Nope, she is the character that needs to be ignored. That's the proper way to deal with trolls - not feeding them, not fighting them but starving them of attention they so desperately crave.
> Nope, she is the character that needs to be ignored. That's the proper way to deal with trolls - not feeding them, not fighting them but starving them of attention they so desperately crave.
That solution to trolling has never worked and never will. The reason is that it requires near complete agreement and coordination between uncoordinated individuals, which is impossible for any but the smallest groups. There's always someone who's too new or who doesn't want to get with the program who will engage.
It doesn't require complete agreement - it does require same level of agreement and cooperation that allows us to have common language, common culture, common laws, Open Source projects, charities, etc. Just a common understanding that empowering people that thrive on tearing down and destroying others is bad for everybody, and we should not fall for any noble words they veil themselves with and see through it to the core of power lust and zeal for destruction.
Yes, there will always be those who do not abide for the societal convention for one reason or another. Cultures have dealt with this problem for millenia, it's not something new. As soon as we succeed in developing a common norm of not enabling the cancel trolls, we will have cultural mechanisms of maintaining this norm, as we maintain many other societal norms that allow us to exist as a culture and a society.
> It doesn't require complete agreement - it does require same level of agreement and cooperation that allows us to have common language, common culture, common laws, Open Source projects, charities, etc....
> Yes, there will always be those who do not abide for the societal convention for one reason or another.
I mean, as far as I can tell, the "societal convention" you're advocating for doesn't exist as such, so you lack even the minimal "some level of agreement" that your tactic requires.
Yes, it does not exist yet. It needs to be created, if we don't want our society to be consumed by attention-hungry trolls. I think a lot of people - whether right-wing, left-wing or neither - are starting to realize that.
The very uncoordinated cooperation you’re talking about happens a lot in the other direction these days, and is perfectly possible in this direction as well. The problem is that “free” ad-based social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) feeds on user engagement, and the more of their users feed the troll the higher their ad revenue.
While not feeding the troll is perfectly reasonable and there’s enough people with sufficient common sense, we all are quite vulnerable to letting GUI patterns slip past our logical thinking and speak directly to system 1. The GUI is powerful in this way, and arguably it’s never really neutral. In case of “free” social media, it promotes action, it makes the “like” action the most effortless, it feeds likes into recommendations, and so on. Not feeding the troll goes against everything it stands for.
I’ll probably never shut up about it, but I believe making social media paid rather than ad-driven is what has the power to address this issue in the most reasonable way. Paid social media should be normalized.
TL;DR: Find your friends, Know what to expect, Don’t back down, Don’t let them make it about you, Hold the moral high ground, Mock them mercilessly, Don’t let their narrative outrun yours, Goad them into overreaching, Turn their weapons against them, Use the courts, Bring administrators around
He has had some success in dealing with Anima Anandkumar and her mob on Twitter.
I am still in shock at what Anima Anandkumar attempted and cannot believe that she is still employed by Nvidia. It’s hard for me to view them as anything but safe harbor for aggressive totalitarian ideologues when someone like that is permitted to remain in a highly visible position. For those who aren’t familiar, Wikipedia has a brief summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_Anandkumar#Public_Contro...
This is why you should just ignore “people on Twitter.” People like this only have power if you pay attention to them. I’m not on Twitter and have never been. People could be “canceling” me there right now and I’d have no idea, and it wouldn’t affect me in the slightest. We give people power by paying undue attention to them.
I know someone (no friend of mine) who said some indefensible things on social media. He ended up losing his job not because of what he said, but because people found where he worked and called up threats against his employers. That wasn’t enough. They also found out where he lived, graffitied and egged his house, made personal threats. I don’t know whatever happened to the guy but the last I heard he had his roommates lying, claiming he had moved.
If you get canceled, it doesn’t happen on Twitter.
I was on Twitter once, and one day I logged out of my account and threw away the password. I never regretted it so far. I had to tell people several times that I do not use twitter, but it never been any problem whatsoever. Unfortunately, there is still some content that is exclusive to Twitter, because some smart and otherwise reasonable people insist on putting it there. I wish they would choose any other platform.
I think Twitter in general is such a harmful thing. There's very little worth saying that can be compressed into 280 characters beyond "I'm right, you're wrong, anyone who disagrees with my subjective opinion is scum" yet somehow it's become the platform of choice for journalism in general.
either the reason is weak, or you're just not important enough to cancel.
cancel culture is not just mean comment. Affecting real life in every possible way is also one of its goal. Its basically modern day witch hunt. No way ignoring Twitter gonna solve that problem
Honest question, is that attention is seeking or is it overload (various forms of pain, sadness, frustration) turning his/her brain into a distorted accusation machine ?
That solution to trolling has never worked and never will. The reason is that it requires near complete agreement and coordination between uncoordinated individuals, which is impossible for any but the smallest groups. There's always someone who's too new or who doesn't want to get with the program who will engage.