Topsy-Turvy: Things I Notice
To me, a Topsy-Turvy is worse than a Catch-22. The latter is a logical impossibility due to contradictory rules. Topsy-Turvy, on the other hand, is pure and utter bullshit.
Here’s a couple examples I’ve noticed of late.
1)
A new term has cropped up recently to describe the act of publishing a person’s real name, address and other personal information on the internet with the intent to cause harm.
Yes, it happens so much there’s a word for it now.
The term is “dox.”
Years ago, long before it was trendy, I was doxxed. I had banned a couple of racists from an online forum and they were none too happy about it. So they threatened to kill me. “You have 24 hours to get out of town. Or else.” Seriously? You just did that? I didn’t realize I lived in the town of Tombstone. Oh, look. There goes a tumbleweed. Somewhere a chicken clucks.
I reported the emails to the police. They contacted me and I showed them the printouts. “That happened online? That’s not real. There’s nothing we can do.” True story. Good times.
Later the racists doxxed me on Craigslist, published photoshopped pictures of me and my wife, and took credit for killing my missing cat. Craigslist wouldn’t reply to my requests for help. Remember, I was years ahead of my time. Again, I turned to the police. I had proof I had been doxxed. Their reply? “Nothing we can do about that. It’s not illegal. That’s public information.”
Fast-forward to today and the Topsy-Turvy part: Oregon currently has about 55 “juvenile sex offenders” attending class in 24 different school districts. Parents and other students are not notified of their presence. Why? Because of federal and state laws that protect the privacy of the sex offender student.
How do you know when a situation is Topsy-Turvy? When it only flows one way – against you – at every possible turn. That’s Topsy-Turvy!
2)
You may remember the name Ethan Couch. Recently his name has been coming up in the news again. He’s the Texas teenager who used the “affluenza” defense to get out of serving jail time for killing four persons while driving drunk at over three times the legal limit. He was 16 at the time when he crashed into a stalled pickup on the side of the road.
A CBS television station in Dallas, Texas, reported yesterday that Ethan will be released “very soon” from about a year spent in rehabilitation. Once released, he will be on ten years of probation. He will not have served any jail time for his actions.
And now some Topsy-Turvy: A 90-year man was arrested and taken away, in handcuffs, by Fort Lauderdale police. His crime? Feeding the homeless.
For 23-years Arnold Abbott has operated a non-profit organization called “Love Thy Neighbor” which distributes hundreds of meals per week to the needy. The mayor of Ft. Lauderdale supports a city ordinance that essentially bans food sharing among local citizens.
The mayor was initially defiant. “Just because of media attention, we don’t stop enforcing the law,” he said. Now, in light of media attention that threatens tourism and the local economy (which consists primarily of horny millennials drinking lots and lots of booze and having gratuitous sexual relations with each other and inanimate objects like fire hydrants) he has adopted a more conciliatory tone.
A killer of four walks free among us while a 90-year old man is “dragged away in cuffs” for feeding hungry people and threatening the rights of young people to act like assholes. That’s a whoop ass can full of fucking Topsy-Turvy.
An open letter to Anita Sarkeesian #gamergate
Sarkessian with some of the video games used to research Tropes vs Women in Video Games. “Anita Sarkeesian + Research Materials” by Anita Sarkesian is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Note: I have chosen to include the “gamergate” hashtag with this post. Am I using it correctly? I don’t really know. I don’t have a friggin’ clue. I am not a gamegate scholar. I don’t have the time or inclination. I don’t really care if I’m using it improperly. That’s not what this post is about. IMHO a lot of people are trying to control, define and co-opt the term based on their own bias, point of view and/or agendas. I’m not taking sides in any gamergate wars. Any offense you perceive as you read the following is your own. –Ed.
Dear Ms. Sarkeesian,
May I call you Anita? I hope so. If not, that’s okay, too. Either way, no offense is intended.
I’ll be honest. I look up to you. I think you are a true modern day hero. When I say “hero” I mean that in the grandest sense of the word. You rock.
Wikipedia says that “[a] hero (masculine) or heroine (feminine) refers to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self-sacrifice—that is, heroism—for some greater good of all humanity.” Two different words for “hero” based on gender? Isn’t that part of the problem? Whatever. Either way, I believe a “hero” is you.
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We Are The Hurled
The Law of Biology states:
An organism will do anything it can.
The hypothetical and highly imaginary Law of Ethics states:
Just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should.
BZZT! Shock administered to test subject. The word “should” is disallowed. You lose a turn. Go back to START.
Okay. How far back should I go?
Hmm. No need to be excessive. How about the day your slimy species grew legs, became amphibious and hauled itself up out of the primordial ooze and lay panting on the beach?
So yeah, the other day I became embroiled in a discussion on Twitter about free speech. It all started when a person I follow stated they were under attack by some haters. Not only that, but she had just written a piece about how the haters were attacking her supporters, too. Hate by proxy, I guess. Adding my two cents, I responded with this pearl of wisdom:
“You have the right to your voice. Online harassers shouldn’t be allowed to operate with impunity.”
Naturally, as if to prove her point, I picked up some criticism of my own. I then got involved in a surprisingly civil discussion about the perils of too much free speech and what, if anything, constitutes “hate speech.” I began by asking my new-found critic a simple question: Where do YOU draw the line on anonymous online free speech?
His reply? “I don’t. Sticks and stones…”
No limits on free speech? None??? Such is the world of absolutes that some find friendly. This got me to thinking. Twitter, alas, was too limiting of a medium to try to explore some complicated concepts, so this post was born.
What would a world with no limits on free speech look like? Warning: This isn’t going to be pretty.
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Thar Be Trolls
I find myself still thinking about yesterday’s story about road rage and the trolling its spawned in comment sections galore. Mostly consisting of death threats and hate. That seems to be who we have become as a people.
I found a post I like on the topic of healthier responses to trolls. It offers three key points on how to view trolls in a different way. I think the points make sense although they might be a skosh overly optimistic on humanity itself.
It also includes an extremely disturbing example of religion-based extreme trolling that took my breath away. Wow.
This is my reblog of the week.
Jana Riess – Religion News: The care and feeding of Mormon trolls: A guest post by Stephanie Lauritzen
Candy Crushing
Hey, have you heard the latest? There’s a game called Candy Crush Saga for your handheld device.
Behold! I give you the ultimate evil in the galaxy!
I installed the damn thing once. By doing so I think I earned a few “Dino bucks” in my dino wranglin’ game, but that’s another story.
I opened the game and played a level. I found the motif totally inane and annoying. The game itself was vapid and uninspired. I said to myself, “Hey, self! Isn’t this game just a rip-off variation of those 42 million other games where you match and line shit up so more shit will fall down?”
I promptly deleted it from my device. What a stupid piece of shit, I thought. Luckily I’ll never have to hear of it again.
Wrong!
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Police State
I ask if you will agree with this humble hypothesis:
Actions without consequence tend to repeat.
–Tom B. Taker
Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
If you stick a fork in an electrical socket and it shocks you, are you likely to do it again? If you touch a hot stove and get burned are you in a hurry to touch it some more?
Tell a dog to stay off the sofa and shoo him away a single time. The rest of the time allow him to lounge all over the bloody thing to his heart’s content. What lesson do you think the dog has learned?
Do you know about the most powerful force in the universe? It’s a child when improperly parented. That particular organism has the potential, in the right circumstances, to learn faster than any form of life we’ve ever encountered. Tell a child, “No, you cannot have the cookie.” Now comes the tricky part: Let the child eat all the cookies it wants. Maybe you’re busy playing Farmville. Maybe you’re composing your next tweet. Maybe, just maybe, you’re sick enough in the head to be doing it on purpose. Whatever. You can bet your life that the message has been received loud and clear. It’s the most instantaneous form of training we’ve ever discovered.
Try to teach them something important and it’s like pounding your head against a wall. But being assholes? That they absorb like sponges.
As I often try to do in my writings, I’m cleverly building to a point. It seems pretty obvious that a lack of consequences does not generally lead to good things. That child? She’s a future Chloe who has a shit fit on national television because her parents bought her a new car for her 16th birthday but it wasn’t an Escalade. She hates them, she does. Poor baby.
Have you accepted the hypothesis yet?
I was thinking about all of this when I violently had one of those aha moments. What if the precocious child in this story was the internet? And what if the role of mommy and daddy was played by the police? What might that look like?
Per usual I’ll begin with a charming anecdote and then slowly build up to the hate. Join me, won’t you? It’ll be fun!
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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