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Hate mongering and social activism
Aug. 14th, 2009 12:14 amI have discovered something interwebz and I am going to attempt to share it with you.
I have seen a lot of social activism on the net lately. I have seen a lot of posts pointing to the failure of other bloggers in being accepting and inclusive of race, sexual orientation, and all such other differences.
I have seen a lot of blog storming, trolling, and fight picking on the internetz lately, from my friends who are socially active. In the name of getting their point heard, in the name of quelling the homophobic, misogynest, closed minded, racist and otherwise conflicting beliefed people in the world.
My friends, and yes I count myself among you, we have boarded the FailBoat(TM).
If you had a post supporting freedom of sexual and gender expression, or race inclusion, or whatever else and someone of conflicting opinion orginized all their friends to comment and disagree with your post, flame and otherwise go looking for a fight you would call them badly behaved, but by and large I saw a lot of people I respect do just that today. Their justification was that the fag-hater was /wrong/ so it was okay to flame him.
It isn't okay.
But worse than it not being okay, it is counter productive.
How many links do you think went to that man's blog today? How much attention did he get for behaving badly? How much publicity did he get on the net for saying homosexuality is wrong and dirty? How many of you bitched on your journals with a link, or on his journal with a comment?
People like attention on the interwebz and today you gave it to him.
I am tired of seeing the cat-fights on the web between people too deeply set in their beliefs to even hear one another.
So a SF writer thinks gays are bad and you don't agree. I can think of two or three things you could do with that, none of which would give him attention or publicity.
1) Write to the SyFy network with a letter of support, thanking them for the decision to include more homo-normaity in their programming.
2) Write to this man's publishers/con commitments/ other fiscal relations and inform them that you will not be purchasing his products or attending events he is paid for and point them to his blog. Tell them why you won't support him and why you don't want them to either.
3) Check to make sure his post does not violate any laws or TOS and report him if it does. There are laws against Hate speech and it is a fine line, but check and push that issue.
But please, for the love of God, stop giving him your attention. Stop advertising these people. Think of a way to support what you believe in without having a piss fight on the internet. Enough drama, use that energy to act in support of what you believe so strongly.
At the end of the day he got a lot of attention, a lot of hits and links and many more people know his name today than did yesterday. Of the 800+ comments he got how many do you think the network that /supported/ homosexuality got today, thanking them, encouraging them?
It has been spread far and wide and instead of bolstering what you believe in you have merely firmed his resolve and advertised his point of view and likely gained him support.
Internetz I challenge you to find good things to support. I would love to see RaceWin, QueerWin and GenderWin and posts that don't send your friends to flame, but to thank and support with comments, letters and, of course, our wallets. Tell us who is doing it right so we can keep it going.
I have seen a lot of social activism on the net lately. I have seen a lot of posts pointing to the failure of other bloggers in being accepting and inclusive of race, sexual orientation, and all such other differences.
I have seen a lot of blog storming, trolling, and fight picking on the internetz lately, from my friends who are socially active. In the name of getting their point heard, in the name of quelling the homophobic, misogynest, closed minded, racist and otherwise conflicting beliefed people in the world.
My friends, and yes I count myself among you, we have boarded the FailBoat(TM).
If you had a post supporting freedom of sexual and gender expression, or race inclusion, or whatever else and someone of conflicting opinion orginized all their friends to comment and disagree with your post, flame and otherwise go looking for a fight you would call them badly behaved, but by and large I saw a lot of people I respect do just that today. Their justification was that the fag-hater was /wrong/ so it was okay to flame him.
It isn't okay.
But worse than it not being okay, it is counter productive.
How many links do you think went to that man's blog today? How much attention did he get for behaving badly? How much publicity did he get on the net for saying homosexuality is wrong and dirty? How many of you bitched on your journals with a link, or on his journal with a comment?
People like attention on the interwebz and today you gave it to him.
I am tired of seeing the cat-fights on the web between people too deeply set in their beliefs to even hear one another.
So a SF writer thinks gays are bad and you don't agree. I can think of two or three things you could do with that, none of which would give him attention or publicity.
1) Write to the SyFy network with a letter of support, thanking them for the decision to include more homo-normaity in their programming.
2) Write to this man's publishers/con commitments/ other fiscal relations and inform them that you will not be purchasing his products or attending events he is paid for and point them to his blog. Tell them why you won't support him and why you don't want them to either.
3) Check to make sure his post does not violate any laws or TOS and report him if it does. There are laws against Hate speech and it is a fine line, but check and push that issue.
But please, for the love of God, stop giving him your attention. Stop advertising these people. Think of a way to support what you believe in without having a piss fight on the internet. Enough drama, use that energy to act in support of what you believe so strongly.
At the end of the day he got a lot of attention, a lot of hits and links and many more people know his name today than did yesterday. Of the 800+ comments he got how many do you think the network that /supported/ homosexuality got today, thanking them, encouraging them?
It has been spread far and wide and instead of bolstering what you believe in you have merely firmed his resolve and advertised his point of view and likely gained him support.
Internetz I challenge you to find good things to support. I would love to see RaceWin, QueerWin and GenderWin and posts that don't send your friends to flame, but to thank and support with comments, letters and, of course, our wallets. Tell us who is doing it right so we can keep it going.
