Are folks who disrupt* fandom activities in constant attack mode or are they in constant defense mode and how do we tell they two apart?
In my experience, it's really, really easy to tell the two apart, and I think the difference is extremely important, especially since real violence is being performed against real people and causing real pain.
Classifying death threats, rape threats, anonymous hate mail, and organized bullying campaigns as "disruption" demeans the concept, regardless of the intentions of the people who are engaging in such behaviors. Moreover, I suspect that people who perform real "disruption," whether conscientiously or as a routine aspect of their lives on planet earth, would not appreciate being placed in the same category as people who get together to, say, urge someone to commit suicide.
For what it's worth, Whitney Phillips's monograph This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things has served as a useful resource to me in the development of my own understanding of the evolution of the term "trolling" and its connection to political-activism-in-scare-quotes. I'm using the term as Phillips does, namely, to designate aggressive and intentionally harmful online abuse targeted against an individual in order to provoke an extraordinary response.
Basically, I agree with you that "disruption" is understandable and justifiable, but a line does need to be drawn somewhere to demarcate defensive attitudes and behaviors from "trolling," even if that line then must be repeatedly renegotiated.
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Re: Still chewing on your ramble
Date: 2016-10-10 12:21 am (UTC)In my experience, it's really, really easy to tell the two apart, and I think the difference is extremely important, especially since real violence is being performed against real people and causing real pain.
Classifying death threats, rape threats, anonymous hate mail, and organized bullying campaigns as "disruption" demeans the concept, regardless of the intentions of the people who are engaging in such behaviors. Moreover, I suspect that people who perform real "disruption," whether conscientiously or as a routine aspect of their lives on planet earth, would not appreciate being placed in the same category as people who get together to, say, urge someone to commit suicide.
For what it's worth, Whitney Phillips's monograph This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things has served as a useful resource to me in the development of my own understanding of the evolution of the term "trolling" and its connection to political-activism-in-scare-quotes. I'm using the term as Phillips does, namely, to designate aggressive and intentionally harmful online abuse targeted against an individual in order to provoke an extraordinary response.
Basically, I agree with you that "disruption" is understandable and justifiable, but a line does need to be drawn somewhere to demarcate defensive attitudes and behaviors from "trolling," even if that line then must be repeatedly renegotiated.