On Dentists, Doxxing and the Death of a Lion

The internet is a funny, scary place.

Photo Credit: gecco! via Compfight cc

Over the past 48 hours, an Australian woman has been subjected to a torrent of the vilest imaginable abuse from fans of an American performer, whose work could be said to be misogynistic. The Australian woman made a public comment asking for her government to reconsider granting the performer a visa to enter Australia due to the content of his music (which features lyrics glorifying rape, sexual assault and violence against women) and when the performer announced, erroneously, on Twitter that this had resulted in him being denied access to the country, the woman endured thousands of disgusting Tweets. These Tweets were sent by fans (overwhelmingly male) of the performer – so, way to go with proving that listening to such music doesn’t encourage a person to feel, or think, or act in misogynistic ways. Or maybe the music speaks to a deep level of preexisting anti-woman sentiment in the fans’ minds. Maybe it’s both.

Here is a link to her Twitter feed, should you care to check it out. I’m not sure I’d recommend it, exactly, but it’s up to you. She shared several of the vilest threats she received, and also some of the supportive messages. It’s an education.

Also over the past 48 hours or so, a story about the horrific death of a lion in Zimbabwe has been making headlines globally. Lured from the safety of a national park, hunted, tracked and eventually slaughtered, the lion was skinned and beheaded and its carcass left to rot. The lion was named Cecil by the rangers in the park where it had lived since at least 1999, and it was part of a longitudinal study by Oxford University. It was a local ‘celebrity’, drawing tourists and those who wanted to marvel at its beauty and splendour. By all accounts, Cecil even enjoyed the company of people.  But it has emerged that an American man, known as a big-game hunter (and one who has had brushes with the law due to irregularities with his behaviour) had paid a hefty fee to hunt and kill ‘a lion’ – not necessarily Cecil, if the hunter’s account is to be believed – in the area, and had apparently believed his actions were entirely legal and above-board.

Except, when the animal was dead and it became clear that it was a collared lion, being monitored, the hunters made every effort to cover up their actions. They tried to destroy the collar., unsuccessfully They still skinned and beheaded Cecil, and left the remains behind. They made no effort or attempt to ‘fess up. The hunter returned home. The ‘guide’, who had been paid the hefty fee, pocketed it and turned away.

This situation is abhorrent. I, personally, condemn it in the strongest possible terms. I do not agree with the hunting of big game, whether one pays a ‘fee’ to do it or not, and whether or not this fee goes towards conservation. If one can afford thousands of dollars to destroy an animal in the name of ‘conservation’, why not simply go on safari to observe, take photographs, and pay your fee to preserve the animals? I do not agree that a lion which may have been more accustomed to humans than most deserved to be lured, tricked and tracked, shot with a bow and arrow and left to suffer for almost two days before finally being killed. I hate what this hunter has done with every fibre of my being, and he should be punished. He should never be allowed to take part in another hunt. The entire sport, when done in this way, should be abolished. (I’m not including hunting in indigenous communities, which is done to provide food, shelter and other necessities to maintain life, here; I’m talking about hunting as ‘sport’, whether paid for or not, simply for the ‘thrill’ of the kill).

But I do not stand over online harassment of this man’s family, staff and clients at his place of work, nor of the man himself. I don’t agree with vitriol being left on his website, or threats being made to his safety and wellbeing. If we condemn the abuse meted out to the Australian woman who dared to make a stand against misogyny, we can’t then turn around and shriek blue murder at a hunter whose actions happen to make us sick. Online abuse is online abuse; just because it’s being aimed at a ‘deserving’ victim doesn’t make it right. I hope that the family and friends of the hunter in question (and, grudgingly, he himself) are not feeling the same fear and stress that the Australian woman must have been feeling over the past few days – he deserves to be punished, certainly, and I hope he will be, to the fullest extent of the law. But his family and associates are innocent. They are as innocent as the solitary woman who said ‘no’ in the face of misogyny. I am not defending the hunter or his actions, which I believe to be abhorrent. I’m simply saying that in the clamour for ‘free speech’, we forget so easily the huge responsibility which comes with that privilege. We should use our freedom of speech to enact real change, and make meaningful commentary, and engage in true debate. If we sink to the level of online trolls, we have already lost.

The type of online abuse being suffered by the American hunter and the Australian woman is vastly different. She has been threatened with horrific physical abuse and threats of rape; he has received a few death threats among hundreds of largely clearly-phrased, well-written letters of condemnation. This, in itself, is a lesson. Women and men do not fare the same online. There are lessons we can learn, and things we can take from this situation – it’s an opportunity to begin a sea-change in how we conduct ourselves on the internet.

It won’t be taken, of course. I know that. Trolling will continue, and online hate will continue. But not, if I can help it, in my name.

All Change

It’s been a weird few days.

Not, perhaps, in terms of my actual, personal existence – I mean, I still got up every morning, and went to visit friends, and spent time with my beloved people, and I even laughed, like everything was normal.

But, never far from my thoughts, there was a sparkly-eyed man beneath a big black hat, and the ache of knowing that he’s gone.

Image: taken by SJ O’Hart.
2013 reissue (Corgi), cover art by Josh Kirby. ‘Lords and Ladies’ originally published 1992, Victor Gollancz.

I read my copy of Lords and Ladies (which is the fourteenth Discworld novel, and – when I pressed myself to make a choice – the one I decided was my favourite) over the weekend, which meant most of my laughter was at scenes like the Lancre Morris Men doing the long-forbidden Stick and Bucket Dance, or the exploits of Casanunda the dwarf, the Disc’s second-greatest lover (his motto: ‘I try harder’); I think it was an appropriate way to begin my send-off of Sir Terry Pratchett. The only thing is, I might begin this process, but I don’t think it’ll ever come to an end. I’ll be saying goodbye to him for the rest of my life.

I’ve been following the grieving process of other fans (over the past few days, I think the Discworld community has grown extremely close, despite us only knowing one another ‘in the ether’), and it has made me feel proud to be part of a fandom like this one. There has been no horrible ‘trolling’ (at least, none of which I’m aware), and – by and large – the family and associates of Terry Pratchett have been treated with kindness and respect, if some thoughtless but well-meaning attempts at consolation, by fans on social media. Money has been raised for Alzheimer’s awareness and research, and will continue to be, with any luck (here’s a link to a fundraising page, if you want to check it out), and Sir TP’s books have been selling in huge numbers – which is, of course, the best way to honour his memory. I’m glad I have an entire bookshelf full of his novels to read at my leisure, collected over the span of my lifetime so far, but if I had the money I would buy second and third copies of all of them and gift them to people who’ve never read them, or simply leave them tucked into nooks and crannies to be found by passersby as my offering to the universe. All humanity (and more – I’m not speciesist!) is to be found within their pages.

If you know someone, or you are someone, who has never read a Pratchett book, then now is the time. Now is the time to find one, and open the covers. Step onto the Disc, and stay with it a while, and you may never want to leave. If you want a Neil Gaiman-y introduction to the flavour and humour of Terry Pratchett, then try Good Omens; if you’re in the humour for affecting, meaningful, written-in-the-bone storytelling about family, bravery and the facing down of monsters while armed with nothing more than a frying pan, then start with the Tiffany Aching books, a series-within-a-series. If you’re interested in setting off on an adventure with Rincewind the wizard and getting to know the Discworld, then begin at the beginning, with The Colour of Magic.

Whatever you do, just start somewhere. Keep the ripples of Sir Pterry’s life going. Keep the flame of his memory lit. Keep laughing at his jokes, and keep being amazed by the worlds of knowledge packed into his stories, and keep being moved by the emotion at the heart of his characters. Maybe, that way, the horrible changed reality we’re living in, the one where he’s gone, can be forced back up the Trousers of Time, and we can go down another leg instead – one where he’s still with us, and in good health, and where he has time to write down all the tales he wants to tell us.

And if not, at least we have the stories he did manage to write, which are good enough for a lifetime’s reading and re-reading. I’m just so sad that there won’t be any more.

Book Review Saturday – ‘The Circle’

The first thing I did when I finished this book was to send a Tweet about it. Then, I checked up what other reviewers thought of it on Goodreads. Now (but I’m sure it won’t have escaped your attention) I’m blogging about it.

Is this irony? I’m not even sure myself.

Image: thewire.com

The Circle is probably not the sort of book a person like me should read – a person, in short, who has a fraught relationship with modern technology and who is a bit afraid of the internet and what it’s doing to personal privacy and how it seems like people feel more entitled, these days, to say what they like about others no matter how hurtful or damaging just because they can. I’m fascinated by technology, but at the same time I hate it. At the same time as loving the fact that I can connect with people all over the world through my computer, I want to take off and live in the wilderness away from everyone – but, if I were living in this book, someone would have been there before me and left a SeeChange camera behind.

I really like Dave Eggers. I’ve been a fan since A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and while I haven’t read all his novels I usually feel like I’m in for a pleasant journey when I pick one up. I enjoyed The Circle for all the reasons I usually enjoy an Eggers novel – good writing (overall), good characterisation (overall), and a plot engaging enough to keep me reading. I didn’t put this one down, reading it practically in one sitting over the course of a grey, rainy Sunday – and it’s over 500 pages, so it did well to keep my attention that long. But I can’t say I enjoyed it. This book disturbed me.

The Circle tells the story of Mae Holland, a twenty-four year old woman who has been working in her local power utility plant for the two years since she graduated college. Her friend and college roommate, Annie Allerton, was recruited by the world’s most sought-after employer, the Circle (a mix of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon and just about any other internet- or tech-based company you can imagine), straight after completing her MBA and – after a lot of encouragement from Annie – Mae eventually applies for a job there, too. Apparently on her own merit, she is successful. She’s employed in the ‘Customer Experience’ department, dealing with queries and complaints from Circle users all over the world. Her salary and benefits are excellent, and her parents are very proud. Mae herself is thrilled to have landed such a prestigious job.

But who, or what, is the Circle?

The Circle has made it impossible to hide behind an internet avatar. Everyone is who they say they are – the TruYou method – and this has (apparently) made internet trolling obsolete, along with cyberbullying and fraud and a host of other crimes. The web is an open, rational, welcoming and unthreatening place. People can do everything through their TruYou account – pay their bills, their taxes, run their businesses, maintain their social media profiles, even cast their vote and insure their vehicle. What’s wrong with that – right?

Mae is welcomed personally to the company. Everything seems so laid-back and friendly. She is trained in the use of her equipment, and it is explained to her that customers will leave feedback and scores on her ‘performance’; if this score is anything less than 100, she is expected to follow up with them and encourage the customer to raise the score. So far, so expected. As the novel goes on, however, we feel the cold hand of entrapment begin to strangle Mae, and us. She is strongly encouraged to take part in the company’s social gatherings – ‘strongly encouraged’ to the point of compelled – and everything she does has to be documented. Photographed. Shared. She must comment on the photographs of everyone else. She must improve her rankings and become one of the top 200 ‘Circlers’ – people whose every purchase is used as advertising, whose every choice is monetised somewhere, whose every ‘zing’ (a Twitter-like social media platform) has no value unless it is rezinged, or commented on, or given a ‘smile’ or a ‘frown’, by hundreds if not thousands of others. How you are seen, whether you are ‘liked’, whether you have followers and influence, matters more than anything.

Every so often a new screen is added to her workspace, another distraction. She has her work to do, but she also has to take part in constant surveys, trying to divide her attention between these surveys and the queries which pile in on top of her. Then, she is expected to train the newer staff, and another screen is added to her desk, one on which their queries appear, colour-coded depending on how urgent they are. She has no time to think or reflect, and eventually she ends up living at the Circle campus, away from her family, self-medicating in order to sleep at night. She works into the small hours, despite the Circle’s declaration that they want to enable their employees to have a perfect ‘work-life’ balance – the way they run their company makes that impossible. It quickly becomes terrifying and claustrophobic – to the reader, at least.

As well as all this, the Circle is constantly developing new technology, all of which is sold as marvels which will transform the world – chips embedded into children to stop them from being abducted, cameras the size of lollipops which can be discreetly placed anywhere – and while we witness the fervour and evangelism of their inventors and the passion of the Circlers, as readers we are thinking: hang on. But what about privacy? What about people who don’t want their every move broadcast to the world? What about these microchipped children who will grow up still microchipped, against their will? Mae’s parents and her ex-boyfriend Mercer are the voices of ‘reason’ here; her parents cover up the cameras in their house, and Mercer runs to the wilderness in an effort to get away from the constant surveillance.

But Mae? She is swallowed up.

She becomes a company figurehead, going ‘transparent’ – in other words, wearing a camera 24/7 which is broadcast on the internet to her millions of followers. Every conversation she has becomes a performance. Every interaction with the world rings false. A rift begins to open up in her psyche, but she stifles it. The Circle’s stated aim – to make knowledge a human right – sounds so good on the surface, but the truth of its cancerous power is gradually revealed as we read. People have a ‘right’ to know everything, regardless of security or privacy or personal objection. The will of the person becomes crushed under the will of the people.

Then, Mae meets a strange man on the Circle campus who is maddeningly elusive – she can’t find him on the staff intranet. She can’t search for him, she can’t figure out who he is. The fact that she can’t know everything about him drives her crazy. But who is he? And why is he important?

Some of this book is irritatingly heavy-handed – the imagery of the shark, for instance – but I thought the rest of it was spot on. People have criticised Mae’s naivety and stupidity, but I think Eggers pitches her just right: idealistic and inexperienced, sucked into the cogs of a large, persuasive and well-oiled machine. I thought the utopian aims and dystopian outcomes of the technology were brilliantly handled, and the tension (and sense of being crushed) amps up at a perfect pace. Technologically, it’s unlikely (if not impossible), but if you can suspend your disbelief that forcing people to use their real names online would crush out cybercrime, the book makes a terrifying and gripping point – do we have the ‘right’ to know everything? Where do our rights overlap with others’, and which set of rights should take precedence? Is it possible to fool all of the people, all of the time?

Read The Circle and find out.

 

Mayday!

My goodness. Is it Friday yet?

Image: sonotstraight.com

This has been a busy week. The other day on Twitter I listed out all the various accounts I now have on social media: five email addresses, three Facebook pages, two Twitter feeds and two blogs. I’m now an assistant editor with a literary magazine, as well as the ‘owner’ of my own small business (can I say ‘owner’ when nothing, on the face of it, has actually changed?), and I’m still making time to write amid all the clamour too, of course. Writing is what I do, after all. Isn’t it?

For a person who tends, in all other ways, to be cautious, I can also be rather impulsive. The more important something is, the quicker I can seem to make a decision about it. Choosing a pair of socks in the morning, therefore, can turn into an angst-ridden melodrama; deciding to go ahead and set up a proto-business, however (albeit one that’s been brewing in the back of my mind for over six months) was rather spur-of-the-moment. Perhaps this is because the pressure of an important decision tends to cave me in, and I choose a course of action so as not to remain on the precipice for too long. Or, perhaps – and this is a little more comforting – I’m allowing myself to be guided by my ‘hindbrain’, which knows better than I do about what’s right and wrong and which doesn’t see the need for delaying proceedings

Muwa-ha-haaa! I am Hindbrain! Bend before my almighty Will!
Image sourced from: indigenize.wordpress.com
Image copyright: Extrafeet Inc., 2011

Whatever the reason, I’ve been making a lot of decisions this week and throwing so much caution to the wind that it’s surprising I have any left at all.

It’s exhausting.

But it’s exhilarating too, of course.

Yesterday morning, after I’d completed my story for the Wednesday Write-In, I found myself doing some reading for the literary magazine (Number Eleven, for the curious, in which I was published a little over a year ago; if you haven’t checked it out before, or it’s been a while since you’ve taken a peek, go and have a look. It’s gorgeous.) Once I’d popped off my feedback to the editor, I turned to my own WiP, which has been languishing for a fortnight, read it through – editing as I went – and added just over 1500 words to it. Then, I decided to take another plunge and create a Facebook page for my new business, Yellow Road Editing Services – and, because people are wonderful, it has been ‘liked’ almost sixty times in less than twenty-four hours. All the while, I was keeping up with the Twitter feeds both for myself and for Yellow Road, and keeping an eye on blog traffic, too.

It was a lot to get through in one day, and I’ve taken away a few valuable lessons from the experience:

People are wonderful. I have had so much support and goodwill shown to me over the past few days that it would, quite frankly, bring a tear from a turnip.

Getting up early in the morning is a great habit to have. I started work yesterday at 6.30 a.m., and kept going – pretty much uninterrupted – until 4. I’m usually awake by about 6.30 most mornings, which proves that you can train even the nightliest night-owl to be an early riser with enough cold water and torture… I mean, willpower and motivation. (And yes, I know ‘nightliest’ isn’t a word. But doesn’t it sound pretty?)

Who *DARES* wake The Great Hootowlio?
Image: thefeaturedcreature.com

Dividing one’s attention is hard. Yesterday, I tried to do All the Things All at Once. This isn’t usually a good idea, no matter what you’re attempting to do, and despite the fact that I know this, I still try to do it from time to time. Yesterday was one of those times. I found my attention being dragged away from my WiP because I wanted to make sure I’d sent the proper Excel sheet to the editor or because I had to check one of my email accounts or because someone followed me on Twitter, or because… the list went on.

What I should have done – and what I will do, from now on – was take a deep breath and a step back, and realise that everything will get done in its own time. Putting myself into a frazzle is going to accomplish exactly nothing, and may in fact hamper my efforts to be productive. I’m going to get a wall calendar and block off the days, focusing on one thing at a time, and I think I’ll change my screensaver to a picture of the gently smiling Buddha, or something. As my sainted mother always says: you can only do a day’s work in a day. She’s right, as she is about everything.

And, of course, the more divided your attention is, the more your work – all your work – will suffer. And nobody wants that. (And yes, I know I just started three sentences in a row with ‘and’, but it was for emphasis. I can do this. I’m a professional. Don’t try it at home.)

So, in honour of May Day and its traditional association with workers, I’m going to resolve to work smarter and harder, and to love every second. Stress isn’t a nice thing, but it’s also a powerful motivator, and I’m going to try to use it as a force for good in my life from this day forth.

Really? Aren’t you laying it on a *little* thick, now?
Image: halliewestcott.com

All right, all right. I’d better sign off here, and get on with the rest of it. Jeez, you guys are hard taskmasters.

Happy May Day!

Serendipity

You know what’s weird? Waking up on a Monday morning with something on your mind, and logging into Facebook to say ‘hello’ to the world, and seeing a post from a person you follow which is about exactly the thing you were thinking about.

That’s mad, Ted!
Image: quotefully.com

it’s not like this person and I know one another (she’s a celebrity) or that we’re even in the same cultural milieu or general surroundings (we’re, unfortunately, not); it’s just one of those things. In this world of ours, one that’s all about connectivity and ‘sharing’ (a vilely abused word, these days), but wherein the actual human connection can, unfortunately, be easily lost, it’s startling to be reminded that, sometimes, other people’s minds are in exactly the same place yours is in.

And, isn’t that a wonderful thing?

Sadly, the place my mind was in this morning wasn’t exactly a happy place – this article, to which said celebrity provided a link on Facebook and about which she waxed lyrical on her personal page – will tell you all you need to know about my thought processes. I’m thinking about this topic – that of the reality of bereavement, mourning and grief in a world wherein social media is king – mainly because, in the last few years, several of my Facebook and (God love me) Myspace contacts have passed away, but their online presences remain. If a person is lost suddenly, can those left behind (or, should they) find a way to mark their social media outlets with the message that their creator has died? We are the first generation who is faced with the sorrow of seeing a deceased loved one’s name pop up in our newsfeeds every year on their birthday, reminding us to send a card or exhorting us to write a greeting on their Wall, or whatever it is. We are the first generation living with a phenomenon like ‘funeral selfies‘ – the very idea of it makes something break, deep down inside me – and it’s a reminder, once again, that the internet is such a powerful thing. It’s powerful enough to change the way we think, feel, and act. It will be the thing which reshapes human nature, in my opinion.

Or, perhaps, it will be the thing which ushers forth the narcissism that has always been a part of human nature, but which has never before had such an opportunity to become central to how we think about ourselves. I’m not sure which I find more strange – the idea that the internet is making us more self-obsessed, or simply giving us an outlet for the self-obsession that’s already at the heart of our existence.

John William Waterhouse, ‘Echo and Narcissus’, 1903
Image: en.wikipedia.org

I do realise that I’m writing a blog, here, and that I’m making use of the internet to put forth my ideas and my thoughts and it’s all about me, me, me… And perhaps that’s the saddest part of the whole thing. The culture in which we live is, like all cultures, all-encompassing. You’re part of it, for good or ill, and making the best of it is all you can do. It does occur to me sometimes that this blog will, probably, outlast me; if I were to die unexpectedly, this blog would remain. Nobody would be able to log in and disable it. It would be like an abandoned, creaking, obsolete space station, slowly pinwheeling its lonely way across the vastness of eternity, forever (or, until it hits a meteorite or burns up in an atmosphere or, you know. Whatever.)

That freaks me out a bit.

It also makes me want to write the best blog I’m capable of – if it’s going to be my memorial, then let’s make it sparkle, goshdarnit!

Actually, no. The ‘freaking out’ thing outweighs everything else.

I’m pretty sure that there’s an element of this self-memorialisation in all art, too. It’s not that we feel we’re such incandescent geniuses that the world needs our art to steer it into the future, but it’s more about feeling like we’ve made a difference, that something we’ve written or made or painted or sung has added to the pot of human culture. Even if nobody remembers our name, our art will live on after we do. It’s getting harder and harder for each individual note to be spotted in the clamouring mish-mash that is our humanity, but that makes the urge to contribute even more pressing; the more difficult it is to be heard, the louder we shout. But what if all that’s being created and contributed is ‘art’ which is ever more inward-looking, all about the self, focused entirely on an individual and their view of the world? We’ll have millions of tiny vortexes, all tightly bound to their own whorling hearts, none of them looking out and seeing what’s there, seeing how we can help, how we can – each of us – make the world a little clearer and easier to bear for everyone.

All art is about the self, but – I feel – it has traditionally spoken to the commonality of shared humanness, too. Nowadays, most of the creative content I see, particularly online, has a larger focus on the ‘self’ of its creator and less focus on the connectedness of its creator to their fellows. Social media allows us to make ourselves into art installations. But what’s the point of creating millions of beautiful, individual pieces of art – which are, in so many ways, our lives – if none of them are truly in conversation with anything else?

‘Sharing’ is not the same as ‘communing’; putting forth our art, our words, our social media posts, our blogs, our music is all rendered a bit pointless if we don’t listen to the contributions of others, and recognise their validity.

And yet, there are days you wake up and someone on the far side of the world is thinking exactly the same thing as you, and they’ve expressed it publicly, and you feel a connection. And – if you’re clever – you use that connection to drive forth your own art, and your own humanness, and you realise that you’re living in an age of miracles, and that all will be well.

Image: ivillage.com