Juvenal and the internet: Fear and Loathing Online

If Old Holborn’s been trolling to the extent stated by Jonathan Maitland in ITV’s Tonight program, his Twitter feed shows he’s been behaving himself recently; but he knew the program was coming out.

The Libertarian Alliance compared OH to Juvenal (left, who admittedly railed bitterly against those who he saw as his lessers), but ignored the dearth of literacy and materials in ancient Rome relative to today. And also satire’s traditional targets, as Maitland pointed out: not “the weak and vulnerable” but public figures, especially those in power.

Old Holborn didn’t help himself, coming across as something of a psychopath:

It isn’t my responsibility what other people find offensive. If you don’t like it, turn off.

But it’s not always possible to turn off. Even the act of looking at a computer screen increases cerebral arousal and can create a compulsion to look further.

That’s maybe why some people can’t look away, most notably 14-year-old Hannah Smith, who killed herself after trolls – anonymous hyper-offensive posters – ground her down so much on ask.fm living didn’t appear an option.

Maitland traced a troll, "Jamie Card", who posted offensive comments about a woman’s 2-year-old child with Down’s Syndrome. However, under present laws, he has to be caught “with his hands on the keyboard”.

Old Holborn (Robert Ambridge - masked, right) defended himself as a championing free speech. But, as one victim pointed out, trolls curtail the free speech of their victims. The internet becomes a lawless expanse where only the brave or the abusive dare tread, and where both statutory authorities and social-media operators fail in their duty to enact Tim Berners-Lee’s principle that they must "prevent the Web from being abused by destructive forces to an extent that the overall pain is greater than the gain".

Given that the Internet enables communication and organisation like nothing before, is Establishment inaction in the face of these abusers totally coincidental?

Charles Bond
300 words

Resources

How to deal with an Internet Troll - wikihow.com

Fear and Loathing Online - ITV player, until 11 october 2013

Fear and Loathing Online Homepage - itv.com: scroll to bottom of page for sites to help you if you are a victim of trolling

Old Holborn's Twitter feed

Old Holborn: a Juvenal for our times - Libertarian Alliance blog

Facebook troll ["Jamie Card"] hijacked woman's account and pretended to give her child away

Tim Berners-Lee's internet archeology principles: filtering

September 11 2013

This day seems to come about more quickly every year. 9/11 is by no means the only atrocity committed against Western freedoms, but it remains the wake-up call that we enjoy those freedoms - and others aspire to them - only because of the sacrifices made by armed forces and victims of terrorism. For me it's best put by Karl Popper in his 1956 essay The History of our Time: an Optimist's View, in his collection Conjectures and Refutations:

In spite of our great and serious troubles, and in spite of the fact that ours is not the best possible society, I assert that our own free world is by far the best society which has come into existence during the course of human existence.

Let's whisper a prayer today for all who have died in the name of our precious freedoms; including, most recently in my country, Drummer Lee Rigby.

Gerry Dorrian

Click for National 9/11 Memorial Website

Blackout

Pace Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity, Channel 4’s Blackout is the best found-footage film I’ve seen, and all the more scary because of its feasibility.

The last blackouts to affect Great Britain were in 1972, during the Miners’ Strike. They were only in the evenings, but memories were still strong enough to see Edward Heath’s government voted out when he called an election over the strikes in 1974.

In Blackout the outage lasts for a week, literally 24/7, and by day 2 social order is breaking down. For me the central character is a DIY enthusiast who borders on what in the US would be called a "prepper", an individual who stocks food and supplies in case of an emergency entailing social breakdown. What our man seems to have overlooked is a stock of what across the Pond would be common sense: in such a breakdown you don’t just need supplies, you need the wherewithal to protect them.

In his non-fiction book Danse Macabre, horrormeister Stephen King concludes that horror films – and Blackout was very chilling – reflect the preoccupations of society at that time. Thus Them and the Godzilla movies reflected fears around nuclear warfare, while The Exorcist and The Omen came out at times of anxieties caused by youth uprisings.

I think King’s take on Blackout would be that it reflects, pretty obviously, fears about the fragility of our social fabric. However, King would also look at other meanings of the title: information blackout, say, as in the dearth of knowledge we have about how many people are actually in our country and how our money is really being spent at home and abroad; and blackout of consciousness, whereby our unelected establishment chooses not to be mindful of the abuses perpetrated by its favoured communities.

Watch Blackout – and be scared.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

REsources

Watch Blackout on 4oD

Go to the Channel 4 homepage for Blackout

open letter to Feministe moderators

Dear Feministe moderators,

you have decided that "Gerry is definitely not welcome to throw around such bigoted stereotypes" on the Feministe blog.

A post was followed by a discussion that was fractious from all sides; I stated my belief that there’s no such thing as race, misogynist societies abet rape, and also wondered why we spent decades tackling our home-grown institutionalised misogyny before throwing it away by importing and proceeding to institutionalise other cultures’ misogyny.

Then I realised: you believe I am being "passive-aggressive" by linking to my blog (a standard practice) when commenting.

So what posts on my blog might you have objected to? The ones questioning "what’s the entertainment value in rape" and "since when was rape a freedom of speech issue"? Or maybe my investigation into porn and lads’ mags freely visible in newsagents in a Cambridge (England) major street?

It appears you object to the minority of posts on my blog that deal with Islamism and Jihad.

That’s your prerogative.

But I’d like to point out that opposing Islamism isn’t the same as opposing Muslims; for example, anti-Islamism appears throughout Benazir Bhutto’s autobiography, Daughter of the East. Muslims in the UK are increasingly finding their anti-Islamist voice, most noticeably when Ipswich Muslims took the initiative to join the English Defence League in processing to the town’s war memorial in remembrance of murdered soldier Drummer Lee Rigby.

I’m sad to see that you seem to subscribe to an anti-humanist view prevalent in some sectors of society, whereby you agitate for the freedoms of expression that allow you to make your point to be denied to those with whom you disagree. In the UK this is leaking outside the Islamism debate: now people who support fracking or badger culling are also being labelled "fascist".

I won’t darken your virtual door again. Have a good life.

Yours faithfully
Gerry Dorrian
300 words

musicians oppose bullies, but they have strong friends

The last time I bought Kerrang!, New Wave of Heavy Metal pioneers Iron Maiden and Saxon were were regulars; Helloween and older hands like Ozzy Osbourne and Gary Moore, of blessed memory, were frequent flyers in its pages.

So when I bought a copy for old times’ sake the first thing I felt was a vague sadness that I wasn’t familiar with any of the bands mentioned. Then I noticed a special feature on bullying.

Black Veil Brides are part of an army of rock bands participating in MOB – Musicians Opposed to Bullying – and a line of their song Unbroken (which featured in Avengers Assemble) has been used on T-shirts funding a film, The Bully Project.

I was very interested in what Bride founder and vocalist Andy Biersack had to say. He was bullied because his hair was longer than the norm. When I went to school blokes with long hair were the cool ones, but tempus mutat mores, as we were always saying in the East End of Glasgow.

Then he said he was a bit chubbier than the rest. Unfortunately fat(ter) kids have always been punished by their peers, but don’g always get better treatment from adults. A 2007 Telegraph article reported authors were "making fat children bully targets", but I’m thinking about real life. In the British government’s first "Change for Life ad, we see a kid sitting playing video games then the huge word "fat". Then we have school uniforms: chain stores are only stocking uniforms for stick insects, while one Surrey newspaper’s story on shops that did stock uniforms for fat kids was headlined "our shame". Welcome to nudging.

It’s good that bullying is being dealt with by rock musicians. But while governments and their friends effectively encourage bullying to further their agendas (eg on health), the problem will infest all sectors.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

Government Change for Life video

Unbroken by Black Veil Brides

Click to watch The Bullying Project full movie

Authors making fat children bully targets - The Telegraph

Our XXXXL shame: Oversize Sussex school uniforms puts spotlight on child obesity - The Argus

Littoral Conversatives' Framework Manifesto?

Littoral Coversatives?

WHAT?

I'm not sure if this is lunacy, or an inspired piece of political philosophy.

Take a look, if you have the time:

Littoral Conversatives' Framework Manifesto by John S Waintaft

Charles Bond

porn and "lads' mags" displays in Cambridge's Mill Road newsagents

A campaign called Lose the Lads’ Mags is calling – very reasonably, in my view – for “Lads’ Mags” like Zoo, Nuts, etc to be put on newsagents’ top shelves and have modesty covers, arguing that they "promote sexist attitudes and behaviours" and "normalise the idea that it’s acceptable to treat women like sex objects".

So I decided to take a walk down Cambridge’s Mill Road from the town end to the top and look at how its newsagents store both Lads’ and porn mags. "Unedited" shots refer to covers featuring pictures of topless models where nipples aren’t obscured by stars.

Nip In Express

Top shelf occupied by porn magazines, many with whole front page displayed, no modesty covers on any. One lads’ mag – FHM – on display at child’s-eye level in contravention of National Federation of Retail Newsagents’ Guidelines on Diplaying Adult/Top Shelf Titles, no modesty covers.

R.B. Stores/Mace

Top row occupied by porn mags, no modesty covers. One – Whips’n’Chains – had unedited cover picture. One lads’ mag – FHM – on top shelf.

Lally’s Newsagents

Top two rows occupied by lads’ mags, no modesty covers, often whole front pages visible, several of these with unedited shots. No lads’ mags visible.

Tesco

No porn mags. Lads’ mags on top shelf: Nuts, no modesty cover; Zoo with modesty board on front.

Londis

Top shelf occupied by porn mags. Two had modesty covers, the rest had edited shots. Two lads’ mags – Zoo and Nuts – at childs’ eye height.

The Co-op

No porn mags. FHM and Nuts on top shelf, no modesty covers.

Spar

Top shelf occupied by porn mags, many obscured by the mag in front. But some whole front pages visible, some of which had unedited shots. DVD covers – Strap on Dildos and XXX Lesbians – visible, with unedited shots. This surprised me, as Spar's homepage says it supports the NSPCC, which recently criticised how girls feel they have to look and behave like porn stars.

Personally, I have no problem with consenting adults buying magazines containing pictures of consenting adults. But putting such images on covers which are then prominently displayed is skewing the way both genders, especially young people, view women. Change in the way these magazines are stocked and displayed is needed.

Gerry Dorrian

Resources

Lose the Lads Mags homepage

NFRN Guidance on Displaying Adult/Top Shelf Titles