Online interaction - some recent musings
Aug. 31st, 2011 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wendyzskiI just spent large parts of the last few months playing in the ARG/experience A Map Of The Floating City. It was the lead-in to Thomas Dolby's new CD coming out this fall. It was a trading game, a competition, a collaboration, a community - all kinds of things. It had aspects that could appeal to codebreakers and obsessive photoshop fiends as well as history nuts, hardcore strategy gamers, RPGers, writers and artists, and in general a whole bunch of people from around the world. The endgame was Sunday, and our alliance came in 3rd. While we're dissapointed that we didn't win and I have some issues with how some of the scoring and tasks played out, in the end most of the folks in our tribe and in out alliance had a good time. We met interesting people with whom we worked, played, raced to solve puzzles, bounced increasingly paranoid theories off of, cracked jokes about, and generally interacted with in a positive manner. Within 12 hours of endgame there were Facebook groups set up for both our individual tribe (the folks we were with for the long haul) and the alliance (some of whom we shared the most intense pressure-filled events with).
I've been idly peeking back at the game forums as they wind down, partly because I was curious as to what the 'Best moment of the game" posts talked about, how some of the loose ends were originally intended to run, and how the scoring and gameplay changed along the way we traveled. But there was one tribe (who also did not win) that consistently played really hardcore. There were a few nice people in there but in general they are focused on winning and scoring at all costs. Now that some of the game metrics have been revealed, there are quite a few of them who are "hanging on like a pissed-off badger" - demanding to know the names of the team who designed a particular task for example, or continually explaining wht what they did shoudl have worked. While I certainly appreciate some of their criticisms, THE GAME IS OVER FOLKS - and you (and we) lost. We can take what happened and give it a positive spin - I would totally invite the core members of the Poison River Delta Brain Trust over for a weekend - or we can whine anf ight amone ourselves. Some of them are even using phrases like "The tribe I used to consider myself a part of" ...really?
I guess I got spoiled by the generally high caliber of people I was interacting with. Maybe it's because many of us were in our 40s and on the whole were smart and polite. I'd forgotten that it's a general rule that most of the people on the internet are assholes.
Then today I opened up a post by Seanan McGuire. In addition to being a gifted musician and lyricist as well as a Campbell-winning NYT Best-Seller-list appearing Hugo-nominated author, she also has 3 cats whom she dearly loves. Two of them are purebred Maine Coons and both are from the same breeder. While I'm an advocate of shelter adoption, she spent quite some time explaining why she made the choices she did, and I can't argue with her logic. Not that she needs my permission, of course - but she's not the "run to a breeder because I want a fancy cat" kind of person. She wants healthy cats with known pedigrees that have been bred for specific traits and temperment, and she sought them out.
But because the Internet is full of assholes, she now has to deal with the fact that someone is sending her e-mails from dummy accounts through her website berating her for not adopting a shelter pet and threatening to kill her cats. WTF? I agree with most of the people who commented that this probably isn't at heart about the shelter-breeder issue. It's about trying to hurt her, by threatening the things she loves most.
John Scalzi made a post that she linked to in her entry - about 'The Sort Of Crap I Don't Get' - in short, the things that women bloggers (or those who are thought to be women) have to deal with that men or those perceived as men don't. It points out some pretty seriously messed up ways about how we interact on the net.
I don't really have a point where I'm going with all of this. I'm not enough of a public figure to have to deal with this sort of thing, and the fact that I have a reputation of Not Putting Up With Bullshit probably helps as well. It's been years since I have had to deal with a Creepy Faire Stalker (and even then I was just being sent really awful poetry most of the time) and I wield the Hammer of Bannination on my Facebook Page pretty freely. Thou canst disagree all thou wantsts but Thou Whalt Not Be An Asshole About It. But having just had a generally positive experience with some really cool people entirely online, it makes me kind of queasy.
I've been idly peeking back at the game forums as they wind down, partly because I was curious as to what the 'Best moment of the game" posts talked about, how some of the loose ends were originally intended to run, and how the scoring and gameplay changed along the way we traveled. But there was one tribe (who also did not win) that consistently played really hardcore. There were a few nice people in there but in general they are focused on winning and scoring at all costs. Now that some of the game metrics have been revealed, there are quite a few of them who are "hanging on like a pissed-off badger" - demanding to know the names of the team who designed a particular task for example, or continually explaining wht what they did shoudl have worked. While I certainly appreciate some of their criticisms, THE GAME IS OVER FOLKS - and you (and we) lost. We can take what happened and give it a positive spin - I would totally invite the core members of the Poison River Delta Brain Trust over for a weekend - or we can whine anf ight amone ourselves. Some of them are even using phrases like "The tribe I used to consider myself a part of" ...really?
I guess I got spoiled by the generally high caliber of people I was interacting with. Maybe it's because many of us were in our 40s and on the whole were smart and polite. I'd forgotten that it's a general rule that most of the people on the internet are assholes.
Then today I opened up a post by Seanan McGuire. In addition to being a gifted musician and lyricist as well as a Campbell-winning NYT Best-Seller-list appearing Hugo-nominated author, she also has 3 cats whom she dearly loves. Two of them are purebred Maine Coons and both are from the same breeder. While I'm an advocate of shelter adoption, she spent quite some time explaining why she made the choices she did, and I can't argue with her logic. Not that she needs my permission, of course - but she's not the "run to a breeder because I want a fancy cat" kind of person. She wants healthy cats with known pedigrees that have been bred for specific traits and temperment, and she sought them out.
But because the Internet is full of assholes, she now has to deal with the fact that someone is sending her e-mails from dummy accounts through her website berating her for not adopting a shelter pet and threatening to kill her cats. WTF? I agree with most of the people who commented that this probably isn't at heart about the shelter-breeder issue. It's about trying to hurt her, by threatening the things she loves most.
John Scalzi made a post that she linked to in her entry - about 'The Sort Of Crap I Don't Get' - in short, the things that women bloggers (or those who are thought to be women) have to deal with that men or those perceived as men don't. It points out some pretty seriously messed up ways about how we interact on the net.
I don't really have a point where I'm going with all of this. I'm not enough of a public figure to have to deal with this sort of thing, and the fact that I have a reputation of Not Putting Up With Bullshit probably helps as well. It's been years since I have had to deal with a Creepy Faire Stalker (and even then I was just being sent really awful poetry most of the time) and I wield the Hammer of Bannination on my Facebook Page pretty freely. Thou canst disagree all thou wantsts but Thou Whalt Not Be An Asshole About It. But having just had a generally positive experience with some really cool people entirely online, it makes me kind of queasy.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-01 01:02 am (UTC)FWIW, I was stalked online in the distant past, mostly because I didn't return a guy's attention that he thought he deserved. It never turned overtly violent but ever since I've been online under a pseudonym.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-01 01:32 am (UTC)And I just read those two posts. Horrible. In a related vein, DragonCon is this weekend (I'm not going, no money as usual), but there's been a lot of harassment of women, and a BackUp Project has been started, by women for women, with some men of Scalzi's good sense as auxiliaries. http://backupproject.livejournal.com/
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 03:52 am (UTC)I usually stay out of threads where I'm not going to add any content. But having read a lot of comments on these posts, it appears that redundantly saying it's not okay to be an asshole, even if you're on the Internet is adding content. So I'm saying it.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 02:44 pm (UTC)But that is why these communities tend to be word-of-mouth, almost invitation-only. Someone vouched for you in order for you to get the invite.