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.

May 4, 2008. Tags: The News Gang. Social Media. 4 comments.