Knight Templar said:
endtherapture said:
It's part of online culture now.
I reject that, and so should you if you think this is wrong.
I can jump up and down and scream about the sky not being blue. Doesn't change shit. "Rejecting" it, as in not seeing that's how the internet works, is nothing short of completely delusional. You have to be lying to yourself pretty hard to not see it; this case we're talking about in this thread is just proof of how the internet actually is. You can't even begin to affect any kind of change without a thorough and complete understanding on the topic; pretending the problem is something it isn't will impede your ability to change it.
Short of government and police regulation of the internet, which people are extremely opposed to, for civil rights reasons...
Sending death threats, and harassment in general, is typically illegal already.
But you're wrong, thats not the only way for things to change as I noted in my post you can stop acting like this is something we should accept.
Right, this is a little more logical. It's not something anyone should accept; it's deplorable behavior. But it's "normal" on the internet, or at least widespread enough that combating it is a constant uphill battle. Some places have always fought it, to varying degrees; even IGN forums have recently starting to crack down on it, with their editor-in-chief recently quoted as saying
"When even just one hostile comment is enough to ruin an entire thread, we've got to take our job as curators of our site more seriously. The best way to create an appetite is to feed it and, by letting these abusive comments live on IGN, we've been encouraging more of the same. It's long past time for that to stop."
While companies can hire forum moderators, and companies already have PR people, the internet isn't going to change overnight. It blows that social media has made these people easily accessible targets, but at the same time, given the reality of the situation, there are some basic steps they can take to avoid pain in the meantime.
Firstly? Unless you ARE the PR person for your company, don't have a public twitter account with your name on it. Or if you have to, don't make any industry-related posts from it. That's what your PR people are paid to do; they give out news to the crowd, and sift through the vitriol to find the quality feedback. Plenty of people are capable of dealing with this vitriol (Ghostcrawler from Blizzard is a good example), and thus it's fine if they continue doing what they're doing; but if it's having such a negative impact on your life that you want to either quit the industry or quit your company, cut back on the social media. The internet is dark and full of dangers, and if you aren't up to it it's best to shield yourself from pain.
Secondly? Well... that's about it, actually. Just have the knowledge that the internet is currently full of fuckwads, and realistically that isn't going to change soon so be capable of dealing with it or don't deal with it at all (especially if your professional career is on the line, and even a simple heated twitter exchange can lead to job losses on either side). It's akin to walking around Harlem at night in a tuxedo and talking on a shiny new smartphone with a sparkly gold watch on. Yeah, it's not your *fault* that you got robbed, but you really shouldn't have been doing it in the first place. Your company has people paid to walk around Harlem and talk to the natives; if you are just going to get mobbed helplessly, do everyone a favor and stay the fuck away from it.
On the whole, it's a huge disconnect between "normal" well-adjusted people and those who have literally grown up on the internet, knowing nothing but internet standards. To fight that behavior, you're going to have to change how those people *think* to change how they behave. As any therapist can tell you, that's a huge feat. If that behavior is ingrained over the years (especially their formative years), it's going to be borderline impossible to purge it out of them.
Failing said purge, you simply have to take away their ability to negatively impact others (forum bans, twitter account closures, police investigation, etc). It seems heavy-handed, and... it is, really. But that's the only other option. Most of those people you aren't going to "convince" to be nice; they've spent years as anonymous internet fuckwads, spewing their opinion and hatred at anything or anyone they dislike, and nothing short of taking away their ability to spew will stop the flow.
But that's where the situation stands, really. It's not something you can just "reject" and pretend that will change a fucking thing. That's the kind of slacktivism that led to those guys scamming ignorant folks out of thousands of dollars over Kony. Police, particularly their cyber divisions, have to be more well-staffed and ready to take on these kinds of situations; because online is where crimes are headed. And in all honesty, crimes have been there for years now... police are decades too late to the party. Hopefully they can pick up the pieces, but it's a pretty rough place for the time being - and any professional with internet access should know this, and conduct themselves accordingly. If they can't handle the bullshit that they *know* will be thrown at them, they need to take a more hands-off approach, particularly to social media. If they want to contact the community about something, they have the means: an entire fucking PR department.
Again, there's no excuse for netizens to be... like this. Graphic death threats just cross all kinds of lines. But you can't let that stop you from being logical; look at the problem as a whole, understand every facet, before trying to "solve" it, or you'll just end up using a bucket to drain an ocean.