A Living Hell

Pile-ones and cyberbullying have real life consequences. Why do we do it?

Originally published on August 3, 2017.

Earlier this week, Steve Bartman, a Chicago Cubs (baseball) fan who was blamed for that team’s 2003 crucial playoff loss, received a 2016 World Series Championship ring. The Cubs team owner, no doubt, offered it as a gesture of reconciliation for Bartman having his life turned upside down: Bartman was escorted from the stadium that night as fans pelted him with debris and poured beers on him; because he was immediately doxxed, six police cars were posted outside of his home; then-governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, offered him asylum (kinda rude, since the Cubs lost to the Florida Marlins). Bartman refused interviews and redirected gifts, never going back to Wrigley Field to watch a game, even during last year’s World Series games. For his own safety, it seems, he opted out of a community he seemed to love when that community no longer loved him.

The thing is, Wrigley Field had no screens to replay Bartman’s attempt to catch the foul ball, so no one at the game knew what he looked like. Only when people watching at home called friends at the game to describe him did the mob start to go after him. Funny how technologies (even flip phones!) speed up or enhance this mob mentality in us. Anil Dash, a brilliant human-internet translator, refers to this mob behavior as the “Law of Fail”:

Once a web community has decided to dislike a person, topic, or idea, the conversation will shift from criticizing the idea to become a competition about who can be most scathing in their condemnation.

We see this over and over, visited on people for their comments or actions as well as for who they are / are perceived to be. In a case of the former, Carlos Hakas, who was filmed last month pushing over an elotero’s cart in Los Angeles, had his name, address, phone number, and other relevant PII published by angry internetters. When Benjamin Ramirez, the elotero, had to replace the cart and provisions — his livelihood — the community reached out and supported him.Hakas, who is easy to hate, may not so easily be made whole. I don’t condone Hakas’ bullying of a vulnerable community member nor his destructive behavior, nor do I deny the possibility of long-term effects of the trauma Ramirez endured. But I wonder if Hakas’ punishment fits the crime.

This kind of oversimplification, similar to that of the Ashley Madison hack, in which a good person is mistreated by a bad person, sets up the self-appointed judge-jury-executioners of the internet to feel righteous in their piling on. When I see these examples, though, I think about other folks who’ve become internet pariahs, when members of their community also felt so righteous, and the lasting, life-altering effects of the pile-on.

For example, Adria Richards, famous for calling out dick joke behavior at a conference in 2013 and being publicly fired when her bosses at SendGrid were threatened with doxxing, still can’t get a job. When Anita Sarkeesian, famously threatened with death by GamerGate trolls in 2014, decided to get back into public speaking, her trolls coordinated to fill the front rows of the auditoriumand livestreamed her talk, in a clear intimidation tactic. Chinese “human flesh searches” left a Chinese student at Duke afraid to return to China after her parents went into hiding, simply for mediating between Pro-China and Pro-Tibet friends on Duke’s campus. For many folks on the receiving end of internet mobs, there is no way back home again, no returning to normal.

When the privacy of anyone, even and especially the people we don’t like, is compromised, so is the privacy — and speech and security, for that matter — of everyone else. I’m lingering on that idea that witnessing online attacks stymies speech; another study found that 72% of internet users have witnessed harassment. As this pile-on, tear-down behavior becomes normalized across the web, and platforms continue to ignore or exacerbate the problem, it’s easier to feel justified in harassing, intimidating, or exposing the personal information of anyone who does something that bothers your morality. In that environment, who would speak? And how much do we all lose when those talents, ideas, and inspiration aren’t shared.

For the internet to truly be open, it’ll take more than a handful of security fixes on social media platforms. Online communities will have to practice cyber-civility, and some will likely need to offer their own conciliatory rings for their Steves, Adrias, and Anitas.

#security #doxing #pii #cyberbullying