Don't F**k With Cats

[rynling]

This three-part documentary series on Netflix is really upsetting, and I mean really upsetting. It's difficult to write a summary, but basically, a group of people on Facebook tries to track down a man who posts videos of himself killing animals, thus giving him the attention he craves and inspiring him to post a video of himself killing another human being. The documentary itself is well-made and doesn't show the grisly bits of the actual videos, but it's still not a pleasant experience to watch. Thankfully, there's nothing particularly sensationalist about the project, and the "internet nerds" are presented as normal and intelligent adults.

The director has said that he created this documentary for the purpose of spreading awareness, which I appreciate. My experience with trying to get my anxiety treated over the course of the past year has been that a lot of people - especially people born before around 1980 or so - just don't understand how violent and upsetting online engagement can be sometimes. Even people my age and younger haven't responded well when I try to talk about this, and common responses include:

- Maybe the person attacking you has a mental illness. (That's not a valid justification.)
- Maybe you shouldn't spend so much time online. (That's not the problem.)
- Maybe you deserve this. (No one "deserves" death and rape threats.)

What I think people who haven't experienced extended episodes of online harassment aren't getting is that sometimes it's possible to encounter people on the internet who are genuinely scary. When you become the target of a person like this (as one of the primary "narrators" in Don't F**k With Cats does), it has nothing to do with you specifically, and there's really nothing you can do about it. 

I also recently read the book Nobody's Victim, which is written by Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer and advocate for victims of internet stalking and harassment. This book is just as upsetting as Don't F**k With Cats, especially since many of the people Goldberg represents (as well as Goldberg herself) have had to suffer through intense and pervasive victim blaming. No one they go to for help understands what happened to them, and everyone thinks the fact that they became the targets of scary people is somehow their fault. Very few people believe what they're saying in the first place, and a lot of the evidence they produce to document what they've experienced is used against them.

I personally haven't been the target of anything as severe as what appears in Don't F**k With Cats and Nobody's Victim (thank goodness), but it was still very easy for me to recognize the patterns of how popular online platforms enable abusive modes of behavior and the hate crimes of disturbed people. I'm finally starting to see people within fandom share resources (like this) discussing best practices regarding how to process and handle these types of encounters, and that's wonderful, but I'm really looking forward to there being a greater awareness of these issues in mainstream society as well.

Comments

[runicmagitek]

I was moderately prepared for this to be about how disgusting it is that people find killing animals to be aaaaaand then that didn't happen lol I feel like someone's stabbed me in the gut whenever I even have a sliver of a thought about someone else harming animals, especially cats, but that's a story for another time.

It sickens me to see how little has changed in terms of online harassment since I first heard of it in middle school to today. I'm so sorry you have been in these scenarios, even more so when you haven't done anything like, you know, record yourself killing animals and slap it online. Not that posting violent crap like that means it's ok to violently bully people; was just saying that your examples of your own experiences don't even remotely tread in that territory

Shit like this is why I try to distance myself from the likes of Twitter and Facebook. I have a hard time walking away from deep and/or heated conversations until everything is resolved, which is rarely the case, and I feel like I'd just be glued to my phone/computer responding to people who just Don't Get It. And yet Twitter is one of the biggest platforms for writers :\ sigh...

[rynling]

And yet Twitter is one of the biggest platforms for writers :\

I've been trying to figure out how to make new professional connections on Twitter for the past year, but I've got nothing. If this were ever possible, I'm not sure it still is, but I have to admit that I haven't really explored the matter in depth.

I think, in the end, to be successful you either need to be a wealthy and well-connected person in New York or the sort of person who's been going to SF and writer's conventions for the past twenty years. So who even knows how useful Twitter is.

I'm mainly on the site to retweet lofi visual art to chill to, and also for 41 Strange: https://twitter.com/41Strange

[lassarina]

Oooof.

The fact that people just ignore online bullying (the same way, tbh, meatspace bullying was ignored for decades and people still try to ignore it when they feel like they can get away with it) is just....I haven't got words for it other than tragic, honestly.

Yikes.

[rynling]

I think "hate crimes" might be a better description for a lot of this, but there's an awfully fine line between the definitions of a hate crime, harassment, and bullying.

And I'm with you on not understanding why people in positions of power are still ignoring this sort of behavior. It would be one thing if people were trying to raise awareness of, idk, the politics of something like resource hoarding in an MMORPG, but these events involve unambiguous sexual assault and murder. So why does the unambiguous written documentation somehow not count if it's digital? I dislike generalizations, but this makes me wonder just how differently older generations see the world.

[lassarina]

I wonder how much of it is like, "we lived through it so it can't be that bad." (except of course for not admitting how much it scarred them. And I will not get on the soapbox of how much I dislike the particular form of gatekeeping that is "I suffered X therefore you must also or else you have not earned your way" because we could be here for days and I have better things to do with my limited allotted days of life than rehash that argument.)

I think, too, that there's a distinct unwillingness to understand both how much damage "mere" words cause to the psyche (scare quotes very intentional) and how very easily people cross from words/thoughts to actions. Like, there's the saying that thoughts become words become actions become habits become destiny, right? (paraphrased heavily) And we see it in action, we use its positive side in business, psychology, and other fields. The negative side exists. And sure, sometimes it legitimately is "just a joke" blah blah thought police, but there are a lot of ways to know when it's not--and surely having a conversation to figure out when it's not isn't so high a cost when the alternative is people literally dying?

I realize I'm effectively preaching at the archbishop here, but. ugh.