PZ wrote about it over at Pharyngula and the comment section got very heated.
Robert
10 years ago
As long as this is an open thread. . .
Our two sons are in the same room at the same time. Cain* is playing on the PS3, and Abel is watching it like a movie. Eventually, Cain will be done and head upstairs to his PS Vita and bedroom, and his younger brother will start reading fanfic online. My immediate impulse is to try and intervene, but I know they need to learn to get along without a referee. It’s a conundrum as a parent, particularly of emotionally wounded children, knowing that the best thing to do is nothing. I only wish their dad could see this.
*My online pseudonyms for them. Esau and Jacob didn’t seem to fit. Although Cain is not especially murderous, he is more squeamish about eating dead animals than his brother.
Been reading the posts linked by SVKA, and while I get what’s wrong with some of them (she wouldn’t let anyone speak ill of Bill Clinton on a post she made (despite an apparent history of sexual assault?)), I’m not sure what the problem with other posts were? Like the Trigger by Void post. I mean if you don’t get it or don’t agree, fine, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t experience this (I do). I guess I just wish I knew what the specific thing was about Shakesville that’s problematic? Maybe there doesn’t have to be a specific thing, I don’t know.
hellkell
10 years ago
I’m not a fan of Shakesville. I used to read, but the vibe has gotten steadily worse, and the cherry leaves post along with the one about the movie “Brave” reached peak ridiculous for me.
She…accused Brave of racism? Didn’t Pell come by not too long ago (as Peter LaCroix) and accuse people of being racist for calling him Peter LaCrap? Because that’s about the same amount of ridiculousness going on there.
And the cherry leaves thing…what?
serrana
10 years ago
I used to love Shakesville, but Melissa’s habit of reading bad faith into comments that most reasonable people wouldn’t see started grating on me and I quit reading. She’ll call someone victim-blaming just for disagreeing with her sometimes. Or she’ll write about a subject and then tell commenters that they can’t tell their own stories because they’ll be triggering. Of course she’s free to do that, just like I’m free to not read.
I’ve never felt the need to comment at Shakesville because it’s too tightly moderated and seems boring. I like moderate amounts of moderation. There are still a lot of good posts on that site even though they can go over the top.
I did read a few pages of that kool aid site and found it creepy as fuck. If you don’t like Melissa or the site don’t visit it. She’s not like the MRM constantly brigading comments sections with her fans or anything. She doesn’t dox or harass anyone. She’s pretty easy to avoid if you don’t like her and I fail to grasp how a heavy hand at moderation is abusive. Boring yes. I prefer it here where we can go off topic whenever we want. Abusive? Please. I just don’t get the need to make a whole hate site about it.
I used to frequent Shakesville. I stopped once I realized how abusive the site’s owner and mods were. She was abusive towards me and abusive towards everyone els ewho dared to disagree with her.
Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago
Alex, the fuck?! That’s mega creepy! You have an awesome bartender though.
Ally, your father remains The Worst. No really, The Worst. Only time I can see hitting a kid being justified is if they’re too young for a stern lecture to work AND whatever they were doing was seriously dangerous (e.g. a butt swat for trying to run into traffic) — being angry at a kid? NEVER an excuse to hit them!
Pecunium — “It’s going to be busy (argenti, I will ping you with my overseas cell number, I think you can iMessage me; because I’ve done it with a friend in Amsterdam).” Thank you dear, I’ll probably just stick to email though, what with time zone differences and IT BEING YOUR HONEYMOON!!! Have fun! Take pictures for me please?
“Fucking hell, I thought after Rwanda and the break up of Yugoslavia that the UN would act fast against genocide. I was wrong. Sometimes I want off this planet.”
Yep.
“Who has the money? That’s who pulls the strings (and the reason why I will never entirely abandon Marxism).”
And double yep.
Can somebody give me the short version of wtf y’all are talking about regarding Shakesville? Anything with that level of “you must read ALL OF THIS to comment” veers straight into “we’re (not actually) less wrong” land and I noptopus.
Also…*drags over the barrel of hugs, plops a fish tank next to it* the clown loaches want to do a little dance, so let’s give them an audience?
Auntie Alias
10 years ago
Shakesville: It all started with this post in which a reporter reached out fat HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to get a psychologist’s input on an article about abusive and toxic online social justice communities. McEwan, with her usual flair for exaggeration, freaked out that someone was going to psychoanalyze her without her consent. She was so rattled she took the next week off.
Upon her return, she wrote a manifesto condemning SVKA followed by another one the next day. Virtually everything she wrote consisted of gross exaggerations or outright lies. There has never been any harassment or threats “orchestrated” or encouraged by SVKA. She has zero proof yet most people believed her. In her mind, the mere existence of the site was harassment. McEwan painted a picture of dire threats of violence putting everyone’s safety at risk; it was all bullshit designed to deflect attention away from her abuse and the HARO request (IMO). She couldn’t attack the anonymous person who posted on HARO so she turned her fury onto SVKA instead.
She pretends that SVKA is a group of people who were banned because they broke SV’s rules and it was just sour grapes. This is crap. I flounced from SVKA yesterday but was a long-time poster there. A lot of us were never banned but were treated like shit by MM or the mods and it usually wasn’t because we broke any rules. For example, in a thread where MM was celebrating a speech by Bill Clinton, one commenter brought up his past sexual abuse and MM jumped down that person’s throat because SHE didn’t want to talk about it. Cherry leaves. Mods regularly pile on commenters. Many of us were hurt badly by our treatment there and found a community to connect with others to share what had happened as well as to mock SV in general.
I could go on all day but anyway. I hope like hell a major publication does expose SV for the toxic hellhole that it is.
Wait, what’s the deal with the fucking cherry leaves? I’m confused, even more so after reading the link. They can’t talk about cherry leaves? Because reasons? Huh?
*has never been a part of Shakesville, which probably isn’t helping*
Auntie Alias
10 years ago
LBT, the theme for day was cherry leaves. Aay I had heaps of cherry leaves in my yard I had to deal with and I said in exasperation, “Don’t even talk to me about cherry leaves!” MM decided the hapless commenter was telling others what they could or could not talk about.
Auntie Alias
10 years ago
Aay = Say. Jeez.
Unimaginative
10 years ago
Yeah, I’ve been visiting Shakesville less and less over the last couple of years, because it got less and less interesting and relevant, and more and more, I dunno, controlling? I never felt abused, but I also stopped commenting, because it was just too much work to guess what kind of wording would set off a mod and make me question my sanity.
I found the “hate” sites by accident via google autofill. I don’t know why SV targeted SVKA instead of any of the other “hate” sites.
I don’t think they’re hate sites at all, just a place for people to vent. I saw a lot of jabber about SKVA stalking and harassing the Shakesville people, but they really seemed to stretch the definition of harassment. Ana Mardoll actually posted that the way they’re harassing her is that somebody would make a comment on her blog that made her wonder where they came from, and when she followed them through Disqus, which led back to SVKA, where she HAD to read to find out what they were saying. Which is not harassment, any way you look at it.
Anyway, I’ve lost a big chunk of time this week following the drama, but the good news is I’ve stumbled across a treasure trove of resources for people trying to deal with past or current abusive situations.
Every death from addiction is an unnecessary death, a tragic death, because we could do so much better.
and she responded
I think saying that every death from addiction is unnecessary is implicitly, even if unintentionally, victim-blaming.
I lost someone very dear to me to drug addiction and I read this as her death being “necessary.” I found this extremely upsetting. I know MM didn’t mean it to be, but it was thoughtlessly worded. She did go on to say:
Some people’s death from an overdose may have been preventable if they’d had access to better resources for recovery. Some people just die from addiction like people die from any disease — but there are too many narratives around the moral failure of addiction to say “every death was preventable” (or “unnecessary”) for that to exist in a vacuum separate from that moral scolding.
The thing is that the commenter was opening up what I thought was a good discussion and MM was shutting it down because she didn’t like how they worded it, but her response was even more thoughtlessly worded, which is hypocritical as fuck. Also, if I had taken exception to her comment, she would have (in my estimation) cried “my safe space” blah-di-blah blah and made me (and anyone else who might have been upset) feel worse. I did not let the door hit me in the ass.
Auntie Alias
10 years ago
It’s a common sentiment that people are afraid to post comments. Even people who are pro-SV have said that. SV thinks reading a mandatory 70,000-word* commenting policy is reasonable and, boy, if you forget something in it and make a mistake or just happen to bring up something MM doesn’t want to talk about, watch out. Walking on eggshells around someone who could blow up unexpectedly is not a healthy environment to be in. Yet she trumpets it as a “safe space”.
*I can’t verify that number but it’s ridiculous whatever the true number is. It literally took me several sessions over a few days to wade through it all. It’s MM’s version of feminism for the most part.
Unimaginative
10 years ago
And just wow about the Pharyngula thread. That was some disproportionate reaction, there. Holy cow. That hippo in a tutu person made me fear for his/her blood pressure.
Auntie Alias
10 years ago
serrana, that’s sad. People who have strong personal feelings about a topic speaking from experience, people who are actual subject matter experts who try to correct MM or expand on what she wrote about, people who actually say they’re upset or triggered too often get *BOOM*. MM’s ego and feelings take precedence over everything.
Unimaginative
10 years ago
I actually alluded to Shakesville in a conversation we had here once about this feeling like a safer space. *toddles off to see* Nope. My google-fu isn’t up to it. As I remember, though, a newcomer was calling the regulars meanie pants, or saying something like you have to be very careful to comment here, and some of us started talking about how we felt safer here than at other places that emphasize safety, and I, personally, meant Shakesville. And we talked about being thoughtful as opposed to careful.
tl;dr: I like it here. I can’t always keep up, but it’s my favourite on-line hangout.
You know, I follow someone on tumblr who calls that the “well actually” phenomenon, so called because whenever she said anything, even something that was flagrantly bullshit (anything about video games for instance) would get someone popping up to go, “Well actually…” and then blather on about their totally clever and original idea, many of which she had gotten identical messages regarding.
It comes off even grosser when it’s actually about a topic of importance.
Auntie Alias
10 years ago
Unimaginative, I’m not an online community butterfly by any means but from my limited experience it seems like groups that self-police are happier than those with excessive moderation.
I honestly tend to avoid “safe spaces” like the plague, because I know that at least ONE of my damned labels will not be one of the things dignified with safety. (Ask me about the times I got bounced from LGBT “safe space” chats for being multi!) It just becomes exhausting, and honestly, I’d rather deal with the trolls here and get my catharsis than just feel like I’m at best tolerated for diversity purposes.
Here, people have my BACK. And that’s something I don’t really feel in “safe” spaces.
Unimaginative
10 years ago
Yep. I like it here.
In other news, it’s a FREAKING GORGEOUS day, and I’m sitting outside in the shade on my deck. Now that the pot-smoking neighbours have buggered off, I can smell flowers and cedar bushes. It’s still too hot for bugs, but just marginally not too hot for me. I love summer. I’ve done fuck all that’s useful (except go grocery shopping), but I’m feeling pretty darned good.
We Hunted The Mammoth
PZ wrote about it over at Pharyngula and the comment section got very heated.
As long as this is an open thread. . .
Our two sons are in the same room at the same time. Cain* is playing on the PS3, and Abel is watching it like a movie. Eventually, Cain will be done and head upstairs to his PS Vita and bedroom, and his younger brother will start reading fanfic online. My immediate impulse is to try and intervene, but I know they need to learn to get along without a referee. It’s a conundrum as a parent, particularly of emotionally wounded children, knowing that the best thing to do is nothing. I only wish their dad could see this.
*My online pseudonyms for them. Esau and Jacob didn’t seem to fit. Although Cain is not especially murderous, he is more squeamish about eating dead animals than his brother.
Been reading the posts linked by SVKA, and while I get what’s wrong with some of them (she wouldn’t let anyone speak ill of Bill Clinton on a post she made (despite an apparent history of sexual assault?)), I’m not sure what the problem with other posts were? Like the Trigger by Void post. I mean if you don’t get it or don’t agree, fine, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t experience this (I do). I guess I just wish I knew what the specific thing was about Shakesville that’s problematic? Maybe there doesn’t have to be a specific thing, I don’t know.
I’m not a fan of Shakesville. I used to read, but the vibe has gotten steadily worse, and the cherry leaves post along with the one about the movie “Brave” reached peak ridiculous for me.
She…accused Brave of racism? Didn’t Pell come by not too long ago (as Peter LaCroix) and accuse people of being racist for calling him Peter LaCrap? Because that’s about the same amount of ridiculousness going on there.
And the cherry leaves thing…what?
I used to love Shakesville, but Melissa’s habit of reading bad faith into comments that most reasonable people wouldn’t see started grating on me and I quit reading. She’ll call someone victim-blaming just for disagreeing with her sometimes. Or she’ll write about a subject and then tell commenters that they can’t tell their own stories because they’ll be triggering. Of course she’s free to do that, just like I’m free to not read.
I’ve never felt the need to comment at Shakesville because it’s too tightly moderated and seems boring. I like moderate amounts of moderation. There are still a lot of good posts on that site even though they can go over the top.
I did read a few pages of that kool aid site and found it creepy as fuck. If you don’t like Melissa or the site don’t visit it. She’s not like the MRM constantly brigading comments sections with her fans or anything. She doesn’t dox or harass anyone. She’s pretty easy to avoid if you don’t like her and I fail to grasp how a heavy hand at moderation is abusive. Boring yes. I prefer it here where we can go off topic whenever we want. Abusive? Please. I just don’t get the need to make a whole hate site about it.
I used to frequent Shakesville. I stopped once I realized how abusive the site’s owner and mods were. She was abusive towards me and abusive towards everyone els ewho dared to disagree with her.
Alex, the fuck?! That’s mega creepy! You have an awesome bartender though.
Ally, your father remains The Worst. No really, The Worst. Only time I can see hitting a kid being justified is if they’re too young for a stern lecture to work AND whatever they were doing was seriously dangerous (e.g. a butt swat for trying to run into traffic) — being angry at a kid? NEVER an excuse to hit them!
Pecunium — “It’s going to be busy (argenti, I will ping you with my overseas cell number, I think you can iMessage me; because I’ve done it with a friend in Amsterdam).” Thank you dear, I’ll probably just stick to email though, what with time zone differences and IT BEING YOUR HONEYMOON!!! Have fun! Take pictures for me please?
“Fucking hell, I thought after Rwanda and the break up of Yugoslavia that the UN would act fast against genocide. I was wrong. Sometimes I want off this planet.”
Yep.
“Who has the money? That’s who pulls the strings (and the reason why I will never entirely abandon Marxism).”
And double yep.
Can somebody give me the short version of wtf y’all are talking about regarding Shakesville? Anything with that level of “you must read ALL OF THIS to comment” veers straight into “we’re (not actually) less wrong” land and I noptopus.
Also…*drags over the barrel of hugs, plops a fish tank next to it* the clown loaches want to do a little dance, so let’s give them an audience?
Shakesville: It all started with this post in which a reporter reached out fat HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to get a psychologist’s input on an article about abusive and toxic online social justice communities. McEwan, with her usual flair for exaggeration, freaked out that someone was going to psychoanalyze her without her consent. She was so rattled she took the next week off.
Upon her return, she wrote a manifesto condemning SVKA followed by another one the next day. Virtually everything she wrote consisted of gross exaggerations or outright lies. There has never been any harassment or threats “orchestrated” or encouraged by SVKA. She has zero proof yet most people believed her. In her mind, the mere existence of the site was harassment. McEwan painted a picture of dire threats of violence putting everyone’s safety at risk; it was all bullshit designed to deflect attention away from her abuse and the HARO request (IMO). She couldn’t attack the anonymous person who posted on HARO so she turned her fury onto SVKA instead.
She pretends that SVKA is a group of people who were banned because they broke SV’s rules and it was just sour grapes. This is crap. I flounced from SVKA yesterday but was a long-time poster there. A lot of us were never banned but were treated like shit by MM or the mods and it usually wasn’t because we broke any rules. For example, in a thread where MM was celebrating a speech by Bill Clinton, one commenter brought up his past sexual abuse and MM jumped down that person’s throat because SHE didn’t want to talk about it. Cherry leaves. Mods regularly pile on commenters. Many of us were hurt badly by our treatment there and found a community to connect with others to share what had happened as well as to mock SV in general.
I could go on all day but anyway. I hope like hell a major publication does expose SV for the toxic hellhole that it is.
“fat HARO”?? Farking autocorrect. Should be “to”.
Wait, what’s the deal with the fucking cherry leaves? I’m confused, even more so after reading the link. They can’t talk about cherry leaves? Because reasons? Huh?
*has never been a part of Shakesville, which probably isn’t helping*
LBT, the theme for day was cherry leaves. Aay I had heaps of cherry leaves in my yard I had to deal with and I said in exasperation, “Don’t even talk to me about cherry leaves!” MM decided the hapless commenter was telling others what they could or could not talk about.
Aay = Say. Jeez.
Yeah, I’ve been visiting Shakesville less and less over the last couple of years, because it got less and less interesting and relevant, and more and more, I dunno, controlling? I never felt abused, but I also stopped commenting, because it was just too much work to guess what kind of wording would set off a mod and make me question my sanity.
I found the “hate” sites by accident via google autofill. I don’t know why SV targeted SVKA instead of any of the other “hate” sites.
I don’t think they’re hate sites at all, just a place for people to vent. I saw a lot of jabber about SKVA stalking and harassing the Shakesville people, but they really seemed to stretch the definition of harassment. Ana Mardoll actually posted that the way they’re harassing her is that somebody would make a comment on her blog that made her wonder where they came from, and when she followed them through Disqus, which led back to SVKA, where she HAD to read to find out what they were saying. Which is not harassment, any way you look at it.
Anyway, I’ve lost a big chunk of time this week following the drama, but the good news is I’ve stumbled across a treasure trove of resources for people trying to deal with past or current abusive situations.
RE: Auntie Alias
MM decided the hapless commenter was telling others what they could or could not talk about.
O_o Oooookay. And people say tumblr is fixated on word choice!
RE: Unimaginative
Oh hey, I wanted to let you know, I’d planned for the half-price sale to only be going until August 7th. Just so you know!
Whoa, Auntie Alias! That’s bullshit.
This is what made me leave. In the Philip Seymour Hoffman thread after his death someone commented
and she responded
I lost someone very dear to me to drug addiction and I read this as her death being “necessary.” I found this extremely upsetting. I know MM didn’t mean it to be, but it was thoughtlessly worded. She did go on to say:
The thing is that the commenter was opening up what I thought was a good discussion and MM was shutting it down because she didn’t like how they worded it, but her response was even more thoughtlessly worded, which is hypocritical as fuck. Also, if I had taken exception to her comment, she would have (in my estimation) cried “my safe space” blah-di-blah blah and made me (and anyone else who might have been upset) feel worse. I did not let the door hit me in the ass.
It’s a common sentiment that people are afraid to post comments. Even people who are pro-SV have said that. SV thinks reading a mandatory 70,000-word* commenting policy is reasonable and, boy, if you forget something in it and make a mistake or just happen to bring up something MM doesn’t want to talk about, watch out. Walking on eggshells around someone who could blow up unexpectedly is not a healthy environment to be in. Yet she trumpets it as a “safe space”.
*I can’t verify that number but it’s ridiculous whatever the true number is. It literally took me several sessions over a few days to wade through it all. It’s MM’s version of feminism for the most part.
And just wow about the Pharyngula thread. That was some disproportionate reaction, there. Holy cow. That hippo in a tutu person made me fear for his/her blood pressure.
serrana, that’s sad. People who have strong personal feelings about a topic speaking from experience, people who are actual subject matter experts who try to correct MM or expand on what she wrote about, people who actually say they’re upset or triggered too often get *BOOM*. MM’s ego and feelings take precedence over everything.
I actually alluded to Shakesville in a conversation we had here once about this feeling like a safer space. *toddles off to see* Nope. My google-fu isn’t up to it. As I remember, though, a newcomer was calling the regulars meanie pants, or saying something like you have to be very careful to comment here, and some of us started talking about how we felt safer here than at other places that emphasize safety, and I, personally, meant Shakesville. And we talked about being thoughtful as opposed to careful.
tl;dr: I like it here. I can’t always keep up, but it’s my favourite on-line hangout.
RE: serrana
You know, I follow someone on tumblr who calls that the “well actually” phenomenon, so called because whenever she said anything, even something that was flagrantly bullshit (anything about video games for instance) would get someone popping up to go, “Well actually…” and then blather on about their totally clever and original idea, many of which she had gotten identical messages regarding.
It comes off even grosser when it’s actually about a topic of importance.
Unimaginative, I’m not an online community butterfly by any means but from my limited experience it seems like groups that self-police are happier than those with excessive moderation.
RE: Unimaginative
I honestly tend to avoid “safe spaces” like the plague, because I know that at least ONE of my damned labels will not be one of the things dignified with safety. (Ask me about the times I got bounced from LGBT “safe space” chats for being multi!) It just becomes exhausting, and honestly, I’d rather deal with the trolls here and get my catharsis than just feel like I’m at best tolerated for diversity purposes.
Here, people have my BACK. And that’s something I don’t really feel in “safe” spaces.
Yep. I like it here.
In other news, it’s a FREAKING GORGEOUS day, and I’m sitting outside in the shade on my deck. Now that the pot-smoking neighbours have buggered off, I can smell flowers and cedar bushes. It’s still too hot for bugs, but just marginally not too hot for me. I love summer. I’ve done fuck all that’s useful (except go grocery shopping), but I’m feeling pretty darned good.