Online provocateurs are the real thing

When I read Glenn Greenwald's latest leak of the Snowden files, titled How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations--I found it some pretty sobering stuff. (all graphics here are from the article; you can click to enlarge.) Greenwald wrote:

One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the [NSA whistleblower Edward] Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.

And now it's time to tell another chunk of the story, focusing on my little corner of the net.

On the radio, I had been talking about online-provocateurs (and their carefully-targeted disruptions) only a few days prior to reading the Greenwald piece. I suddenly knew I had to write this. Typically, very few over on Tumblr seem to have read the leaked documents. On Social-Justice Tumblr, despite the okey-doke posturing, politics is basically secondary to self, self, self and the self's many facets of wonderfulness. (sigh)

I knew I might have to name names. And naming names has a tiresome and predictable outcome: The named-persons' friends stream forth to defend them and call me evil names. In this case, the provocateur is a successful and much-enjoyed troll, with literally thousands of followers. In December, after this individual "gave the order"--I was basically Tumblr-blacklisted ... which means it is highly unlikely that this person and their legions of fans will ever read this. Thus, I feel a certain freedom in that I don't have to please anyone and I have already been labeled an enemy (although I am not sure why--it was never fully explained to me). I might as well go ahead and speak my mind.

I am talking about THIS AWFUL PERSON (quoted therein), who shall henceforth be known as TAP for short. She is probably the most well-known leader of the trans women faction at Tumblr. In many ways, she directs the posse and calls the shots; if she was not in a leadership-position, I wouldn't take note of her zealousness in destroying others, she'd be just another meanie. But as a leader who draws a lot of attention, it is pertinent than she is divisive and gives advice to others, that they should be as divisive as she is. TAP is an entertaining writer, fairly outrageous and very good at reducing her detractors to tears; she excels at the personal insult, the creative cussing and take-downs. It is useless to attempt to argue "facts" with her. I know this, because she told me.

In the above link, TAP pointedly called herself an ex-troll, and yet, she is obviously trolling more than ever before. I wrote that piece in 2009, and it was only last year that I learned she was considered the biggest, nastiest and most vicious hell-raiser on Tumblr.

So what happened?

Check out the list of stuff I quoted from TAP in the link, the different types and techniques of trolls... and then check out THIS list:



It's the same, only not as colorful. Same. In fact, I am wondering if TAP is the one who wrote it. (Or maybe she just excelled at the correspondence course?) "Divorce behavior from outcome" = pretty much defines emotionally-manipulative trolling.

And here is where we cut to the chase:

We are not talking about a simple troll, folks. We are talking about someone who is masterful at driving people away from social justice movements; someone tremendously skilled in purposely painting social justice activists in the worst possible light. TAP is excellent in creating and exaggerating discord between two or more factions (as G Gordon Liddy said was necessary for the destabilization of a popular movement). In short, TAP may be a paid provocateur or federal agent. She might be working for the government, the NSA, The Dept of Homeland Security (etc etc) or she might be working for right-wing operations like Americans For Prosperity. She may be part of a "dirty tricks campaign" run by a particular sectarian group or politician. She may be getting nickel-and-dimed; regularly slipped some PayPal contributions in exchange for picking a fight with first this activist, then that one... and she may not know WHO she is actually working for.

Since TAP endlessly talks about being mentally ill and having been manipulated by opportunistic people in the past, it is also reasonable to assume this could still be happening. Certainly, she is far worse than she was in 2009, when I wrote that post.

Who is making her so much worse, and who benefits?



Ask yourself: who benefits?

We see that TAP's last attack was on Ellen Page, a likable and popular young actress who just came out as gay. TAP attacked her, claiming that she was transphobic (since all cis lesbians are transphobic). However, in her coming-out speech, Page pointedly mentioned trans actress Laverne Cox as an inspiration, so TAP's statement instantly blew up into a feud within the LGBT community on Tumblr, not surprisingly. TRANSLATION: A great public-relations moment for the movement, gets the immediate take-down from TAP.

This is a seasoned provocateur-move, and this is what made my antenna go up: Take the last morale-building WIN from a movement, and turn it into a morale-killing LOSS. TAP did this admirably. Although I do find it odd she is changing her name so many times; like a half-dozen times in the last few months. She changed her name again, right before this attack on Page.

And now, since the Greenwald leak, I have suddenly become aware of TAP's habits. Mostly, she tears feminists apart. She is devoted to keeping trans and cis women divided and spends hours and hours online exacerbating the divisions, keeping everybody angry and stirred-up. When things start to die down, she gets them stirred up again in short order, by making pronouncements like the one about Ellen Page. For instance, she tells all cis women that we are ugly, stupid and totally inferior to trans women. (She emphatically says "Ewwww!" about the bodies of cis women.) This kind of thing is calculated to get a response. And although she claims she has a job, she appears to spend ALL of her time insulting people on Tumblr. She deliberately tries to upset and hurt people and proudly succeeds. Usually, after one of her bloody verbal attacks, she invariably tries to milk pity, and suddenly reminds her readers that she is suicidal, mentally ill and popping pills. (Apparently, she doesn't realize that being a constantly-vicious, cruel person makes you feel bad about yourself. As you should, of course.) She then throws in some politically-correct stories, reblogs some crowd-pleasers. Next day, she is right back at it without missing a beat. Dedicated and determined. She is single-minded and relentless.

After all, she has a job to do.

~*~

To those of you who follow this person, stop. You are being used and exploited. She is spreading her poisonous hate to you, and you ingest it willingly.

But even more than garden-variety hate: you are being manipulated. It is doubtful she believes most of what she says. SHE IS TROLLING AS A COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY, deliberately trying to bust up several movements at once. And she does it demolition style: accuse cis feminists of raping thousands of trans women (she has actually claimed that, for example) and then scream like a maniac when anyone asks for evidence of such a thing. There is no "evidence" that will satisfy a provocateur, there is only emotional manipulation and extremism. These are their DESIRED GOALS: to make you mistrust feminists and trans women, to make people more likely to avoid face-to-face collectives and/or group-activism, and in fact, likely to drive you away from all political involvement.

Or maybe more likely to come to the conclusion of the right wing: THESE PEOPLE ARE ALL CRAZY.

That is the real goal, since there is no olive branch offered, no dialogue, no efforts to come together or to understand each other. After all, that would STRENGTHEN our movements, not weaken them.

And that is not what she is being paid for.



When she stops this behavior, I will change my mind. Not before. Until she stops, she is dangerous. She is working for reactionaries and effectively doing the work of the right wing. I regard her as the online equivalent of a grenade.

And so should you.

Dead Air Church: How we've changed, continued

Blast from the past: Counter-demonstrators at the Democratic Convention in New York in 1980, were given this handy-dandy "non-delegates handbook"--which looked a lot like the official delegate-guide issued to Democratic delegates. (Us scroungy types didn't have to pay the $5; that was for the press, tourists, curious-onlookers and other nosy people who looked like they could afford it.)

~*~




I have been arguing with somebody online about Ayn Rand. Why? Good question. I like banging my head against the wall, obviously.

But as one who has spent most of his life reading about politics and not actually DOING, he hasn't actually met too many Objectivists (Ayn Rand followers) in person. A lot of what I know about them, I realize, has been from arguing with them, up close and personal. For example, I remembered an argument with such a person outside the aforementioned Democratic convention. (It is remarkable how their arguments have NOT changed.)

Thus, when my online-opponent accusingly demands CITATIONS!!!???? --I don't have them. I am reporting what "I have heard Randians say" since it IS what I have heard them SAY. In person. Not write. And not online, since (like Ayn Rand herself) these conversations predate the internet. (Thus, to a great many people of ALL political persuasions, this means my account is disqualified from consideration. Pre-internet history is UNRELIABLE!)

And I heard the Randians say all manner of things, including endorsing euthanasia for old and disabled people. They didn't back down from this position or display any shame. Why should they? They would proudly tally up the savings on their pocket calculators and show you the figures. The more horrified you were, the more GLEE they would take in shocking you. Your shock at their selfishness was just more proof of what a bleeding-heart girlie-girl and/or brainwashed sheep you were. (Slight interruption for amusing link: I Was a Teenage Objectivist.)

In remembering this period of history, I sadly realized, its over. The internet has put an end to it. People just don't blurt out world-class wacko things as often as they used to. It's dangerous; they might get quoted and Tweeted on the spot, or find their rants surreptitiously recorded and saved to YouTube for posterity. This is doubly true for writing: A blog post or forum comment can be copied and circulated by the time you visit the restroom and come back and decide to delete it. Google cache strikes again! Screen shots uber alles!

And so, you just don't get that kind of extreme insanity any more, except from the internet trolls, and they don't count. They don't MEAN IT. (Or maybe they DO, but there is simply no way to know for sure.)

I have been perusing Steven Pinker's recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. I haven't exactly been READING it, since I tend to doze off during heavy-science discussions, peppered with data, footnotes and suchlike. But I do perk up when he talks about how animal torture is no longer acceptable (for example), relating a harrowing anecdote about how he once tortured a poor rat to death by accident during a lab experiment. And how that situation simply would not happen now, in the same circumstances.

Pinker's overall concept is that violence is declining. I am skeptical. However, my recent inability to find wacko quotes from Randians (that I KNOW existed back in the day), is a telling testament to his thesis. Hmm. It seems he has a point, and I now have a real-life example of my own: there is less verbal violence and extremism than there used to be. Why? People are held accountable now. You will end up on YouTube! You will end up on Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus; your name will be mud. Your boss and your mom and your boyfriend will SEE IT and you will be HELD ACCOUNTABLE in ways your wacko self could never be held accountable back in the day, before the internet, when you could easily dismiss and deny it all.

That's a real, measurable change in our discourse.

Even the existence of anonymous troll-comments means something: it demarcates the limits of what is acceptable, what people WILL take responsibility for saying and signing their names to.

As the Old Testament, well-known for not messing around, warned us: Be sure your sins will find you out!

That verse now seems oddly prophetic, not merely descriptive.

On The Future of Small Blogs

Small-blog traffic is down across the board, even as the 'big blogs' get more readers. It is increasingly obvious that blog traffic is like income: the 1% get it all, and us 99% puttering along down here at the bottom, are lucky to get any at all.

I used to get about 10,000 hits a month--even in 2010 when I averaged only about 2 posts a week. Now I am down to about 7000 or so. Every (small) blogger I know has reported similar trends.

How did this happen and why is it getting so much worse?

I blame Facebook, of course. And Twitter. And hypocritically, I am right there on both of them with everyone else. Twitter provides everybody with fabulous linkage and good reading, while Facebook provides the personal stories and socializing; the grease that keeps the online Dharma-wheel turning. What need is there for small-time local blogs? I find it interesting that the most hits I have received in the past year on one post (about 3000), was primarily because it was widely reproduced on Facebook.

Today, whilst interacting on a rather fiery, opinionated blog, it occurred to me. On this blog, where I have previously interacted with lots of people who disagree with me, I was suddenly called a concern troll and instructed to stop commenting. Wow, I thought. What the hell happened? Are people not allowed to simply disagree any more?

No.

Everyone must be FRIENDS, like on Facebook. You can't categorically disagree with the majority any more, or they will just tell you to shut up. Facebook has changed the terms of debate and what sort of discourse is acceptable. Thus, when you step "out of line" or express an unpopular opinion--you are dealt with much more harshly.

By contrast, Facebook threads are self-contained, for the most part. Nobody is totally "anonymous" and there can be no sock-puppets. Many of the participants in any given thread, will already agree with each other since they are from the same social circles, age-grouping and class. However, some of us have a LARGE and DIVERSE number of friends--which is far more likely if you are older (or have lived and worked in a variety of environments, as most older people have). People who hate each other and/or disagree on every single issue in the world, can suddenly and unexpectedly collide on the same thread. And predictably, all fired-up with "likes" (votes from people who agree with any given comment)-- they come out guns-a-blazing. Many Facebook people may not have any other online experience and it is entirely possible they have never before argued with people who disagree with them; thus, they promptly go into ideological apoplexy. This is marked by a lot of "you're crazy!" and "you can't be serious!" because they really do believe this. It's not rhetorical. You can tell they have not been exposed to real life ______ (fill in the blank). Atheists, anarchists, libertarians, Ayn Randians, communists, animal rights activists, whoever. They have heard of them, sure, but they've never met them before ... and they often respond by hitting the proverbial roof, flipping out and calling names.

For this reason (ideological apoplexy), you can easily "block" people on Facebook, so you don't have to SEE their awful opinions and be annoyed by them. This is diametrically opposite to blogular life, where you can't NOT SEE what you don't want to see, unless you are the owner of the blog in question.

And so, Facebook has tamed Blogdonia, made it more homogenous. In so many ways, cyberspace bullies made this happen, just like real-life bullies gave birth to gun control. Just when online culture seemed to be teetering on the edge of a free-for-all, suddenly, Facebook and similar social media promise ORDER FROM CHAOS.

Facebook and other self-contained, monitored sites became the safe place to meet. Who wants to be harassed by total strangers? When does "arguing" end, and actual harassment, hatred and stalking begin? (And who decides?)

I heartily recommend Julian Dibbell's fascinating post (which I originally read in the Village Voice, back in the day) titled A RAPE IN CYBERSPACE, which I commented on. (And I have finally learned how to link to just one comment in a thread, yay me!) I wrote:

The new wrinkle on [the] thousands of listservs (like on Google groups) is that some people are anonymous, some are pseudo-anonymous, and some provide their real names, leading to an imbalance of power among users. The anonymous people have the power to attack, those of us pseudo-anon or using real names, can’t attack phantoms in return.

...

It’s a pernicious environment… and one I think has given rise to Facebook, where people feel “safe” from anonymous assholes. Of course, a great deal of privacy is given over to FB, and that is the NEW problem… so the trolls greatly assisted the rise of internet surveillance and spying. They should be held accountable for that too.

Just as IRL, a rise in crime can lead to increased cops and fascism.

Another thread participant, Galactic Stumblebum (and what a great name!) added some important points. To say the least:

The issues are expectations and trust. People expect that when they are on the net, others will respect them as they would in RL. They trust in the sysops to enforce behavior just as they would trust the courts or the cops or mommy and daddy or Big Brother to enforce behavior in RL. They demand that someone hold their hands.

Perhaps Daisy is right. Perhaps the rise in Facebook popularity is a manifestation of the need for having one’s hand held. Personally, I do not know (I took one look at Facebook and decided that Sturgeon’s Revelation applied and haven’t been back since. I don’t have any fear of that corporation violating of my privacy because I avoid their product like the plague). But I don’t think so. I think rather that the rise in social network popularity is just that – social.

Nor do I believe that fascism is the culprit. No, I think that the rise in surveillance and the loss of privacy are the natural results of both the control freak propensities of the power elite, and the boohoo whinging of the carebears. People have been taught to expect someone to hold their hands, when they don’t get it, they are outraged – just as they are IRL when the cops do nothing. That makes the carebears call out for someone to do something, and the power elite is all too happy to oblige as it directly feeds their need for power and control.

It’s a cycle.

The major problem is the expectations. After all, reality is simply a mechanism for fulfilling expectations – change the expectations of what will be real, and you change what becomes real. That is perhaps the role of antisocial netizens – to bump the expections back into line when they stray too far down the path of fantasy.

As for griefers and trolls – well, let’s not fool ourselves; The real reason for laws and oversight is because the vast majority of humans really are primates barely out of diapers…in short, assholes.

And Mr Stumblebum, obviously very wise, gets the last word.

Trolls, trolls, everywhere a troll

Except for copious amounts of fried okra, I tried to be a good raw-foodie this week! At left: SC farmers market tomatoes.






I had a pretty hectic weekend and have mostly just been playing catch-up. The best part of my weekend was meeting RACHEL of MOODY SPRINGS blog! My first blogger-meeting! Rachel is a real sweetheart! (Of course, I had no camera with me, so you'll have to take my word for it.)

And I dealt with my troll.

As many of you are undoubtedly aware, I once was pretty self-righteous about my "Anything goes" policy at my blog. And so was Mike, the guy these trolls first invaded and began harassing. And now, Mike is moderating all comments on his blog. As we used to say, I can dig it.

I finally started deleting troll comments. My first deletion was on the topless thread. Although it appears I deleted nearly half the thread, I only deleted one comment, and the troll went ahead and deleted the rest of his comments himself. (I am not sure why.) I also deleted two posts (both mine and another person's) that had degenerated into personal name-calling, on the Mary Jo Kopechne thread. And then, I deleted Bob's, over the weekend.

What is pertinent about these three trolls is that they all have their own blogs. I am confident I have not inhibited their free speech, as Bob repeatedly challenged me. In fact, two out of three trolls wrote about my statements on their own blogs--one wonders why they had to come here and make a fuss IN ADDITION to airing their own opinions (in their own space) about what I had written. I would not have deleted a link to their respective posts, if they had posted it. For some reason, they just wanted to make me MAD. And manipulating emotions is the troll's entire raison d'etre.

This past weekend, I was particularly inspired to delete by this wonderful post on trolling by genderbitch. She really lays it all out, quite knowledgeably, as an ex-troll.

I advise any blogger to read the whole thing, but here are some perceptive highlights:

Trolling is merely a specific version of social engineering. A specific type that incorporates a certain methodology in the abstract (while the complexity and differences sit in the details). However they all exhibit a set of shared traits. Trolls seek a response. Invariably. It is about your reaction as the target. Stop reacting and they lose interest. Trolls attempt to elicit an activity and in doing so they draw people out. Trolling in and of itself is an act of drawing a person out. It’s a lot like fishing. You put bait on the hook. Drop the hook into the water. Fish nibbles and bam. You yank the pole, the hook sets and suddenly the fish is out of water and at your mercy. What trolls do is they apply social engineering in such a way as to create stimuli that draw people to them (usually angrily) and then they continue to engage in behaviors that in turn keep the people around and engaged.

Trolling is, generally, a very harmful state of affairs. Quite often an energy drain on the resources of any network to deal with, Trolls, among other types of draining social engineer types, are intensely damaging influences. Not only do they suck the energy and motivation out of a network but they often harm and scatter the members of that network to the four winds, further damaging its integrity.

I used to believe trolls had to be a certain type, but genderbitch delineates 6 distinct types:

1: Offenders: Offense trolls target based on things found personally offensive. They will try to pick up on what will affect their target the best and then use it to their fullest power. This tends to be the most common method of bigot trolls because of the absolute ease with which marginalized groups are targeted and offended.

2: Concern Trolls: Concern trolls pretend to be (or genuinely believe that they are) helpful and concerned about things that are going on. However most of their concerns incorporate the begging the question fallacy (e.g. “when did you stop beating your wife?”, “I never started beating my wife… o_O”) and tend to imply really awful things about the people they pretend to (or are) concerned about.

3: Clever Trolls: Clever Trolls are those who employ antagonistic satire. They always have a distinct purpose to their actions of getting an idea across or raising a view and are inciting reactions to get the idea noticed instead of ignored. Bigots usually fail at this because a clever troll’s ideas or views need to be logically supportable and most bigotry is based off of fallacy driven emotive arguments used to justify and rationalize internalized hatred and feelings of superiority.

4: Noise Makers: Basically spam of incoherence, pictures or weirdness. Usually the most simple and least effective of trolling methods because it is so easily recognized as trolling by its obvious nature. Often mixes with Offense Trolls.

5: Griefers: Trolls that don’t necessarily have offensive content (in fact their views may be quite reasonable) but are intensely antagonistic, nasty, rude, insulting, demanding or vicious. They also tend to mock people when they lose a debate or back down, making it extraordinarily hard to back down even when you’ve been proven wrong.

6: Devil’s Advocate Trolls: Trolls that play DA and use arguments that they don’t believe in for varying purposes, usually presented in an offensive or antagonistic manner.

Trolling, whatever archetype it fits, is still a form of social engineering and ergo a form of control. This means that inherently and invariably, when you troll anyone you are attempting to control them and their responses. This does act as a form of dominance, even if you don’t intend to be dominant (say merely protect yourself). Not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you’re trolling a group who attacks and hurts your people. But, if you troll a marginalized group, then you are attempting to control and dominate a marginalized group. And that is silencing and marginalizing behavior in and of itself.

So no matter what, trolling marginalized groups is marginalization and therefore it is a bigoted act.

Yes it is... and thank you for that definitive statement.

You know you're being picked on, but of course, they couch it in democratic language and mess with your mind.

Indeed, the goal of the troll is to silence us. For example, I am now reluctant
to write about guns and assault weapons again, because I don't want these trouble-makers and assholes showing up here again.

They have succeeded, haven't they?

Trolls draw a person out. Normal silencing techniques are designed to work when you speak up. But a troll puts out a wide net, catches you in it before you’ve even thought to speak out and then controls you to make you reveal yourself. Once you are revealed, the troll swoops in and plays hack and slash with you, using as much offensive and triggering material as possible all while using the methods of Griefer Trolls to further push fear into you. The energy used dealing with these social engineers is intense. It can be beyond draining to respond to constant bullshit arguments interspersed with triggering and painful images or words. It exhausts a person and it creates fear. Both of these are highly dangerous emotions for a marginalized activist. Not only has the troll silenced us from speaking, the troll has pulled us out of hiding and silenced us even then. The fear is pushed to such an intensity that most of us will train ourselves to not even respond to such grandiose and ridiculous levels of offensive hatred as these trolls spout just to avoid being hit by them. And this means that people can get away with the less intense but still damaging ism and privileged bullshit they normally spout because of the troll.

That’s a pretty horrifying level of effectiveness, wouldn’t you agree? It works in the long term because trolls don’t just seek to quiet us, they literally seek to make permanent wounds.

Italics mine.

I did not blog all weekend, as focused as I was on the troll invasion. Another form of silencing: keeping me preoccupied with their ongoing abusive shit.

The best way to handle trolls is to disengage. Always. And it will be hard to do, obviously. The best trolls will make it extraordinarily hard to pull away from them. They will make you feel like a coward or feel like by backing down they’ll convince everyone of the horrible things they believe. For a marginalized person this is especially painful, because so many people tend to believe the shit the trolls are peddling. But the fact is, fighting a troll is always a losing battle. Invariably.

Trolls are, in the end, energy sink traps. You may see them like an opponent, whom you must fight against, but the moment you strike out even once, you are caught and they will drain you of every drop of vitality and sense of safety you have. It is vital that all activists remember this.

Don’t feed the trolls. Because it is you they’re feasting on.

Advice taken, my friend.

I won't be allowing trolls to hold forth any more on my blog. If you can't be polite and tactful in your comments, you are cordially invited to fuck off. And if you can't BE polite because my words have infuriated you beyond mere civility, post your dissenting opinion on your own blog and link it here; I won't delete a link (unless its obscene or disgusting). But I will delete troll-rudeness and overt hostility. You will not attempt to control me in this way. No.

New sheriff in town.