Chicks On Anime

Net Etiquette

Sara, are there any types of online behavior that you find particularly damaging?

With one very important exception! Any ethic of care must take into consideration the harsh realities of power imbalances. I think the weak should be allowed to direct vulgar insults at the very powerful—especially when they are public figures. For example, you know how people were comparing President Bush to a chimp and matching up his facial expressions with chimpanzee facial expressions? That's okay. But it is not okay for people to lob vulgarities at their equals or those somehow weaker than they are. Imagine if I were to do the same to either of you. The Bush vs. Chimp was satire and political commentary; a hypothetical Bamboo vs. Chimp would just be meaninglessly cruel. And it would be absolutely beyond the pale if Bush himself were to Photoshop a Casey vs. Chimp and post it on the White House website. So I'd put a caveat to the issue of other peoples' feelings: Those feelings matter in direct proportion to your ability to directly hurt them. Of course, I'm to sure how much this exception would apply to online relationships between fans.

There's an online… personality, I guess you could call him, who's infamous in some cosplay circles. He also happens to be pretty obnoxious and rude in real life, but online, he's been known to send some dicey PMs and instant messages. To the point where it's sexual harassment. Things like telling girls that he wants to lick their boots, or that he wants to see them making out naked. He's even offered to let them tug him around a convention on a leash, as long as he could kiss their feet or what not.

The thing is, you could ban these types of people, but they don't go away. They might continue to email someone, or IM someone, even creating multiple accounts to do so. There's no way to monitor this kind of behavior.

There was this one news story about a year ago about a girl who committed suicide because of people calling her names on her myspace. And the person who turned out to be doing this was a grown woman who wanted to see what this girl was saying about her own kid. I don't know what appeal a grown person sees in calling a teenager “slut” and “fat” is, but it's kind of sick.

But going back to what I was saying about that skeezy guy… it's worth pointing out that the girls aren't entirely free of blame. Many times, girls aren't willing to come out and say, “Hey, back off,” or “You're being really disgusting.” Sometimes it's because they find the behavior to be so pathetic it's hilarious, but also, in some respects, it's easier to ignore someone and hope they go away. If you're confrontational online, you end up making the problem worse. And once again, there's no real good way to deal with it.

To bring up a somewhat controversial question—do you think there's a double standard? We certainly hear less about girls who message guys saying, “You make a really hot Cloud!” Not to mention that some would argue that the reason why female cosplayers post suggestive photos of themselves online is to get attention in the first place. Sara?

Plus there are guys (and general public) who complain about the way fangirls act online and at conventions, particularly in the way they fetishize homosexuality in their reaction to BL titles. There are pictures online of girls posing with paddles, and tales of “glomping” at conventions. This brings up a kind of interesting point—women seem to be more annoying in person (how many of use have complained about overhearing fangirls screech about how “kawaii!!!” Heero Yuy or whoever is at the top of their lungs?) while guys tend to be more annoying online.

In relation to female cosplayers in sexy outfits, it's always important to be exceedingly suspicious of any talk of a “double-standard” when it comes to women in revealing clothing—especially when the blame seems to fall on the woman: i.e. “She was asking for it!” Waitaminute, so it's her responsibility to keep male desire in check? That's the sort of lame, blame-the-victim excuse you hear from rapists and perpetrators of domestic violence. So she wants attention? So what? That doesn't excuse someone else's misbehavior! In any case, I think people should be held responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others. That goes for both real life and online life.

I mean, attention whores are everywhere, and it's especially prevalent in places, i.e. the Internet, where insecurities run rampant. You see this a lot in forum picture threads where you'll have a girl who posts pictures of herself, then fishes endlessly for attention. And once again, all's good when a cute guy compliments her, but when a less handsome guy does it, suddenly it's “creepy.” But that's not much different from how it is in real life.

But what would fix it? Is there anything anyone could do about this? Goodness knows people have tried. Aside from just your everyday bullying, electronic terrorism is alive and well, with hordes of people crashing servers or purpose, or blocking Internet traffic on purpose. What could the lone anime fans hope to accomplish?

On the other hand, I've had a blog for the past five years now and a now-defunct mailing list for years before that, and in those cases I do police the gates myself. There is no filter between me and the readers; everyone is assumed to be equal and will be expected to behave as such. A lot of my philosophy on this has been trial and error. Nowadays, I work very hard to set the tone and level of discourse that I want, and that seems to work most of the time. At one point a few years ago, I had to install an IP tracker to identify trolls, and I find that simply making it clear to everyone that I am paying attention seems to help also. I prefer to be proactive rather than just reactive; it's when there doesn't appear to be any accountability that you see the worst offenses. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet that solves every problem.

It almost seems like people need an incentive nowadays to be civil to each other when it should be common sense to be respectful of others. Have you ever read YouTube comments? They're 95% trash talk, with colorful shades of bigotry mixed in. It's like people naturally want to default to assholery instead while they have to be trained to play nice.