But a WisConner found the post. It was an intersectional moment of feces and fan. The flames leaped from blog to blog.
Then Liz Henry, on her Badgerbag LJ, revealed Zathlazip’s LJ user name and legal name. In the comments, Henry said, “It was like 30 seconds of googling for me to find her real name.”…
Someone left an anonymous comment at Something Awful telling Zathlazip her legal name was known. If the WisCon post was not down in a day, her boss at the university would be told she had violated school policies on sexual harassment. How a woman mocking male and female fans is sexual harassment, no one explained, but the point’s moot. Zathlazip immediately asked Something Awful’s moderators to remove her post, and, as a goon at Something Awful put it: “the White Knight Action Patrol immediately swooped into action and deleted all traces of the thread.”
Zathlazip got anonymous emails promising to make her unemployable.
People called and emailed her bosses in the hope of getting her fired.
According to Pyratejenni on journalfen, people wrote public posts about Zathlazip that have since been deleted or made private about “how they would hurt/STAB her if they saw her on the street.”
A google-bombing was launched. More blogs than I care to count made posts outing Zathlazip so anyone who googles her legal name will learn what she did and how thoroughly she’s hated.
And someone snuck into her office to leave a threat scrawled on a page from WisCon’s program book.
Zathlazip was terrified. She told the Madison Police Department about “vague threats” and the University of Wisconsin Police Department about the note in her office. She apologized on her LJ for what she had done and warned that if she got more emailed threats, she would record the ISP numbers.
But the WisConners rejected her apology. K. Tempest Bradford said if Zathlazip “feels scared, hurt, embattled, and like she can’t walk down the street without someone having something nasty to say about her, all I can say is: good. … you know that feeling in the gut you get when you’re anxious and upset and freaked out? I hope she feels that every day for a year. It still wouldn’t be enough.”
Pyratejenni may have been the only member of the community who denounced the outing. She noted that “the unspoken rule of fandom was ‘What happens in fandom, stays in fandom’” and that there was “nada about this behavior from fen normally so worried about community standards, like Coffeeandink. So it’s okay now to post people’s real names and similar information, as long as they do something that really, really pisses you off.”
…
Mobbing has more consequences than mobs know. As noted in “Warning: Mobbing is Legal, Work with Caution” by Jody E. Housker, Ph.D., NCC, LPC and Stephen G. Saiz, Ed.D., NCC, LPC, ACS:
…the target may find that he/she is less productive, creative, and self questioning. Mobbing can leave the target’s life in turmoil (Glass, 1999), feeling embarrassed, frustrated and untrusting. Symptoms may include crying, sleep difficulties, lack of concentration, high blood pressure, gastrointestinal problems, excessive weight loss or gain, depression, alcohol or drug abuse, avoidance of the workplace, and/or uncharacteristic fearfulness (Namie & Namie, 2000; Davenport, Schwartz and Elliot, 1999). For some the degree of symptoms may become severe and include severe depression, panic attacks, heart attack, other severe illnesses, accidents, suicide attempts, violence directed at third parties and symptoms of PTSD (Namie & Namie, 2000; Davenport, Schwartz and Elliot, 1999)
Stay classy, anti-GG of 7 years ago.
Carlton, at least the Lifschitz and Van Valkenberg trust funds are being put to a good use. (as long you are on their side of course)
