secretspice posted this
really good article a while ago. Among other things, it presents a sympathetic view of Something Awful's
griefer community (guys that will, for example, disrupt Second Life interviews and entrepreneurship with flocks of flying penises
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I totally wanted to go in this direction before deciding I was too tired to write any more, but yeah, I think exactly the sort of stuff you are saying complicates matters. Yes, the internet has a lot of stuff that shouldn't be taken seriously. But, as you say, useful discussions do happen, and as a channel of communication it's just a potent connection as any; people are just as vulnerable when communicating on-line as they are in person.
So I guess what I'd want to say in order to pretentiously parallel something I said in the OP, this kind of deliberately disruptive behavior can't be considered a good thing based on its form alone--"disruption is good!"--but rather, the content of the act matters. What is being disrupted? Is it a wasteful human institution? It is unwarranted pomp? Or is it serious human communication or self-worth or sanity?
I think I've told you before about the general shitshow that LiveJournal's philosophy community is, but there's for me a lot of parallels between this discussion and a lot that went on there. As far as I understand the history, faux_philosophy was started as a parody community because of the perception that real_philosophy was taking itself too seriously. At its "The Internet is serious business," i_am_lane posted this great prank message that reminded everybody that real_philosophy was just a place on the internet.
But the reaction of the mods, who apparently had a lot of personal stake in the perceived importance of real_philosophy (maybe because they were mistaking it for real philosophy, in the unhyperlinked sense) then used their self-policing powers to throw out all the "trolls."
This was widely considered an act of capricious censorship, and I think the noble intentions of faux_ were revealed when after things looked like things were going to get even worse they decided to start their own community, the now defunct just_philosophy, thinking that there they could have the conditions for useful dialogues on the internet. Perhaps to their detriment, they took this project seriously.
That project ended when through a series of personal attacks trolls drove one of the mods of just_philosophy into a very real psychotic episode, after which the mods of real_philosophy claimed victory and in some deplorable acts of ressentiment decided it was worth their time to kick the poor guy while he was down for a good long while thereafter. It was disgusting.
So, is trolling/griefing bad? Well, it depends. And rereading the OP, I realize I didn't really say that I think that. For the sake of saying something more interesting, maybe. I dunno. Anyway, thanks for giving me the opportunity to vent a partial retraction.
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