Poll!

[jlh]

Friends, I've been wondering about a few things, and I thought I might put up a poll. I'm not sure your answers to said poll will make me feel better--it's probably more my own neuroses that are making it tricky to put these issues into perspective--but hey, there's always trying.

[Poll #1314215]

Thanks!

Comments

[bhanesidhe.livejournal.com]

The very very few times I (or one of my communities) have been trolled, it's actually been because they're hating on someone who I'm friends with, so its hate by association.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

God, proxy fighting, it is the exponential factor in all internet wars, for reals.

[ali-wildgoose.livejournal.com]

I think you should clarify exactly what you mean by "sockpuppet" because it's kind of a mushy term.

I personally think it means "a journal or persona created for a specific purpose, usually so that one person can play multiple parts in some online drama." Others might feel differently.

[hermorrine.livejournal.com]

That first question was hard, because what comes up if you google my real name is actually a combination of university stuff, being interviewed about slash in articles in newspapers, being on panels at HP cons, and being the former president of an org. Nothing related to any of my jobs comes up, which is good, I think?

Why do you think some slash or RPS fic gets obnoxious comments and other slash or RPS fic doesn't?

From what I've seen in my corner of bandom, RPS is looked down on as a sort of 'You're a freak and a stalker and WRONG WRONG WRONG!' attitude. People are openly made fun of and called out if it's discovered that they're writing OR reading RPS. As for why, I think it's because in the cases of both bands, they've had a LOT of personal contact with fans over the years, and so the fans take it a lot more personally if you cross the line (whatever that line might be in their minds). They really do think that they KNOW these guys, and the funny thing is, it doesn't occur to them to realize that their own feelings about 'knowing' celebrities really makes them more delusional than someone writing something that is purely fictional.

I hope that made some kind of sense...

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was making people choose, and I knew some would straddle things but just pick whatever felt right.

The event I was thinking of was when a few people from Vote for the Worst came over to idolslash and made trouble for some folks who were writing about Blake Lewis and Chris Richardson during season 6. I had a Ryan/Simon fic up at the time but I wasn't trolled, and I always felt sort of strange and guilty about that.

But what your saying totally makes sense! Bandom really is different than actorslash because so many fans have met the bands in question.

[salemdipity.livejournal.com]

You know my real name, so you know it's a very, very common name. There's an author with a couple of books out who has the same name as me. I googled my name out of curiosity and on the first page, lots of other women with my name. I doubt you'd find anything on google about me, as I've done nothing newsworthy that I can think of.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Q1: I don't have facebook, so I don't show up on google. And (like the vast majority of people I know) I don't use my RL name on LJ. I hope that's not too weird, and I'm glad other people have also clicked "not one thing"!

Q5: Asking us to choose is asking us which can of worms we'd like to open. Because the real answer, I think, is: "all of the above". Obviously, if somebody's really pissed you off and you like spewing the rage, you're not going to check their popularity stats before putting their name on a hate-meme. But if I only clicked "Because they did something to anger somebody else" I would be ignoring the fact that people like to tear others off their pedestals. (oh, and people would get annoyed with me.)

What it isn't is totally random.

Q6: er, I don't know. :)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Facebook is not always google-able. I have a facebook and I still don't show up. It depends on your privacy settings, I think.

Q5--the third option is a combination of the first two, at least. Which is what I think it is, striking out at people who have both done something that pissed you off AND are very visible which can create more resentment.

Yeah, that last question was a reference to something specific, but I wanted to get a sense of how people might feel about it.

Thanks!

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

But the third option struck me as AND rather than OR. Depending on what you've experienced, for some people, it's nice to believe that People Only Hate With Good Reason; for some people, it's nice to believe that People Never Hate With Good Reason.

Sometimes it's just because they pissed you off. Sometimes it's because they're visible. No necessary connection at all.

PS I googled myself again and NOW I AM A PORN STAR WHEN THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN???!!!! I preferred being a published expert on economics!

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

Why do you think some people turn up in hate memes, or get their LJs trolled?

Because some other people (less than one tenth of one per cent, at most) are batshit crazy, evil or think they are auditioning for Mean Girls (not the Tina Fey role).

[tessfawcett.livejournal.com]

With the last two questions, I think it's actually either a or b for both. With the second-to-last I would also clarify that I don't think someone's necessarily done anything, it's also possible that they've simply been brought to the attention of the troll in a way that makes the troll angry. When someone decides to dislike another person I think the choice to dislike them is not necessarily prompted by action on the part of the person being disliked. Sometimes people are just crazy or cranky or evil.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

It's true that some people are just crazy or cranky or evil, but you just don't see a lot of those people picking on anyone who is sort of at a middling level in fandom. You mostly see them picking on the visible people in fandom, because they want attention. That's the thing that I've noticed, anyway.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

You mostly see them picking on the visible people in fandom, because they want attention.

That conclusion doesn't follow.

If Fan X is a BNF and highly visible, then a lot of people are listening to her, and so there's more potential for her rubbing somebody up the wrong way. Or, if she says something nasty, there's more people around to call her on it. If 20% of the people who pay attention to her pay attention to Fan Y, chances of Fan Y appearing on hate memes is lower.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

But that only explains why more people might hate on a more visible person. It doesn't explain why less visible people tend to not show up at all, full stop. One could easily post on a hate meme "I hate so-and-so midlist author" and no one will comment on it, because they don't know them. Or, people comment with "who is that? whatever, dude." But people don't tend to post about unknown people they hate at all. I mean, the reason I'm not on hate memes isn't because I'm so nice. The reason I'm not on hate memes is because I'm not important. In your scenario it's been my experience that it isn't that Fan Y is less likely to appear, but that Fan Y doesn't appear at all.

It's sort of like how Cassie would inevitably be brought up in unrelated FW threads, because everyone had an opinion about her. And it was even more likely if the thread was about some middling HP writer, because HP people would show up, not know that person, not care that much, and then start talking about Cassie.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

You could definitely be right. The thing is though, I suppose, that one man's MNF is another man's n00b. I've never frequented hatememes (I'm sure I must have seen a few in the last six years but I can't remember any offhand) but in general throughout LJ it'll happen that somebody I've never heard of is in fact well-known in other circles. Contrariwise, people I'm chatting with mightn't have heard of somebody I consider visible.

[emsariel.livejournal.com]

#2 didn't have an 'other' option, so I am making my own. If I didn't see any results, I would assume that they had not used their real name online, but I would *not* conclude that they were 'paranoid and strange'. I would conclude that they are cautions or even wise. Perhaps this is because I'm paranoid and strange ... but perhaps it's because I have completely boring and normal friends who are careful about aliases because their RL work would not understand any online presence no matter how mild. Teachers who don't want their students in their online lives. Lawyers who can't have anything online associated with their firms. Corporate folks whose companies work with kids and need to be cautious of how parents would spin something no matter how tenuous the connection.

On to Thing #2: For #5 and #6 ... I don't think it's completely random, but it might as well be. Bhanesidhe's point about notorious friends stands; tessfawcett's point about someone, somewhere, being angered whether it's just or not; and the homophobes who find their way into something through a random link and freak out at the first thing they see before closing their browser. I've seen coworkers wander into something that doesn't surprise me, be unable to handle said thing, be vocal about not handling it, and then leave. If they'd been alone, they might've flamed or trolled. The way they got there, though, was a randomly forwarded link from a friend, followed to two other links, to some link that caught their eye. They might as well have thrown a dart or used "I'm feeling lucky".

[jlh.livejournal.com]

That's what I would have hoped, but I have heard people be flummoxed if they know someone's real name and can't get real life details about them online, rather than be able to tie them to strictly online activities. Like, they can't verify where someone works or went to school. And when you hear news reports of more and more companies googling their workers, it makes me nervous because I wonder if not showing up at all is a bad thing?

I still think for 5 and 6 that visibility plays a huge role. Nearly everyone who does a thing has been flamed once or twice, or had unkind things said about them here or there, but the people who are visible get more of it because the people talking get more social capital out of bashing someone popular than bashing someone no one has ever heard of.

[flourish.livejournal.com]

The first question was pretty lulzy for me :>

[jlh.livejournal.com]

The thing I worry about is, as we move away from the "omg don't ever use your real name online" are we moving to a place where being un-google-able is suspicious? You hear about employers googling their employees--what if they find nothing? Granted, this started from the whole stupid msscribe thing in which some people got a hold of her real name and googled her and couldn't find anything, and then declared that she had to be lying about her real name because anyone not googleable doesn't actually exist.

Which is bizarre, because there are plenty of people who don't exist who are totally googleable!