--said that superheroes had to retire because ordinary people hated them for making them feel small. The troll is in effect saying that Lindy West makes him feel the same way because she seems to be invulnerable to the usual bullshit.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:05 AM on January 26, 2015
A certain sort of person can only see another person who is strong and/or tough in terms of their own weakness and vulnerability, since to them it's all a zero-sum game. There's a line in The Dark Knight Returns (yeah, I know, Frank Miller, but he hadn't quite gone over to the dark side then) in which someone--Superman, I think--said that superheroes had to retire because ordinary people hated them for making them feel small. The troll is in effect saying that Lindy West makes him feel the same way because she seems to be invulnerable to the usual bullshit.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:05 AM on January 26, 2015
There's a line in The Dark Knight Returns (yeah, I know, Frank Miller, but he hadn't quite gone over to the dark side then) in which someone--Superman, I think--said that superheroes had to retire because ordinary people hated them for making them feel small. The troll is in effect saying that Lindy West makes him feel the same way because she seems to be invulnerable to the usual bullshit.
"They'll kill us if they can, Bruce. Every year they grow smaller. Every year they hate us more. We must not remind them that giants walk the earth."
posted by inturnaround at 8:18 AM on January 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
"They'll kill us if they can, Bruce. Every year they grow smaller. Every year they hate us more. We must not remind them that giants walk the earth."
posted by inturnaround at 8:18 AM on January 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
Ars has been (either wittingly or not) a sad demonstration of exactly how 'that' (what are we call them now, aside from assholes) crowd functions. I'm used to a normal amount of geeky douchery (MS/Apple flamewars, etc) there but it's it literally stunning watching those threads go sideways (and how far out of bounds they get). I try to be diligent and log in and downvote, but as much as I know that's exactly what they want, a lot of the time I just look away.
posted by 99_ at 8:29 AM on January 26, 2015
posted by 99_ at 8:29 AM on January 26, 2015
I think that in twenty years unmoderated comment sections will be extremely rare and that the idea of women writers describing a constant sewage-like flow of rape threats and obscenity as just "part of the job" will strike us as barbaric and embarrassingly old-fashioned. Sites that essentially allow a free for all in the comments section have decided that subjecting their female writers to this kind of abuse is worth the traffic (troll site visitors are still site visitors). That's the kind of crass economic decision that is gross but fixable in a way that the essential nastiness of a certain subset of the human population is not.
Even the idea that we must let anyone say anything to us on Twitter is ridiculous; there's no reason someone else couldn't be paid to filter this out, in the same way that writers who came to prominence in the age of old media hire agents to open their mail. There are also lots of decisions about moderation that get made along the way by all these websites that determine where the balance of power lies. Trolls may be inevitable but the idea that women just 'deal,' alone, with the consequences are not; this is a transitional period that I think, later on, we're all going to be embarrassed about.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 8:48 AM on January 26, 2015 [7 favorites]
Even the idea that we must let anyone say anything to us on Twitter is ridiculous; there's no reason someone else couldn't be paid to filter this out, in the same way that writers who came to prominence in the age of old media hire agents to open their mail. There are also lots of decisions about moderation that get made along the way by all these websites that determine where the balance of power lies. Trolls may be inevitable but the idea that women just 'deal,' alone, with the consequences are not; this is a transitional period that I think, later on, we're all going to be embarrassed about.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 8:48 AM on January 26, 2015 [7 favorites]
I think we'd need to add social/cultural psychology to the standard high school curriculum for that.
It seems like it's always the ones that don't consider the internet real who are capable of this stuff.
posted by halifix at 9:26 AM on January 26, 2015
It seems like it's always the ones that don't consider the internet real who are capable of this stuff.
posted by halifix at 9:26 AM on January 26, 2015
Even the idea that we must let anyone say anything to us on Twitter is ridiculous; there's no reason someone else couldn't be paid to filter this out, in the same way that writers who came to prominence in the age of old media hire agents to open their mail.
Do you have any idea of the volume of data that travels over Twitter? In 2013 they were averaging 400 million messages a day. Even if you assume someone can always moderate a message in 5 seconds, you'd need ~7000 people all dedicated to moderation to even come close to catching up with the traffic. It's not a workable solution. It's like asking the phone company to moderate all phone traffic.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 9:29 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
Do you have any idea of the volume of data that travels over Twitter? In 2013 they were averaging 400 million messages a day. Even if you assume someone can always moderate a message in 5 seconds, you'd need ~7000 people all dedicated to moderation to even come close to catching up with the traffic. It's not a workable solution. It's like asking the phone company to moderate all phone traffic.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 9:29 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
I listened to this walking the dog this morning and ended up dropping a couple tears along with them. It's really powerful. Ms. West's willingness to show her vulnerability, especially in this situation, is admirable.
Also, her point at the end, that wishing pain on these people is useless because it's their pain that got them where they are, is really moving. I wish I could be more compassionate when confronted with idiocy dealt by these people, but I have a hard time with it.
I'm not really sure what the takeaway from this should be for my life, but I do know when someone is acting like a hategoblin towards me on the internet, I might feel less like strangling them, and maybe just a little bit sorry for them.
posted by lumpenprole at 9:56 AM on January 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
Also, her point at the end, that wishing pain on these people is useless because it's their pain that got them where they are, is really moving. I wish I could be more compassionate when confronted with idiocy dealt by these people, but I have a hard time with it.
I'm not really sure what the takeaway from this should be for my life, but I do know when someone is acting like a hategoblin towards me on the internet, I might feel less like strangling them, and maybe just a little bit sorry for them.
posted by lumpenprole at 9:56 AM on January 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
Lindy's a friend and whenever I start feeling distance between myself and the issues I see on the net, often discussed here, I generally just have to remind myself that it's not "people like Lindy" who are being targeted, it's literally her, my friend who lives down the road, who is getting death threats daily, forum threads dedicated to making her life worse, and towards whom thousands of people feel (or at least show) a kind of inexplicably seething hatred and/or disgust. Really amazed to see her story on TAL and really glad to see it highlighted here on the blue.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:26 AM on January 26, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:26 AM on January 26, 2015 [6 favorites]
I'm not really sure what the takeaway from this should be for my life, but I do know when someone is acting like a hategoblin towards me on the internet, I might feel less like strangling them, and maybe just a little bit sorry for them.
posted by lumpenprole at 12:56 PM on January 26 [1 favorite +] [!]
I think as a society whenever anyone anywhere is spewing (personal attack driven) hatred should just universally respond, I'm sorry to hear you're in so much pain, and then just link a hotline number for free psychological counseling.
posted by edbles at 12:05 PM on January 26, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by lumpenprole at 12:56 PM on January 26 [1 favorite +] [!]
I think as a society whenever anyone anywhere is spewing (personal attack driven) hatred should just universally respond, I'm sorry to hear you're in so much pain, and then just link a hotline number for free psychological counseling.
posted by edbles at 12:05 PM on January 26, 2015 [4 favorites]
I just think we're not biologically psychologically (as in the biologic effects that give rise to our psychology) evolved to the point to understand that we can now communicate to people that aren't physically present near us.
If this was a sufficient explanation, men would garner the same kind and volume of abusive, sexualized harassment that women do, and women would perpetrate the same kind and volume of harassment as men do. That's not what we observe, so something else is going on here that can't be handwaved away with a "genes did it, can't be helped" evo-psych just-so story for why men can't treat women like people.
posted by amery at 1:37 PM on January 26, 2015 [11 favorites]
If this was a sufficient explanation, men would garner the same kind and volume of abusive, sexualized harassment that women do, and women would perpetrate the same kind and volume of harassment as men do. That's not what we observe, so something else is going on here that can't be handwaved away with a "genes did it, can't be helped" evo-psych just-so story for why men can't treat women like people.
posted by amery at 1:37 PM on January 26, 2015 [11 favorites]
Do you have any idea of the volume of data that travels over Twitter? In 2013 they were averaging 400 million messages a day. Even if you assume someone can always moderate a message in 5 seconds, you'd need ~7000 people all dedicated to moderation to even come close to catching up with the traffic.
Employing about 7000 people dedicated to moderation seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to me. Granted it would be expensive for Twitter to do it - but so what? Why shouldn't we expect a company to not facilitate a never ending stream of bile? If their business model doesn't allow them to function like that then the company can just go out of business. We'll cope. Or do silicon valley types get a free pass to do whatever the hell they like and damn the consequences to the rest of society?
posted by coleboptera at 2:56 PM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
Employing about 7000 people dedicated to moderation seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to me. Granted it would be expensive for Twitter to do it - but so what? Why shouldn't we expect a company to not facilitate a never ending stream of bile? If their business model doesn't allow them to function like that then the company can just go out of business. We'll cope. Or do silicon valley types get a free pass to do whatever the hell they like and damn the consequences to the rest of society?
posted by coleboptera at 2:56 PM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ijeoma Oluo (previously, and coincidentally Lindy's soon-to-be-sister-in-law) had a similar experience recently confronting a shockingly racist troll with radical forgiveness, resulting in a surprisingly happy ending. (warning: unbelievable racism and hate speech)
posted by Thomas Tallis is my Homeboy at 5:01 PM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Thomas Tallis is my Homeboy at 5:01 PM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ah, I didn't know about her connection to Ijeoma Oluo -- thanks Thomas Tallis!
posted by librarina at 5:08 PM on January 26, 2015
posted by librarina at 5:08 PM on January 26, 2015
That was a fantastic bit of radio.
I do kind of feel like calling stuff like this "trolling" ends up giving straight-up online harassment too much of a jovial veneer. When I think of trolling, I think of stuff like the recent AskMe about, "Ladies, we're the worst!" or even the "Pool's closed!" idiocy. When you're sending tweets from the persona of someone's dead dad because you want them to shut up, you're harassing them. There's no "lulz" there. It's just straight up misogyny.
posted by klangklangston at 5:12 PM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
I do kind of feel like calling stuff like this "trolling" ends up giving straight-up online harassment too much of a jovial veneer. When I think of trolling, I think of stuff like the recent AskMe about, "Ladies, we're the worst!" or even the "Pool's closed!" idiocy. When you're sending tweets from the persona of someone's dead dad because you want them to shut up, you're harassing them. There's no "lulz" there. It's just straight up misogyny.
posted by klangklangston at 5:12 PM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
klang, I absolutely agree. It was hard for me not to editorialize regarding that point in the post.
posted by librarina at 7:31 PM on January 26, 2015
posted by librarina at 7:31 PM on January 26, 2015
coleboptera: "Why shouldn't we expect a company to not facilitate a never ending stream of bile? If their business model doesn't allow them to function like that then the company can just go out of business. We'll cope. Or do silicon valley types get a free pass to do whatever the hell they like and damn the consequences to the rest of society?"Twitter is not a public utility. You are free to not use it, or, even better, start a competing moderated social network.
Facebook has moderation facilities, and they work about as well as you could expect: pictures showing non-sexual nudity are removed in about a nanosecond, while all sorts of vile, racist crap is left to fester.
posted by brokkr at 2:09 AM on January 27, 2015
And that never-ending stream of bile that you want moderated? It's done by low-paid developing-nation outsourcers, so when you demand "Twitter" spend more time looking at the child porn and mutilated animals sent to women targeted by the chans etc, that's a woman in the Phillipines taking care of that for you. Demanding they get more of them in to scrub your Twitter for you is...a complicated demand, at the very least.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:22 AM on January 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Lyn Never at 8:22 AM on January 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
that's a woman in the Phillipines taking care of that for you. Demanding they get more of them in to scrub your Twitter for you is...a complicated demand, at the very least.
You're completely right, I'd forgotten about that the moderation would have to be done by actual people (and thanks for the article, it's fascinating) - negative consequences wouldn't end up happening to the silicon valley types, they shove the vile parts to the poor. (I don't use Twitter myself, so I'm already doing the literally nothing I can do to assist in their financial collapse. It's not working very well so far :( )
posted by coleboptera at 7:46 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
You're completely right, I'd forgotten about that the moderation would have to be done by actual people (and thanks for the article, it's fascinating) - negative consequences wouldn't end up happening to the silicon valley types, they shove the vile parts to the poor. (I don't use Twitter myself, so I'm already doing the literally nothing I can do to assist in their financial collapse. It's not working very well so far :( )
posted by coleboptera at 7:46 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ars Technica has some very, very patient feminist commenters who were very, very calm about this lunacy. I salute them!Ars definitely has an unfortunate deluge of trolls any time a new story is posted matching certain keywords but, unusually, this is falling into a pattern where 20+ pages and a lot of trolls being down-voted later, something resembling a real conversation breaks out. Earlier today, their story about Feminist Frequency pivoting to deal with harassment had the most recent incidence of a teachable moment. It's not a road to Damascus conversion by any means, but it's a lot more positive than the normal outcome for this kind of thing.
I've seen the same poster (Operative Me) do this with other people who showed up repeating gamergate talking points at least twice before. Inspiring in a way because I think that kind of patient conversation is the only way this is going to end well.
posted by adamsc at 6:13 PM on January 30, 2015
What happened when I confronted my cruellest troll by Lindy West in The Guardian.
posted by Mothlight at 2:53 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Mothlight at 2:53 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
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"When you talked about being proud of who you are and where you are, where you’re going, that stoked that anger I had," the troll said. He also told West that she had "no fear when you write. You stand on a desk and you say, I’m Lindy West and this is what I believe, fuck you if you don’t agree with me. "
so I guess my mom was right. Bullies are just jealous.
posted by philip-random at 10:21 PM on January 25, 2015 [9 favorites]