“I wouldn’t feel responsible. Bullying and harassment are not matters to be taken lightly or in jest. I should know. However, the "cyberbullying” phenomenon is completely hyperbolic in my opinion. Imagine the “older street tough” of lore taking your lunch money every day, or to be a woman and have a male coworker slap your ass or make other unwelcome advances. These are serious issues that have a real impact on a person’s life and psyche. It is entirely another matter to be on the receiving end of a completely anonymous voice, with no physical presence whatsoever, spilling words into a medium that one has complete control over.“

I want to share a conversation with you.

A few weeks back, I published a piece called "Our Internet Empathy Problem.” It used the widespread, culturally-accepted harassment directed at Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen as a vessel to discuss the abuse people are asked to put with online. It’s about the difference between how we treat the meaning of words in real-life and “on the Internet.” It’s about how we victim blame.

Attached to the article was an image that highlighted some of the harassment. This image was, for a time, on the front page of Giant Bomb. One of the harassers learned about this, and he reached out. We had a short but terse dialogue that didn’t result in anyone’s mind being changed. The image remained on the site. Many comments–a good portion of them meaningful–were posted underneath the story.

I’ve had some success in changing people’s minds with my work, and it feels awfully good. It’s a one-at-a-time battle, but I take that in stride.

One. Two. That means something.

But the conversation I had with that one person I just mentioned wouldn’t leave my mind. It stuck. See, this individual was paritcularly vile. Death threats and worse. Some of the comments could easily make one sick to their stomach. A complete lack of empathy.

A few days later, I reached out to him. I wanted to have a longer conversation with this person. You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned who they are. It’s because it doesn’t matter much. The “who” of this conversation a distraction. The conversation is important, one that I felt was worth sharing. The individual on the other side has approved the release of this exchange, and it was my choice to hide their identity.

It’s long, yes, but please stick with it. It takes some twists.

from: Patrick

to: ********

Hi ********, appreciate you getting back to me. You were [redacted]. Anyway, I found the response interesting, and wondered if you might be open to a back-and-forth dialogue, something that possibly (if it proves interesting) was published in some form?

from: ********

to: Patrick

I try not to take this sort of thing too seriously, generally speaking, but it would seem that everyone has interpreted my response as serious so I have no choice but to play along. When I made the initial comment, I was upset because it seemed to me - and was ultimately borne out to be true - that Nguyen was throwing away money due to lack of a spinal column. A physiological condition which would trouble almost anyone I’m sure, but it didn’t seem to be relevant here. I wrote several other tweets at the time which expounded on this thesis but deleted them within minutes because they were also even more vitriolic if you can believe it. I get carried away on Twitter sometimes. Anyway yeah we can have a dialogue if you want, and I give permission to publish it should you choose to do so, minus the email address of course.

from: Patrick

to: ********

Hey *********, appreciate you agreeing to this. Let’s start at the beginning. Your tweet was [redacted, but the tweet basically “go kill yourself”] Why such a violent image? To gain his attention?

from: ********

to: Patrick

Apologies if I don’t respond right away, I’m doing a bit of studying for mid-terms right now. Well, I don’t view it as entirely violent. Maybe he could use potassium cyanide and a bottle of Ambien. It was just a suggestion to end his own life so that the earth might be spared his insufferable and stubborn existence. The [redacted] part was not necessarily to evoke the slapstick nature of a circus performer’s act; more to illustrate ineptitude on a grand scale such that a spectacle is created. I must admit that gaining his attention was a goal, one which I didn’t obtain unfortunately. I have a feeling this has something to do with the language barrier, or perhaps merely the deluge of comments he received all of which were unwanted and unread I’m sure. Had he responded to me individually I would have continued to harangue him until blocked, so this was probably a wise course of action for him. Indeed, it is often my own most common reaction when faced with internet harassment. “Don’t feed the trolls!”

from: Patrick

to: ********

No problem–no rush. OK, so you don’t like the guy. What if he actually did kill himself?

from: ********

to: Patrick

I wouldn’t feel responsible. Bullying and harassment are not matters to be taken lightly or in jest. I should know. However, the “cyberbullying” phenomenon is completely hyperbolic in my opinion. Imagine the “older street tough” of lore taking your lunch money every day, or to be a woman and have a male coworker slap your ass or make other unwelcome advances. These are serious issues that have a real impact on a person’s life and psyche. It is entirely another matter to be on the receiving end of a completely anonymous voice, with no physical presence whatsoever, spilling words into a medium that one has complete control over. At any time, I can block anyone on Twitter, I can tell them to go away in whatever terms I choose, or I can even delete my account or make it private at no cost to myself. I simply don’t see the connection. If someone is so weak of will, so volatile of temperament, so easily influenced by the slightest whisper that they take their own life because of something I typed in one second on the other side of the earth, then perhaps they’re doing all of us a favor by eliminating their obviously flawed genes from the pool. Is it then acceptable for me to make comments like “kill yourself” at people on Twitter? Of course not. I’ve never contended that it is. Quite the opposite in fact. But really, when people take these sorts of issues seriously, I just have to laugh because it is an absolute absurdity. I believe a compelling argument could even be made that drawing a parallel between “cyberbulling” and tangible harassment denigrates and undermines those who actually suffer in real life, though I think that is beyond the scope of our conversation. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus says: “An act like [suicide] is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art,” and later, “In a sense, killing yourself amounts to confessing … that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it.” I refuse to believe that my fleeting and farcical tweet contributes to any such monolithic act. I will allow the extreme hypothetical that perhaps my tweet in combination with many others like it produced a resonation in Nguyen that may have led to his equally hypothetical choice to kill himself. If you will permit a further quote from the aforementioned book, Camus also says, “One would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently. He is the guilty one. For that is enough to precipitate all the rancors and all the boredom still in suspension.” Still, my responsibility is acutely limited even in this wild scenario. Aside from my previous arguments, which still hold in this dire case, we should remember that Nguyen - who we must assume in good faith legitimately despised the attention his game brought upon him, though personally I doubt it - turned the spotlight of public scrutiny upon himself, intentionally and voluntarily. This flirts bawdily with blaming the victim, however I also refuse to believe that he was so naïve he could not have foreseen at least some manner of negative reaction. A cry for help maybe? Well, since he didn’t actually kill himself, I won’t stray too far into speculation.

from: Patrick

to: ********

How can you logically reconcile that it’s not appropriate to make comments like “kill yourself” on Twitter, while doing exactly that? It’s not appropriate, but because you’re able to deal with the harassment, everyone else should, too? Isn’t it possible that people have varying levels of coping mechanisms?

from: ********

to: Patrick

That’s an important question, and probably central to why I make comments like that on Twitter and sometimes elsewhere on the internet, and have for years - though in recent times I have slowed down quite a bit. People definitely have different ways of coping. Holding others to the same standard which I, sometimes dysfunctionally, hold myself would be as absurd as taking my comments seriously. The reasoning behind this contradictory stance is twofold. First, the internet is an inherently ridiculous place. I view Twitter as a very large comedy club. Taking my comment seriously is analogous to condemning Daniel Tosh for making his rape joke nearly two years ago at The Laugh Factory. Was it well-intentioned? Was it acceptable? Was it funny? No, no, and no. But that’s comedy. Comedians are used to having an open floor on which to say whatever they please. Many of them got their start because they simply don’t have the same conversational filter most people do, and others often find this humorous. Call Daniel Tosh an unfunny prick and you would be speaking the truth. But dressing him as a rape apologist because of one comment? Perhaps he’s made more. What was the context? If it’s a comedy act, I would argue anything is fair game. (I would also observe that his singular comment received as much if not more media attention than the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, OH not a month later. Where are our priorities?) Anyway, I could write an entire essay on that subject alone, but coming back to my point: the internet is ridiculous. You have “bronie” fan fiction of sexualized cartoon horses, next to white supremacy forums, next to your grandmother’s vacation photos. Is all of it good? No! Most of it isn’t! But I like it that way. I grew up when the internet was still a mysterious black hole that even government agencies didn’t seem to have a grasp of. The Wild West. In an afternoon, you could learn volumes of information you never wanted to know and see hundreds of things you never knew existed and now wish you didn’t. But the internet is rapidly becoming a much smaller place. Government controls are seeping in from every crack, the vast majority of the web is owned by a few large corporations, and just around the corner we could see restrictions by ISPs on what kind of content you’re allowed to consume just because you didn’t pay for the “Super Tier” internet, or whatever. To quote Timothy Olyphant’s character on Justified, “Someone’s trying to put one over on me. I don’t like that.” I’m not attempting to paint myself as a crusader for social justice and champion of free speech. That’s a classic backpedal and a thought which exposes narcissism and shallow reasoning. It’s also quite the opposite of my self-image, a topic I will come back to in a moment. What I am saying is, I don’t think people should take the internet and its content so seriously. I think it is detrimental to all of us if we do, and not just from the perspective of restricted speech. I believe the consolidation of social entities to electronic imitations of real life structures, e.g. Facebook and Twitter, does not enrich but rather debases the human experience. The internet is a tool, not a replacement for reality, and one best kept open and free. People forget this. I like to remind them, in my own way. The second reason stems from the first. Why do I choose to remind them in such an abrasive way? I feel powerless and I take my frustrations out on others. When the targets of my japes fire back with questions of morality, or when I am criticized in a piece such as that on Giant Bomb (this is not the first time one of my online personas has been featured in articles about rudeness or silliness on Twitter, though it is the first for this account), they often assume I’m operating from their frame of reference; which is to say, they believe I have a conscience that dictates my behavior as wrong and I have somehow lost my way and stumbled into terrorizing conservative old people on Twitter. This fundamental misunderstanding is always very amusing to me, and the subject of further frustration for those who would seek to “educate” me on the error of my ways. I can logic my way out of almost anything, but at the end of the day I acknowledge my presence as an overall negative in the community. I’m an embittered, resentful, and defeated vestige of the old internet - my sanctuary for many years, as I used to despise the world I was forced to live in offline. I have steadily ramped down my trolling profile over time and I will eventually cease such activities entirely, because at this point in my life it’s more exhausting than entertaining. Real, lasting, positive social change is not won through wars or revolutions, and certainly not through being an insensitive ass on Twitter. Only gradual progress achieved through non-violent means is capable of transforming our world into a more ideal setting. However, going back to my first point, this is the internet. It’s a different context requiring a different response. If I saw someone else make the tweet I made, I would laugh, not because I take suicide lightly or want Nguyen to be miserable, but because: here’s some random Vietnamese guy upsetting millions of people across the world, over an extremely simplistic phone game, due to some autistic tantrum, and the comment has just reduced his entire existence and all of their cares into five words. The humor of this scenario is self-evident to me, but I guess it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

[Several days pass without an exchange–I hadn’t had a chance to respond. The responses were giving me pause. Normally, when interacting with someone who prefers aggressive, hateful speech on the Internet, they aren’t so articulate. It actually made me slightly uncomfortable. Then, out of nowhere and without my prompting, this email shows up.]

from: ********

to: Patrick

So my last answer was pretty long, however I wanted to note that having this mostly one-sided conversation with you has given me pause and time to reflect on how I conduct myself online. As I mentioned, the internet isn’t the same place it used to be. Maybe that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. One of my favorite comedians of all time, Bill Hicks, has a bit in one of his recorded shows on marketing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo “By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… Kill yourself.” I love that stanza of his act and I guess that’s the spirit I was thinking of, because I’m really sick of these new media tech dweebs spending massive amounts of resources on advertising and crying like babies when the slightest thing doesn’t go their way. Nguyen represents to me just another one of those faces, who cares so little about how money is used, who is so self-absorbed as to publicly proclaim his desire to rid the world of a (supposedly) enjoyable game and a profit stream that could be used for a net positive gain. It makes my stomach turn. But there are more constructive and productive ways to address my concerns, instead of creating an elaborate web of absurdity to justify what was really a one-off comment that I didn’t think about at all. I am sorry for wasting your time, but in asking me to think about my response you have convinced me that you may in fact be in the right here. My tweet was overly harsh, and could have made a fragile ego like Nguyen’s crack apart. Fortunately, and to be quite honest, I doubt it had any effect on him at all and was lost in the din of comments he received that day. But it could have. I’ve left behind my more destructive habits in real life, and perhaps it’s time to leave them on the internet as well. The line between them is becoming blurred whether I like it or not, and it’s past time I respected that. Thanks for your help Patrick.

Change. Longterm? I don’t know, but I hope so. I’m optimistic.

More generally, I’m unsure what to draw from this conversation. It’s just one person. It’s not indicative of every Internet citizen who spews bile and hate. Some of them can’t (or won’t) be changed–it’s burned into their very being. But I’ve found success in talking to people, and reminding them that people are on the other side of their commentary. They don’t take it seriously but others do.

But who would want to talk to someone that, jokingly or not, wants to see them killed? That person has not earned the right to a reasonable back-and-forth, and asking a victim to confront abuse and harassment is an unreasonable request. This is not possible for many people, and I understand that.

The Internet empowers people to speak up, but who are we empowering? That question isn’t asked very often, and it gives me concern. We have built powerful forms of enabling sharing and communication without building proper tools for the consequences.

If everyone is talking, nobody is listening. When nobody is listening, those hoping to be heard shout louder. It’s a vicious cycle, and it only seems to be getting worse. Not everyone can be reasoned with, but maybe there are lessons here. That lesson might not having a heart-to-heart with a person saying hateful things to you, but maybe you’re that hateful person. Maybe you don’t realize these words have power, and you ought to have more respect for them. Maybe you can be the one who changes.

I hope so. I’m optimistic.