laceblade | This is what an ignorant jackass looks like

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This is what an ignorant jackass looks like

Okay, so it appears as though Something Awful has deleted the offensive post* made by a Wiscon attendee at her request. Indeed, she is so sorry.

So here is my question. I am assuming that people are going to want to discuss what happened. People should discuss what happened, and IMO, how it can be prevented next time.

I still have the window open on my laptop with the original post. Should I post the text in a public post so that it might be accessible to the interwebs once more? If so, where would be most appropriate: my personal blog, or the Wiscon blog? Is it offensive to re-post the material, or is it more offensive for the perpetrator to hurt people so egregiously and then do a hand-wave because she "did not even begin to consider how much harm it would do to people"?

I'd rather not re-post the pictures in my blog, and I'm not even sure that I could. If the post was deleted, I don't think that I can save them, even if they're still on a web browser window that's been open for hours.

*In case you missed it, someone who attended Wiscon spent her time snapping photographs of people without their permission, removing their faces from pictures, and uploading them to the Something Awful forums with some of the most hateful and ignorant commentary I have ever seen in my life. She attended panels such as "Fat is Not the Enemy," took pictures of people whom she considered to be fat, and then hatefully mocked them for the rest of the world to see, often posting people's names with the pictures. I felt physically ill reading the post, and was nearly in tears by the end of it.

I am disgusted and ashamed that this girl attends my University, and presumably lives in this city. I hope for her sake that our paths never cross. Verily, words would be exchanged.
(Thank God for Facebook, so I know what she looks like, am I right?)

ETA: Read the comments for a link to the first half of the original post. Also, the threads of that post on the SASS forums contain lots more pictures (did people find flickr pools?). People seem to be posting lots of just random photos from Wiscon, including a cute picture of

littlebutfierce,

raanve, and someone I don't recognize. NORMALITY, IT TRANSLATES TO LOLS. I guess I'm just really out of touch with Internet humor. I don't get it.

ETA2: One of the Con-Chairs has posted to the Wiscon LJ community, asking people to please cease violent threats of any kind. The post is here. Please sit tight, people. The Con-Chairs and ConCommittee are aware of the problem and working on it. Please refrain from posting personal information about the person in question, etc.

Also, the thread on SASS seems to be using pictures from the Wiscon Flickr pool in an ever-increasing number of posts. If you have photos of children on Flickr, please lock them. If you took photos of people without asking for their permission, I would recommend locking those as well, until you obtain it.

EDIT 3: Do not threaten the original poster (that's just stupid). Do not post her personal information (there is more than one person with her name in the world). If you happen across her personal information, I would go with: Do not contact her.

EDIT 4: If you want to disagree with my friends and I in the comments, that's fine. But if your comments are in any way derogatory, they will be deleted. I am open to discourse, but will not tolerate slurs.

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This is so disgusting and infuriating. I almost feel that someone should do something to make this public in a way that draws negative attention to this person. The things she says (about hating women, etc.) are so pathologically disgusting that I can't even begin to understand what the hell is going on in her head. As Jeremy said, how much must she hate herself to go through such meticulous lengths to hurt people? This is entirely too thorough to have been done without thinking, as she claims.

That was my first impulse: to post her e-mail, name, AIM screenname, etc.

It sounds like the concom is totally on it, though.

And you're right, I can't imagine the self-hatred, or the malice that exists inside of a person to be able to execute such a hurtful attack campaign.

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on a humourous note, thats what i do with all the people who give me problems, and i'm not a teacher of any sort. ;-)

Oy, it IS tempting to post that stuff. I mean, I found her graduate school phone number in less than two minutes. :takes high road, takes high road:

Not only the high road, but I would hate for any of us to get in trouble for responding in ways that the law might consider to be not okay.

Stupidity and ignorance know no bounds.

Finding out that a con member (badged & all) can also be a troll is disappointing, to be sure. I first assumed that it was an outsider invasion, frat boys or something; finding out otherwise while still at WisCon made me laugh at my own assumptions. (I am sure that more than one of the male-type WisCon regulars were frat boys at one time.)

Does it help to know that the troll was escorted off the premises?

It does help! That's great news. The troll is also a member of

uw_grads and I'm tempted to ban her, particularly as other members are WisCon folks.

Well we certainly can do some ol' fashioned Puritanical shunning, that for sure.

I just recovered from the stomach flu and this is what I get? I'm ready for some shunning, yo. Are you on GoogleTalk?

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mystickeeper.livejournal.com - 2008-05-27 15:34 (UTC) - Expand

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brdgt.livejournal.com - 2008-05-27 15:40 (UTC) - Expand

Ban her.

Please do. She is breaking the rules of conduct and I believe should be removed from her grad program. Who do we contact about this?

She got so many things wrong in her post. 1) Moondancer is a Native American. 2) The photo of her husband in the soy panel, he's not a vegetarian. He eats meat all the damn time. He knows he's "doing it wrong." 3) She puts the smack down on their 9 year old? Seriously? A grad student needs to feel better about herself by trying to harm children? 4) She confuses 1 person for another. 5) I could go on...

Moondancer won't talk about this in her LJ because she will be an ordained minister soon and feels she should take the high road. I have no such compulsion. I'm not a pacifist. Where would be the best place to post her personal information? Attacking children, posting photos, oh no.

I'll direct you to

heyfoureyes's comment higher up in this thread:

I would suggest NOT to take a course of action. Do not contact her or her employers unless you are doing so in an official capacity (ie. ConComm member) or are actually filing a charge against her (i.e, for publishing photos of yourself/your children without permission). To contact her otherwise, may constitute legal harrassment.

She does make a ton of mistakes, including misquoting people. But if I were you, I would direct your e-mails to people on the Con-com for now, and ask what we can do to help. Protecting Wiscon's image is of vital importance, and so is everybody's safety. We post her information (whether it's already on the Internet or not), and she can just as easily post ours, and make the situation a lot more dangerous and involved than it already is.

Her foul mouthed attack on Moondancer's son was the point where I started to think she was actually crazy.

I will, definitely. I'm conflicted on what to do about her grad program. I would think the Dean might be a good person to go to first. I'm uncertain about the ethics involved here - not that she paied an attention to ethics.

The concom (and

heyfoureyes) had good points in that for now, we should let the concom figure out what to do. Contacting her bosses or whatever might be considered harassment, and I would just hate for one of us to get in hot water (I don't think we would, but whatever).

I think we should wait for guidance from the concom, which is hopefully coming soon?!?!

The more I thought about it the more I agree you should ban her - I would personally never go to an event that she attended (like a

uw_grads meet up) for fear that she would violate our privacy like she has done to Wiscon attendees.

I'm in several of the photos posted in that awful thread - zooming in on my name tag would reveal my full name on my nametag, where I live, and my LJ name.

Will do.

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brdgt.livejournal.com - 2008-05-28 15:27 (UTC) - Expand

>Stupidity and ignorance know no bounds.

True enough, but hostility is different from stupidity or ignorance. I don't think educating the perp would help any (and education usually helps ignorance.) Or, of course, it might be delusion. Education doesn't help delusion, either. Stupidity is a different thing, too. Smart people can maintain more complicated delusions and grudges.

>Finding out that a con member (badged & all) can also be a troll is disappointing, to be sure.

It really is disappointing. On one level, I know that anyone who wants to can buy a con membership. There's no loyalty oath or background check. (I'd be disturbed if a con tried to investigate me before letting me join. The openness of fandom is part of what appeals to me.) Yet WisCon *feels* so much like a community of like-minded people. It's easy to think those who are not fundamentally in sympathy with WisCon's ideals are all taking themselves elsewhere. It's unsettling to find that isn't so.

>Does it help to know that the troll was escorted off the premises?

It does help. Thanks for telling us that part. I expect there will be other trolls at future WisCons, but it's good to know the community can take some action to protect itself. Why was she thrown out? Was it a post she made during the con, or something she said or did face to face?

> True enough, but hostility is different from stupidity or ignorance. . .

Oh yes indeed. I was thinking of an entire range of negative motivations (conscious or not), yet the subtext didn't make it into my typing. What you say.

> On one level, I know that anyone who wants to can buy a con membership.

Yes, and this was her second WisCon. Presumably she got something out of the first one, and then her behavior took a bizarre turn at this one.

> There's no loyalty oath or background check.

That's what I call a horror story! And yet I feel safely reassured that that is unlikely to happen at the cons I tend to frequent (e.g., WisCon). Thankfullly.

I've only read what is posted here and about half (maybe) of the post at SASS, but I noticed in a couple places she talks about having a goal of hating "everyone." She mentions it specifically in the section labeled "Fat is not you Enemy" and notes that she had been reading fat acceptance blogs as fuel, basically, toward her goal of total misanthropy.

So it doesn't seem to necessarily be ignorance OR stupidity - it seems like she's just a very miserable person who has a need to hate everyone.

NOTE: I am NOT defending her - what she did was horrible, and why she did it is not really the point. I just thought, though, that it might be good to throw that info in to the discussion of her motivations, since that's the one she ascribes to herself.

Edited 2008-05-31 18:38 (UTC)

Yeah, except she didn't go to a con and mock people for being thin, or for being white, or for being straight. Her "misanthropy" is directed down lines of cultural power.

I'm posting her personal information to the MadisonDorks yahoogroup because people who run conventions in WI do post there and I want them to know that there is a predator in their midst.

OddCon is aware of it. A lot of our comcon also makes up parts of past, present, and future Wiscons comcon. It will be an issue we will talk about at one of our meetings.

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