this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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Personal experience.
From personal experience about 80% of the harassment I recieve is from straight white american males, not kids either, many times they're middle aged. There are some females in the mix, rarely people of colour but there have been a few.
If I were to guess I would imagine it's because women and people of colour also belong to vulnerable communities and run the risk of attracting the wrong type of attention and becoming targets themselves.
Not every white american male is a troll or violent obviously but since 2015 the ones who are continue to become active threats.
Honestly I see them almost as victims themselves. No troll, stalker, mass shooter, etc started out that way. They became radicalized online by getting wrapped up in online activities they were not emotionally nor intellectually equipped to handle.
An example is the Christchurch massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings
He didn't start out as a mass murderer, he was radicalized online in places like 8chan. He even posted on 8chan that they needed to keep an eye on Christchurch because something big was going to happen.
It's not just americans and it's not just white males but so many get caught up in the culture of trolling that there are going to be those who become fundamentally damaged by the continued activity to the point that they take it too far and sometimes that leads to things like mass shootings, or swatting, stalking or other criminal behaviour.
It's so easy for them to fall in to those holes. I'm currently half way though my 19th year of being a father to a what is now a fellow man.
That's a loaded statement, but trust that he arrived there on his own. We had some amazing conversations along the way about; what gender meant to him, what the words gay and stright meant, hell we discussed what his fursona "could" be.
That one scared me, I was on b long enough ago that furf*g (sorry y'all) was still a term that I had defined 20 years ago without reassessment until the moment the 13 year old that was my favorite human brought it up over greasy appetizers at Applebee's during a 4 day LAN party. Man, those kids that were sightly older than him with tails and ears were his everything at that event. Haha
Anyways, all along the way I've been part of his dialog with "the Internet". I've done it as a very active user and a long time lurker. I still have irc channels I idle in and I still remember epic gets going back to 1 million. I was a boxy hater and you'll never convince me otherwise even as the shoe head shit comes back as lame ass Q pedo baiting for 40 something neckbeards with poor relationship skills and amazing commander decks. (trigger warning for keyboard warriors that are really going through it, I hope you find grass some day).
I digress. What I have seen and tried with all my ability to do is steer him from being someone incapable of true human interaction and empathy despite natural bias. I think I got there but it wasn't without tours through Wikipedia articles about misogyny, incel culture and feminism. It wasn't without incredibly frustrating moments where I didn't get why the fuck you'd spend hours a day on YouTube being fed what ever shit the algorithm served you. But I asked if we could go over his watch history and I had honest conversations with him about Andrew Tate and that culture. We did. I think I made things better by doing it too. Either way, there's millions of dudes out there who never had that and it sucks. But advertisers know that nothing sells better than anger, unless it's loneliness.
No matter what though, we may be an anomaly. And I understand why some can't help but yell online in impotent rage. The only path they see to actualizing that is through a barrel. My neighboring high school senior year was the site of one of the first mass school shootings in America some 25 years ago. Now I've normalized active shooter drills and had legit discussions with my ex-wife about bulletproof backpacks. The fuck are we doing?
It's a travesty we don't have the support systems in place for anybody that doesn't have the means for self sufficiency and it's ever more so that we have created systems that further deny that for those that would benefit most from them. I don't have an answer. Wish I did because it would sure give me something to write a manifesto about and possibly even inspire a lifestyle change to the Vegas strip with a belt pack microphone. That always seemed like an interesting reality. Alas, I'll continue to live in a medium sized town, building a bug out NAS and hoping shit doesn't get so hot I'm too exhausted to enjoy the fallout.
Stay safe out there. And thanks for letting a 40 something CIS dude monopolize the Internet once again.
/rant
Good, high quality comment. It's these discussions that I like Lemmy for, and makes me confused about why everyone complains about it.
Even though I was on the other side of you in the Boxxy wars (lol feels so quaint now), I think we'd agree about a lot. You sound like you're taking a very active part in your child's life, which is key nowadays in this age of the internet and social media. So many people are letting their kids get half-raised by the algorithms without any oversight or context. Just wanted to say that though I don't know you personally, I can tell that you care and are doing your best, which is all we can do in this crazy world, and I'm happy we still have parents like that who are able to adapt to raising a kid in this "information age".
I won't hold the Boxxy against you. Lol. Thanks for the reply and encouragement. Trying is the best we can do and hopefully it makes a difference in the end. I advocate for all the other parents I encounter to try and be aware of what's out there, it's not like it was when I was growing up where the worst that could happen is you'd end up cybering with some creepy old dude. But that's hard for folks to do when they too are distracted by the asshole parade that is most social media.
I appreciate a thoughtful response as well. If we're all diligent we can keep that discourse as the standard here and maybe continue to live in that early internet era that Lemmy had in the beginning. Much like Portlandia, the dream of the 90's is alive on the fediverse.
Cheers friend!
So I am also a straight white American male and the ones I blame for this culture is the old rich white American males. They don't want to lose power so they use their money (Rupert Murdoch as an example) to radicalize those who don't have the education and/or training to tell real from fake. Yes there will always be the "deplorables" as well. But i do feel for those who fall for the bullshit. Doesn't mean they can be allowed to drag everyone else down, but I at least understand how those who might have initially had the best intentions could be radicalized into more extreme mindsets. Propaganda and peer pressure is far more powerful and insidious than a lot of people give it credit.
I imagine you're at least in your 20s and so I've got bad news for you. The younger folks in their teens now are absolutely skewing right in a big way.
Thanks for your response - I think that we agree. My point was just that your post was about being decent, then you randomly dunk on a group.
It's not that your personal experience isn't representative - I think that there is a contingent of privileged people who feel left out by progress towards a level playing field. That sort-of makes sense, right? There are also strong echo chambers pushing those people towards radicalization. I suppose I'm asking you to feel empathy for these, very privileged, victims of a society that doesn't know how to engage with them. Egalitarianism has to bring everyone along - I don't know if that can be done.