Being Amber Rhea

Today I saw Tony Comstock Twittering about something he called the Google “No Fly List,” and sending tweets about who was and wasn’t on it. I was reading Twitter on my phone when I first saw his tweets, so I couldn’t visit his links and find out exactly what he was talking about until I got home tonight. He put up two posts about the issue today, and another one earlier this week.

Turns out this is the same issue I had read about on ErosBlog in September. Somehow it had fallen off my radar though. Tony’s blog posts and Twitter updates piqued my interest again, and naturally I was curious as to whether I was on “the list.”

Apparently, I am. Hey, it’s official: I’m objectionable!

It’s not as if there aren’t search results for “amber rhea” or even “amber rhe” - but Google is specifically filtering them out of it’s auto-suggest feature.

Obviously the next person I tried was Rusty. He’s there… interesting!

Of course you can still get to any search results for any search term if you type in the full term and hit Enter. But that’s not the point here. The point is, why blacklist some search terms and not others? I think we all know the answer to that. “Objectionable” is code for “sexual.”

As Tony points out, racism is apparently just fine by Google Suggest; start typing in “stormfront” and you get no shortage of suggestions.

So then I started thinking, well, this is all very interesting, but let’s try a few other things to see if it really is specifically targeting sexual content as objectionable - not those naughty searches for porn, but information about sex.

Sure enough - start typing “sex education,” and it’s crickets from Google Suggest:

Similarly, “sex work” draws a big blank:

And the only suggestions that do show up for “sex” are very telling:

What’s important? Sex and the City. What’s objectionable? Sex education.

Things like this that some people would argue are minor or not a big deal are very, very revealing. It really shows where our collective priorities are. White supremacy? Eh, who cares. Sex? Oh god no!!

melissa:

rkb:

You lose a lot by not being anonymous, and maybe the only thing you gain is the freedom from worrying about being outed. I’m with Melissa in that I’m not sure what Emily wrote is something I necessarily want to avoid. I’m still figuring all this out, and probably always will be. I don’t know that you can ever fully manage your online persona (or offline), because at the end of the day, whether you say everything or nothing or opt for somewhere in between, there will always be haters, there will always be misinterpretations, there will always be someone who’s uncomfortable with what you’ve said.

Also with Rachel here: I want to talk less about “oversharing” and more about the gutter. “Oversharing” has jumped the theoretical shark. In academia, we’d say the term and the way its deployed is overdetermined, but this is the Internet, and so, sharks it is. Chomp. We need better tools to take this thing apart. Using “oversharing” as our analytic lens is like using Gawker commenters to issue a Human Rights Declaration. And what I mean by the “gutter” is what Scott McCloud nailed in Understanding Comics — that we have been trained as readers to fill in the gaps between images (read also: blog posts, Twitter updates, News Feed items). This is where we as readers/users engage a text as authors (little “a,” Barthes bear with me). This is where the people formerly known as the audience get a front seat in our own lives, as writers, producers, creatives, insert overplayed word you’re too scared to apply to yourself and your work here. Plus all the connotations of the gutter are perfect for what we’re really pointing at here: body/bawdy talk, cum and tears, love and loss. Look at the examples Susan and Viviane pulled for their talk: girl, sex, blog.

So a few days ago Grayson was kicked off the front page of Peach Pundit. I don’t read Peach Pundit, because I find the place toxic and can’t bear to be there for even a few seconds without feeling ill (and no, I’m not exaggerating), so I wouldn’t have known if someone else hadn’t told me. Frankly I don’t understand why so many people seem to bow to Peach Pundit even though it’s blatantly obvious that the place is not trying to be some comprehensive resource for Georgia politics, and exists only as a place for the nastiest version of the old boys club, moved online, to jerk themselves off and feel better about themselves by hurling around schoolyard insults. Problem being, of course, that when you’re in a position of power and privilege relative to those who are on the receiving end of the hurling, it’s not something that can be written off with “just ignore it” or “they’re just idiots.” I mean, they are idiots, but they’re idiots whose words and actions can have real-world effects. This is why the “just ignore it” trope never worked for me. (Well, this and other, related reasons.) Not everyone has the luxury of “just ignoring it” - because if you do, something terrible and very real might happen.

That said, I do my best to “ignore it” by simply not visiting Peach Pundit. I’ve got enough on my plate at the moment without adding that heaping mound of BS. There isn’t room in my brain to deal with the drama of a bunch of disaffected white guys who totally aren’t sexist, so why don’t you shut up about it already… geez why are you so oversensitive, you humorless bitch? Also, you’re ugly, and probably a lesbian (because that would be the worst thing!), and I would never fuck you (such a loss!), etc. etc.

This is my lived experience. This is the lived experience of countless other women. No, you do not get to question it or invalidate it. THIS IS MY TRUTH. IT IS REAL.

So anyway, I didn’t know about Grayson being kicked off until Rusty told me about it. I thought, “Huh, that’s fucked up” but didn’t think more because like I said, there’s just not room in my brain right now for the PP bullshit - I have more important things I need to think about. I never understood why Grayson wrote there in the first place; the few times I would go over to PP (before I imposed a self-ban for the sake of my mental health) I would see her getting attacked and abused constantly, and no one did a damn thing about it. As for why she continued to write there, the only thing I could think was it was like Melissa’s reason for persevering at Valleywag (a place I find comparably hostile, if not as openly Republican):

My tactic has been to go ahead and take my stories where they dare not go, breaking with this whole “pink ghetto” nonsense as a game — I want to see what happens when I refuse to believe that there’s a certain way to be authentic and there’s a certain “right” audience for my work. Being a whore has made me very, very comfortable with letting people think I’m everything they want me to be for them, even as I’m doing (mostly) what I please.

And I really respect that. Coincidentally, Melissa put up that post right around the time I quit Download Squad. Some people can stand up to that sort of abuse, and not let it get them down, and stay focused on what they’re trying to do, and hopefully reach even just 1 person out of 1,000. I can’t. I don’t think that makes me weak or not as good of a writer/blogger/idealist/whatever or not as dedicated… or whatever else people might be prone to say. Those accusations are the easy way out, the way to cast judgment without taking a deeper look at all the layers of a situation.

Going back to Melissa’s quote above, the part I’m not comfortable with is letting people think I’m [x], when really I’m doing my own thing. I have my moments; in certain situations, I can handle that. But overall? I have this need for people to understand, and anything else feels out of whack in my system, and I can’t deal. I know that’s a hindrance to me, because there are some people who just won’t understand, plain and simple, because of their own shit, no matter how much I try to explain and be clear and find the point of communication breakdown. I wish I could get over that, though, because I know it’s pragmatism (which I am a huge fan of); that’s how you get what you need done. I guess for me, getting what I need done has to take other avenues, for now.

As for Grayson’s situation at Peach Pundit, let me be very clear(!) that this has fuck-all to do with the substance of her writing there: was it on topic, was it off topic, was it inflammatory, blah blah blah. I don’t know, because I didn’t read it; and I don’t care. It’s immaterial to my concerns. To try to drag that into the conversation is to divert attention from the larger issue and to move dangerously close to “blame the victim” territory. What I care about is the pattern of behavior. This is how women are treated online. This is the same old shit over and over again, regardless of the particulars of the situation of the moment. This is how male bloggers go around their ass to get to their elbow, anything, my god, to avoid admitting that yeah, there’s a gendered explanation for what they’re doing, and the problem is with them, and it’s not okay.

This exhausts me. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat the same basic shit. And it’s not about my personal feelings for one blogger or another. It’s about a pattern of behavior. I can hardly even bear to type this because it feels so ridiculously repetitive - and it just upsets me. A lot.

Here’s an IM conversation between Rusty and me, from a few days ago. Ideally, I would write a totally well-thought-out, well-written post based on this conversation, complete with links and citations and references; instead, I’m letting it stand alone.

[15:55] Rusty: saw the email re: grayson…on one hand feel sort of bad for piling on, but on the other can’t really help but be a little disappointed that she got pretty viciously personal about it
[15:56] Amber: yeah, but i don’t think it’s really an appropriate time to focus on that. it reminds me of ppl who try to pretend all things are equal when they’re not. it’s like, why focus on that (whcih sucked and was uncalled for, no one is denying that) and not the MOUNTAIN of SHIT they’ve heaped on her?
[15:57] Amber: it’s like, you do one little thing that’s “out of line” when you’re dealing with people shitting all over you, and THAT is what gets focused on/ called out. i’ve seen it a lot ’round my blogosphere travels, and it bothers me.
[15:59] Rusty: thing is, she has been writing tons of irrelevant posts on the site..and yeah, other people write some, but with her it was like more than half her posts were that way…erick has been kind of spineless about reigning that in, hence exposing her to a lot of abuse that could have been avoided
[16:00] Amber: well see, i think that’s erick’s fault
[16:00] Amber: it’s his responsibility, as editor, to tell ppl when they are writing off topic stuff and make sure they don’t continue
[16:00] Rusty: yeah, which is something I mentioned in my blog post
[16:01] Amber: i know, which further shows that the playing field isn’t even. it’s like, why focus on her remark, rather than his lack of holding up his responsibilities, and then just pulling the plug? that was a shitty and unprofessional (and he wants to be “professional” which is why i pull that out) thing to do
[16:04] Rusty: it was still an uncool remark that I can’t let slide without saying something, even all other things considered…how devastating would it be if someone started talking her and her kid? I don’t think that’s acceptable under any circumstance
[16:05] Amber: it’s not acceptable, and i don’t disagree w/ that. but why let all of the other bullshit abuse she’s taken slide, and not this?
[16:05] Rusty: I don’t think I’m letting it slide
[16:06] Amber: it’s been going on for months… so my thing is, when ppl do this, it’s like, ok, yeah, that one thing was shitty, but how about this mountaitn of shit that’s been going on for a long time and is much worse? why did that never warrant a calling-out? why pile on the person being shat on at this particular time?
[16:07] Rusty: well, take the thing with jefferson…lots of people have been letting a lot of shitty behavior slide for a long time and are just now talking about it publicly..you included…that doesn’t invalidate any of it
[16:08] Amber: i see this as a different situation, bc jefferson has a court case going on with real-world implications and is asking for money
[16:09] Amber: i think what pushed a lot of ppl over the edge w/ him is that he’s asking for $20,000
[16:10] Rusty: yeah, certainly that’s greater motivation than in this case…but sometimes it takes a big public display to draw those comments out
[16:11] Amber: i think in the case w/ grayson, it’s pretty lopsided
[16:11] Amber: i’ve just seen this happen far too often in some of the blog circles i frequent, esp. with women… it happened to me at download squad, for example
[16:12] Amber: ppl left some vile, misogynistic comments on my post - personal comments -and nobody said a word. but the minute i did something i maybe shouldn’t have - twittered that the commenters were assholes - everybody was all over my shit
[16:12] Amber: now you tell me that’s fair
[16:16] Rusty: nope, not fair at all…and I’m not at all arguing that grayson has been treated fairly there…she hasn’t…but while erick may be tangentially responsible for some vile things said to her through his editorial negligence, he never personally attacked her…and she brought his parenting into it…I still think that’s beyond the pale even given the history
[16:19] Amber: he never personally attacked her, but he never defended her, either. and in a way that’s worse. at download squad, grant never personally attacked me, but he never stepped in to say anything to the misogynistic commenters, either - and as editor that was his responsibility. and i think that’s worse. it stinks.
[16:21] Rusty: it’s definitely shitty. but again, I’m disappointed that she went there because it makes the job of defending her very difficult. it was a fucked up thing to say
[16:23] Amber: it totally was. and i thnk there’s a way to point that out w/o making it seem slanted like “let’s focus on this one thing she said while people were treating her like garbage”. there’s a way to say that personal attacks are uncalled for, and use that as one example - but point out that the MOUNTAIN of unprovoked, awful comments she endured for months with no defense are a million other examples, and the silence on the matter has been deafening
[16:25] Rusty: I think I tried to acknowledge that in my post
[16:25] Rusty: I think there are problems with Peach Pundit, and that Grayson has taken abuse there that is disproportionate to any wrongs she is alleged to have committed prior to today.
[16:26] Amber: i just don’t think that point has been made - by anyone, me included, and that’s my bad bc i’ve been meaning to write on it, and now this happens - strongly enough
[16:27] Amber: women take this kind of abuse online all the fuckin time and if we dare talk about it we’re told we’re whiners and we can’t take the heat and we need to grow a thick skin… i’m fucking sick to death of it

Erick never personally attacked her. Grant never personally attacked me. Oh great. Do they get a medal?

*sigh* I don’t know what else to say. I need to lie down. Would I handle this better if I weren’t in the middle of dealing w/ grief? Maybe. But if I’m totally honest… probably not. It would still twist itself up in my gut, sitting there and eating at me and making me feel awful.

I’m putting this up without proofreading. Just, there. Now, I’ll go rest for a while before we go to Home Depot to get something to hang the bird feeder on, so the squirrels won’t steal seed from the bird friends that visit our balcony. Like this one, from Flickr user stewickie:

I figured it would be good to end on a happy note, with a photo of a bird!

Well, let me back up. I might have killed my internets. I don’t yet have conclusive proof.

So last night I’m chilling in my apartment, sitting in bed with my iBook. I spent about an hour or so watching episodes of a video podcast (a.k.a. “vidcast;” or, for the even hipper, “v-cast”) of teh pr0n, which I cannot link to now because I’m at work - but you should check out Comstock Films. At around midnight, the GDBF finishes his fervent and awesome editing of episode 1 of the North Fulton Drama Club podcast and makes his way down the hall to my place. He climbs into bed with me and the iBook, and I’m all, “Let me show you this cool shit I’ve been watching” - and as we’re getting situated so that we can both see the screen, there’s a quick flash and a loud pop, and the lamp on the bedside table goes out. We’re both stunned for a second, and then we’re like, “WTF was that?”

My first (rather alarming, but also rather stupid) thought was that the water heater had exploded or something, because it sounded like it had come from the utility closet. Rusty thought it might’ve been a power surge, but none of the other lights were out. So I thought the lightbulb had just burned out and had made a big production of it. (Going out with a bang, as they say.) While I went to get a new lightbulb, Rusty realized we were no longer connected to the internet. Now things were getting seriously worrisome.

My wireless network wasn’t appearing at all in the list of Airport networks. I investigated and saw that all my electronic doodads - cable modem, wireless router, Tivo - were, in fact, off. (No glowing green LEDs!) I flipped the circuit breaker and everything came back on.

Still no internets though. So I went through all the standard troubleshooting BS… reboot the computer; unplug the modem and router and plug them back in; turn off Airport and turn it back on; et cetera. All to no avail. By this point it was very late and we were tired, so we decided to just go to bed, even though I was stressing about my potential lack of connectivity. I guess I’ll know for sure when I go home tonight. Any of you network admin fools know anything else I should try? It would suck if I fried something.

Oh, I guess that means I should tell you what caused the flash and the pop. We finally figured it out; get a load of this shit. Since I live in a converted ice and coal factory, the whole place has that ultra-hip neo-industrial feel - e.g., the electrical outlets stick out from the cinderblock walls. Turns out my metal bedframe was making contact with an empty socket. Uh, oops. Guess I need to get one of those plastic thingies that prevent babies from sticking their fingers in sockets. (”Socket” is a funny word.)

And only I could ramble on for several paragraphs about the spark that jumped from my electrical outlet to my bed frame.

From the Wired story, “Is the Internet Out of Room?”:

RTI estimates that only 30 percent of application vendors will have integrated IPv6 capabilities by 2008. And while market-leading Cisco Systems routers have been IPv6-ready for years, most corporate workstations aren’t. Current versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system aren’t set up to support IPv6 automatically, although the company’s oft-delayed successor, Vista, will.

What they don’t tell you is that Mac OS X has supported IPv6 since Jaguar (10.2), which was released in 2002.

Ryan has been asking me to explain the differences between blogs and message boards. In my mind, the two are clearly so disparate as to require no explanation; thus, when I tried to think of an answer on the spot, I couldn’t, and became frustrated with myself (and looked like I didn’t have an answer and therefore they aren’t different - which isn’t the case).

I told Ryan I’d write my response in the form of a blog post, because that way I’d be able to give sufficient thought to my answer and word it correctly. Well, as it turns out, I’m lazy, and if I’ve learned anything as a programmer, it’s this: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Especially when someone else has already done it more elegantly than you could.

So, here are some good explanations I found out there on the internets.

Semantic differences between blogs and message boards, from Common Craft:

• A blog post says “Here it is, dig it”
• A message board post says “your turn”

• Comment implies “if you want, not required”
• Reply implies “I’m not done until you do.”

• A blog is my back yard
• A message board is a park

• A blog has readers
• A message board has lurkers

• A blog is all about ME
• A message board is all about US

• When things go quiet on a blog, the onus is on one person
• When things go quite on a message board, the onus is on everyone

I even found a handy chart at Common Craft. (This URL, by the way, was the #1 Google hit for “differences between blogs and message boards,” and is the one other people seem to be referencing the most when presented with the question.)

Here’s another side-by-side comparison of the features of blogs and message boards, from Mathemagenic.

Shel Holtz says:

[F]rom where I sit, the key difference is control. On a message board, anybody can initiate a topic. Only the owner of the blog can open a subject for discussion.

Eric at CollabuTech offers this (and also provides a more complex graphical representation):

The signal-to-noise ratio is so much better on blogs than on message boards. You don’t have to slog through the garbage to find the good. Instead, you are handed a map that gets you their (sic) directly. You don’t have to read everything to find the good stuff.

(Of course, “the good stuff” is a painfully relative term, but you get the idea.)

Charles wants to complicate things with his new blog (which I’m currently working on coding), whose structure will be kind of a hybrid of a traditional blog and a message board. But more on that later. ;)

So, Ryan… does this answer your question? (If anyone has anything else to add… well, you know, that’s what comments are for!)

So, apparently a programmer was fired from Friendster, and the reason given was blogging. I am very tempted to cancel my Friendster account. This is utterly ridiculous.

I originally read about it here. I didn’t have any comments at first, but after this ludicrous comment, I couldn’t stop myself. There are 2 main issues that stick in my craw with that comment: 1) the key phrase is “I have not read the particular offending entries…” Yeah. So go do that before you make an ass of yourself with your broad, sweeping generalizations. 2) Obviously I understand that companies have a right to protect themselves against libel and slander and public revelation of non-public company information, etc. It’s just that I don’t see any of those things happening in this case. Go read the “offending entries”. They’re about as bland as you can get.

Now that usage of the internet is so widespread, there are new and unforeseen problems and conflicts arising all the time. Don’t get me wrong; I think the growth and increasing permeance of the internet is a good thing. Of course, so do greedy corprate-types, but for different reasons. I still believe in the original intent of the Web (I was going to say, “I still believe in the original intent of the internet, but let us not forget that originally, way back when, the internet started as a DOD project [but was soon absorbed by academia, of course]), as stated by its inventor:

The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then use computers to help us analyze it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together. (More)

Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not some Luddite saying the Web shouldn’t be used by corporations for business or a way to make money. Of course it should, that’s the natural progression of things, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just… argh, I can’t think of the best way to say what I mean… well, I think this guy said it best when he said, “Just like the music, art, and film industries, capitalism (and those quality traits its worshippers appreciate) is going to squat and take a giant shit on the world of bloggers, too.”

Back in the day, before everybody and their grandma was buying an HP Pavilion at Wal-Mart and getting 1 million hours of free AOL, the internet was the domain mainly of a rebellious underground, a counter-culture if you will. (Groan… did I really just use “counter-culture” and “if you will” in the same sentence?) Its inhabitants were, for the most part, idealistic, anti-establishment innovators who sought to tear down the restrictive walls and limits imposed by capitalism and greed… they believe that the internet could help make the world a better place. Inevitably, more and more corporate types stared hopping on the bandwagon, and the whole thing became a little less magical and free-spirited. Laws governing things like “intellectual property” began to pop up. The free spirits are still there, and always will be, but now they are having to fight tooth and nail against… well, people who would fire you for blogging.

Like I said before, I understand the need for laws against slander, libel, etc., even the need for confidentiality agreements. But fundamentally, don’t we have free speech on the internet anymore, on our personal web sites? Isn’t that one of the things its users have held dear since way back when?

JP (the woman who was fired) didn’t say anything bad about Friendster. But, furthermore, what if she had? So what? Can we no longer express opinions? I hate feeling now like I have to be careful of even mentioning in my blog that I work at WebMD. I guess The Man will always be bringin’ us down, and the only [relatively] safe place to rant about whatever the hell you want is an old-fashioned paper journal.

(Note: this was written stream-of-consciousness, in a sleep-deprived state to boot. If I were to spend more time working on it and revising it, as if I were still in college or something, I would have a nice little essay on my hands.)