Has technology made us all Stonewall Jackson's?

[Popcorn Sutton]

I think that a lot of us are familiar with social interactions over the internet by now, but, by looking at the attitude of people who do not participate in anonymous interaction, it seems that we have become a lot more mature, and maybe it has gotten to the point of making us stone walls, like a mental Stonewall Jackson. It's pretty obvious to see this type of maturation of mentality by looking at video lectures given by our genius predecessors in comparison to our current geniuses (Ray Kurzweil, Lawrence Krauss, Stuart Hamerhoff, Michio Kaku, Patricia Churchland, Bill Nye, Noam Chomsky, Morgan Freeman, etc.). It's like we have the capacity to completely ignore emotions with every new internet troll that comes around. Are we being conditioned to become a race of mental Stonewalls? Would we be lucky to become one? Is it a good thing? I'm interested to hear what you guys have to say.

 

Cheers!

[cladking]

I believe this is primarily just culture.

 

People used to take every post they read as a personal insult and now we are more apt to just try to understand the words.

 

God knows it's usually a herculean task.

 

Trolls were mostly created by misunderstanding just like war.

[Popcorn Sutton]

I think that it's a different type of culture though. It's like anyone who has participated in online discussions, especially in a scientific context, are mentally hardened to the point of being very respectable people with completely unbiased and emotion free opinions. From what I see, the culture that you speak of is entirely virtual, but it has real world impact.

[Popcorn Sutton]

The geniuses I was thinking of in comparison was Alan Watts and Ray Kurzweil (I've been watching and listening to a lot of Ray Kurzweil lately). When I was introduced to Alan Watts, it was by an 18 year old schizo. He was extremely excited to have me listen to Alan Watts. It seriously blew my mind, not because it was genius, but because it had nothing to do with science. The talk he had was about him being god, and, instead of lecturing, he told people to ask him questions as if he was god. It literally killed me. I told the guy who wanted to show me the video that I couldn't listen to it anymore. I didn't want to have that talk enter my ears. I didn't want to make room for those concepts.

[swansont]

I believe this is primarily just culture.

 

People used to take every post they read as a personal insult and now we are more apt to just try to understand the words.

 

God knows it's usually a herculean task.

 

Trolls were mostly created by misunderstanding just like war.

 

I think that this is not true on wide swaths of the internet. Some people may have adapted to this, but others have been emboldened by the lack of repercussion, because we can wall ourselves off even on the internet, and interact only with a chosen group. Other still are shocked that they are criticized for posting something loathsome, as if freedom of speech was the same as consequence-free speech. While the source may be misunderstanding, it's apparently willful misunderstanding. No interest in facts and no interest in seeing another side of the story.

 

Ask a woman who is identifiable by gender and active on the internet the intensity of the misogyny she encounters on a daily basis.

[Popcorn Sutton]

Two of my best friends are girls. When we first started talking, they made me aware that they both wanted to delete their facebooks. I didn't know why at first. I was like WHY would you want to delete facebook. Jamie, one of those girls, decided to open up facebook in front of me. I heard beep after beep instantly when she logged on. It was a bunch of dudes messaging her. One was asking for nude pics. They say that they get pictures of peoples penises constantly, and that's why they want to delete their facebook. It's ridiculous, seriously.

[imatfaal]

To be honest Popcorn that form of overt and shameless misogyny strikes me as less dangerous (more easily recognised, dealt with, and stopped) than the insidious form we see here and on other well moderated fora. It is truly depressing to see otherwise sensible and articulate posters suddenly make comments which clearly imply that an answer from a female member is diminished in their eyes because of the responder's gender. Or that a female scientist has a less complete perspective on a subject that a male colleague would have. We regularly see posts that make it clear that poster feels a woman will hold a position because she is a woman whilst a man holds a position through a more pragmatic and rational process. And this is in people on a Science Forum in the 21st Century....

 

This form of discrimination is still pervasive in our society - and it operates, to an extent, on a subconscious level. Lab Directors reading resumes will rate suitability of male potential employees as higher than that of female - even when the resumes are identical! Those who audition performers for inclusion in world renowned Orchestras will pick 50/50 men/women when they only listen to the applicant playing - this changes significantly when the curtain is drawn back and they can also see the applicant playing.

Blog write up on Lab positions - here

Paper on Orchestra - here (mea culpa - my memory on the percentages may have been askew)

Edited June 12, 2014 by imatfaal
Thought as this is SF.N I better find the papers I was talking about

[Popcorn Sutton]

I see what you're saying now and, yes, I have witnessed it. I don't know if you or the other moderators remember, but there was a post in one of the threads that I started by a male who overtly stated that women were inferior, and he said that it was especially obvious when it came to science. I don't believe that. I know of two female scientists whose work I enjoy seeing, hearing, and reading. Those two are Patricia Churchland (her book Neurophilosophy was a great book, it took me a while to read it through because of how big it was, but it was well put together), and Michelle Thalmer (who appears on the Science channel pretty often when it comes to talking about the cosmos).

 

There is definitely a bias there, even now.

[swansont]

Two of my best friends are girls. When we first started talking, they made me aware that they both wanted to delete their facebooks.

 

How does this fit with the claim in the OP?

[Popcorn Sutton]

It fits. The claim is that technology has made changed us to be more stabilized because of stuff like that. The argument is that after you get trolled so often, you become more mature because of that experience. On a site like this, the experience can be pretty often, but I assume it's like an instrument, you don't just pick it up for the first time and play something beautiful, it takes time to learn how to do it. In this case, you have no option but to let it happen, and when it does happen, it builds on your previous experience. From what I see, it's getting to the extent that we are becoming mental stonewalls. In that particular example, you can infer that it happens to women a lot more than it happens to men. Women are typically exposed to a lot more graphic and disturbing stuff over the internet.

 

I've seen it myself with my friend Jamie and also with my ex girlfriend who NEVER wanted to use facebook. Sure enough, one day she opened her facebook and got a million messages all at once. I've also experienced it in person. I had to deal with security one time because of a guy that none of the girls wanted around, but he just stayed there. It was pretty obvious that no one wanted him there, but he wasn't going to leave us alone. I got him kicked out, and there's been plenty of other times where the same thing happened but I wasn't there. They don't know that it's ok to talk to security about it and get it taken care of.

 

Do you see how it relates? Technology is having a significant impact on our mentality.

 

One time, me and my lady friends went out and they met a nice guy (through me meeting one of their friends). Jackie (my other friend) liked him, and so at the end of the night she gave him her number (there's technology right there). He ended up blowing up her phone with message after message every day. She got annoyed with him very quick and so she stopped responding. That's when he became abusive and started to beat her up and make her feel guilty over the phone. I told her that she should block him, and she eventually did, but now she has the paranoia that we will see him again in person. I typically tell people that they shouldn't ever expect to only meet someone once, because when you do, that's when you make yourself anxious.

[cladking]

I think that this is not true on wide swaths of the internet. Some people may have adapted to this, but others have been emboldened by the lack of repercussion, because we can wall ourselves off even on the internet, and interact only with a chosen group. Other still are shocked that they are criticized for posting something loathsome, as if freedom of speech was the same as consequence-free speech. While the source may be misunderstanding, it's apparently willful misunderstanding. No interest in facts and no interest in seeing another side of the story.

 

Ask a woman who is identifiable by gender and active on the internet the intensity of the misogyny she encounters on a daily basis.

Apparently you aren't the only one to think so. i mentioned this thread to a friend and he said he saw no such evidence on the sites he frequents. Popcorn Sutton may have a point about people here being different because of a scientific interest.

 

But all the sites I frequent have calmed down quite a lot in the last decade. They used to be like the wild west where it was shoot first and ask questions later. You had to swagger into the sites or everyoine would walk all over you. If you did swagger in the personalities at the top of the pecking order would be gunning for you. Trolls oozed out of the woodwork and people engaged them. Real world threats were not uncommon.

 

I can't help but think some of these kids who behave so poorly might have to pay a high price someday. There's so much storage capacity and it seems every year there is wider access.

[swansont]

I think the internet has amplified different behaviors. You can interact with more people, and since it's not face-to-face, people tend to be more emboldened and can act in a more extreme fashion. You can also more easily choose destinations where extreme behavior is not restrained, because everyone is like-minded. It's not hard to find people who are seemingly making a profession out of being offended; the blogger at The Slacktivist points situations like this out from time to time, calling them the citizens of the Indig-Nation (love the description) and points out their hypocrisy, because when they are told that their outrage is based on a flasehood, they get even angrier instead of being relived that the horrible situation doesn't exist.

 

I think that any anecdotes arguing that people are more susceptible or less susceptible to trolls suffers from confirmation bias, and that these are only anecdotes.