Well, not really, but …
The same cannot necessarily be said of Franc Hoggle, who runs the Grey Lining blog. He used to post somewhat sporadically about a variety of topics. Since July, his rate of posting has increased, and he’s been blogging (almost?) exclusively about Rebecca, PZ, Ophelia, Greg, and me. His blog has become a stream of anger aimed at us, sometimes combined with sex. He’s been whipping up the flames on the hate campaign, as well as producing months of his own hatred.
Now a meatspace acquaintance of his has found out what he’s been up and was not made any happier by the revelation. In fact, this person took Hoggle’s real name and gave it to Ophelia, one of the people Hoggle’s been particularly ugly in attacking. We’ve been discussing what to do with it. …..
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While I find Frank Hoggle repulsive and have him on filter on SB, the idea of “outing” a pseudonymous blogger by a group of FTB bloggers sounds ludicrous. Half the bloggers on FTB are not using their real name, and everyone on SB was upset about National Geographic instituting a policy demanding real names.
It’s a bit like “I’m against the death penalty, but for people who really deserve it.”
Either you support anonymous blogging, or your don’t.
I am not sure it is as simple as that. The reason why a person is blogging anonymously needs to be taken into consideration.
Matt, yes, that could be true. The problem is, who gets to decide why someone is blogging? Go look at Abbie Smith’s blog post on Kyle’s mom, the one where the winged monkeys are doing all their hating and stuff. They are quite sure that they have a definition of feminism, a definition of sexism and a definition of misogyny, and according to them I’m not a feminist but i am very very sexist and very very misogynist. Personally, I think the guy who masturbates with a prostitute then tells us about it and makes sure that he mentions that she’s “Eastern European” is probably the racist and misogynist one, I’m pretty sure I’m a feminist (a rad-fem, in fact) and so on and so forth.
If I was a pseudo, and Abbie Smith’s winged monkeys knew my identity and felt that they should reveal the identity of a liar (I’m that too according to them), an anti-feminist, a misogynist and a racist (they have called me that as well) then they would potentially agree with your argument and that would be it.
Yes, I know, I’m right and they are wrong, in every possible respect, but that is not the point. If we are left to our own to decide what to do based on some evaluation of the truth of the matter, The Justicar or John Welsh or Abbie Smith or this Hoggle guy would do very different things than, say, you or me, yet with the same exact level of justification.
This is why we have a criminal justice system! If we treated crime and civil offense that way … individuals decide who is guilty of what, what the punishment should be, etc. etc … then we’d have the Spanning Inquisition! Or worse!
@Greg
Slight criticism: What’s stopping them from doing that anyway? Don’t you think you may be falling into scrub territory?
What is “scrub territory”
One thing is certain: Greg–you are not a hypocrite in your consistent stance about pseudo/anonymity. I always did like that about you.
Matt: Remember that scene from Casablanca–where Rick watches Ilsa get on the plane? What do you think the bad guys thought of Rick? How about Ilsa?
One never knows who they protected or didn’t until one day it’s your turn to have to fly.
Then, you better hope the pilot isn’t the guy you burned. But if you play your cards right? Maybe even you can earn a good friend some day.
As it is now? I can’t believe that a bunch of shallow blog dips are so willing to give up the right to the nym without a fight–and without which your great country could not have been “born.”
I always wondered if Ilsa was knocked up as she got on that plane…
By the way, what the fucking HELL happened to Abbie? And has SB done anything about it yet?
Azkyroth, what happened to Abbie was a run-in with a cop who used feminists as an excuse to not help her with a nasty stalker situation instead of doing his job and helping to protect her. She bought the “reasoning.”
As for the rest, Abbie is who Abbie has always been. She and Arnie go pretty well together that way.
Abbie writes perfectly excellent and widely loved blog posts about ERVs on a regular basis. I suspect the people in charge at SB would prefer to not have these winged monkey threads on their site, but I have no idea. Abbie doesn’t really seem to comment on those threads anyway. And, they are contained, at least, and as time goes by as long as she doesn’t post new ones like that, they will drift into the background where they can’t shock people who show up at SB to see the actual monkeys or viruses other science.
Heh. Just looked at my comment again. Realized that could be taken in a way I decidedly don’t mean. Abbie and Arnie are both incredibly tenacious, energetic, and focused. The combination is both a strength and a weakness.