nudge, nudge, wink, wink

I really should let this go . . . but Ingrid - that thinking is dangerous.

Let's say - now this is just one example, there could be many examples, and the point here is not to pick apart the example; it just happens to be the first that comes to mind - let's say that a woman goes into the streets of NYC at 2 am dressed in hardly anything, and sashays along the sidewalk, asking men in cars if they want a "date."

A man in a car says, sure. Then the woman says "nyah nyah nyah, I was only kidding," and sticks her tongue out at him. Whereupon the man gets out of the car, grabs her arm, drags her into the car, rapes her, and tosses $20 at her.

Yes, she asked for it. No, he shouldn't have raped her. See what I mean?

Moreover, which is the worse crime? To my mind it is the man who did the rape.

(Bear in mind that whenever I use an analogy I do NOT mean to equate acts to each other. So don't anybody give me some sort of lecture about how rape is serious and not at all the same thing as what we're talking about here, because I know that. In other words, if A - B = C, where A is one act and B is another and C is an undesired outcome; and if D - E also equals C, where C equals the same undesired outcome, it does not follow that A must equal D or B must equal E. 5-2 = 3; 11-8 = 3, but 5 does not equal 11, and need not be equal to eleven for the formula to be true and applicable in both cases.)

It is irrelevant whether or not a person "brought it on himself" when the crime of the other person/people is what is on trial. In my posts, the other people have always been the subject, not the person who supposedly brought it on himself. That would be a different subject, and I'm not so blind as to not see - have ALWAYS seen, in fact, for the past two years - what the person has done that others find provoking. That, however, is irrelevant to how others decide - CHOOSE - to act.

coco

How is it irrelevant. That's like saying one person jaywalks, and the other murders a child. When seeing how the public reacts to both crimes..you say that their crimes have no relevance to how people react to them.

You can't cut out the cause and just focus on the effect. They go hand in hand.

Logic, David.

coco

Ah, the rhetoric of the 00's. Simply repeating that there is some sort of mob action, despite all the arguments to the contrary doesn't make it true. Well, maybe for the politicians, but they get air-time.

Let's take a completely non-SL example. Rush Limbaugh had opinions, strong ones - I won't even say if they were right-thinking or wrong-headed because that isn't relevant. Some people listened to his fervent opinions, some because they agreed with him, others because they found them preposterously amusing. Regardless, his presentation was intentionally polarizing because it made good theatre.

That Mr. Limbaugh was pretty widely reviled by the mainstream media could either be viewed as a vast left-wing (liberal, biased, jewish, rosicrucian, take your pick) conspiracy or more simply that he just pissed people off - rather intentionally.

There is no mob, there is no FIC protecting some unspecified agenda, there are just a bunch of people (who rarely agree on much) that have drawn their own, independent conclusions that a certain poster is an inflamatory ass.

One more time, with feeling: There is no mob, there is no FIC protecting some unspecified agenda, there are just a bunch of people (who rarely agree on much) that have drawn their own, independent conclusions that a certain poster is an inflamatory ass.

Yes..that is what I was trying to show you. Glad you figured it out

It is worth repeating.

Coco, I think that analogy may not be the most accurate one. Let’s try a different one.

Lets imagine a person moves into a community. This person quick tells the local baker how he is baking all wrong, how he is stupid and that most of the community is stupid. Now the baker doesn't like this person.

Our new resident then tells the butcher that his business has a stranglehold on the community, that his prices are too high, and that the reasoning behind the prices are diabolical in nature. Now the butcher doesn't like this person.

He goes to the candlestick maker, the police chief, the farmer, etc ... tells them they are evil, dumb, greedy, unfair. And each one of them starts to dislike this individual.

This goes on and on...person by person, until our new resident suddenly notices that there seems to be a lot of people that do not like him! They even IGNORE him! Rather than believe that he pissed off ALL these people on an individual basis, he turns to the town's seamstress. He then claims she has been holding secret meetings at the local lodge to conspire against him and shun him.

It was later revealed that the seamstress never actually set foot in the lodge, and that the lodge seldom even talks about this person. But our new resident didn't even break stride at this revelation... and continues to insist that the widespread opposition is an organized centralized effort rather than a simple matter of him being a bad person to everybody he sees.

The End.

Hey was this actually even an analogy?

Does this mean you are skipping the meeting tonight, Mal? You were responsible for bringing the (F)rosty (I)ced (C)upcakes.

Coco, it's not irrelevant.

If you put a quarter in the gumball machine you're likely to get a nice gumball.

If you kick the machine in hopes of getting some gum, and you do get some, it's likely to have rolled on the floor and/or get bent out of it's spherical shape a little bit.

I appreciate that you gave a disclaimer about the fact that people responding to negativity with negativity does not equal your rape scenario. I must ask then, why that particular choice of scenario? For inflated impact? There are no laws being broken here. It's an open forum and if one chooses to respond to hostilty with a less than sterling demeanor, so what? You reap what you sow, or as my Grandpa liked to say, "every wrong you impart on someone else will come back and roost on your own doorstep some day."

Tu toque?

Deflect the blame from the person who initiates hostility by pointing out that the respondants are "guilty" as well? This is simply ignoring the root cause and redirecting.

Sorry, I will never buy that. That is like saying that because one country attacks another unprovoked, that the attacked are just as guilty for defending themselves.

Offense does not equal defense no matter how many hairs you split.

I think the word you are looking for is "erotic".

I will pass THAT version of the story to you in private. "The seamstress and the candlestick maker make some very curious and intriguing candlesticks. "

I dont think so. As a newer person in the community even I can see this is exactly what happened.

Panda my new nickname for you will be BUNKY.

Cups and cakes,
Cups and cakes...
Im so full my tummy aches.

Let's keep on topic. My remarks were about this specific situation and no other. My thinking isn't dangerous, I do not condonne rape... your analogy is a tad ridiculous.

Like doormats you mean. Yeah that's normal.

Where to begin.



There was mob behavior and there was a mob. You want to define a mob as someone who meets and plots in advance. I don't know if they did or not, but that is irrelevant. There WAS mob behavior; there was a mob behaving that way.

I objected to the mob behavior - what I would call "piling on" - originally more from a position of etiquette, really. That it is unseemly behavior that reflects more on the pilers- on than it does on anything the pilee could have done.

When it reached the point of a call for an organized shunning, and people joining that call, then it became even more dangerous. That people want now to backtrack from the shunning and minimize its importance - or that many never approved of it in the first place - doesn't negate the fact that it represented the pinnacle of the movement to batter an individual into submission, and mob behavior at it's worst - or at least, at the worst it can be in a forum.



David, in the case of the jaywalker and the child-murderer, both people have committed crimes. Breaking law = crime. Breaking law being a broad field, with some crimes more egregious than others. Public reaction to these crimes is, of course, commiserate with the nature of said crime. In neither case, though, should mob behavior be tolerated.

It has never, for me, been a matter of "understanding" why people might react to a certain individual so vociferously. It has always been, for me, a matter of objecting to mob mentality, mob behavior, calls for shunning.

Prior to that, it was a matter of objecting any sort of cruel piling on, much for the same reason I would object to all the kids in the schoolyard jumping in together to pummel the most unpopular kid, regardless of what he himself might have done to cause unpopularity with a large percentage of the other kids.

Would you not step in as well?



I understand your analogy, Amy. But, again, "understanding" the desire to respond by turning on the new resident en masse isn't the problem. The point is, the baker and everyone else don't have to do that, shouldn't do that, and debase themselves by doing that - and engage in outright cruelty by doing that. There is no need to turn on the new resident with mob behavior.

Ingrid is right that two wrongs don't make a right. But my point is, the existance of one wrong doesn't rationalize or justify the committing of a second wrong.

And I am further saying that the second wrong is far more eggregious than the first wrong.

Particularly when it is multiplied by the fact that a whole BUNCH of people are committing the second wrong, whereas only one person is committing the first.



Nolan, that particular choice of scenario, as I said, was just the first thing that popped into my head.

And the reason it popped into my head was the similarity: Fake hooker "asks for it," frustrated and humilated John delivers it, and breaks the law in doing so. Understandable - maybe. Justified - no.

Mob behavior in a forum, singling out a poster and piling on him with personal attacks, attempting to drive him away, attempting to influence other residents to do the same - all and any of those are against forum rules, and therefore are attempts to take the law in one's own hands. "Well, maybe he doesn't break any rules, so THEY can't get rid of him, but we certainly can try!"

Mainly, though, it's just not right. Mob behavior is always uncivilized and unseemly, and lowers the person who engages in it. Each of us can tell, for ourselves, whether something is crossing that line or not.

I understand cause and effect. I would certainly understand why the frustrated John might do what he did. It is not a matter of being sympathetic, or understanding cause and effect.

But what the frustrated John did was a wrong in and of itself, and in my opinion, a far greater wrong. Mob behavior against a particular poster is a wrong in and of itself, and in my opinion, a far greater wrong.

And what does "tu torque" mean?

The current situation is better. People are less hot-headed, and I notice everyone is trying to get along better, and listen to each other respectfully, even if they feel they are not listened to respectfully.

However, this thread's very existance is an example of how the mob mentality - "let's pick on this person" - lingers. And that's why I've taken pains to explain my position here, despite Foolish Frost's pointing out that we are all still wallowing like pigs in the mud while Prok himself has taken off for better pursuits.

Please don't mistake my stand on this - which does not change - for lack of sympathy for you. But since I can let some things roll off my back - including plenty from Prok - I figure you can, too, without thinking you have to resort to mob mentality to "do something about it" or feeling that you have to keep the campaign alive in threads like this.

My hope is that we won't have to revisit this issue again.

coco

But that's just it. You assume mob mentality because a bunch of folks share the same opinion. I DO disagree with the call to mass-shun. However, folks "piling on" in their reaction to his posts is NOT mob mentality, but merely people reaching the same, and logical conclusion and reaction to his posts. In those occasions, no mob is meeting outside the jailhouse demanding alynching. Folks are just responding to being insulted and responding to the arrogance and disdain shown by the poster. What part of that don't you get?

If someone walks up to you and calls you a horrible name..then walks past you to the next person and insults them..then walks to the next person and spits on them..then on and on...is it mob mentailty because you all share an instant dislike for that person? No..it's called a justifiable and understandable reaction.

I will agree with you on the calls for mass-shunning, because it is trying to influence others opinions, but will never agree with you that he didn't get exactly what he was asking for as far as people's individual responses toward him.

I get it, David, I really do. I just think that "line" I talked about earlier, between natural individual reaction and purposeful piling on, was crossed, and often. You don't, I do. We aren't going to convince each other.

coco

Well I see both of your points!

Now kiss and make up and take lots of pictures!

I would like to "ditto" everything David said. I also didn't participate in (and I certainly didn't organize) the shunning. But I would also like us to keep the whole shunning thing in perspective for what it was. 48 hours of ignoring someone.

For the record, if any enemies of Aimee are faced with the decision to either:

1. Fabricate negative stories about me or anything I have done PLUS haunt every blog where my image appears with angry tirades...

or

2. Shun me for 48 hours.

Please please please pick the shunning.

I don't agree with shunning, and I don't like mob mentalities. I do think mob mentalities sometimes exist on these forums; I've seen it.

However, it would be a mistake to equate a mob mentality with numerous people who have had difficult encounters with the same person, for similar reasons, coming to similar conclusions.

What's important is that these people do not, after discovering their similar experiences, become a mob. It's difficult to guard against that when the same person continues to goad. There's a natural safety in numbers; an old human instinct.

Overall, it's easy to be the person in question. It's difficult for the people who react to him to keep it right. Give them credit, not him.

If I were LL I would simply perma-ban that account and IP address.
Problem solved.