When the Internet Chases You from Your Home

As someone who mostly eschews Facebook and Twitter I viewed Gamergate as much ado about nothing when it happened. Idiots yelling at idiots about things I didn't care much about. I cannot imagine caring if there is integrity in video game journalism or not.

Pieces like this bring home that beyond idiots yelling at other idiots on the net there are real people whose lives are being disrupted, who have experienced real fear and anguish. Who deserve our sympathy and protection.

In America we are normalizing dehumanizing other people in our public dialog with people like our President leading the charge. You make a sarcastic tweet about someone dehumanizing them, move on, and have lunch.

Not only does that person experience your shitty words in a more personal light but after you throw an apple, someone else throws a brick and pretty soon bullets are flying.

A thought leader describes someone as a worthless piece of trash and others are eager to make that person feel that way with threats of violence, threats of rape, harassment.

We especially those whose words influence others need to stop deriving self importance by attacking the worth of others. We need to elevate the level of dialogue in America and shove the trolls back in their caves when they open their mouths to spew vile crap.

> while these are all legitimate worries someone should take a minute and ask why, when mustached men have been stalking women since the days of Whitecastle yet no systemic changes have been effected, the moment women feel threatened from the safety of their LCD screens America opens the nuclear briefcase. No one finds that suspicious?

> regular stalking is barely ever mentioned in media, no matter how many times the guy was laying under her new boyfriend's front porch on Wednesday nights after Organic Chemistry class, what drives the article is "and then he stalked her on Facebook!" [...]

> As the recipient of not zero decapitation emails I admit it does make you curious about whether or not you can buy an alligator, but while you're arming your windows like a Saw movie you should contemplate the difference between what should be done and why it appears something should be done.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150905124257/http://thelastpsyc...

That page is so difficult to read because of all the interactive crap that it risks making people react negatively to the content.

Which is a pity because the topic is important.