1. 2nd gravlax, 2nd update: The thicker of the two pieces turned out fine with just a thorough rinse. I do think the Charcuterie book’s advice about texture is key here. 1a. Also, I ordered that book from Atomic Pop, so we’ll [...]]]> Various updates, including another about the 2nd gravlax, the letter I wrote to the president, etc.

1. 2nd gravlax, 2nd update: The thicker of the two pieces turned out fine with just a thorough rinse. I do think the Charcuterie book’s advice about texture is key here.
1a. Also, I ordered that book from Atomic Pop, so we’ll see it soon. Also, an order for The Whole Beast, which was not available at the library, came through there and we are both thrilled with and curious to try about 50% – 75% of the recipes in there. It’s definitely not run of the mill food, but mostly has to do with eating offal for which, with respect to organ meats, I already have a passion.

2. Looks like the Administration changed its tune with respect to the VA insurance proposal (about which I wrote a letter to the President). I am pleased to see spokespeople using my vocabulary from my letter. In truth, I think my letter was just part of an onslaught he probably got and was just part of the statistics, but it’s cool to feel like I have a personal effect on it all.

3. I am feeling either content or bored, I can’t tell which. I think more content than bored. I am a little worried about the economy and whether my company will decide I have a job any tomorrow, but whatever, I guess. I mean, my family will pull together like we always do if necessary. Otherwise, gardening is hard work but rewarding (didn’t have to do it in the old house) and work done stays did as Hanne sometimes says. Work proceeds as a daily fight for scarce resources and a daily fight to be heard among a throng of qualified technical experts. I did finish a draft of a 24 page white paper (technical paper) about our Kerberos configuration Friday and have already received a lot of compliments over it. And my boss who is not always effusive about praise has recently been praising me for doing my job well. No speculation as to why this upturn of praise, but I’ll just keep on truckin’ and hope it reminds people that I’m a good, retainable employee.
Honestly given the folks they end up retaining when they lay me off (I’ve been laid off twice in my life so far), I am more and more privately convinced (I mean it is convincing even my lizard brain of this) that choosing who gets laid off is much more a matter of politics and charisma than skills, loyalty and productivity.

4. Facebook: Meh. Twitter: Ew. LinkedIn: Meh. LiveJournal: Good to read, but not so often do I contribute. This blog: Cool. The old social networking MOO: Meh. Activism: Meh (with a side of thinking about writing about it anyway, privately). Not that I necessarily want a more socially exciting life, not that I necessarily don’t want one, but meh. I am feeling like I should have maybe a few more local friends I see regularly, but I am also enjoying having time alone to do me-things at my new home which is quiet and protective even if it’s still in Charm City (note the irony in my voice here).
I should say that I do enjoy Facebook – it’s cool to be hooked up to new and old friends and to know what they’re up to and I update occasionally. But it’s not very compelling for me. Same is true for LinkedIn.

5. I also feel retired. From the circumstances that necessitated my shutting up and leaving the activist circuit for a while. I’ve been through this kind of mental/emotional withdrawal before when I “hung up my spurs” as a vigilante troller type (7 years ago? 10?). Part of this feeling just has to do with where to put the excess energy that used to go outward. I want to put it to some good use, but honestsly I won’t have really withdrawn/retired/left the scene until I figure out something else to put it to, so for now that’s the house, my family, food explorations, etc. Inward instead of outward.

6. Since my post in which I used “loyalty oath”, “witch hunt” and “howling mob”, I am left with a few interesting impressions. (a) Plenty of folks disagreed with me about “loyalty oath” and “howling mob” but I don’t recall getting negative feedback about “witch hunt”. Interesting. (b) “howling mob” is easily taken as being animalistic, and plenty of folks disagree with my usage of it in that post. It wasn’t meant as an animalistic phrase and I can’t find a good etymology that includes an exclusively or explicitly animalistic interpretation/derivation. Wind howls, mobs howl, animals howl. I guess that’s the link (in set mathematics, essentially, though I know what we’re actually talking about here is emotional meaning and understanding), though it’s tenuous. I wonder if there are other phrases that are/were not derived from racist or other power/privilege-bias systems that aren’t okay now. I did see someone discussing “chink in the armor” on the new racism-101 livejournal community as if it were bad (that is not its derivation at all). I think we have to be extra extra extra careful of meanings an possible (mis)interpretations now. Especially me.

Real Live versus “Virtual Life”: I have been on the Internet since very near the beginning.

I have at least been here since before DNS – when you had to know IP addresses of servers you used by yourself and keep track of them yourself.

I have also been here since before [...]]]> Let me get to the second part first.

Real Live versus “Virtual Life”:
I have been on the Internet since very near the beginning.

I have at least been here since before DNS – when you had to know IP addresses of servers you used by yourself and keep track of them yourself.

I have also been here since before Bitnet. Bitnet was the e-mail addressing/protocol wave of the future that we still use today (i.e. malcolm.gin@gmail.com). When I started, we used UUCP, where you had to know the path your e-mail would take and you had to specify each e-mail host in turn along the path from you to your intended recipient in the address field (i.e. zeppo!harpo!cbosg!!ucbvax!malcolm).

I have also been here since when teleprinter (or TTY) terminals were the kinds that typed out your “screen” on a continuous feed of paper.

I remember when there was gopher, which was before HTTP and was more like endlessly interlinking dmoz directories. I remember Trumpet and other SOCK stacks. I remember the first Mozilla, I remember AOL’s browser, I remember older software and things that made the Internet go than many of you do.

Why do I say all this? I am (almost) 40 years old, and granted I did start early (my preteens), when I came into the Internet, it was already Real Life for me and for most of the other people already there. They used it for business and research and it was a small community of folks who found that posting on the USENET or sending an e-mail was easier to do than phone or write postal mail to someone they needed to talk to.

When I took the Internet and telnetted to MOOs, those were also already Real Life for me. The Internet has always been, for me, Real Life.

Now to trolling.

Trolling:
If you are going to troll me here or in Real Life, keep in mind that here, the Internet, is already Real Life for me.

If I call your boss or your HR department or if I forward your crap you were stupid enough to put in writing and send to me over the Internet (thus violating interstate telecommunications laws), to the FBI or to your ISP, I will have done so because you used a Real Life communications device to send me a threatening or harassing message.

In my experience of the Internet, the Internet is not a playground. It is not a get out of jail free place where you can be a fucking idiot and expect to get off scot-free. There are no grace periods. There are no free shots. My Internet, which I grew up with, is a telecommunications device, just like a phone, just like a written letter, just like a telegram. It’s a communications medium whereby you and I talk to each other.

This blog is a personal diary I share with the public or with selected interested people. The web site that hosts it is like my business card.

My other blog is a place where I put technical stuff I (or my coworkers) need to refer to about the technical stuff we do at work.

The LiveJournal I have is a place where it’s important to be a good representation of who I really am in Real Life (because it is a telecomm extension of Real Life).

My avatar on Second Life is similarly a (more abstract) depiction of me (though it’s easier to wear costumes).

Who am I on the Internet? The same person as who I am in Real Life. That’s because the Internet, to me, is Real Life.

And I will treat it as such even if you may disagree. So consider this your fair warning.

Links:

Also, because I am linking to troller or almost-troller posts, let me remind the unwary reader/commenter about my policy on trolling on this journal (from the About [...]]]> As an archivist in this effort, I’m still taking the trouble. Otherwise, I think I would have quit by now. Anyhow, I’m posting new as well as updating the metapost.

Also, because I am linking to troller or almost-troller posts, let me remind the unwary reader/commenter about my policy on trolling on this journal (from the About page):

Generally I just ignore trollers, but on this journal it’s trivial to delete comments, and if you do troll me, it had better have some value. Be amusing or insightful or whatever. If you can’t be amusing or insightful and you troll me, your comment’s going in the trash. Consider this your fair warning.

Links:

• A Secret Chord: WisCon and Rachel Moss
• ~366 Megahertz: Evil Rachel Moss and Okay, Rachel Moss *Is* Kinda Wacky (this appears to be a politically conservative blog)
• There is now a rachel-moss tag on wordpress.org
• Modern Mitzvot: Rachel Moss
• LJ coffeeandink: Tempest on the Rachel Moss/Something Awful imbroglio
• Jennifer Pelland: Rachel Moss, asshole
• Blogging While Feminist/Plan(s)feminist: Rachel Moss and WisCon
• ocker zeal: Reblogging: Rachel Moss, Mark Pesce + others
• LJ jlassen: Rachel Moss is a bad person
• LJ mucking: Another reaction to Rachel Moss
• The Sable Verity: Rachel Moss: WTF Award Recipient, per the Angry Black Woman (Looks like a reposting of the Angry Black Woman’s blog post from prior with a little bit of intro)
  
• Kuro5hin: Wiscon – SA/SASS Drama (warning: unkind wording from a non-sympathetic source, including patently hostile, kneejerk comments)
• Bastante Already: Rachel Moss and “Women with a fear of fat, hate fat. Period.” (there’s potential in this post for nasty triggering reading – it’s about someone with a history of EDs deconstructing how this kerfuffle and attendant language hakes her feel, and she’s not wholly fat friendly, though she is definitely careful and respectful)
• My Fat Spouse – some discussion of Rachel Moss/Wiscon (another site with a philosophy different from my own, so be careful)
• The Isthmus – The Daily Page – The Forum | Madison, Wisconsin: File Under Bizarre: That WisCon “fat hate” blogger (discussion starts out sympathetic to fat acceptance, but there are one or two SASS/Moss supporters in there)
• LJ seperis: this is not a test case
• LJ wombat-socho: more control and discipline, plz

I am thinking that’s probably it, but please feel free to let me know if anything’s forgotten. This is six to eight pages out from both simply “rachel moss” and also “rachel moss wiscon” in Google Web Search.

I’ll add more here if any more appears on my radar (as well probably in an additional post).

The WisCon 32 trolling [...]]]> This post is for convenience of people still coming to the scene and wanting to know what happened, and because at the tail end of discussion, I just got a trackback from the Body Impolitic blog.

I’ll add more here if any more appears on my radar (as well probably in an additional post).

The WisCon 32 trolling prize goes to…. Rachel Moss of the Graduate Student Program (Inorganic Chemistry) University of Wisconsin. Among these links you can find more info about her, including, probably, her last known e-mail address. As others and I have remarked in the past few days, this is what happens when you unsuccessfully troll folks. They out you.

Anyhow, to avoid having you jump through two hoops to each link I provide, I’ll just copy/paste the linkings I did over the past few days.

May 28th: Things 1 and 2:

• …a good summary link about the person involved in the initial trolling report on Wiscon.
• Apparently the troller has had previous issues with bulimia and anorexia, which inspired badgerbag to post a fairly sympathetic post about the troller’s behavior and deeds regarding WisCon 32. Interesting reading both in the post itself as well as in its comments.

May 28th: More interesting coverage on the WisCon troller (includes advice from me to the troller about underestimating your targets and un-heartfelt apologies):

• Jezebel (more interesting for the comments than for the original article)
• Angry Black Woman is really pissed off (reader comments also interesting)
• Troller herself, said recently to be sorry, is not (unfortunately both links I intended to link to are now dead/screened). But I can attest to reading one comment where she appeared to sort of apologize (in that way people do when they don’t really mean it but someone is making them) and then about a day later she posted a longer comment where she made it clear that she wasn’t sorry at all, except maybe about involving someone’s child in her original Something Awful post and comments.
• A response to being targeted, by one of the targeted.
• Later comments (starting around 30 and going down the page) in the widely-linked Alas, a blog blog entry, where Kate Harding of Shapely Prose and Sheana of the Seeworthy blog post comments, are interesting in that at least Sheana seems to think the troller was quite intentional about her betrayal of trust built with Sheana in a similar fashion, sort of befriending in order to get troll-worthy material.
• At Seeworthy, there’s a post that includes the troller’s e-mail address. Go geeks!

May 29th: But what do you do about trollers? (own post)

May 29th: More coverage of the WisCon troller:

• A post on SeeLight goes into a discussion of fat politics and the author’s emotional reaction.
• Seeking Avalon comes down in support of Angry Black Woman.
• Almost Diamonds rounds up articles read by this post’s author.
• popelizbet on LiveJournal talks about our troller in context with Mallorie Gareis’ passing.
• David Anthony Durham talks a little bit about the incident, and talks about Angry Black Woman’s post.

May 31st: this post:

• WisCon Troll Attacks: A First-Person Experience

May 31st: More WisCon Troller links coming in:

• A Secret Chord: WisCon and Rachel Moss
• ~366 Megahertz: Evil Rachel Moss and Okay, Rachel Moss *Is* Kinda Wacky (this appears to be a politically conservative blog)
• There is now a rachel-moss tag on wordpress.org
• Modern Mitzvot: Rachel Moss
• LJ coffeeandink: Tempest on the Rachel Moss/Something Awful imbroglio
• Jennifer Pelland: Rachel Moss, asshole
• Blogging While Feminist/Plan(s)feminist: Rachel Moss and WisCon
• ocker zeal: Reblogging: Rachel Moss, Mark Pesce + others
• LJ jlassen: Rachel Moss is a bad person
• LJ mucking: Another reaction to Rachel Moss
• The Sable Verity: Rachel Moss: WTF Award Recipient, per the Angry Black Woman (Looks like a reposting of the Angry Black Woman’s blog post from prior with a little bit of intro)
  
• Kuro5hin: Wiscon – SA/SASS Drama (warning: unkind wording from a non-sympathetic source, including patently hostile, kneejerk comments)
• Bastante Already: Rachel Moss and “Women with a fear of fat, hate fat. Period.” (there’s potential in this post for nasty triggering reading – it’s about someone with a history of EDs deconstructing how this kerfuffle and attendant language hakes her feel, and she’s not wholly fat friendly, though she is definitely careful and respectful)
• My Fat Spouse – some discussion of Rachel Moss/Wiscon (another site with a philosophy different from my own, so be careful)
• The Isthmus – The Daily Page – The Forum | Madison, Wisconsin: File Under Bizarre: That WisCon “fat hate” blogger (discussion starts out sympathetic to fat acceptance, but there are one or two SASS/Moss supporters in there)
• LJ seperis: this is not a test case
• LJ wombat-socho: more control and discipline, plz

June 1st: Yet More WisCon/Rachel Moss activity

• Not Be Televised: Newton’s Third
• spacedcowgirl: Downfall of humanity staved off temporarily
• Some links from the Amptoons post of previous examples of Rachel Moss’s trolling/griefing (warning, some of these are Google cached and may not last):
  • hypersurfaces posts to LJ 4chan about comment trolling
  • hypersurfaces posts what looks like a fake poll to LJ 4chan (as an example?)
  • hypersurfaces comments “helpfully” about how to bypass bannings and leave nuisances behind for other users at public libraries
• Queer Geek Theory, and Related Wanderings: WisCon, fanacademia and internet drama
• Feminocracy: Guiltless snacks
• Fat Girl on a Date: Non-Headless Fatty
• Somehow missed: The-F-Word: Putting heads back on the headless fatties
• wickedqueen.net: And lo, I have returned, with the startling news that there is asshaberdashery on the internets.
• (NSFW) Viviane’s Sex Carnival: links for 2008-05-31
• A Flight of Ideas: The personal touch of Rachel Moss

My first question to you is, what about “don’t feed the trolls” did you not understand?

Probably the worst way is to respond with hurt and rage. This is what trolls are in the game for. If you do [...]]]> So now that most of us know who the troller from WisCon is, what do we do about her?

My first question to you is, what about “don’t feed the trolls” did you not understand?

Probably the worst way is to respond with hurt and rage. This is what trolls are in the game for. If you do this, the troll can make more fun of you and the cycle continues.

Another poor way is to respond in kind. Again this perpetuates the dynamic and encourages more interaction while simultaneously corrupting your own side and your moral and ethical advantages.

A good general way to respond is in a way they aren’t hoping you will (Angry Black Woman has suggested an approach of spamming the SASS board with cute pictures of kitties and nice, sweet things). Honestly, this would be a good one if we knew none of the cute-spammers would ever get angry and knew no one would ever stoop to anger or revenge on the side of the righteous. Unfortunately, because we’re human and on their battleground, it’s not likely to go well for us if we do carry out this plan – inevitably we’ll get caught up in the bad feelings and stop doing the right thing.

Another possibility, which grants a moral advantage, is the way badgerbag responded, which was deconstructionist and in sympathy. badgerbag responded by saying, “Hey, this person must be pretty fucked up.” (paraphrase), then did research and found evidence that our troller seems to have some eating disorder-related problems, and then exhorted us to instead try to respond to this person with sympathy, and to interpret her trolling as cries for help. The advantage here is that we move from a moral high-ground and the ethics of this approach are pretty sound. Unfortunately, like the cute-spamming strategy, it puts us within reach and should things go south again, builds in us the possibility to resent and to rage about how it went, despite all the good faith effort we put into trying to build bridges.

I think if I were moved to respond in some way, I would probably choose a strictly formal legal route with hired legal representatives. It is a little trollish to respond with legal measures, but it kind of evens the playing field and from the tactical standpoint, any trollish aggression after the first legal move actually digs holes much more deeply and more quickly for the opposing side (actually, until they realize you’re absolutely serious, you’re likely to get more bullshit than less, which will be to your advantage in the long haul, which is one of the reasons I’d choose this route). Legal responses are formal and impersonal, which helps average out any stupidity and cushions us from the corrupting influences of getting too involved. Also, they are generally ethically sound (as long as you’re careful). Morally sound? I’m not quite sure. I think it may depend on your religion.

But I think the absolute best way to respond is very satisfying in a Zen sense, if you can manage it. You simply don’t. You do not give the troller any notice, credit or attention. You just get on with life and act like they aren’t even there (or even better, naturally exhibit complete ignorance of their existence, because you don’t care). Why does this work so well? Because the troll craves attention, the troll craves a reaction, the troll wants to be noticed. Fundamentally, not noticing, not caring, not responding is the best reaction because they get absolutely no feedback at all, and will eventually go elsewhere for their trollish pleasure.

Extra bonus advice for our young, foolish troller included at end!