dunmurderin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dunmurderin) wrote2007-05-31 01:37 am
dunmurderin) wrote2007-05-31 01:37 am
Entry tags:
Strikethrough 2007 -- my thoughts
I'm of two minds about this whole thing. This post is fairly long and rambling and will quite possibly offend people on both sides of the issue. No personal offense is meant toward anyone. These are my thoughts and opinions on this whole matter and they are subject to change -- hell, they started shifting around as I was looking into this whole mess a little deeper. Your mileage may and probably does vary. If you agree, two pips and an eclair for both of us. If you disagree, that's your perogative and you can have an eclair too. The Generic You is used throughout.
On the one hand:
I've backed up my journal – twice, once using LJ's export function and once using LJArchive (which is really spiffy since it allows you to save comments as well as your own entries). This is something I've been meaning to do, particularly for the fics that are embedded in comments on various challenges in this journal, but this current drama is the spark that got me off my ass about doing it.
I've backed up the communities I started and run, even though none of them have much in the way of objectionable content in them, using LJ's export function and will probably do the same using LJArchive, just for the redundancy factor and to save comments. Again, something I should probably have been doing from the beginning, but the drama is what sparked me actually getting off my butt about it.
I think LJ's decision to delete journals based on interests rather than looking at the actual content of the journals in question was pretty unfair, particularly since it hurt support journals for incest and abuse survivors. Not to mention the deletion of RP journals that were – or would have been after a moment's review – clearly centered around fictional characters.
I think “Warriors for Innocence” has a good idea but a) they should get themselves aligned with a real law enforcement agency since vigilante justice is really only cool when it's fictionalized vigilante justice and b) get a new name that is less pretentious and c) learn to pick their battles better because honestly, I seriously doubt they got any real pedophiles' journals shut down with this. Or if they did, it was a negligible amount. ('Course, I could be wrong and they might have actually done some real good in between pissing off a lot of fans, y'never know.)
I think LJ could have handled this matter better – or at least could have given people more warning. I'm rather annoyed that their main page doesn't make any mention of the deletions despite the fact that this has clearly blown up in their faces and they should be telling us something.
I'm not changing my interests or posting any icons or banners or signing up for fandom_counts because, honestly, it's slacktivisim at its finest. WfI got results because they went to LJ's advertisers. If all the people who could take two seconds to join fandom_counts took five minutes to write an email or an actual snail-mail letter or place a phone call to one of LJ's advertisers, it would probably have a bigger impact.
Note: a list of LJ's advertisers can be found on Perverted Justice's site about Corporate Sex Offenders.
On the other hand:
Backing up my various journals really is something I should have done before now – though as already has been said, this was the spark that made me actually do it.
I can understand that it's a hell of a lot simpler to delete journals in one big lump than it is to go through journal by journal – particularly since it would be damned difficult to come up with objective standards that wouldn't leave LJ open to people whining about the unfairness that a support group for incest survivors was allowed to stay open while their fanfic community about Wincest was shut down. Not to mention, since Warriors for Innocence (and even on the other hand, I think that's a name that's pretentious as fuck) went after their advertisers and I really can understand LJ being more concerned about their bottom line than the feelings of fandom in general. They're a business, if they lose their advertisers, they're going to be seriously hurting. 'Course, they also could have done a smaller deletion of specific journals from the information Perverted Justice gave them and probably not had much, if any, outcry about it.
To be brutally honest, I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who wrote sexual fics about underage characters losing their journals. I know, I know, just because they write about it doesn't mean they're a pedophile anymore than I'm a thief because I write about Swindle trying to steal PS3s. But writing about kids having sex squicks me and squicks me hard. It squicked me when Stephen King did it in “IT” and it squicks me in fanfics. Yes, I'd be pissed if it was me, but if you write fics about a controversial topic like incest or shota then you do kind of have to expect that you may get some backlash for what you do.
And as for RP character journals that have been shut down – in a way, role-playing on LJ is like LARPing. You're essentially role-playing in public where, for the most part, anybody can stumble across what you're doing. And just as you shouldn't run around in public flashing your fangs or waving your prop gun at people lest they call the cops, you probably shouldn't list things like 'murder' and 'pedophilia' as interests in your villanous character's journal – even if those are his number one interests because there is every chance that someone is going to stumble across your journal and have no idea WTF you are doing and get the wrong idea and report your ass. And in that case? It's at least partly your own damn fault. Being a fan is not a Get Out of Responsibility Free card.
On Yet The Other Hand:
A super-special WTF to LJ considering the fact that Perverted Justice apparently also went to LJ months ago with a specific list of pedophile-related journals and communities and LJ didn't bother doing anything about it then but instead waited to do mass deletions of journals once WfI went after their bottom line.
Additional WTF: according to an article on the mass deletions from CNET.com says that LJ isn't legally responsible for the content on their site – something that LJ themselves should know. 'Course, LJ may know that and even their advertisers might know that but both sides could be banking on the fact that the average person on the street doesn't know that and wouldn't care even if they did because WfI is emphasizing a righteous purge of perverts and threatening to cost LJ and their major advertisers money. Not a lot of companies are willing to fight potential bad press like this since people are oh so happy to believe that all corporations are evil and any fight against them is clearly a blow for the Little Guy.
General Bitchiness:
I'm really kind of annoyed that people usurped “Hoist the Colours” from POTC3 for their slogans for this campaign, because I like the song and I just hate seeing it turned into slogans for what appears to be a tempest in a teapot (there have apparently been no deletions of any journals for over 24 hours, now it all seems to be down to trying to sort out the mess). I guess it's a nice change from the usual “First they came for the Jews, but I wasn't a Jew” quote that seems to be trotted out every time someone wants to show how not getting their way on the Internet is equal to real-life persecution.
ETA: Ohhh fuck me sideways, someone did it. SOmeone actually @#$@# did it. If the link disappears, which I'm hoping like hell it does, an idiot over at fanficrants posted their version of the "First they came" poem with this line of progression pedophiles, incest writers and Jews. Because people in power have hated all three! I'm calling this person a troll and sitting on my hands 'cause otherwise, I'm going to lose my shit all over this idiot.
And now, I'm going to bed. And possibly to King's Island tomorrow.
On the one hand:
I've backed up my journal – twice, once using LJ's export function and once using LJArchive (which is really spiffy since it allows you to save comments as well as your own entries). This is something I've been meaning to do, particularly for the fics that are embedded in comments on various challenges in this journal, but this current drama is the spark that got me off my ass about doing it.
I've backed up the communities I started and run, even though none of them have much in the way of objectionable content in them, using LJ's export function and will probably do the same using LJArchive, just for the redundancy factor and to save comments. Again, something I should probably have been doing from the beginning, but the drama is what sparked me actually getting off my butt about it.
I think LJ's decision to delete journals based on interests rather than looking at the actual content of the journals in question was pretty unfair, particularly since it hurt support journals for incest and abuse survivors. Not to mention the deletion of RP journals that were – or would have been after a moment's review – clearly centered around fictional characters.
I think “Warriors for Innocence” has a good idea but a) they should get themselves aligned with a real law enforcement agency since vigilante justice is really only cool when it's fictionalized vigilante justice and b) get a new name that is less pretentious and c) learn to pick their battles better because honestly, I seriously doubt they got any real pedophiles' journals shut down with this. Or if they did, it was a negligible amount. ('Course, I could be wrong and they might have actually done some real good in between pissing off a lot of fans, y'never know.)
I think LJ could have handled this matter better – or at least could have given people more warning. I'm rather annoyed that their main page doesn't make any mention of the deletions despite the fact that this has clearly blown up in their faces and they should be telling us something.
I'm not changing my interests or posting any icons or banners or signing up for fandom_counts because, honestly, it's slacktivisim at its finest. WfI got results because they went to LJ's advertisers. If all the people who could take two seconds to join fandom_counts took five minutes to write an email or an actual snail-mail letter or place a phone call to one of LJ's advertisers, it would probably have a bigger impact.
Note: a list of LJ's advertisers can be found on Perverted Justice's site about Corporate Sex Offenders.
On the other hand:
Backing up my various journals really is something I should have done before now – though as already has been said, this was the spark that made me actually do it.
I can understand that it's a hell of a lot simpler to delete journals in one big lump than it is to go through journal by journal – particularly since it would be damned difficult to come up with objective standards that wouldn't leave LJ open to people whining about the unfairness that a support group for incest survivors was allowed to stay open while their fanfic community about Wincest was shut down. Not to mention, since Warriors for Innocence (and even on the other hand, I think that's a name that's pretentious as fuck) went after their advertisers and I really can understand LJ being more concerned about their bottom line than the feelings of fandom in general. They're a business, if they lose their advertisers, they're going to be seriously hurting. 'Course, they also could have done a smaller deletion of specific journals from the information Perverted Justice gave them and probably not had much, if any, outcry about it.
To be brutally honest, I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who wrote sexual fics about underage characters losing their journals. I know, I know, just because they write about it doesn't mean they're a pedophile anymore than I'm a thief because I write about Swindle trying to steal PS3s. But writing about kids having sex squicks me and squicks me hard. It squicked me when Stephen King did it in “IT” and it squicks me in fanfics. Yes, I'd be pissed if it was me, but if you write fics about a controversial topic like incest or shota then you do kind of have to expect that you may get some backlash for what you do.
And as for RP character journals that have been shut down – in a way, role-playing on LJ is like LARPing. You're essentially role-playing in public where, for the most part, anybody can stumble across what you're doing. And just as you shouldn't run around in public flashing your fangs or waving your prop gun at people lest they call the cops, you probably shouldn't list things like 'murder' and 'pedophilia' as interests in your villanous character's journal – even if those are his number one interests because there is every chance that someone is going to stumble across your journal and have no idea WTF you are doing and get the wrong idea and report your ass. And in that case? It's at least partly your own damn fault. Being a fan is not a Get Out of Responsibility Free card.
On Yet The Other Hand:
A super-special WTF to LJ considering the fact that Perverted Justice apparently also went to LJ months ago with a specific list of pedophile-related journals and communities and LJ didn't bother doing anything about it then but instead waited to do mass deletions of journals once WfI went after their bottom line.
Additional WTF: according to an article on the mass deletions from CNET.com says that LJ isn't legally responsible for the content on their site – something that LJ themselves should know. 'Course, LJ may know that and even their advertisers might know that but both sides could be banking on the fact that the average person on the street doesn't know that and wouldn't care even if they did because WfI is emphasizing a righteous purge of perverts and threatening to cost LJ and their major advertisers money. Not a lot of companies are willing to fight potential bad press like this since people are oh so happy to believe that all corporations are evil and any fight against them is clearly a blow for the Little Guy.
General Bitchiness:
I'm really kind of annoyed that people usurped “Hoist the Colours” from POTC3 for their slogans for this campaign, because I like the song and I just hate seeing it turned into slogans for what appears to be a tempest in a teapot (there have apparently been no deletions of any journals for over 24 hours, now it all seems to be down to trying to sort out the mess). I guess it's a nice change from the usual “First they came for the Jews, but I wasn't a Jew” quote that seems to be trotted out every time someone wants to show how not getting their way on the Internet is equal to real-life persecution.
ETA: Ohhh fuck me sideways, someone did it. SOmeone actually @#$@# did it. If the link disappears, which I'm hoping like hell it does, an idiot over at fanficrants posted their version of the "First they came" poem with this line of progression pedophiles, incest writers and Jews. Because people in power have hated all three! I'm calling this person a troll and sitting on my hands 'cause otherwise, I'm going to lose my shit all over this idiot.
And now, I'm going to bed. And possibly to King's Island tomorrow.