3996: Dirty Picture

[jen_aside]

I'm not cutting any of this to be obnoxiousmake sure at least some of it catches your eye. If you don't like that, I reiterate that you can unfollow/filter me out. Would have liked to post something fun again like yesterday's, but it's hard to find the material lately

Comments

[jimboomega]

There are a whole set of male-specific insults, typically insulting sexuality or masculinity. Listen to the chat in a Halo game and you're sure to hear them.

I hesitate to argue the proportionality, but I would say, that on the internet, it seems like you sort of have to be hardened to this sort of thing. As penny arcade discussed long ago. You have whole communities dedicated to trolling, and now that they have what they feel is a legitimate beef ("She insulted our hero!"), they go crazy.

It goes back farther; there's the question of "what do you have to accept to be a celebrity?". In a world where celebrity can really be thrust upon you without you making a choice, the harsh reality is that people are going to write all kinds of nasty stuff wherever they can once you're famous. I remember reading a comedian (I think?) in an interview talking about it was hard to entirely tune it out, and to never read it, and not let it bother you.

Hatemail is certainly older than this incident.

Now granted, I think the bullies and friends have demonstrated nothing good about themselves through it; as I said I think it shows mostly that Finkel is living their dream, and they fully expect women to throw themselves at the bullies if they ever reach that level of success.

[jen_aside]

The bile and hatemail [haha, I typoed "hatemale"] element is an obvious hazard of putting oneself in the public eye, which is why I thought her article wasn't a good idea--and, as I said, if it was her intent to rile people, then I guess there's nothing else to be said. [Don't feel as though you have to censor things in my LJ, incidentally--it's not supposed to be searchable, so I don't care--unless you have a reason for doing that that isn't coming to mind...?]

But what's interesting[?] to note is that the most behaved person was Finkel himself--saying in response to the hubbub that he and she didn't see eye-to-eye, and that should have been the end of that--so when the fans rush in where their hero fears to tread makes me think, "I sure wouldn't want THOSE people as my fans."

But I've gone over the stalker aspect before [I think, though not on this specific subject], and it's true that no one can chose his/her fans, either. I personally would feel humiliated to be in the same position, where my "fans" behaved in a manner completely contrary to who I was [see: Jesus]. So there's that element as well.

And going back to the sexism [also addressed in Tait's article], wanting women to throw themselves at the Champion Nerd is exactly the double-standard I was getting at. Without even knowing who Alyssa Bereznak was or what she looked like, these bullies foamed at the mouth over her dismissal of their Alpha dog. Then, when she turned out to be homely [in some opinions--I think she looks decidedly average], this became further fuel for their fire. Why does it matter that an ugly woman insulted you[r hobby]? Wouldn't you be relieved instead? "Oh GAD NO, our hero is dating an uggo!" An eye-roll still seems more than sufficient.

I'm trying to imagine the inverse, and what would happen if a guy dated then slammed... the... author of Twilight? See, I don't know--I'm not girl enough to rally behind some supposed champion of girlkind, and I'm not butch/troll enough to get the bully mentality. I kind of imagine it would be a subject within circles, but hardly an Internet phenomenon, if only because "girls don't use the Internet." *eyeroll*

I do recognize that girls kind of in-fight as it is, though, so perhaps girls wouldn't rally in remotely the way guys do.

So, my position needs some refining when put to words, but I guess I'm kind of mortified that trolling is such a pervasive Thing that people will do it even under their very public names [though some of them at least try to make it a sociopolitical statement, like George Takei has been prone to doing], or maybe more that the vitriol is over something as trivial as who decides not to date what Gamer Celebrity nearly so much as the collapsing job market and how rich people blame the poor's poverty on said poor people being "lazy" and how the U.S. is falling behind on education and about a billion things that seem to matter significantly more. Where are we on THOSE fronts?