Apropos of a friend’s IBARW post, I went looking for good links that talk about Cultural Appropriation. For those with no time to read about it on Wikipedia, Cultural Appropriation is the selective adoption of elements of a culture one does not belong to, and is characterized by in some way idealizing what we like about cultures and only hearing/seeing what we want to about them. Often commentators will talk about how appropriators have romanticized parts of the culture and done what they liked or simply ignored the rest. Most folks indigenous to the appropriated culture will see the picking and choosing and observe that the appropriator’s knowledge about the complexities of cultural, political, economic and other factors go unnoticed.

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Of course I’ll also update the metapost.

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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.

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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).

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Interestingly, all of these links were on the first three pages of Google results from the phrase “rachel moss wiscon”

• 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.

So now that most of us know who the troller from WisCon is, what do we do about her?

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Various developments in the saga (actual property of being interesting not guaranteed).

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

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Thing 1: Regarding the troller who took pics of WisCon attendees and contrived to have them posted (unsure whether this was intentional) on Something Awful and mirrored on various Something Awful radical splinter sites (along with sparkling commentary, real names and sometimes also the names of children also in attendance), I was remarking to my sweetie how unlike Geeky Slashdotters the victims behaved. On Slashdot this person would have been treated a lot differently.

In my experience in most Slashdot encounters with slimy people, within a few hours, that person’s identity and contact information is posted to the Slashdot thread. This posting is generally emphatically not posted with any exhortation to do anything with the information, just posted, in full, sometimes with Social Security Numbers and other sensitive information. Geeks seem to feel this evens the score.

Updated: Here’s a good summary link about the person involved in the initial trolling report on Wiscon.

Update 2: 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.

Thing 2: The Telectroscope (official site) reminds me of the giant puppetry exposition that happened around Jules Verne’s birthday (a few years ago?). Like the crashed space vehicle that started one of the puppetry exhibitions, the telectroscope started with some drills coming up out of the ground in London and New York and went from there.