The utility of snark.

Snark, which is a combination of deep cynicism and sarcasm, has a use. It means that we call rubbish dung, lies untrue, and propaganda bullshit. It also means that we have the ability to discuss things.

Snark offends. This is useful, because if it engenders shame then people may change. Or may not. Snark will hurt your feelings if you are in error. If you are correct, snark does nothing to you: it is shrugged away, like water off a good raincoat.

Another point worth making, particularly as people across the political spectrum seem to be genuinely shocked and appalled by this attack, is that far too many attacks on free speech these days are justified in the name of banning “hate speech”, and so on. Certain forms of expression may indeed be hateful and unpleasant but the best defence against that is indifference, contempt, or ridicule. And another point, particularly for the more anarchist-minded out there, especially those of a leftist bent, is this: if you want to vent, do so on private property, in a consensual way. The producers of the French magazine did that: no-one was forced to buy their product or forced to read it. It is not as if they sprayed their cartoons in public streets outside a mosque.

The trouble with policing harassment and offense (which are different things: I think you are free to offend, but calling the cops out by falsely claiming that there is domestic violence at your enemies house (SWATting), publicising his address and employer (Doxxing) and harassing the employer to get him sacked because he has hurt your feelings probably cross the line) is that setting up such rules is hard to do and even harder to enforce.

Trolls and online mobs, almost by definition, are groups that are skilled in efficiently directing concentrated fire against others. That means that voices that are facing harassment can be the ones ejected from online discussion, as the weight of the mob makes it look like they are the ones who are radical and outside the mainstream. To find examples of this, one need only look to the governments—such as China, Israel and Bahrain—that employ paid commenters to sway online opinion in their favor. And of course, there are plenty of trolls willing to do it for free.

We also worry that the business models of the current batch of centralized, monolithic, and multi-national (but US-based) social networks potentially work against both the preservation of free speech and the safety and privacy of those targeted by harassment. Companies’ primary focus is on revenue and legal safety. Many would be happy to sacrifice free expression if it became too expensive.

I have my own work arounds. Comments here are read by me, and I am not afraid to edit comments (in bold) or ban people. Under NZ law, I am responsible for what is left up. This does not scale that well: Cameron Slater, who gets a million plus hits a month, as a couple of full time Mods policing his site, and uses disqus (and many of those tools as well).

Like almost everyone, I use spam filters on comments and on my email: in particular I have a series of filters that ban certain words (In short, if you swear you are toast). And this site is fairly obscure.

But words? Disagreement? Meh. We are adults here: the occasional argument is keeps the blood flowing.

Say, for whatever reason, valid or not, you perceive me as annoying and contrary and generally pin-headed, and you undertake to call me truly despicable names in the most contemptuous and filthy manner imaginable. Every day. Until you expire. Are you harassing me? No. You aren’t. It wouldn’t even rise to the standard of mild annoyance. Why? Because I am immune to such rhetoric under all but the most trying circumstances, and even were you somehow to reach such a malodorous level of offense, you’re still 100% within the bounds of acceptable speech in my book; I just have to cope with it (which would require just about zero effort, I assure you.)

But the next person in line? They might break down into tears, wander off into the nearest bathtub, and slit their wrists if you simply called them a douchebag or implied they had too many pimples.

Whose fault is this? What is our responsibility in the matter of such weak, unprepared, or broken personalities? Should we pad the very walls and take out all the tubs and razors and knives and muzzle each and every one of us to prevent poor Cluetard McDimwit from wrist slitting lest something rises to the level of offense in the dim, dysfunctional reaches of what passes for his mind?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

No one has the “right to not be offended.” Being offended is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual, or as part of a collective, or a group, or a society, or a community; it varies due to your moral conditioning, your religious beliefs, your upbringing, your education; what offends one person or group (collective, society, community) may not offend another; and in the final analysis, it requires one person to attempt to read the mind of other persons they do not know in order to anticipate whether a specific action will cause offense in the mind of another. And no, codifying an action in law is not in any way sufficient… it is well established that not even lawyers can know the law well enough to anticipate what is legal, and what is not. Sane law relies on the basic idea that we try not to risk or cause harm to the bodies, finances and reputations of others without them consenting and being aware of the risks. Law that bans something based upon the idea that some individual or group simply finds the behavior objectionable is the very worst kind of law, utterly devoid of consideration or others, while absolutely permeated in self-indulgence.

Prepare your kids, and yourself, for exposure to the opinions of others, and gird yourself appropriately lest there is (gasp) an encounter with differing opinion, surprising and/or not-to-your-taste behavior, or OMFG, someone intentionally being nasty, crude or stupid. Or all or the foregoing. It is not anyone else’s job to do this for you or your children; and it is not anyone else’s responsibility if your failure to do so causes unrest, or worse, in minds you failed to prepare. Including yours.

In order to have freedoms, we must be educated well enough, and prepared well enough, to deal with them. If the fact that some cannot deal with them is sufficient to the cause to limit those freedoms, then eventually, they will erode away to nothing. Likely there will always be some personality on the borderline of collapsing at some provocation, imaginary or otherwise. Should we really attempt to tune our whole society to the lowest possible standard of discourse as a result?

Think very carefully before you endorse force of any kind as a remedy for “offense.” To borrow somewhat from Jefferson, if it does not pick my pocket, break my leg, or falsely portray my reputation in some measure likely to cause material or financial consequence… then no remedy is called for; no coercion of law appropriate; and no sympathy required.

And finally, as the Sunday Star Times warned, yet again, against moving away from multiculturalism, they may find, like all the elite, that the ground has been cut out from under them.

What has been ruled out of bounds for more than three decades is finally becoming the political fault line. And the line is not going to be drawn in the favor of those with blood on their hands, in the favor of those whom history will one day damn far more fervently than the Chamberlains and Quislings of a previous generation. Names like Merkel, Hollande, Cameron, and Blair will be reviled across Europe as long as they are remembered.

At the train station, I heard one schoolgirl telling her friends that World War III has started and she doesn’t care if anyone calls her racist. There is a perception that something has dramatically changed in the last week, and indeed, the way in which people are not being hysterical about it over here, but are speaking out rather calmly, strikes me as being all the more ominous for the establishment.

There are two natural fault lines that matter.

Within the church, between those who consider the word of God as inspired and our ultimate rule for living and those who choose to deny this, placing their salvation at risk. The latter call the rest of us fundamentalists or tradtionalists. Wear it with prude.

And in the secular world. those who hold to the Western paradigm of free speech and preservation of property and those who would destroy it in the name of Gaea and Progress. The latter call us conservatives and inbred regressives. Wear that with pride, for as with the church, the liberal viewpoint is slowly committing suicide.