Me and Cory Doctrow

Lesson: don’t argue with the famous on Twitter.

Honestly, I didn’t think there was that much of an argument. I made one remark, just one, and for my apparently poor judgement, got a minor torrent of rebuttal.

Well, Cory: fuck you sideways. It’s like this: publicly, you champion free speech, but only if the speech that’s free is that which is endless echo-chamber we-love-you-famous-person fandom?

Fuck you with a Tabasco dildo.

Dude, I am a nobody. A five-star, number-twenty-seven champion nobody. There is absolutely nothing I can gain, monetary-wise, fame-wise, anything­-wise that I can get out a public spat with you. You win, instantly and before we get to a starting line that’s as rigged as is I were hopping on my K-Mart pushbike with Lance no-doping Armstrong next to me.

(Actually, I would lose in a cycling race with anybody. I can’t turn right without falling over, due to a dodgy ear. I walk the bike around sharp right-hand corners. But anyhow…)

You put a stupid idea up on Twitter: that drones would be a worthwhile instrument for a break-and-enter house burglar. And I said:

“Umm, no break-in technology will compete until it's cheaper than a brick applied to a window. #SpecialSubjectTheBleedingObvious”

@doctorow: “You get more time to search and harvest if the front window isn't smashed. Risk minimization is worth something to crims”

Me: “You're thinking like a hacker. A burglar only needs "undetectable" for enough time to find sellable stuff and get out.”

@doctorow: “Huge difference between a break-in that can be detected externally and a "silent" one”

Me: “So smash the back window. You're talking organised and intelligent. When did that last fit the profile of a burglar?”

After that, a bit of a storm arrived in my in-box, and I just can’t be arsed to relate the whole thing, except that apparently it offends the Sainted Cory to be accused of being a “futurist”.

But what gets me is two things.

One: You, dude, are rich and famous. I am not: I’m a working journalist with no particular claims, who thought one thing you said was a bit silly. I’m not going to damp the enthusiasm your fans obviously pour on your head. Why so serious? Why take one dissenting voice so personally that you have to back the shit-truck up to my doorstep?

Two: One of the few things I know about you – apart from Boing Boing – is that you believe in freedom of speech. So – again – why send the shit-truck over to a piss-poor nobody who spoke?

I yielded in the Twitter debate, because I like to sleep. But honestly, I would like to know: what’s the psychology behind someone of success and fame, drilling guns onto a nobody, merely for the crime of dissent?

PS, Cory. I’ve been burgled eight times. Every instance was fast, opportunistic, and based on a brick. If I found one person among the losers and junkies who stole CDs, cash, cigarettes, a hammer,  household electronics and, once, a two-year-outdated jar of caviar that probably landed them in hospital, who had either the capacity or contacts to use advanced technology in a break-in, I’d eat Clive Palmer’s used underwear. As a sci-fi story premise, “drones for burglars” sucks hairy donkey’s balls. And it’s derivative of Philip K Dick’s “The Unreconstructed M”. Now you know, and I know, and they know.

Anonymity’s legitimacy under threat from cowards

The “Twitter trolling” debate in Australia is becoming a tragedy of the micro-commons.

If you find Dick Smith and Joe Hockey in foreplay-like agreement, you know you’re in trouble – but that’s what happened on ABC 702 Sydney’s Drive program Monday afternoon when the subject of “trolling” came up.

Both of them are against anonymity, and that’s a worry, because you’ve got a very broad spectrum of political thinking following the “no anonymity” idea.

I’m possibly in a minority, but I like mad old Dick the ratbag. He’s one of the few genuine high-profile ratbags Australia has left (Clive Palmer is starting to show promise). I don’t agree with his politics, I buy his peanut butter because my sons like it, and I love his possum-stirring, even when I think he’s wrong.

Hockey? If I was drawing lots on a desert island to see who went in the pot, I wouldn’t vote for him.

And they’re in agreement on anonymity?

We’re in trouble.

See, I don’t post anonymously, and I hate the “Anonymous Coward” (TM to Slashdot) that abuses anonymously, but anonymity matters – sometimes for good reasons.

Good Reason 1: Political oppression

It comes in many flavours. It may be because you live in Egypt, but it might also be that in America, your workplace sees fit to demand a particular vote. In Australia, you might just want to express a right/left view when you know you’re subject to a left/right supervisor/boss/arsehole/bitch who can’t sack you, but can make you miserable.

Good Reason 2: Whistleblowing

There’s absolutely no challenge here. A whistleblower – someone exposing real political or business corruption – deserves anonymity. A good journalist suffers gaol rather than reveal a source; that, for me, suffices as a benchmark.

Good Reason 3: Your employer

Since Senator Conroy, Joe Hockey, and for good measure, Barry O’Farrell, haven’t cottoned on: some employers take extreme exception to things their employees or potential employees might have said online.

Hell, employers do Facebook searches – which probably explains why my sporadic attempts to become a staffer fail (I don’t have a Facebook page, immediately suspicious). So I can perfectly understand that anyone might think there’s things they don’t want the boss to know – not just political (Good Reason 1), but social, religious, marital, sexual – anything, really.

Bad Reason: You’re a sockpuppet

I include this category in the next one.

Bad Reason: You’re a dickhead

The problem is this: the dickheads are commanding the public debate. All the good reasons for anonymity are being dragged down by dickheads hiding behind fake IDs either because they’re desperately insecure hyper-sensitive hate-mongers – in short, losers – who want to spray at Aborigines, Jews, celebrities, anyone that offers an easy target and a big audience. If you slag off Charlotte Dawson, Robbie Farah – or, better, Stephen Fry – your Tweet lands in front of a great many eyes.

Or you’re hiding your identity so you can slag off people or causes in the pay of someone else – climate sceptics, “big oil”, a political party, whatever – and you’re just another dickhead.

The problem is, one bad reason has suddenly become the Trojan that undermines all the good reasons – partly because some of the sponsors of bad reasons resent the good ones. Employers want absolute control over all aspects of their employees’ lives – all of those “benefits” Google provides equate to keeping the sheep penned. Everybody hates whistleblowers, even after they’re proved right. Political parties detest their opponents so desperately they seek to deny the legitimacy not just of ideas, but of debate over ideas.

And in all of this, the smallest minds, the narrowest viewpoints, the littlest vocabularies – these have taken command of the public debate.

Twitter’s “tragedy of the commons” is that its commons is polluted by people who defecate without fertilizing: they only pollute. They give aid and comfort to the worst impulses of control – as I’ve said elsewhere, either paraphrasing or quoting mad Nietzsche, “For your own good” expresses the will to power – without saying anything worth saying or defending.

Detesting the citadels of the powerful, the trolls, bullies and abuses burn the houses of the weak. How depressing is that?

It's not just the victims: Twitter's "trolls" need to harden up

There’s an interesting psychological PhD to be had, and I’m not a psych student, so I’ll offer it for free to anyone who cares:

Why do so many people believe Twitter’s “block” function raises questions of free speech?

If someone subject to an attack hits the "block" button, the "troll" (hate that usage) often rises up in fake outrage. They blocked me? How DARE they?

HTFU, dude: blocking, like posting, is as close as you'll get to a "right" on Twitter. FFS: the function is built into the service. What gives you the right to dictate its use? 

(To be even harsher: I don't have to pander to someone's whining, desperate, nasty insecurities by actually listening to them. Share your inadequacies in the mutual materbatorium, I won't stop you. I just won't watch the circle-jerk.)

So: you take aim at a target, and the target doesn't idly stand by for the bullet, and now you're upset? 

HTFU: harden the fuck up. If you can't stand the push-back, you're a lame excuse for troll, bully, or abuser. You're just a wet slap with an anonymous profile, location "Web". An archetypal self-abuser, face it, dickhead, you're a loser.

If someone’s attitude offends me, I can unfollow them.

I can filter someone if they’re bugging me, or I can block them. I hit the “block” choice at least once a day, nearly always for spammers.

I apply filters routinely, sometimes because someone I follow has become obsessively noisy about something I don’t care about (a temporary sanction); sometimes to avoid someone I don’t follow from being re-Tweeted into my timeline (for example, I long ago found Annabelle Crab to be as predictable as a song from The Church, as repetitive as a catechism, and as interesting as a hammer, so even if someone wants to tell me how funny she is today, I don’t need to hear it).

But the block button is a hot button. When people suggest to someone like Robbie Farah that he should block people sending abuse at him, there’s counter-voice yelling “freedom of speech”.

There is no “freedom of speech” issue in blocking someone. They’re not being stopped from posting their Tweets: they’re just not allowed to force me to see them.

Over time, people have come to believe that “right to free speech” carries an implied “right to be heard”.

With the exception of speaking to particular institutions (such as a court or a government), nobody has a “right to be heard”. What’s happened is that an active right belonging to the individual – “I have the right to say this” – has been re-interpreted as an obligation imposed on others.

Kooks love the "right to be heard". They regularly demand of me that I hear and publish all sorts of conspiracy theories merely because once they've told me, I need to give up my judgment and tell the world about Area 51, the Illuminati, and whatever else the diseased imagination can contrive.

Once you accept the proposition that I have the “right to be heard”, you have imposed an obligation on an audience not to ignore – which is absurd. Of all the billions of people in the world, a mere handful will read this blog post. By what “right” can I demand the rest of the billions hear me?

I have no right to demand that anybody hear me. I can pretty much make myself heard in my own home, but even that’s subject to permission: my wife might tell me to “shut up”, my sons might retreat behind headphones … the rest of the world? Yeah, right.

Even in my professional capacity as a freelancer for The Register, I cannot demand, only seduce: people will read me because (by now) they know me and seek me out (always a delicious honour for any journalist), or because I drag them in with a clickbait headline, or because I chose the right story at the right moment.

I have the right to speak: you are not obliged to listen, here, on Twitter, or anywhere else.

As I discussed yesterday, Twitter doesn’t even exemplify a right to free speech: you’re on Twitter’s patch, captive to its terms of service, and if it dislikes what you do, it can kick you off.

And as for the “block” button: a “right to be heard” doesn’t exist outside of Twitter. Someone blocking you – or me – isn’t inhibiting our right to speaking, merely exercising their right to ignore us.

People following the “bully’s charter” tell “troll victims” to “harden the fuck up”, but rise up in confectionary fury when someone blocks them.

Been blocked? HTFU. 

Some words about “trolling” for the adults

First, there is a difference between a troll and a dead shit who slings abuse from behind what Slashot always called “Anonymous Coward” and who, in my personal opinion, would receive a compliment if they were drowned in damp turd.

I’ve been trolled by professionals, and abused by amateurs, and it isn’t that hard to tell the difference. However, the pop press has decided to apply “troll” to people who I more readily consider dead shits, and as a bit of a language geek, I am hip to the way that usage changes meaning…

Second. About freedom of speech.

Sorry, people, but Twitter is not the same as standing up in the Domain (or Speakers’ Corner or whatever may be substituted in your locale).

Twitter looks like a public space, but it’s not: it’s a commercial service, and when you sign on, you agree to a set of terms and conditions – in other words a contract. Not only that, but – to indulge my occasional taste for pettifogging legalism – the contract is defined by American law. If you’re outside of America, tough: you clicked “I Agree”, you’re governed by whichever state Twitter’s agreement references (and no, I just can’t be bothered to check which state).

The point is this: Twitter is a private space. It’s owned. Your free speech rights – your right to say whatever you please, so long as you willingly assume the risks (such as libel) – don’t apply on Twitter, and I am perfectly happy to call you a 90-proof moron if you think otherwise.

Third: “If you don’t like it, go away”

My short response to this is “fuck off”. But I probably have to shoulder the responsibility of justifying this position.

“Get out of here” is a bully’s charter: “I/We own this patch. If you don’t like what we do, don’t come here”.

It’s like a bunch of high school dead shits saying “if you don’t want us to beat you up, don’t come to the west side of the oval”.

I don’t accept it. I don’t accept anyone’s right to bluff or shout me out of somewhere I want to be. I don’t accept that someone should have to “go somewhere else” to avoid abuse.

For example: should a woman be told to stay away from the 20-20 cricket because some drunk idiots want to grope them in the stands?

For example: should gays accept the idea that it’s their responsibility to stay away from Hay, Hell or Booligal because “this town doesn’t like pooftas”?

Even if you accept the frankly limpwit notion that some kind of absolute freedom of speech exists on a contract-controlled service called Twitter – why should the “fuck off” charter apply? Why should I curtail communicating with my friends, just because someone with neither balls nor brains – or some raisin-nutted celebrity with lots of followers and an inferiority complex – decides to nuke my account with abuse?

Nope.

I’ll even go so far as this: my Twitter name is @R_Chirgwin, because if I write it, I sign it. Go ahead, anonymous cowards and dead shits all the world over: try and take me off Twitter.

You won’t. 

By the way: in response to a cogent remark on Twitter: I agree. Politicians do not and should not claim the right to regulate what people say on Internet forums. But that is probably a discussion for another post! ...