Dude, I don’t even know what a… [googles it]
Oh…
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Concern_troll
A typical formulation might involve the troll’s invocation of a site’s espoused ideals alongside a perceived example of hypocrisy (such as contrasting “we value free speech” with the banning of a “dissenter”), and with a call for some relevant reform by the troll. This reform will frequently be burdensome or silly - the concern troll’s message is: “I have some concerns about your methods. If you did these things to make your message less effective, it would be more effective.” Surprisingly, there are people who spend so much time on the Internet that this is actually a thing they worry about.
One common tactic of concern trolls is the “a plague on both your houses” approach, where the concern troll tries to convince people that both sides of the ideological divide are just as bad as each other, and so no one can think themselves “correct” but must engage in endless hedging and caveats. This preys on a willingness to debate critics and allow dissent; everyone wastes time discussing the matter and bending over backwards, so as not to appear intolerant of disagreement, all to the great amusement of the troll.
I can see where you’d see me as doing some of that. I did say that Wu should probably stop harming their own movement by chilling out a bit. I just think that’s valid though, it WOULD be helpful, and not reduce the effectiveness of anti-GG or whatever flag they salute today. Also, I kinda do think both sides of the divide at the extreme end are VERY much horseshoe theory. Both sides are rolling in Alynski tactics as their primary engagement method. Does that invalidate the views that are more centrist? Nope. I like everybody in the middle, it’s the fringes I think are destructive idiots. Wu, KingofPol, Roguestar, etc. They all deserve each other, and really symbiotically require each other to exist in their current form.
I’d like to examine the idiots on both sides without being declared in support of any idiot in particular, if that’s alright.
So, my point in saying that maybe the problem that sets “CIS white male” against progressive change is when the tactic used to give leverage to the change is to blame the CIS white male as the source of the problem. As one myself, I wouldn’t think that I’m personally responsible for the woes of people I don’t even know or had never considered the existence of. Systemically, perhaps as a collective over history, maybe so. When it gets applied personally, without cause, I’m going to fight you - same as if you punch me in the nose when I’m standing there minding my own business. I don’t even know what the fight is about, but you just made an enemy.
I don’t even consider that up for debate really, because I spent the large part of my youth having the shit kicked out of me by other CIS white males. I learned eventually that the only way to stop causeless aggression was by striking back decisively, with as much force and damage as possible to the opponent so nobody thought it was a good idea to try it again. It worked, too. Just took me years to realize I had to be more hostile than them for just a moment. Society, authority, nobody was fixing the problem. Creating a brutal example of consequences turned out to be the correct answer, but I had to accept the repercussions of doing that. Oddly, afterwards my former tormentors saw me as a peer and not a target.
What is debatable here in the extreme is “how personal is the attack” that they’re reacting to? If it’s a direct shot in the nose or your personal reputation (since that’s all we have online of value) then maybe. But I don’t see how a bunch of radfems tweeting ridiculous hate about men is anything to be paid attention to aside from scoffed at - until it becomes personally targeted. Did that happen? I saw a bunch of people get pissed about “gamers are dead” and yell back about it. That’s fine. Bunch of people talking about basement dweller gamers being misogynists. Whatever, yell back at them.
Now, the moment that someone gets a personal physical threat made - that’s instant grounds to go to war with every weapon you have to destroy the person who threatened you. Absolutely. Return the threat with 10x force, it’s justified because it was unprovoked despite how much verbal trolling was going on. That crosses the line. Only problem is, instead of finding and crushing the perpetrator, it was someone anonymous and un-findable. So, now what? Well, I think what was done in the aftermath was not good judgement. It caused a storm of back and forth repeat offenses on a bunch of people. Did it accomplish anything? Did it create 10x the problem?
I do wish there was some perfect compromise where physical threats and trolls who create financial damage that is provable could be rapidly identified and neutralized by authorities, while NOT sacrificing our liberty to otherwise say and do whatever we want. I have no idea how to solve that though. I have a few ideas about empowering the recipients to block it. One thing for SURE is that we absolutely must have some way to scrub our personally identifying information off the web. There needs to be a right to anonymity of some sort that can be invoked against sites that publicly expose your real name, address, employer, etc. Like a DMCA takedown for normal people to use.
