Fandom, can’t I leave you alone for 15 minut... umm... months?
Ill met by wanklight, foul Fandomya!
Better stop with the misquotation there, as it appears that there are indeed quite a few ‘Fairies skipping hence’ and for that matter, forswearing the bed and company of LJ isn’t looking too extreme an idea right now.
For those strange, weird, unnatural and just plain freaky “normal” people reading this who have no idea what I’m on about (well, the subset who don’t automatically take that in their stride as par for the course), LJ’s lawyers are, to quote my newly tweaked bio, “moronic, incompetent, feckless wimps deserving of ridicule.” More specifically, the “Warriors for Nonsense Innocence” have descended upon LJ, asking them to please, pretty please protect the children. LJ (or should that be SixApart these days - seems so) has done precisely nada to protect anyone or anything except their bottom-line. How-so? Umm, folks, even deleting the few ‘real’ paedophile/incest/rape communities which got hit doesn’t do jack shit to help these peoples’ possible, potential or even real victims, as SixApart’s actions merely act as a tip-off that someone’s onto them and that hiding and going underground might be a good idea. A good idea for them, that is - probably not such a good thing for prospective victims, though.
Heck, they’re not even (so far, at any rate) making an effort to find communities related to this unless they list the activity as an interest - sounds like CYA, smells like CYA - well by God, it is just them Covering their Asses. Indeed, they’re CYAing so much that they’re talking about other interests besides incest, paedophilia and rape(third paragraph of post). Seriously, folks, think this doesn’t affect you? How about the fact that they’ve already suspended a community dedicated to analysis of Nabokov’s works? RPG journals not even expressing the views of real entities - gone too. How about that they talk of expanding their suspension criteria to other crimes/bad-behaviour? How about that there’s no guarantee (heck, as I’ll mention later, I very much suspect the opposite) that our Nonsense Warriors will be the last group to try something like this. Folks, I’m interested in, amongst far too many other things, sociopathic psychology and serial killers - it’s in my interest list and I’m somewhat concerned about that being a liability now. What have or might you have to be worried about, on your lists or off?
Indeed, what these actions do protect is SixApart. Specifically, it protects SixApart’s profits (albeit in an extremely myopic sense.)
No, it doesn’t (warning, IANAL but I can put two and two together) protect SixApart in any realistic legal sense, as “legal”, by my understanding, describes things which could be brought before a judicial system and, potentially, lead to a conviction. Okay, a court might give SixApart a rap on the knuckles over the ‘real’ paedophile, etc. communities but I’d think that any proceeding involving examining the use of “incest” or “chan” as an interest in a community where all other interests, the entire info page and indeed every single post in said community relate purely to specific fictional works would very quickly be laughed out of court, probably with a note along the lines of ‘please stop wasting our time with this - we have more than enough real criminals to deal with.’
SixApart, however, through their actions is protected. How? Well, by avoiding increasing their legal liabilities (and thus lawyers’ fees). Oh, and nipping in the bud a threat to their profits and PR by being called a hideout for Evil Paediatricians Pedofiles... umm... MONSTERS and losing prospective/current users.
You see, folks, whilst I haven’t been around fandom much this past year and a half, I have been sating my inclinations for online weirdness by hanging out on politically-orientated sites - principally ones orientated towards American politics.
Why mention this? Well, because if there’s one thing, one single thing which I’ve learned from said sites (a dicey proposition, given the state of my brain these days), it’s that framing matters, indeed, in some respects, it’s sometimes the only thing which does - well, along with money. How is this pertinent? Well, IMHO, it seems that in responding to this, we should firstly, drop absolutely any pretence that these actions have any relation to protecting poor little kiddies. As I said above, they don’t - if anything, they have the potential to do quite the opposite. Fighting against a Moral Majority Minority Assortment of Batshit Crazy Loons is rather difficult if you, in your responses, in any way buy into the idea that their so-called morality is valid or viable. Particularly if you’re not protected by the majority of free-speech laws, as is the case here given that SixApart is a private company. Trying to argue whether it’s worth ditching the comms/users/reputation to save kiddies is a losing proposition - you’re unlikely to change anyone’s mind over that, it’s the sort of thing people don’t often budge from. Hence, you challenge, nay, change the premise of the discussion to something more advantageous to your side.
Secondly, talk with SixApart in their language. When SA bought LJ, people were worried that all this corporation would care about is their bottom-line - heads up folks, that is all they care about. Consequently, telling them that they’re making you an oppressed, sad little lonely internet-nerd isn’t likely to do jack shit. They’re in this to make money, in this case by avoiding losing money, more specifically through loss of actual and potential users through bad PR and legal fees. How does one get them to consider your views in this equation? Inform them that they’re going to lose more money by not taking your side - seriously, folks, I’ve no idea how many fandomers there are, nor how many are interested in topics possibly misconstrued as ‘deviant’, nor how many would be prepared to hurt SixApart (read: no more paying for accounts, prepared to leave completely, badmouth them to other bloggers etc., etc.) over this, but someone - make that a collective of someones, should be finding out, if they want to combat this and to wit, don’t rabbit-on about all the things about this which annoy you. Focus as much as possible on things which may be effective. No talking to SixApart or even the Warriors themselves about how annoying and self-righteous, etc., they are, unless it’ll be effective in getting us what we are out for. Also, I’d advise against relying on petitions and the like to get SixApart’s attention. All it takes to make a petition is to persuade people to spend 3 seconds signing, electronically, their name on a list with no indication how likely they/you are to follow-through on their/your displeasure/threats. That doesn’t show much commitment to this cause for SixApart to take notice of or be frightened of. Good old fashioned letter-writing campaigns do that, or likely somewhat less effective, fax-writing or even e-mailing if need be. Obviously the best thing we could do is picket their corporate HQ and invite the press, but I’m trying to at least somewhat limit myself to the realms of possibility, so letter-writing it is. Getting a letter that someone has themselves taken the time and expense to craft, write and post sends a better message of commitment to this than a name on a petition. Getting hundreds, or more to the point thousands of them, well, that usually gets attention. You can throw in a petition in addition to this, to add more weight, but it’s the letters which do the heavy-lifting!
Thirdly, Give ‘em an out. SixApart aren’t interested in being on anyone’s side here apart from their own, so, given that you’ve done the above reframing and let them know how and why they’re going to get hurt by their current course more than they’re ‘helped’, be prepared to enter into dialogue with them about how to come to an equitable solution for everyone.
As I said, SixApart don’t care about anything but their profits. Warriors for Nonsense don’t seem to care about our silly communities, only bashing actual paedophiles/rapists/incestyness, as publicly stated on their site and responses to us. Fandomers don’t care about anything except being allowed to pursue their harmless and fictional activities in peace. Now, if SixApart is forced to recognise a threat to their profits, they might be more inclined to spend the time and therefore money to manually look through the deleted journals and re-instate the ones relating to 100% purely fictional contents (which is all fandom’s really after) if, and only if, as our Warrior foes have in fact explicitly stated, the Innocence crew will not cause any waves, legal, PR or otherwise, over such communities - SixApart need only be persuaded that it’s as such in their interest to act in this way and that doing so will not open them up to any significant costs or potential costs greater than that of the manpower needed to check out the dozens of deleted communities.
What precise steps are required to do this? Well, I’m a lazy sod and out of practice at strategising and rabble-rousing these days - dear Lord, am I out of practice at that, but there are many, many fandomers who are wonderful at and very much inclined to do so - a few are even on my flist, hence my posting suggestions/calls-to-arms. bookshop, heidi8, malachan, anatsuno, from Heike's flist cordelia-v posted along some of the lines I talk about here, and there probably others on my flist and definitely many, many more off of it who are all talking about how to combat this (as opposed to just expressing annoyance at it), and you’re all very, very capable individuals from my experience/memories, each with very useful skills to bring to dealing with this - my only suggestion, aside from those listed above, would be to make sure that you co-ordinate your efforts behind an understood shared strategy and present a united front. Individually SixApart can deal with you, but collectively... well, okay, let’s not get carried away, collectively SixApart might still ignore us, but I’d say our chances are somewhat better!
Come on, folks, let’s not get our asses handed to us by a bunch of people like Sue (not going to link to a user-owned domain like www.warriorsforinnocence.org where they can check visitor stats from here right now so the ringleader's blog'll have to do), the person seemingly principally behind these Warriors, and her views - and more importantly, whoever follows her/them after this bunch of clowns has left. Seriously, folks, there are a lot of crazies out there, all with their own pet causes - you let one win and you pretty much set up a sign above your head saying “Free Eats Here” - do you really think that Sue, whose site is plastered with the following crap, and the hoards of her ilk are likely to, in their entirety, stop at what’s already been done? :
“ I am Patriotic to the core, fighting for those who can't defend themselves, and helping out wherever I can. Persistence, determination, never ending vigilance. This is what I am.”
All images & text from Sue, the Warrior for Innocence’s, site.
As I mentioned at the top of this gargantuan post, I’ve been hanging out on American progressive political sites and have consequently come across dealings with a fair cross-section of self-righteous nuts with causes along these lines, with sites like Sue’s and the Warriors’, and as for whether I think she, her group and all the other groups like it will stop at what they’ve already ‘achieved’, well, personally, I don’t! Time to act, folks, and act collectively, cohesively and purposefully - either that, or time to move.
Ps. As I said, I've not been on LJ for ages and am just getting back into the saddle and relearning the ropes, hence I've probably missed a bunch of your and others' posts on this. Plus, I typed this up this morning and had to go out before I could post it, hence, if all the bits in this have been mentioned elsewhere, sorry for the pain of slogging through it all again in my own inimitable (read : horribly verbose) style. Just wanted to add my voice to the baying hoards and maybe make a useful suggestion/pointer or two!
PPs. Though, as I said, I'm not current on what's being done and I'm not sure if the following are centralised efforts, I'll link anyway : begin to Stand Up And Be Counted and for that matter, Let your financial contributions to LJ be counted too - if these are co-ordinated, centralised efforts already then all the better, if not, well, the responses can always be collated into the 'official' ones if and when they are made! *Rushes off again*
Better stop with the misquotation there, as it appears that there are indeed quite a few ‘Fairies skipping hence’ and for that matter, forswearing the bed and company of LJ isn’t looking too extreme an idea right now.
For those strange, weird, unnatural and just plain freaky “normal” people reading this who have no idea what I’m on about (well, the subset who don’t automatically take that in their stride as par for the course), LJ’s lawyers are, to quote my newly tweaked bio, “moronic, incompetent, feckless wimps deserving of ridicule.” More specifically, the “Warriors for Nonsense Innocence” have descended upon LJ, asking them to please, pretty please protect the children. LJ (or should that be SixApart these days - seems so) has done precisely nada to protect anyone or anything except their bottom-line. How-so? Umm, folks, even deleting the few ‘real’ paedophile/incest/rape communities which got hit doesn’t do jack shit to help these peoples’ possible, potential or even real victims, as SixApart’s actions merely act as a tip-off that someone’s onto them and that hiding and going underground might be a good idea. A good idea for them, that is - probably not such a good thing for prospective victims, though.
Heck, they’re not even (so far, at any rate) making an effort to find communities related to this unless they list the activity as an interest - sounds like CYA, smells like CYA - well by God, it is just them Covering their Asses. Indeed, they’re CYAing so much that they’re talking about other interests besides incest, paedophilia and rape(third paragraph of post). Seriously, folks, think this doesn’t affect you? How about the fact that they’ve already suspended a community dedicated to analysis of Nabokov’s works? RPG journals not even expressing the views of real entities - gone too. How about that they talk of expanding their suspension criteria to other crimes/bad-behaviour? How about that there’s no guarantee (heck, as I’ll mention later, I very much suspect the opposite) that our Nonsense Warriors will be the last group to try something like this. Folks, I’m interested in, amongst far too many other things, sociopathic psychology and serial killers - it’s in my interest list and I’m somewhat concerned about that being a liability now. What have or might you have to be worried about, on your lists or off?
Indeed, what these actions do protect is SixApart. Specifically, it protects SixApart’s profits (albeit in an extremely myopic sense.)
No, it doesn’t (warning, IANAL but I can put two and two together) protect SixApart in any realistic legal sense, as “legal”, by my understanding, describes things which could be brought before a judicial system and, potentially, lead to a conviction. Okay, a court might give SixApart a rap on the knuckles over the ‘real’ paedophile, etc. communities but I’d think that any proceeding involving examining the use of “incest” or “chan” as an interest in a community where all other interests, the entire info page and indeed every single post in said community relate purely to specific fictional works would very quickly be laughed out of court, probably with a note along the lines of ‘please stop wasting our time with this - we have more than enough real criminals to deal with.’
SixApart, however, through their actions is protected. How? Well, by avoiding increasing their legal liabilities (and thus lawyers’ fees). Oh, and nipping in the bud a threat to their profits and PR by being called a hideout for Evil Paediatricians Pedofiles... umm... MONSTERS and losing prospective/current users.
You see, folks, whilst I haven’t been around fandom much this past year and a half, I have been sating my inclinations for online weirdness by hanging out on politically-orientated sites - principally ones orientated towards American politics.
Why mention this? Well, because if there’s one thing, one single thing which I’ve learned from said sites (a dicey proposition, given the state of my brain these days), it’s that framing matters, indeed, in some respects, it’s sometimes the only thing which does - well, along with money. How is this pertinent? Well, IMHO, it seems that in responding to this, we should firstly, drop absolutely any pretence that these actions have any relation to protecting poor little kiddies. As I said above, they don’t - if anything, they have the potential to do quite the opposite. Fighting against a Moral Majority Minority Assortment of Batshit Crazy Loons is rather difficult if you, in your responses, in any way buy into the idea that their so-called morality is valid or viable. Particularly if you’re not protected by the majority of free-speech laws, as is the case here given that SixApart is a private company. Trying to argue whether it’s worth ditching the comms/users/reputation to save kiddies is a losing proposition - you’re unlikely to change anyone’s mind over that, it’s the sort of thing people don’t often budge from. Hence, you challenge, nay, change the premise of the discussion to something more advantageous to your side.
Secondly, talk with SixApart in their language. When SA bought LJ, people were worried that all this corporation would care about is their bottom-line - heads up folks, that is all they care about. Consequently, telling them that they’re making you an oppressed, sad little lonely internet-nerd isn’t likely to do jack shit. They’re in this to make money, in this case by avoiding losing money, more specifically through loss of actual and potential users through bad PR and legal fees. How does one get them to consider your views in this equation? Inform them that they’re going to lose more money by not taking your side - seriously, folks, I’ve no idea how many fandomers there are, nor how many are interested in topics possibly misconstrued as ‘deviant’, nor how many would be prepared to hurt SixApart (read: no more paying for accounts, prepared to leave completely, badmouth them to other bloggers etc., etc.) over this, but someone - make that a collective of someones, should be finding out, if they want to combat this and to wit, don’t rabbit-on about all the things about this which annoy you. Focus as much as possible on things which may be effective. No talking to SixApart or even the Warriors themselves about how annoying and self-righteous, etc., they are, unless it’ll be effective in getting us what we are out for. Also, I’d advise against relying on petitions and the like to get SixApart’s attention. All it takes to make a petition is to persuade people to spend 3 seconds signing, electronically, their name on a list with no indication how likely they/you are to follow-through on their/your displeasure/threats. That doesn’t show much commitment to this cause for SixApart to take notice of or be frightened of. Good old fashioned letter-writing campaigns do that, or likely somewhat less effective, fax-writing or even e-mailing if need be. Obviously the best thing we could do is picket their corporate HQ and invite the press, but I’m trying to at least somewhat limit myself to the realms of possibility, so letter-writing it is. Getting a letter that someone has themselves taken the time and expense to craft, write and post sends a better message of commitment to this than a name on a petition. Getting hundreds, or more to the point thousands of them, well, that usually gets attention. You can throw in a petition in addition to this, to add more weight, but it’s the letters which do the heavy-lifting!
Thirdly, Give ‘em an out. SixApart aren’t interested in being on anyone’s side here apart from their own, so, given that you’ve done the above reframing and let them know how and why they’re going to get hurt by their current course more than they’re ‘helped’, be prepared to enter into dialogue with them about how to come to an equitable solution for everyone.
As I said, SixApart don’t care about anything but their profits. Warriors for Nonsense don’t seem to care about our silly communities, only bashing actual paedophiles/rapists/incestyness, as publicly stated on their site and responses to us. Fandomers don’t care about anything except being allowed to pursue their harmless and fictional activities in peace. Now, if SixApart is forced to recognise a threat to their profits, they might be more inclined to spend the time and therefore money to manually look through the deleted journals and re-instate the ones relating to 100% purely fictional contents (which is all fandom’s really after) if, and only if, as our Warrior foes have in fact explicitly stated, the Innocence crew will not cause any waves, legal, PR or otherwise, over such communities - SixApart need only be persuaded that it’s as such in their interest to act in this way and that doing so will not open them up to any significant costs or potential costs greater than that of the manpower needed to check out the dozens of deleted communities.
What precise steps are required to do this? Well, I’m a lazy sod and out of practice at strategising and rabble-rousing these days - dear Lord, am I out of practice at that, but there are many, many fandomers who are wonderful at and very much inclined to do so - a few are even on my flist, hence my posting suggestions/calls-to-arms. bookshop, heidi8, malachan, anatsuno, from Heike's flist cordelia-v posted along some of the lines I talk about here, and there probably others on my flist and definitely many, many more off of it who are all talking about how to combat this (as opposed to just expressing annoyance at it), and you’re all very, very capable individuals from my experience/memories, each with very useful skills to bring to dealing with this - my only suggestion, aside from those listed above, would be to make sure that you co-ordinate your efforts behind an understood shared strategy and present a united front. Individually SixApart can deal with you, but collectively... well, okay, let’s not get carried away, collectively SixApart might still ignore us, but I’d say our chances are somewhat better!
Come on, folks, let’s not get our asses handed to us by a bunch of people like Sue (not going to link to a user-owned domain like www.warriorsforinnocence.org where they can check visitor stats from here right now so the ringleader's blog'll have to do), the person seemingly principally behind these Warriors, and her views - and more importantly, whoever follows her/them after this bunch of clowns has left. Seriously, folks, there are a lot of crazies out there, all with their own pet causes - you let one win and you pretty much set up a sign above your head saying “Free Eats Here” - do you really think that Sue, whose site is plastered with the following crap, and the hoards of her ilk are likely to, in their entirety, stop at what’s already been done? :
“ I am Patriotic to the core, fighting for those who can't defend themselves, and helping out wherever I can. Persistence, determination, never ending vigilance. This is what I am.”
All images & text from Sue, the Warrior for Innocence’s, site.
As I mentioned at the top of this gargantuan post, I’ve been hanging out on American progressive political sites and have consequently come across dealings with a fair cross-section of self-righteous nuts with causes along these lines, with sites like Sue’s and the Warriors’, and as for whether I think she, her group and all the other groups like it will stop at what they’ve already ‘achieved’, well, personally, I don’t! Time to act, folks, and act collectively, cohesively and purposefully - either that, or time to move.
Ps. As I said, I've not been on LJ for ages and am just getting back into the saddle and relearning the ropes, hence I've probably missed a bunch of your and others' posts on this. Plus, I typed this up this morning and had to go out before I could post it, hence, if all the bits in this have been mentioned elsewhere, sorry for the pain of slogging through it all again in my own inimitable (read : horribly verbose) style. Just wanted to add my voice to the baying hoards and maybe make a useful suggestion/pointer or two!
PPs. Though, as I said, I'm not current on what's being done and I'm not sure if the following are centralised efforts, I'll link anyway : begin to Stand Up And Be Counted and for that matter, Let your financial contributions to LJ be counted too - if these are co-ordinated, centralised efforts already then all the better, if not, well, the responses can always be collated into the 'official' ones if and when they are made! *Rushes off again*