Was the uncivil outburst in question the attacks on people concerned about them hiring a surveillance cop as their "maker in residence", or was there another uncivil outburst I should know about?
Can anyone link to the harassment/threats he mentions? (Mostly the latter, I'm sure there was much harassment but I have yet to see any real "threats").
I watched a YouTube video by somebody who was the target of these attacks and he admitted that he started waking up feeling so numb from stress that he couldn’t move and once soiled his bed because he couldn’t get up. The level of stress and how his business relationships and family members were targeted was unbelievable. You can’t just ignore how offended they get
I wonder if this is the first instance of politically motivated mobbing behavior to take place over a digital communications medium? In which case, it is an important historical document in its own right. It has the same structure as modern digital witch-hunts:
1) A group of individuals apparently incensed at some minor infarction by their target.
2) It is not entirely clear why the behavior of their target is wrong, or why it should merit excommunication.
3) The group displays incongruous rage at their target given the apparent wrongdoing, using terms that focus on the target's character rather than the nature of his putative wrongdoing.
4) Certain members of the group are unable to contain themselves and let slip references to the real source of their rage.
5) The expulsion is done by a minor player who does not necessarily take part in the discussion.
6) The summary reason given for the expulsion is different from, and even contradicts the original issue.
R.I.P Jerry Pournelle. Fearless, and always first into the fray.
Apparently it was but that doesn't justify the harassment described in the article. Hate mail and stuff like that. I guess people got too emotional and both parties ended up with a bad taste in their mouths.
Not that it's worth wading too far into this, but there is no good reason to believe those people were there specifically for harassment.
For one, if they were there to harass, you would expect them to have done some harassing. I have seen no examples of that. The only possible thing that could be construed as harassing behaviour was them being there in the first place - and I don't think that's a very high bar to set for harassment.
I mean, you can watch the videos[0] of the event yourself. None of it looked particularly harassing to me, until Sarkeesian started attacking the audience.
Not sure what exactly you're referring to when you say 'the story' but the articles I've seen don't seem to paint the same picture ([1] for example).
[0] First video I found, shows the whole talk. The point in question comes about 2:30 into the video.
It's pretty clear that there's offensive behaviour as generally understood (antisocial stuff, mostly) and whatever reign of terror this company is, from the OP's perspective, prosecuting.
I think the negative reaction has more to do with how the website owner was not only discourteous, but has gone further in promoting a campaign of harassment against someone.
That's what I wanted to know. Was there targeted harassment like this from users? Was it just twitter flame? Did she get angry emails? I understand it has no bearing on the OP but I feel like it would add gravity to her experience if we had some context to empathize with.
What's the actual instance of prejudice, harassment that is being reported? I saw a lot of very serious accusations in the article (the kind that is capable of ruining a carreer), but no links or screencaps of the actual wrongdoing.
It's not clear that this is hostile behavior. The two incidents could be completely unrelated. I'm inclined to believe that is the case based on the anecdotal evidence of other commenters.
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