When Social Media Sucks

     These days, it is fairly easy to find the faux-fended among the crowds of people utilizing social media on the Interwebz. It seems to me that some percentage of people who don't agree on the issues are too quick to digitally scream, "Help! Help! I'm being cyber-bullied." Several examples come to my mind rather quickly.

     The most prominent one to me is the case of  biological mother Lori Handrahan who has taken her accusations to social media. She is truly all over the internet making a steadfast case for the idea that a conspiracy of corrupt judges and politicians and child advocacy workers have repeatedly screwed her over. She accuses the child's dad of sexual assaults of the little one. She accuses his lawyer of selling the child off into a network of sexual predators and of having paid trolls. She accuses her detractors of pedophilia. Her parental rights were terminated because of failure to show at court. I have shared what I found elsewhere on this blog. [http://radicalsapphoq.blogspot.com/2013/03/so-whos-abusing-who.html and http://radicalsapphoq.blogspot.com/2013/05/update-on-lori-handrahan.html if you care to read further].

     I follow South Carolina attorney Todd Kincannon, his wife Ashley, and their dog Noodle on a certain social media website. [Uh, NO, I don't do fakebook]. Mr. Kincannon is a Republican-- not a member of the Tea Party as was erroneously stated by one news article recently. He is outspoken. I found his opinions to be worth paying attention to.

     The crazies seem to blast their ways out of the woodwork with alarming regularity. They engage him repeatedly of their own volition. He responds by telling them what he thinks. They don't like what he thinks. They don't engage in any sort of adult meaningful dialogue. They attack him again and again. He responds to their attacks. They whine and call him a troll and a bully and various other epitaphs. Seems to me that this particular set of crazies sign themselves up for what they think of as meanness. I tend to think of them as engaging in mental masturbation.

     As adults, we certainly get to choose who we communicate with. On a social media platform, if I don't care for someone's dialogue then I excuse myself from his or her presence. Simple. Too much heat, get out of the kitchen and all of that. 

     

     The thing is, when it comes to teens and tweens, the solutions are not so simple. Parents, you have an obligation to police your pre-adult offspring. Do that. Move the computer out of the bedrooms and into the dining room or living room. Sign up for the free app that alerts you to what is being said about your child on-line. Teach your children NOT to use their own names on-line, NOT to ever upload their own pictures [or anyone else's for that matter], and NOT to publish any personal information on-line. Teach them NOT to make false accusations against others. Get rid of the cyber cam. No child should have access to one of those, period. If you have to, cancel your kids' access to any social media sites and restrict their usage to looking up information for homework in your presence as you watch them do it. Ground them if that is what it takes. Get rid of their phones, tablets, and the computer if you have to.  Send them to a small school or move the entire family to a place with little to no access to the Net if that is what is necessary to keep your offspring away from the scum who are using the web as a tool to find fresh young victims. Pretty much whatever you have to do to keep your kids safe and under your control is far better than having to deal with the ramifications of their meeting up with sexually deviant adults face to face that they connected to on-line first. Radical suggestions? Look up and check out the name of this blog. What were you expecting? A pat on the back and a box of tissues?


radical sapphoq says: It is a sad commentary on the times when a teen gets hassled for posting a picture of the results of his participation in an African safari. Whether or not I am in favor of touristy African safaris [I'm not, but not for any reasons related to why the PETA people are against that] or the responsible use of guns for hunting or self-defense [I am, and certainly when parents know enough to teach responsible gun ownership to their kids], that teen in my opinion did not deserve what he got.

     Even worse is when a family loses a business that was their livelihood due to what has been termed as cyber-bullying or cyber-harassment. That sort of thing is a crime, no doubt about it.

     Most grievous is when a vulnerable non-adult is targeted by some creep on-line. People who are on the sexual offender registry should not be allowed to use a computer. There are plenty of other ways to earn a living that do not involve an on-line presence and plenty of other hobbies or ways to occupy one's leisure time. Those who are caught near a computer should have their parole violated and locked up for life. They lost their "rights" the second they began to groom a victim. Period.

     

References:

http://mashable.com/2014/07/13/cyberbullying-stalking-leander-texas/

http://www.ammoland.com/2014/07/ussa-tv-teenage-hunter-faces-cyber-bullying-video/

http://www.koco.com/news/oklahoman-cousins-develop-anti-cyberbullying-app/26757098#!beHldF

http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/top-news/sheriff-s-office-elon-teen-faked-cyber-bullying-1.334416

http://www.motoemag.com/2014/07/10/author-donates-book-proceeds-to-help-crowdfund-family-impacted-by-cyberbullying-harassment/

http://moms.popsugar.com/Askfm-Cyberbullying-35112765

http://www.staceypageonline.com/2014/07/13/wcs-works-to-combat-digital-bullying/

http://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/opinion/letter/?id=37783

http://www.sheboyganpress.com/story/news/2014/07/13/dangers-apps/12605107/

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/features/at-what-age-should-we-warn-our-children-about-predators-30427587.html

http://www.abc.com.py/edicion-impresa/locales/no-a-la-drogadiccion-y-cyberbullying-en-escuelas-1265775.html

http://magicvalley.com/news/local/state-and-regional/sw-idaho-social-media-predator-gets-life-sentence/article_57fa3f14-0772-11e4-8126-001a4bcf887a.html

http://www.news9.com/story/25985785/expert-warns-of-dangers-of-new-social-media-website

http://www.heartlandconnection.com/news/story.aspx?id=1068179#.U8Ous_ldV8E

http://www.news9.com/story/25930199/yukon-mom-warns-parents-after-son-talks-online-to-accused-sexual-predator

http://ewn.co.za/2014/06/15/Sexual-predators-on-the-rise-in-South-Africa

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/crime-law/mason-man-accused-of-sexting-12-year-old-girl/ngdYs/

Cyber-Bullying Versus Being Fauxfended

"1. Bullying is not okay. Period.

 2. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to 

     physically or verbally assault people.

 3. If your sincerely-held religious beliefs require you to 

      bully children, then your beliefs are fucked up.”


                                                                                                                                                        ~ Jim C. Hines


Jim C. Hines is on twitter as @jimchines.

His most excellent blog can be found 

at http://www.jimchines.com/blog/

An excellent article on cyber-harassment written by him:

http://www.jimchines.com/2014/01/online-harassment/


Other articles of note:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/01/10/lets-just-call-it-talking/

         
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/let-s-be-real-online-

harassment-isn-t-virtual-for-women


http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-
arent-welcome-internet-72170/



Experiencing abusive behavior from others online?
Received threats due to stuff posted online?
Or, want to be part of the solution instead of the problem?

http://www.haltabuse.org/



Being fauxfended on the other hand is not the same thing at all. If you tell me that I am a big meanie poopy head because I happen to not agree with you, I can shrug that off easily enough.
If you accuse me of being stupid or racist or an anti-feminist or full of false ego or something, I can blow those comments off also.

A good solid definition can be found in The Urban Dictionary:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fauxfended

Here are some articles and things that talk about people who were fauxfended:

http://thegraph.com/2012/09/personalities-vs-facts/

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/01/04/HuffPo-No-Apology-For-Pearl-Harbor-Insult-Is-Perfect-Response

http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2013/01/08/class-act-katherine-webb-says-musburger-not-creepy-for-gushing-about-her-on-natl-tv/

http://kmgarcia2000.blogspot.com/2012/09/blaming-victims.html



What no one should blow off are threats such as "I'm going to rape you, kill you, or otherwise ef you up." That sort of thing ought to require the attention of the nearest law enforcement agency. [And hopefully, the nearest law enforcement agency will be better informed than the one here is and more equipped to skillfully handle a complaint of cyber-bullying than the one 'round here is].

radical sapphoq says: Some people use cyber-bullying as a convenient argument for using one's wallet name on the internet. I've seen people on Fakeboo, FedBoo, SpaceCase [using one of my fake socks because I will not help the government to collect info or meta-data on me], I mean that website-- you know the one I mean-- using their "real names" and making vicious comments about other people. 
People are people whether using their legal names on the internet or not.

Those who are in the public eye tend to use their names online. The rest of us don't. Some of the rest of us have had problems with people stalking us [either online or in 'real' life F2F] or threatening us. Some of us may be hiding from a past domestic violence situation or other troublesome history and thus we cannot safely enjoy the internet using our wallet info. Some of us prefer that our bosses and our elderly relatives not be able to find us on the internet. Some of us value our privacy and refuse to give out our real names and locations. Some of us have more than one of the above listed reasons for a decision to use socks or pseudonyms online. Some of us may have solid reasons that I have not listed here.

I am against laws that require us to use our wallet information online and against laws that would assign each of us some sort of internet 'number' that a government can use to trace back to us. Period. The dark net has its uses. Hopefully, an alter-net will become a reality for those of us who refuse to succumb to the line of thinking that starts with the dreaded words "It's for your own good that we are...".

               ~ LESS GOVERNMENT MORE FUN ~

And the Fed Informants Keep Turning Up...

The Feds and their informants on Twitter call themselves computer consultants or radio dee jays or poets.  [On FakeBook/FailBook/FB they refer to themselves as "your friends"].  The mother of a close friend in high school used to always tell us that truth is stranger than fiction.  It certainly is.

I tweet [a.k.a. converse] with a truly diverse bunch on Twitter.  It is fortunate that Twitter is not happening in real-life in someone's living room.  Guns would be drawn and people would die.  My Anonymous friends and the ninjas dislike each other.  The good-time trolls and the anti-cyberbullies can find little common ground.  Even the child abuse and human trafficking folks are divided into camps.

I've written posts about Lori Handrahan and I've written about WWASPS-- I don't like either one of them.  I've discussed the alleged infiltration of the Million Dollar March in D.C. by a poet which some believe to be a Fed [and I believe that too.  I could be wrong.  At any rate, I will not be going to D.C. on November 5th].  I haven't blogged about the PayPal 14 or the PayBack 13 for two reasons.  I think others can tell the tale better than I can.  One of the PayBack 13 is someone that I've never met in real life but I consider him to be a friend.

I've written some about my politics but not much about the political ideologies that I've found on Twitter.  I will do a little bit of that now.  Those who know me know that I am pro-gun, anti-amnesty for illegal aliens, pro-secularism in the public schools, anti-N.S.A., pro-free internet, anti-CISPA and the current exaggeration of copyright "protections" in effect today which pretty much render fair use dead, pro-civil rights for all civils, and anti-Obummer Care.  I don't like the A.C.A. stuff because I found a chart with the rates on the U.S. government site-- a chart with public permissions and a download button-- and even with "rebates," I found that the Affordable Care Act is not affordable for me.  Quite frankly, when my circumstances change, I will have to leave the country in order to afford healthcare if ObummerCare is still the ahem law of the land.  The A.C.A. would have been a better idea if it was not 2300 pages of something that Nancy Pelosi has been quoted as saying that we will have to pass it in order to find out what is in it.  Or something like that.  If it was Open Market [versus tied to the federal government and to the states] and did not penalize the uninsured for not joining up, it might have been less of a disaster than it is.  Universal healthcare is a grand idea but the implementation of it to date has sucked.  Period.  It needs to be re-worked and not just patched.

I can no longer call myself a liberal.  I have refused to join Unite Blue on Twitter.  Although I am an atheist and not a christian, I have found myself a political home of sorts on Twitter with Todd Kincannon and some other conservatives.  I have no desire to argue with christians over their religious and spiritual choices.  I do have a desire to write snarky things at the pope once in awhile [yes, his unholiness is on Twitter along with the apologetics for bad behavior of the roman church].  I will engage in snark with a few muslims who think that we ought to follow islam; and with a few of the more extreme christians who are as obsessed with conversions on Twitter as a transfolk is with mutilation via surgical means.  Besides, Todd and Ashley have a dog named Noodle [who is also on Twitter]. 

Todd's Twitter stream is full of people who randomly attack him for his viewpoints, coarseness, and language.  It is never dull.  He does not seek out targets.  They seek him out.  The results are rather zany.  He's been accused of being a bully and several other things which I won't print here.  Todd has several long-standing adversaries and bunches of folks who find his comebacks too witty and have the sense to depart quickly.  The long-standing ones don't have the sense to use their block button, to drop the endless tweets accusing him of all kinds of things, to accept that not everyone on Twitter has to approve of them or their thoughts or beliefs.  Believing in equal rights-- or in civil rights for all civils-- is not an endorsement of all lifestyles on the planet.  This is something that many folks get mixed up about.  Todd says stuff that an average person may think but doesn't say.

Last night a guy who characterizes himself as a "real brother" and his allies appeared on Todd's stream.  This real brother has been accused of being racist and a drug-runner of sorts in other places on the interwebz.  Todd informed this real bro that Todd wanted him to put away or put down for drug crimes [of the foul nature that the real brother is alleged to have committed, and may or may not be continuing in the present].  A quick search engine search revealed that the real brother was doxed by someone in Anonymous and that the real bro is suspected of having turned fed informant.  Another name to add to the list of people that other people think are fed informants.  Ha!

Then we all heard from an anti-bullying coalition of sorts.  Calling names is bad m'kay.  One guy pointed out that cyberbullying is a bit of fakery as we all have the choice to step away from the computer or go do something else online.  In response, another guy inferred that anyone who finds Todd's stuff to be witty has a mental deficiency.  I snarked back in fun that the latter guy just insulted me and my kin, and that we are hashtag MentallyDivergent.  The anti-bullying coalition account retweeted my snark-- perhaps not realizing that I was having fun.  And so on.  Hanging with Todd and other conservatives on Twitter is never boring.  It is a nice break from the drama of current news and current political disasters and reports of earthquakes in places that I may have never heard of.

So last night resulted in the outing of yet another possible Fed informant to add to the list that I keep in my head.  I enjoyed my time on Twitter last night.  It's nice to be nice.  Sometimes we can be too nice.  In my life I certainly have been too nice.  I learned from Todd Kincannon what to do when people attack me with name-calling and their supposes of my character rather than arguing with my ideas in a logical manner.  I retweet them, being careful to add a period before the enclosed a and their twitter handle.  Sometimes I favor their tweet.  Because I can laugh at myself today.

If I have thoughts of suicide, something is wrong with me and I ought to make an appointment with a health care professional.  If I am that fragile that I think some mean comments on the internet can push me over the edge, then I better take up crocheting washcloths and watching soap operas for a hobby instead of social media.  Getting faux-fended is my problem, not the problem of the big meanie poo-poo head who rocked my unself-esteem with their words.  If a stranger from the interwebz shows up uninvited to my home and neighborhood, then it is time for cops and guns and dogs with sharp teeth. 

radical sapphoq


p.s.  A final word to parents with kids and teens.  They're your rat bastards.  You parent them.  You are responsible to know what they are doing on their computers and cell phones.  The computer should be out in the open like in the living room.  You should be monitoring what they do on-line as well as off-line.  There are ways to do this.  Find those ways.  Learn the technology.  Supervise your children.  They are your responsibility until they become adults.

p.s.s.  "Twitter" refers to http://www.twitter.com.  By using the word Twitter, it is not my intention now or ever to take over, cybersquat, make profit from, or otherwise defame the Twitter name.  I am not affiliated in any way with Twitter other than being a tweeter.  And the staff and owner or owners of Twitter probably have no idea who I am and don't care who I am as long as I am not being mean to them on the interwebz which I am not.

 

Interesting Reads

https://data.healthcare.gov/dataset/QHP-Individual-Medical-Landscape/ba45-xusy
It's listed as public permissions and there is a download button too.  These are prices for
the healthcare plans it seems.




http://www.libertynews.com/2012/04/radio-host-theron-k-cal-berates-insults-and-harasses-black-female-caller/

http://rbradioshow.blogspot.co.uk/

http://realbrother.wordpress.com/

www.facebook.com/Realbrother0003

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z604WbTJQmY

http://twicsy.com/i/b8UjP

http://thewordfortheherd.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-theron-k-cal.html

http://pastebin.com/qE2tMxLp

http://pastebin.com/MMwQhrds

http://twitpic.com/6hxbro

https://twitter.com/REALNIGNOG0003

https://twitter.com/REALBROTHER0003

https://twitter.com/REALBRONY0003

https://twitter.com/REALSPOOK0003

https://twitter.com/Realsister0003



http://whosarat.com/aboutus.php

http://whoisthesnitch.com/



http://www.zpub.com/notes/fbi-shame.html

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=613521

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/counterterrorism-glossary

http://www.snitching.org/

http://november.org/Snitch/

http://www.shouselaw.com/informants.html