I guess the source of this long rant is basically examining this blog as a whole, juxtaposed with current events such as the London Riots, as well as several personal observations of people in the area in which I live.
I'm left utterly fucking flabbergasted as to where we have gone as a culture, especially in the last 3-5 years or so.
I guess it starts with a lot of the stuff that I saw in the piece on Internet trolls I've referred to numerous times from the New York Times Magazine.
Well, since that 2008 piece, it's clear that the “Malwebolence” mentioned there has gotten far worse.
“Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” – one anonymous respondent to the interviewer for the piece.
… completely forgetting that there are people who will DIE to your fucking “Lulz”.
(Or is that the point? A death is worth a trillion “Lulz” to you???)
Another incident noted in the Magazine article:
“Sherrod DeGrippo, a 28-year-old Atlanta native who goes by the name Girlvinyl, runs Encyclopedia Dramatica, the online troll archive [on which I do have an article about me]. In 2006, DeGrippo received an e-mail message from a well-known band of trolls, demanding that she edit the entry about them on the Encyclopedia Dramatica site. She refused. Within hours, the aggrieved trolls hit the phones, bombarding her apartment with taxis, pizzas, escorts and threats of rape and violent death. DeGrippo, alone and terrified, sought counsel from a powerful friend.”
She called a person who had this kind of an idea as to what made him tick for stating it out loud after his day-trading went splat for five figures: “The question we have to answer is: How do we kill four [billion] of the world’s six billion people in the most just way possible?”
The next year, he gave a talk to a convention for hackers in San Diego, high on drugs – one which got him in a lot of trouble with the Feds!
But, at the end of the day, the article tends to answer it's own questions about where a lot of this comes from:
“Why inflict anguish on a helpless stranger? It’s tempting to blame technology, which increases the range of our communications while dehumanizing the recipients. Cases like An Hero and Megan Meier presumably wouldn’t happen if the perpetrators had to deliver their messages in person. But while technology reduces the social barriers that keep us from bedeviling strangers, it does not explain the initial trolling impulse. This seems to spring from something ugly — a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that’s a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There’s a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well.”
Well, that destructive urge has only gotten far worse, especially in the last 3-5 years. It is one of the main things I've railed about in- and out-of-game on FFXI, and it applies not only there, but elsewhere on the Internet, as well as in “real life”.
That destructive urge has been cultivated and encouraged in so many people seen as “privileged”, and, more and more, is being loosed in events such as The London Riots and black-on-white feral thuglet violence in cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and countless other examples of the early vestiges of what will be a Second American Civil War.
(Whether it will be a Class, Race, or Generational War is unclear.)
This is basically the kind of attitude that we have to deal with. This is from a “man” named Jason Fortuny, and is an attitude I've seen countless times in all different fora, not just on the Internet (so it is certainly not unique to him):
“Of course, none of these methods will be fail-safe as long as individuals like Fortuny construe human welfare the way they do. As we discussed the epilepsy hack, I asked Fortuny whether a person is obliged to give food to a starving stranger. No, Fortuny argued; no one is entitled to our sympathy or empathy. We can choose to give or withhold them as we see fit. “I can’t push you into the fire,” he explained, “but I can look at you while you’re burning in the fire and not be required to help.””
If this is the case, then complete “pwnership”, complete OWNERSHIP of one's entire existence is the final goal. Effectively, “What's Yours is MINE!”
“I” can tell “you”:
Where you can go level
What NM's you cannot ever hope to have an opportunity to kill
That you will always suck and never gain the acceptance of the playerbase, so please get off our fucking game
When you will be allowed peace and quiet
Where you can be allowed peace and quiet (Often read: at no time and no place!)
Whether you'll have a place to live when I'm done with you
Whether you can basically live at all...
The new methodology in life means these little fucking thuglets can control your gaming experience, your Internet experience, what is considered “true” (just try editing Wikipedia once or twice for a good example of that), all the way up to your livelihood and your very life itself!
They want to own your character, computer, game, livelihood, and life!
They can go arson down a 150-year old furniture store in London, taking countless people out of their livelihoods. Two people were arrested (one was 15!!), and, if convicted, I would hope they fucking fry!!
They can do the same to a century-old pub, to the same effect!
And the fact is that THESE FUCKERS DO NOT CARE ANYMORE!
Their lives, absent the abject nihilistic destruction of all around them to make them the most important or most socially preferred in their circles, are OVER. And that's just as prevalent in prominent game-cheaters as it is here – the only difference is the scope of their damage!
And the only way that's going to be answered is in kind. The only way it's going to be answered is to understand that there is no way this is going to end until these people are violently held to account for their actions (and if the law can't do it, then Doug Llewelyn be damned!), else they will win.
Why will simply "taking back London with brooms" not work? Because there's more and more of them every day, and not all of them are insane/nihilistic rioters out to jack every piece of electronics and effectively leave London in fear because they are in control of when the next set of unrest sweeps England!
(An unrest which has already claimed a national-team soccer match and several tournament and league matches, as well as countless millions in damage, including a block-long Sony distribution plant – burned to the ground.)
In FFXI, it is now common belief that the cheating players are the ONLY REASON the game still exists in August of 2011!
In Magic the Gathering, it's believed the cheating players there were the only reason the game took off to the levels of a Professional Tour, with the likes of Mike Long and his ilk stinking up the joint.
That, as more and more people believe either they or a significant amount of the population have no further hope of improvement, that this kind of terrorist action (or the feral black-on-white “wilding” becoming more and more prevalent in the United States' cities) is the only means of advancement, socially or otherwise!
And the thing is: You can no longer control what's going to happen next. They glorify it, they encourage it, they believe it's the only way to play/live/operate (depending on scope).
If you don't want your ass jumped, they get to tell you where to go, how much to carry, etc. and so forth.
This is no longer just Vana'diel, people – this is real life, and it's the same – fucking – shit.
In fact, if they can drive you to a fetal position in the corner of your apartment, then so much the better to them – not only do they get “Lulz”, but you're an easier target when they start kicking down the fucking doors and finishing the fucking job they started!
I said that, the day I got arrested was the last day of my life that I had something to live for. In fact, on my Twitter, on the 13th anniversary of said day, I said:
“Just "celebrated" 13 years of having nothing but stuff to live _against_.”
And that's just it. I finally got off the canvas at one point, recognizing I would never gain the acceptability of this world, and basically told a lot of it to go fuck off.
Not only do I have nothing to live for, but trying to find something which would be enough to do so with would land me in prison. (One of the reasons I believe I'm heading there in rather short order!)
But if it comes down to what I think it's going to come down to, then the pressures have been increased – and not just from the trolls...
But from types like Icanhasbailout from The Market Ticker Forums who posted the following call to arms on the site:
“You guys do realize that simply declaring war and eradicating the dependent class is the most efficient and honest method of achieving the end goal, and perhaps the only one which has a real-world chance of working. This may end up being the de facto solution simply by virtue of needing to do it to defend ourselves from the rampaging avarice of the FSA once their free **** is no longer being provided to them. A great number of these people are genetically defective and there is no hope for them or their progeny to ever become productive outside of the formal reinstitution of slavery (and even then it would be marginal productivity at best).”
Those with no empathy for another must come to a similar conclusion – and many do.
If you don't want to get your hands dirty, people, hunker down and stay down and hope they don't come for you.
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