My day started with a question posed in a private message:
"Have any ideas on how to deal with crazy, sociopathic fucktards on steemit?"
While I had a dozen other articles lined up to complete, THIS took priority, as it's a matter of great importance to be addressed.
While there may be no direct answer to the question, there are some very important points, perspectives, and questions to be raised in regards to the matter that are critical to invest our time in discussing at this point, early on in the formation of Steemit's cyber-culture.
The question was raised due to the abusive activities of an unreasonably aggressive, sexist, disrespectful, abusive user harassing a number of users, putting a significant segment of the Steemit community at great dis-ease. We're not talking just a harmless troll. Rather, serious concern was expressed over what damage this guy has done or might do - having demonstrated the textbook characteristics of a harmful, criminal sociopathic.
It's been clear to many who have been investing their heart & souls contribution to Steemit's growth that the core philosophy the venture was founded upon placing Integrity, honorable character, respectfulness, and positive reputation amongst its highest guiding values, principles of acceptable conduct, and ideals towards which community members shall continually strive towards. However, it is inevitable that people will come onto the site who embody the total opposite and create waves of hatred, bigotry, and all-around nastiness.
While Steemit also places value on the freedom of speech and absence of censorship, and everyone is free to downvote/flag posts & comments they find abusive - having members of this site so deeply disturbed by simply-unacceptable behavior raises the valid debate of how the Steemit community is best off responding to such users.
Can we stop it? Probably not.
Might we be able to instill certain cultural codes within the community that minimize, detract, and ward off such individuals that threaten the safety, comfort, and dignity of Steemit's members? Perhaps.
Concrete solutions as to how we are to deal with such matters may never be possible. Yet, it is viable to come an understanding and agreement upon cultural standards that enable us to adapt to ongoing conflicts like this responsibly, maturely, and wisely in order to maintain the integrity of Steemit's evolving culture and its commitment to serving, supporting, and empowering its members in their health, happiness, and shared wealth...
While it'd be possible to draw attention to the offending individual, who has instigated a state of disturbance by stalking, threatening, and playing mind games - classic trolling behavior taken to extreme incompatible with the vision Steemians have invested in - I choose to keep his identity anonymous for two reasons:
1.Out of respect for him, regardless of the inappropriateness of his behavior.
2.So as to not draw attention to him in particular and stimulate more engagement in his dramas.
Without diving too deep into psychology - such hostile, hateful, disrespectful individuals often try pull shit like this off to gain attention, for the thrill of upsetting others. To feed this and respond to their provocations only gives them what they want, fuelling the fire.
Sometimes ignoring them might not work either as a means of disarming their misplaced aggression. So what is an effective middle ground, to set appropriate boundaries and establish clear guidelines to make it 100% crystal fucking clear that being a complete fucking asshole is simply un-fucking-acceptable in this community, and they had better crawl back under their lowly, shit-encrusted bridge if they aren't willing to upgrade their character to show some basic human decency and honor the dignity of fellow community members...?
The sociopath in question is not the problem. If he were to choke on his own word vomit and drop off the face of this earth tomorrow, there will still likely be other trolls who may make their way onto this site and attempt the same B.S.
As such, the question becomes: how do we - as a community committed to upholding the values of respecting & honoring our members with the most basic of human decencies - establish a transformative environment in which such offensive individuals are either respectfully confronted and offered the non-negotiable choice of playing by fair, integrity-based rules (and perhaps even influenced to change their fucked up ways), or dismissed due to their inability to mature enough to cease exemplifying the behavior of a rude, revolting psychopath?
(It may be difficult to put ourselves in the place of someone who has encountered such horrific treatment. While I'm committed to respecting the privacy of individuals involved in the specific situation, I promise you the members on the receiving end of the sociopath's attacks have been significantly shaken up.)
What agreement shall we come to on what is an appropriate cultural protocol to adhere to in such cases: do we leave these people to fend for themselves against emotional & intellectual abuse within our shared cyberspace? What can we do to discourage bullying, sadistic behavior which severly compromises the dignity and safety of our fellow Steemians?
Should anybody be granted access to this playground of ours with the right to emotionally torture others with the extreme opposite of courtesy, expected from only the most severely mentally-ill of the lowest human degenerates?
If its clear that "trolls" displaying such extremes of prejudice, disrespect, and hostility are in fact mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ill - do we hold any responsibility at all for how they impact orhers in the community? While they may not abide by our cultural codes & philosophical ideals, would it be upholding those ideals by condemning them for the effects of an illness they may have no control over? Or where can reasonable boundaries be drawn while maintaining a commitment to the value of compassion for them and their pain & conflict driving such behavior, just as we might maintain compassion for the "victims" of their irrational, misguided hostility...?
The challenge is, there are no clear-cut answers to these dilemmas.
Yes, we can downvote the shit out of these twits. But that clearly has not proven to be a solution. Flagging hasn't worked, and if it's to be effective in preventing serious abuse, there need to be some sort of upgrades to the flagging algorithms.
One suggestion was offered by @recursive:
"Steemit needs some equivalent of the Reddit karma. It doesn't have to be on-chain and can be computed by Steemit.com based on the number of downvotes other posts from the poster have garnered in the past. Comments of posters with lower Karma would appear lower in the list, and comments from posters with consistently negative karma would appear collapsed by default or would not appear at all. To avoid blacklisting indefinitely a poster, karma can be computed using an exponentially weighted moving average applied to a sliding window over a specific period of time (a week or a month for instance). This would allow the poster to redeem himself by posting constructively once his past offences are old enough to have less weight in the karma calculation. However, due to the lack of past positive content diluting the penalty, should the poster keep posting offensive content after being rehabilitated, the algorithm would blacklist him again right away.
Level of blacklisting can be tiered in three tiers depending on the level of karma:
sent to bottom of thread
bottom of thread + collapsed by default
not even displayed
This would only apply to steemit.com, and not to the blockchain that would remain unchanged."
Though aside from that - could we perhaps implement a process for voting out users who repeatedly violate the basic rights of community members? While we don't want to censor anyone - might it be acceptable to establish rules protecting the most fundamental human rights of our members from such offensive attacks (regardless of the particular group being harrassed)...?
Do we leave every community member to defend them self against potentionally psychopathic stalkers?
Are we to avoid interfering, expecting victims of unacceptable behavior to do "their best" to just ignore such crazy motherfuckers, as though it's not a serious matter?
Do we step into discussion and engage the sociopaths' desire for drama? If so, with what approach might we be most likely to firmly set boundaries, in a way that would be received & respected so as to either influence a change in the offender's behavior or drive him away from the community?
Regardless of the crudeness anyone might display here, I do feel it's important that regardless of how we respond, it is done so with respect and compassion.
Trying to preach or convince anyone clearly not well may not effective, nor is logic likely to work when dealing with trolls bent on their own egoic domination over a conversation.
Perhaps ultimately, the best thing we can do is to lead by example.
For all the reasons a bitter, spiteful person might attack, harass, and abuse anyone else - none are an excuse for compromising our own integrity by biting for their bait.
Sometimes total non-engagement might be appropriate. At other times, a conscious, mature, insightful remark - given to someone expecting their hate to be thrown back at them - might go a lot farther in transforming the dynamic of the interaction than one would think.
Perhaps a workable solution might be to just throw nothing but genuine love at the guy, creating such a massive pattern interrupt that it snaps him right out of the behavior - confused, humbled, and defenseless.
Or maybe there's times where some tough love is needed.
I really don't know the answers.
But sooner or later, we're likely to deal with people who test and challenge us to come up with and implement the answers.
Unfortunately, it already has been happening. Or perhaps, fortunately - as dealing with it at this point while the site is still young may enable us to establish cultural standards and protocols for effectively dealing with such behavior, before the floodgates open and an army of trolls arrives thinking they can get away with the same behavior they're used to on Facebook or elsewhere.
Either way...
Please set a positive example. Here and elsewhere in your life.
Be respectful. Be honorable. Maintain your dignity & integrity. Be a genuinely kind, good person.
If someone steps out of line and needs a reality check, deliver it maturely with compassion and wisdom.
If we ALL commit to such conduct, this simple act will go a long ways in establishing an environment here that is warm, welcoming, safe, supportive, and empowering for all.
That may be an unrealistic ideal, given human nature. But it's one worth striving towards...
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