For those of you who believe Wil's post, what actually happened was he got bofa'd and kind of went crazy. He started harassing other users, reporting anyone who said anything remotely negative about him, and going to the point of digging through users' old posts to find anything negative they might have said in the past, and when instances started blocking him, he used alt accounts (or assistants) to continue to harass people on those instances (this happened on at least one instance I know of, and I'm assuming it happened on others). He wasn't the victim of an internet mob, the people reporting him were doing so with very good reason.
And to put the cherry on this awful sundae, a lot of the people he was harassing were trans people, the very people that he caused such terrible problems for with his Twitter blocklist.
Wil is kind of notorious for freaking out on social media - it really doesn't seem like he has the temperament required to be a celebrity online. Remember when he wrote upwards of a thousand words complaining about the time someone made a lego minifigure of his character on star trek with a crying face?
Why do people like Wil blame Twitter for Alex Jones & Donald Trump? The only people being bothered are the people that want to be bothered. You can 1. Block people you don't want to see 2. Ignore it. Twitter is not forcing you to view pages you don't like. There are entire other extremely large groups of people that enjoy this stuff and are completely harmless.
Let’s say a popular HN user with a large following (let’s call them “Dex”) starts a campaign on HN to harass you. They start posting lies all over the site, claiming you hit puppies, spit in the coffee of blond people, and talk at the theatre. Dex has rabid fans that take his word over their own research, and those users start to hate you. You start getting hate messages, and they eventually dox you.
> The only people being bothered are the people that want to be bothered.
You don’t want to be bothered by Dex’s actions. You may not even have a clue who he is. Yet you are being bothered by his actions and those of his fans.
> You can 1. Block people you don't want to see
You can’t block people in real life, when they start sending packages of excrement to your house or start swatting you.
> 2. Ignore it.
Pretty hard to ignore AFK harassment that is targeting you and your family in your own home.
> Twitter is not forcing you to view pages you don't like.
By now it should be clear it’s not about being offended by words you don’t want to see.
> Why do people like Wil blame Twitter for Alex Jones & Donald Trump?
In our parallel, let’s say you and a large portion of HN know Dex’s actions are spiteful and based on lies with the sole objective of harming you, and you can prove it. Yet HN does nothing. Instead, it keeps making excuses as to why they won’t silence Dex, thus allowing the attacks on your person to continue.
What stops someone you blocked from asking their followers to harass you? Should it be possible to force someone to spend several hours a day blocking people?
It's honestly not surprising that someone so divisive in the start of the post (twitter being right-wing, "Shitler", etc) would attract a lot of problems. The guy is clearly a political troll so he's going to be poison to any community he joins where he posts like that.
Even though I am in favor of social justice and equal rights and opportunity for all no matter what race, sexuality, gender you are, these social justice people that take things over the top are just as toxic as the other side. They poison communities just as much.
Sorry, my bad. I just couldn't believe someone could be so dismissive of someone else's experience -- I wasn't sure if I was reading a genuine opinion or a parody. I guess I fell for that myself.
FWIW, it's a genuine opinion with samples right from the same blog post. Also, I recommend you read this which seems to corroborate his general disposition on social media: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18011144
Thanks -- that was a very informative link. It sounds like an awful situation for everyone.
I genuinely didn't mean to put down your original comment. I've been badly misunderstood in the past, and have reacted poorly to those reactions, so I don't easily discard others' experiences when I see similar things. What Wil did and what he wrote in his blog post aren't wholly incompatible in my mind, and it sounds like everyone came away from this hurting.
I see that my comment, too, could easily be taken hurtfully, and I'm sorry for that. I meant only what was at the surface: I couldn't tell whether it was a parody or not. Clearly, not -- and now I understand where you were coming from. So, thank you :)
This is the best example of live by the sword die by the sword [0].
Pay for play is a huge issue in journalism, that he was mocking poor white guys with an interest in gaming is very dickish. Gaming is by far the largest cultural industry [1], more important than Hollywood.
I'm more worried about the billionaires buying failing old newspapers and using them to spout whatever ideology gives them the lowest taxes, but that doesn't mean I can't see why someone might care about their hobby being sold out.
