Something Is Wrong on the Internet!

Originally published at Liz Henry's blog Slightly edited by Julia

Panel description from pocket program. What keeps you going at 4 am when there’s so much fail, and only you and your fellow Internet drama addicts stand against it like stubborn superheroes? Let’s talk about why Internet drama is important to us as activists and as fans, why we engage or disengage, and what it all means when ideas and personalities clash in public discussion of SF/F books, tv, fic, and culture. M: Vito Excalibur, Liz Henry, Piglet, Julia Sparkymonster

Panel description: “Something is wrong on the internet!” What keeps you going at 4 am when there’s so much fail, and only you and your fellow Internet drama addicts stand against it like stubborn superheroes? Let’s talk about why Internet drama is important to us as activists and as fans, why we engage or disengage, and what it all means when ideas and personalities clash in public discussion of SF/F books, tv, fic, and culture. M: Vito Excalibur, Liz Henry, Piglet, Julia Starkey, Charlotte

Vito: SOMETHING IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET!

Piglet: when I'm bored I go on usenet and see who's said somthing stupid so I can flame out and get mad. Yay!

Vito - Something is often wrong on the internet. Wait, Liz are you liveblogging this?

Liz: well...yes ... I was kinda thinking...

Vito: it's just the internet , right?

Julia: why do I have to harsh people's squee? It’s cool to just watch women of color be raped and murdered and colonized. why can't I just chill out?

Vito: Yeah and why aren't you out there shooting someone in the head?

Julia: I go into a rage coma when people say that. A few years ago, at a worldcon, there was a huge flame war in a panel about modernism in sf. if we can flame out over something H.G. Wells and Henry James wrote to each other in private correspondence, then we can flame out over gross disgusting racism.

Vito: does internet drama help?

Piglet: I learned a lot from internet drama : we still need feminism. 20 years ago on soc.feminism. I don't hate my body. don't get discouraged on the first, fourth, and fifteenth conversations. The point has to be (and will be) made over and over. It did teach me. I learned something.

Vito: convincing someone else takes time.

Julia: I have learned that I am ignorant about a lot of things. Some of the stuff I've learned… Well for instance I’ve learned that I am deeply ignorant about latino culture and I’m working on educating myself

Liz: I learned something this week. I was just reading a great article on mock spanish and its racism and how it reinforces whiteness. I had to reevaluate every time I might have said "no problemo".

Julia: Oh! West Wing: and the fake country of Qumar

Liz: isn't that umm Bujold?

Julia: Nope, West Wing. Anyway, I thought “oh, well, making up this fake country Qumar is maybe a good way to talk about islam or issues in the Middle East without attacking a particular country. Then a friend pointed out to me, that the fake country is never some place like France or England? I was like ohhhhhh! now I get it!

Piglet: how do you apologize? not getting defensive, but to say, oh, you're right I'm sorry.

Vito: what if you don't get that right?

Vito: How not to make a heidipology. heidi in harry potter fandom is famous for her fake apologies.

“I am sorry people are so hasty to trust, and so hasty to distrust in a cyber-world where it is easy to hide, and bully, and not deal with the repercussions of actions. I am sorry if this is taken the wrong way and once again misconstrued.“ “I am sorry I have to see hypocrisy.”

Liz: Rubyfail, perl playmate fail. (link: geek feminism wiki! Acme::Playmate talk )

Julia: When someone calls you out, you may not be able to engage right away. You may need to process your defensiveness or hurt first. You can leave a comment that you saw it, you're taking a break and will get back to them.

Vito: What if I don't have time to deal with this? Can you participate if you don't have an hour a day to keep up? How long can you read racefail?

Liz: only an hour?!

Julia: I felt like these things can eat my brain sometimes. I get so frustrated, upset and mad.

Liz: It’s important! keep up with it, if all your friends are paying attention to some issue then read about it.

Audience: how DO we keep up with it?

Liz: we need whatswrongontheinternet.com and reporters to update it.

Julia: I call that livejournal.

Liz: twitter is kind of good for it.

Vito: linkspam.dreamwidth.org metafandom.livejournal.com, http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/ are all good places to look.

Charlotte : if my sister wasn't keeping up with it, I wouldn't know.

Audience: what about someone like Ian who doesn't read the net, but wanted to get more aware of racefail and what people would be talkng about at wiscon?

Liz: Zines! newspapers! maybe we need print magazines about the internet drama.

[note from Liz: Print media is already like 1/3 "something happened on the internet" but it is very very slow and can't keep up, and misses quite a lot or doesn't cover it because it's too controversial or is about racism, or sex, and when they do it's not gossipy enough to be interesting. they don't know who to interview, and our journals are not legitimate sources. basically, there are no legitimate sources.]

Julia: well people maybe need to take responsibility for themselves and do something about reading up on things.

Liz: We should all know about the Great Blow Job Wars of the feminist blogosphere.

Audience and panel: (collectively) Whut?

Liz: People are NOT aware of the great blow job wars of 2005, what! we have lost our history. [ed. Note: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/06/19/feminist-politics-of-blowjobs/]

Vito: coffeeandink is sort of a reporter on internet fail. so good. commentary, links, status, analysis.

(general agreement amongst everyone on this point)

Liz: The Dale Spender principle that as a feminist I have to show the person I'm talking about what I'm going to say about them, and consider their response and feelings as a human being... and that considering that changes what I want to say. tried it with Rachel Moss and with theferrett from open source boob.

Audience: what did they say?

Liz: both talked w me and kind of thought about it and declined. maybe in the future we will get their perspective.

seal press drama. Julia explains the entire backstory. colonize this - good book!

feminist bloggers

Vito sums up Marcotte's response. She could have said “Oh damn I didn't see that. We fucked up.” She could have said “I'll think about it and respond” but she chose the third path which was to say “fuck you!”

Julia further discusses marcotte's defensiveness fail WAM women in media conference.

Liz: and I was like dang do I have to not read this blog now? [Marcotte’s blog Pandagon] because it's mostly really good.

Audience: What do you do when someone is generally awesome but then they fail. Fail really badly and they're your guest of honor in two weeks. Just hypotheically...

Liz: We should have spontaneous programming about Mammoth Fail right now [reference to Patricia Wrede’s Frontier Child series]. Could we handle it?

Julia: The bar for how a con should react officially is low.

Vito: Yes.

Julia: Honestly, all a con com has to do is just not say “shut up! You're being too sensitive.” How hard is that? Even just saying there people have a concern about X, and that the con com has no official opinion on the matter is useful.

Julia: There is a con in Boston called Vericon. They made an announcement about how they were really excited to have Orson Scott Card as their GoH. They somehow missed all the controversy about Card’s homophobia, hatred of gay marriage, or all the horrible things he said about how marriage equality in MA was going to destroy the nation. The con com expressed listened to people’s concerns, explained how they would work to minimize further potential problems.

Liz: Why do they fear it! Embrace it! Let people go off! It's conversation! We *want* people to talk about difficult stuff and ideas!

Audience: : Sue Jacobi wrote “Age of American Unreason: abuse of the intellectual in America.” It’s a great book, read it.

Julia: Will Shetterly...

Liz: were you pronouncing the asterixes? [On blogs Shetterly is often referred to as W*ll Sh*tt*rly because he regularly searches for his name and intrudes into discussions that mention him]

Julia: Of course!

Audience: Don't say it three times.

Julia: I don’t think I could have a really respectful conversation with him.

Liz: What are tools for discussion? Image macros and bingo cards. What about the joy of drama!

Vito: What about when your friend does something wrong to someone you don't like?

Julia: Oh, this is the part where I hate having principles a lot. Say you love them and respect them, and this privilege call out is an act of love and affection. Say: “I don't think you meant to do that, I don't think you're the most horrible person ever and I'm telling you because I think you can handle it.”

Liz: We should keep in mind how it feels to be in that hotseat of having fucked up. it sucks when 2000 strangers are piling on you. I'm not necessarily saying pity them, but know they are shellshocked a bit. expect it.

Danny (from audience): What seems to spark a particularly bad reaction is a bunch of people's reactions being called a "mob.” It is not a mob. It is a lot of individuals having their own valid reactions.

Liz: You might have to be particularly skilled at ignoring what people say about you, too, to be doing whatever you're doing. Amanda Marcotte has had to develop a thick skin. After dealing with taking fire from actual idiots and being a bit famous, then a person might misapply that thick skin when hearing criticism from allies.

Julia: Lets talk about Vito’s problematic panel about the “The Master's tools.” Also the aggravation of the “tone” argument and it not being OK to express anger. The tone argument being “if you just said it nicely, then I would have listened. But you were mean so I’m ignoring everything you had to say.” Liz going to pick on you

Liz: Oh goody! you're talking about ME!

Julia: When I go get mad about something like a ramp not being in this room for you to get the podium, I will be seen as more reasonable and polite. “Oh it’s great Julia is so passionate about accessibility for people with disabilities.” My anger is okay while Liz's won’t be.

Liz: Sometimes that's okay and helpful but sometimes I really don’t like it when people appropriate my anger, I'm like: “Go have your own anger about your own issues!”

Julia: Yeah, as an ally, you have to suck it up because sometimes you will fail.

Audience: There is a misconception that what we're going for is zero fail. People are scared to fuck up. But people will fuck up! I love to read fail and I love to snark. I don't hope for a fail-less universe.

Vito: I'm going to be a jerk and refer to my own post. I posted a conversation not about David Levine--nice guy, friend of friends but, imaginary David Ravine. It touched on one of my fuck ups which I won't go into.... Do read it, it says what I wanted to express about that [1]

Chris/Bifemmefatale (from audience): I get to where, I'm privileged and I'm not going to post about it but oh I wonder if I'm harming my friends or POC or trans friends by being silent....

Vito: Interrupting you, with love and affection, I don’t care about your guilt. Do whatever you want.

Liz: How do we not to burn out?

Vito: Sometimes taking it to protected spaces. Deepa did that with locking some posts after a certain point so random haters couldn’t show up.

Julia: There are definitely issues about burnout in progressive communities. (some advice, I missed it)

Audience: Shetterly has an internet safe word for his friends now.

Audience: Can we know what this word is???

• everyone cracks up*

Vito: It would not work even if we knew it.

Alan Bostick: There is this horrible misogynist, racist, etc community that I have to be involved with for my professional life. I feel sometimes like the only voice of sanity in the community and I'm seen as the asshole.

Liz: Hmm. Cry me a river??

• brief silence in room*

Julia: Yeah. You just have to suck it.

Piglet: You might just have to deal.

Julia: OK, let me give you a longer answer. Last year there was a “Trans 101” panel. A earnest young cisgendered man in the audience asked what he can do to make sure he always gets people’s gender correct and never uses the wrong pronouns. He doesn’t want to upset people. My response basically was “you’re going to screw up. Suck it up and deal.” What I mean by that he is going to make mistakes. As allies we can try hard to be sensitive and aware, but we are inevitably going to trip over our own privilege and face plant. That’s normal. What you do next is pick yourself up, figure up how or why you fucked up, and try not to do it again. The idea that you can go through the world without ever being embarrassed or called out is an incredibly privileged position to take.

Liz: [paraphrased] A long serious answer to Alan B. about women in tech conferences, having a guy running a hackathon say “Mars needs women” and me agreeing but do I want to bring my friends into that situation just to be my backup, when the situation will be full of fail and harm?

Naamen (from audience): Back up and having a community is affirming for me. I can say “was this just fucked up or was it my imagination?” Back up is not having minions!

Karen (from audience): If you're like, oh, “I feel like such an asshole,” keep in mind the “Asshole theory of systems.” Every system needs one asshole—it keeps things flowing.

Vito: If you don’t know who the asshole is, it's you.

Liz: There's a danger of being a pet asshole and getting co-opted. The pet radical who makes a community feel like it is tolerant.

Audience: Where you put your asshole is important. Don’t put them over you, you'll be covered in shit!

Audience: Suck it and deal with it is a valid response too.

Julia: Usually when I say “suck it up” I talk to the person about why they need to suck it.

Liz: My friend has a tag for #suckit (queenofspain on twitter).

Piglet: and in closing... people of color are not a hive mind