When Communities Collide
What happens when a committed agitator finds a new new group of people to antagonize?
I’m new at this. I’m new to blogging, new to social media. I am new to a lot of things on the internet except podcasts. That is, in the sense that mp3 media was available before the iPod was invented. It wasn’t as portable in space before iPods, but mp3 media has always been time-portable. Probably ten years ago, if I missed a radio broadcast that I wanted to hear, I could usually find it in the mp3 archives and listen to it later.
Since then, the array of podcasts (or mp3 downloads) has broadened well beyond recordings of broadcast radio shows. The range of podcasts I listen to has broadened slowly since those days when I first started downloading This American Life many years ago. It hasn’t even been a year since I finally found the former TechTV folks reincarnated in the various netcasts available from Leo Laporte’s tWiT.tv domain. Shortly after that, I finally discovered where to find podcasts at iTunes.
I recently discovered Twitter and it has led me to an even broader range of podcasts and blogs to follow. One of them was NewsGang, which led to TheGillmorGang. I usually look forward to listening to the NewsGang phone call each day but when I logged into its ustream simulcast last Tuesday, I wasn’t sure what to think. A semi-professional heckler using the moniker Prokofy was in the process of doing all she could to antagonize the host, the guests, and probably anyone who was listening. I even found myself responding to her baiting techniques in the Ustream chat room posting poorly thought-out comments back to her.
I’m not sure why I continued to listen, much less respond in an arena where I am a quiet listener. I find the conversations on NewsGang interesting and sympathetic to many of my own views. I wondered if perhaps it was a generational thing that held my interest in the way Prokofy presented her views. Her profile indicated she was 30 years old, but she sounded more like a teenager posing as a someone older.
It turns out, according to Encyclopedia Dramatica, Prokofy is 50 years old and works as a Russian translator at the UN.
I found that although I didn’t want to “reward” her by following her on Twitter, I did want to get a better idea of who she was. Of course she had a blog, so I looked at it a bit to see how she perceives the world she lives in. It’s an angry world. She seems to be a well-spoken, melodramatic writer, but her account of her phone call to NewGang was so distorted that I could only wonder what distortions were in the other posts on her blog. I’ve observed some of her exchanges with other people on Twitter and it’s pretty clear that notoriety is what she’s after. Now here I am, adding to it.
What was most remarkable was how the unusual, reflective mood I was left with 2 days later was apparently shared by the regular callers and the host on NewsGang. Prokofy’s attacks in her blog post were so personal and so vicious and it seemed clear that most of the people on the call (as it’s called) had probably read it. It was insulting to everyone involved, at least I found the things she said in her post a lot of insulting venom.
I suppose there are plenty of people who occupy their minds with the paranoia evident in her words. In fact I know that there are plenty of paranoid people in the world. It’s a sad thing, really, that someone so articulate can be so twisted.
Hopefully, that’s enough and this ugly side of me that wants to observe her self-destructive actions online has been satisfied. Surely, future NewsGang simulcasts and podcasts will return to the usual topics, espeically when there is so much going on. Hopefully, I can return to being a quiet newbie who feels an affinity for the people and ideas presented on NewsGang.
Prokofy Neva replied:
Here’s the question to ask: what happens when a committed wannabee totalitarian like Steve Gillmor who makes appalling use of social media to incite hatred and step on people’s legitimate dissent — in particular about his role? The News Gang show is a vivid example of this phenomenon where social media is shaping up not to be the many-to-many conversation it is advertised to be, but manipulation by a few of the many show swarm around a few A-listers as followers, easily mined and harvest and spun.
That this kind of psychosocial conditioning can be very, very thorough can be seen with this kind of tendentious statement:
“A semi-professional heckler using the moniker Prokofy was in the process of doing all she could to antagonize the host, the guests, and probably anyone who was listening. I even found myself responding to her baiting techniques in the Ustream chat room posting poorly thought-out comments back to her.”
I’m not a “heckler,” I’m merely someone *who disagrees with Steve Gillmor” about his idea of putting in the function of block within track. Um, I’m allowed to do that in a liberal democratic society, and I certainly should be doing it in the company of geeks who imagine they are following a scientific approach and are ostensibly willing to receive feedback about their inventions, still in beta.
Steve merely insulted my intelligence by haranguing me over and over again with the “news” that I supposedly “didn’t get it” about track. But I long before the show “got” how track/block works, and was calling him on his vanity use of it and his insistence in “cleansing” his vanity stream of people he hated. It’s worthwhile going and reading the grand total of *four tweets*, only one of which was directly addressed to @stevegillmor that GOSH OMGODZORZ disagreed with his show of the previous day and his comments. My God, what a crime, what a horror, what a spam, kill it, block it immediately!
The amazingly thin-skinned and arrogant default stance of these people — and you in their network — really leaves quite a few of us absolutely breathless.
Any transcript of this show will show you in spades who spoke the most, and who stepped on me and others the most: Gillmor. I merely tried to get the news through to him that I understood what track was, made a suggestion on what might work as a workaround for him, and lobbied for a broader understanding of how track affects the system.
Are you unwilling to accept alternative thinking *ever*? Must it all be the sanctified orthodox creed of the Valley *everywhere*?1
Uh, gosh, good work on your Google witch-hunting, but Encylopedia Dramatica — a racist, vicious griefing group’s source, by the way, in case you are unfamiliar with it — it is inaccurate to say I “work at the UN” as if I am on the staff — I am not. I don’t say I am “30″ as anyone can easily establish I am 51 merely by looking up my straightforward linkage of my SL name and real-life name in Google on sources that are more credible — that particular one simply contains falsehoods that are easily corrected by Google sleuthing.
You seem to find it difficult to understand that someone can have an avatar, and have a pen-name.
Where is your real-life picture? What is your real-life name? And can you provide us with granular details about your work life, Pixie Dreams?
You are an invalid interlocutor if you think somehow you are playing “gotcha” and linking up pictures of me to harass me with — it’s an old story.
Hopefully, you will open your mind just a tiny crack and be willing to hear not just a stream of orthodox diktat from the aply-named Gillmor Gang, but an array of contrasting and competing ideas on that show which is suppose to be the more open of his two shows — but so far they all sing from the same hymn sheet pretty much.
May 11, 2008 at 10:43 pm. Permalink.
Prokofy Neva replied:
Her profile indicated she was 30 years old, but she sounded more like a teenager posing as a someone older.
I have NO idea where you are finding some profile indicating I’m 30 years old? And I fail to see how my voice could at all be construed as a teenager posing as anything. It’s just a normal voice.
I think you’re hysterical and can’t bear it when your idols are challenged.
May 11, 2008 at 10:45 pm. Permalink.
Prokofy Neva replied:
BTW, you should credit that photo to the New York Times if you are going to use it, the griefers at Dramatica swiped it and didn’t credit it or put the link to the article where I’m quoted:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/technology/19virtual.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=75ee308b86b461aa&ex=1318910400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
May 11, 2008 at 10:49 pm. Permalink.
Web Pixie replied:
Prokofy Neva, thank you for providing the proper credit for the photo. I am a novice and your 5/11 10:49pm comment was helpful. I can’t believe that it’s taken this long for me to see the 5/11 comments, but it did – I think. Again, thanks for providing the citation.
June 6, 2008 at 8:46 am. Permalink.