nastiness on the blogosphere

[netmouse]

I've seen a few links to the reported death threats received by Kathy Sierra of the blog Creating Passionate Users, and how they kept her from speaking at a conference because she is staying at home behind locked doors, in tremendous fear for her life and person.

While I am sympathetic to Kathy I have concerns about the way this has been posted about on her blog, in that she names several people repeatedly and implies that they, by hosting a site that involved over-the-top nasty comments (by unidentified commenters), are by implication responsible for the threats made to her. A discussion over on supergee's journal brought up the following cogent commentary by machineplay:

I think there's a precedent here and the comments by "Joey" defending his comments saying that they were about a 'persona' and not a 'person' (he claims to have made the direct comment "The only thing Kathy Sierra has to offer me is a noose in her size.") are making me even more inclined to believe that this was some "nasty fun" that coincided really unfortunately with a handful of worrying threats.

Is her life in danger from the named people? No. Did they post or allow to be posted ugly pictures and statements about her? Looks like it. Are they responsible for creating an environment in which some crackpot already threatening her life feels justified? Yep.

I definitely feel it's more socially complex, and that's why her post conflating the actual danger to her with the 'meankids' stuff is not helpful. I don't think she's being malicious. I think she's unable to separate them in her head right now. She's really talking about two equally unacceptable events: anonymous death threats, and threatening, cruel public commentary. The unfortunate thing is that the bully gang's self-perpetuating ugliness creates an atmosphere that allows genuinely dangerous people to feel that they have social support for their distorted thinking.

(emphasis mine)

Thoughts? Social psychology suggests that even with no evidence to support it, people believe the other people in their community tend to believe as they do (though lately it *does* seem like the tendency for people to cry "The silent masses support me in this!" is going down - is that true or am I just not in those forums any more?). Is there any way for dangerous people not to believe they are supported or justified in their thinking? That we can influence, I mean?

Comments

[atdt1991.livejournal.com]

Most people believe they are justified in both thoughts and actions, until proven otherwise (and often even then). The further one travels down the road of foolishness, the harder it is to be convinced.

There was a study I read about while I was looking at the Stanford Prison experiment re: a cult group based on the end of the world and how aliens were going to save these people before the world was destroyed. They had a time and date, and the cult members gave away their possessions, got divorced, and otherwise made life-altering decisions.

The time came and they all gathered in a circle and meditated (with their leader in the middle).

Time passed. No one came. Eventually, the leader speaks up and declares that the aliens sensed their meditation, and essentially that they had saved the world from destruction, right then and there.

That's not the interesting bit.

The interesting bit is that before this circumstance, they were much like the jewish in that they did not proselytize their beliefs - people came in as they desired. AFTER this circumstance, they used street corners to gather new members and otherwise attempted to convince others to their cause.

The researcher who'd infiltrated them surmised that when people are at risk of believing they've done something phenomenally illogical/embarrassing/incorrect, they try to convince others to have the -same- belief in order to diffuse that potential pain and in order to justify their actions in the usual "everyone else did it and everyone can't be wrong".

We all know, of course that if 99 out of 100 people make decision A instead of B, 99 people damn well may be wrong.

Anyway, as far as I see it, there is no way to combat this. We humans use coersion and peer pressure from the moment we can control our bodies, and there are so many niches in that crennellated wonder we call the intarweb that you can ALWAYS fine SOMEONE who will support you in your wacky ideas.