Small point of order
I just read this article in the New York Times.
I’ve only just started writing this blog and I’m still discovering this weird world of people talking into the binary void. It’s fun - and it’s profoundly silly, at times.
There’s also a lot of terrible and cowardly behaviour. There are trolls. Fair warning now: bad language coming up:
I wouldn’t even call these people trolls. They are ugly fuck-wads who are below contempt. Below consideration, even.
Every time there seems to be a discussion about bad behaviour on the Web, the usual apologists come forward, blathering about censorship & free speech.
Abuse is not free speech. Threats form not free speech. Bad behaviour & rudeness are not free speech. What these fucking trolls do is the lowest form of bullying.
So be it. Give people the opportunity to act out in anonymity or in the safety of a mob and they will take it. They will write ‘Suzy sux’ on walls and gleefully take part in beating up gays, stoning women and any other kind of Kristallnacht they can make their own. That’s human nature, sadly enough and one shouldn’t be surprised to see that the dregs of all societies also troll cyberspace.
Not here though. I don’t care a damn about anyone’s individual ‘rights’. I am not even a democrat. I don’t think the majority of people are right. I think the majority of people will almost invariable be wrong on any given issue. I also do not believe that any individual is necessarily as good or worth as much as some other.
Here though my only concern is whether visitors behave in a civil manner. Their ‘rights’ to do as they like do simply not exist in this bit of cyberspace.
I am the host. You are visitors. I will try to be entertaining; you are free to visit – and indeed, start or join any discussion, if you so want. I will try to be a good host: to offer a pleasant and safe environment for people to vist, to do a bit of quiet reading and/or talk about all kinds of matters.
I will remove any remark and any visitor that I do not want in my ‘house’. There will be no discussion about this, no system of first warnings. Visitors are always welcome – if they know how to behave in a grown-up and civil fashion. If they don’t know how to behave, I’m not willing to spend one nano-second of my time on trying to enlighten them.
If they - in deed, thought and imagination – have so far avoided to join the civilised part of the human race, they can fuck off and take their disgusting manners somewhere else.
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