Hmmm, interesting thought (and I like the phrase "asymmetric beef"). On the other hand, the internet IS public, on a huge scale- if you post something publicly on Twitter, Twitter is set up in a way that tons of people could instantly see it, should they choose to look at you, for whatever reason. If you turn on your microphone, isn't the point to be heard?

But how else would we know which assholes to ridicule? I need something to jack off to, you know, and shaming idiots seems to do the trick. Get your hands out of my pants!

Shaming such people does not bother me in the least, but I do wonder that I saw a dozen retweets of that meme when I only follow 120 people.

yea I think the thing that makes the distinctions for me is the melding of 'spaces'. I mean, I'm in some internet communities where people don't give a f*** about propriety between contexts at all, they'll save a naked picture a woman sent them 3 years ago and lo it pops up in the middle of some other thread. And you could be like, you shouldn't have sent that, but on the other hand, the person posting it is being a dick. That's an extreme example but I've seen it happen too, like most mefi/mecha type people I might have privately said something to about my life have been extremely mature about not regurgitating it elsewhere but I've also had occurrences of people not making that distinction and I was like *facepalm*.

Actually after moving back to India I've been learning a lot of this cloak and dagger approach to social information just because I've been understanding the nature of gossip and things like that.. not everyone is going to take information about you and people you care about and be good natured about what they do with it

So selective scrutiny happens all the time in regular life, online life, whatever.. everything person X knows about person Y is not necessarily appropriate for telling person Z

Now we move to public tweets. The problem here is again, context shifting. Except we've gone from private vs public to public in a context vs public permanently to a large audience. This is why facebook lets you delete whatever you want and change the viewership privacy on things, all the way back into their history, because something I thought was a good idea idea to make public on some midnight october 2005 is not something I want public today. That's just the nature of life and communication--what you say is not what you want on the cover of the NYT at any moment--and technology is disrupting that by putting us in these programs that publicly archive everything we say and make us addressable by anyone.

That's what causes this sort of asymmetrical twitter fight to happen; if John says "fuck you, Leonardo DiCaprio" and Leo is like "oh yeah?" and suddenly has a thousand people mad at John, tweeting at him, looking up his home address, calling his phone, etc suddenly the scrutiny his comment is causing is completely different from the context of the comment he made, which was a semi public comment to Mr. DiCaprio and maybe a couple of John's followers. And it is a sustained asymmetry; the guy with a lot of influence not only has more people hanging onto his words all the time but also is less vulnerable to random people getting up in his business because he may have more wealth, access to lawyers, cops, etc

I clicked three tweets from the buzzfeed thing and one of the guys has his tweet still up, one woman deleted it and turned her twitter private, and one of the guys deleted it but kept his twitter public. So they reacted to the buzzfeed story in a way I was thinking, they didn't want this extra scrutiny in their life just because they had a political opinion, so they're deleting messages, locking down their accounts etc.

In the long run, a few replies on twitter is a small issue and most people will get over it. But with my general point about the responsibility of influence, I believe not everyone is built for the same fight and if they don't deserve it, don't bring it to them. If you're in a gang, don't bang on civilians.

That's what causes this sort of asymmetrical twitter fight to happen; if John says "fuck you, Leonardo DiCaprio" and Leo is like "oh yeah?" and suddenly has a thousand people mad at John, tweeting at him, looking up his home address, calling his phone

How often that it get that extreme, though? A friend of mine got into a Twitter brouhaha with Alec Baldwin (maybe 2-3 tweets, tops?). As far as I know, there wasn't any effect on his life outside of getting to fight with people on Twitter, which he loves.

Conversely, those people now know that a) saying something stupid on the intarwebs has consequences, and b) those consequences aren't really all that big a deal.

I suppose the maturity of the audience and the nature of the argument does count, I mean, I don't get annoyed when I see Keith Olbermann doing it because I know it's just a superficial, political back and forth and his audience isn't going to engage in too much nonsense

The thing I don't understand is when people tweet complaints about mid-level celebrities and use their @name. Like if you want to tweet that Lena Dunham is too fat and ugly to have her own TV show, don't fucking @ her. She'll probably see it, asshole!

"She'll probably see it" - I think that is the point.

Oh yeah, I'm sure it's the point. But why? Just to make someone feel bad? It's one thing to directly address someone, but this is like talking behind someone's back when you know they're listening. That seems really dehumanizing to me.

Trolls are by no means the lowest lifeform online. Your example is just one of many such archetypes.

I've seen this "asymmetry" come up on other sites, where some dude's stupid dating profile or somebody's Beyond-the-Grave Seance Experience (tm) home business or whatever gets picked up virally as something to mock and attack.

And I've seen the idea floated that it's not fair to come down on them with the full viral derision of the internet. Sure, fine. It's not all that classy to pick on the weak, unobservant, un-with-it, not-the-same-as-you, etc.

At the same time, I think TPS' observation is quite true: what you post is mostly public, and you're not operating in a vacuum.

Though it is more mature to let people be stupid (in your opinion) without poking fun at them, or inciting a pitchfork mob to protest on their page or point and laugh at them from another page, it's true that the targeted people have invited comment by creating public content, and I don't think it's fair to suggest that others should bear the burden of exempting them from comment. I think it is wise and mature to exempt them, but not possible to expect everyone to always be wise and mature.

In real life people enjoy some buffer from comment by strangers because of the mitigating social glue that gives the people making whatever statements they want to make, perhaps, a more generous space to operate in which exposes them to fewer critical stranger eyes and a more generous reception because of shared bonds of georgraphy, class, race, gender, in-group membership or whatever.

But that's simply not the context on the internet, where you cross paths with people that don't share your in-group or automatically bring a respect for it, and you can't import presumptions and expectations from meatspace to the internet in perfect ways, because there are exponentially more stranger eyes on internet content, dramatically easier means of replication and reproducing and sharing said content, and exponentially less "we're in this together" social mechanisms preventing people from taking the A-hole stance. If you're half a world away, there really are no mitigating social forces keeping you from being a total jerk, or delivering other social consequences for your choice to be an asshole, in the same way that those forces do exist in a real city or on a campus or in a workplace.

This is the reality we live in now; we reap the benefits of a flat world and the ability to self-publish anything we want, but that means we also reap the disadvantages of being able to be noticed, called out, critiqued and challenged on the things we make the choice to publish. There's really no "semi-private" on the internet. Writing shit on the internet is publishing it. Publishing is publishing; if it's private, don't publish it.

Back in the old days when only major media controlled publications, writers and editors knew this; you can't take back what you publish, once it is in print and out of the warehouse reactions to it are well beyond your control, and so you should be very, very, very judicious about what you publish. Now it's time for everybody to know this. The revolution in personal publishing didn't come equipped with a revolution in random, individual reaction to published content - regardless of whether the content comes from a 15-year-old girl in Toronto or a major urban broadcasting outlet with 2500 editorial staff. Once it's published, the origin point doesn't matter, and it's pretty hard to get people to (a) take the time to learn about and (b) consider the feelings, condition, or status of the publisher. The risks of publishing are the same, regardless of scale. That can't be helped much on a large scale, despite the here-and-there efforts of people to be like "hey, she's 15, go easy" or "hey, they're grieving parents, go easy" or whatever. I think we're up against the fact that people consider published content a fair thing to react to, and their responses as free speech, even if they contain things they'd never say to someone's face. That's the element that changes when we communicate through media.

But yeah, one thing remains clear: assholes are assholes. Assuaging a weak ego with asshole behavior that seeks to focus on the shortcomings of others who are not surrounded by the infrastructure of a major media organization or the buffer of celebrity cushioning is way easier to spot online than it is in real life. And it pretty much is the lowest life form, or at least the lowest and basest form of human interaction, to say "look at those jackasses! Let me make fun of them!" online or off.

[damn, I wish I could write as clearly as Miko]

Some people with facebook is the internet. People know nothing about the internet, computers, publicity or actual confidentiality. Some people commit suicide or kill for what they view as public shame, and shame has its uses. The problem is people tend to be ashamed of all the wrong things and oblivious to the things they should actually feel shame for. Shame is power. The mindless bandwagon has power. Emotions are powerful.
And comedy knows no shame.

think/with
me/should be asleep

I can still find the "smell your boyfriend's colon" thing hilarious, I hope?