One of the Offending Images: BobsYerUncle's effigy of SierraPrompted by my post below about l'affaire Sierra, Izzy engaged me in a Skype conversation. As always, it was more fun than either of us have any right to be having on the clock:

Izzy: So here's the thing: it sounds like you're advocating a "suck it up" approach. I mean, sure the internet is a nasty place. So's East New York. But if the police told any crime victim that they just shouldn't be in crime-ridden places, that would be hugely irresponsible.

Michael: Well, if you read her self-regarding post about the whole thing, you begin to think she's overreacting.

Izzy: I read it, and I don't. I can see how something in her tone could be off-putting – angry and scared people can sound a little self-obsessed. But legitimately – when someone threatens you, you become obsessed with your own well-being. I wouldn't have cancelled the conference, but i would have talked to the organizers about security.

Michael: The distinction is this: living in East New York means having to navigate a hazardous terrain everyday, and with no other choice in the matter. Starting a blog means granting yourself the ability to a) block comments, b) block certain ISP addresses, c) keep your identity, location private.

Izzy: But the comments weren't on her blog.

Michael: Some of them were.

Izzy: And she's blogging about what she does for a living. Yeah, but she couldn't control the ones on BobsYerUncle or Meankids. When your online image is tied to your professional life, you need to have your name attached.

Michael: That's true, but if these people are posting it in places where she's not immediately privy to them, how can what they post be said to constitute real threats against her?

Izzy: Because they're still threatening.

Michael: They're nasty and violent-minded, to be sure. But I see that kind of thing all the time leveled against all sorts of people.

Izzy: I don't see your logic there.

Michael: Well, if I send you an email and say I'm planning to kill you, that's a death threat. You go to the police.

Izzy: If I put a sign up threatening to kill you, but I put it on a block you don't normally walk down, it's still a threat.

Michael: If I say, on some other website, "Izzy's a bitch and I hope someone slits her throat." Is that really the same thing as saying, “I’m going to slit Izzy’s throat”?

For one thing, these posts are not declaring an intent to do harm to Sierra.

Izzy: Sure!

You're Special: Weiss, not so muchMichael: They’re expressing a wish that harm befalls her, but they're too vague to seem genuinely threatening to me. And as for fun with Photoshop, that happened to me during my little run-in with Mr. Rogers. [Note: You’ll like Michael even less for this, but when Mr. Rogers was selected to be the Commencement Speaker at Dartmouth College’s 2002 graduation ceremony, Michael, an imminent graduate, said some unkind things about the children’s television icon, things that were subsequently picked up by the AP and Reuters. Michael received ominous phone calls and emails for a week. To this day, he’s wary of low-flying tennis shoes aimed at his big Irish head. –ed]

Izzy: Legally, it's the same thing.

Michael: The site Fark held a Photoshop contest at my expense. And I was airbrushed and cut-and-pasted in effigy. Far more creatively than what these people did to Ms. Sierra, I might add.

Izzy: But more threateningly?

Michael: Evidence, however slight, that the physical taunts don't just affect women.

Izzy: Did those taunts involve sexual imagery?

Michael: Sure they did.

Izzy: How so?

Michael: One was my head Photoshopped onto a gay porn pic of a guy being sodomized. The best, though, was my whole body (I was doing a mock-impersonation of Nixon's double victory sign for the school humor mag -- that's the image they found of me, lucky fuckers) turned into a King Friday-type puppet shoved onto the Cardiganed One’s hand.

Izzy: That's interesting

Michael: Yeah. I was mortified, of course, because I was recognizable.

Izzy: This argument comes up a lot, in a lot of different contexts: is the threat of sexual violence more damaging to women because it's more likely to happen to them? I hate the implications, but I think it's probably true.

Michael: But after a while I realized, that's the price one pays for having an opinion. Humanity is vicious (although, when ranged against me, also hilarious and innovative). Given the opportunity to avoid having anything attached to one's reputation, a person will be completely uninhibited and vile.

Izzy: Right, and the way the internet works right now, you have to suck it up.

Michael: Yes.

Izzy: It just seems lazy, or unprogessive, to me to say, “Ah well, I guess that's the way it'll always have to be."

Michael: Well, there are measures to take that fall short of, I think, granting such importance to the cheap seats in the audience...

Izzy: That's why I think it's key that the law comes in.

Michael: Which is what saying, "That's it, I'm not going to my conference" or "That's it, I’m not blogging for a week" in effect does do. How so, though?

Izzy: The police might be able to trace violent emails.

Michael: But not anonymous postings on message boards or blog comment sections, especially if posted from an internet cafe, say.

Izzy: A responsible site could require that postings only come from traceable IP addresses. Or they could do what Gawker does, and only publish stuff once it's been filtered. That's not what I’m talking about in terms of the law, though. I think there needs to be a legal distinction between general trollishness and actual threats of violence.

Michael: Gawker doesn't do that - they grant licenses to post, people post, and then they cancel licenses at their (Gawker's) discretion.

Izzy: No, they do sift stuff.

Michael: But read those comments - perfect example.

Izzy: How so? You don't see crazy, violent, misogynistic stuff in their comments section. You just see garden-variety meanness.

Michael: Nasty, vile stuff about physical appearance, etc.

Izzy: That's fine.

Michael: Well, you see crazy, homophobic stuff, don't you? (Even if Gawker’s readership is mainly gay.)

Izzy: I've never seen anything homophobic on Gawker. I’ve seen gay jokes, but they tend to be homophilic, if anything.

Moments Before the Money Shot: Britney undrapedMichael: Well, look, if I post a picture of a woman with panties on her head – how is that so insulting compared with propagating an image of Britney spear's vagina?

Izzy: It's her own vagina!

Michael: Snapped by a paparazzi looking to cash in on her abasement.

Izzy: If Kathy Sierra had allowed herself to be photographed with panties on her head, looking absolutely terrified.

Michael: That would be different.

Izzy: Listen, it's really not that hard to keep your vagina to yourself.

Michael: I defer to your judgment on that.

Izzy: She could have worn underwear. It's really easy. Millions of people do it every day. In fact, I think it's downright difficult to maneuver into a position where someone can snap a photo of your junk. It's not like we're talking about anything dangly here.

(But this might be a digression).

Michael: But the cruelty is still there, isn't it? I mean, she's famous so she gets a free pass to be humiliated and exploited.... at what point do we say, as a blogger, you're now famous, too. (Journos have to deal with being Photoshopped in effigy all the time. Look at what they do to Hitch on a regular basis.)

This is a digression, and you're talking to someone who exposed himself in the second grade for money. So I might not be the most sociologically astute when it comes to public nudity.

Izzy: How much?

Michael: All the way, baby. 5 cents for a money shot.

Izzy: No, how much money, you perv?

Michael: At that stage in my development I figured, I’m at least worth a recycled Pepsi can. I was right.

Izzy: I think you could have finagled a better deal.

Michael: Thanks. That's sweet of you to say.

Izzy: Well, 5 cents in 1985 is pretty damn cheap.

Michael: But anyway, I don't see how this medium can be regulated without hopelessly endangering its fundamental appeal. It'd be about 10 cents today.

Izzy: This is why someone smarter than us needs to figure out how to regulate it in a non-intrusive manner. In the meantime, though, I do think saying, "No more blog for you" is a good response.

Michael: I think Sierra's figured it out, if a bit histrionically. Take a stand and declare that you're not going to be providing the service that seems to attract this sort of stupidity... She's number 1 on Technorati right now.

Izzy: Good for her.

Michael: And I bet you anything those sites that hosted the horrible comments will have those comments yanked.

Izzy: I guess my fundamental disagreement with you is that I don't think she's being histrionic.

Michael: To avoid their bad publicity.

Izzy: The other thing she did really well was call out certain names of people associated with the sites.

Michael: Yes.

Izzy: Which sucked for them—but got them to respond.

Michael: Right, now consider this: All I have to do is say, "Well, I suspect so and so is responsible." How is that any less damaging, if so-and-so turns out to be innocent, than what's happened to Sierra?

Izzy: It's just as damaging—but if we do need to deal with a dirty, gritty, unfair internet world, then the only way to respond is with equally nasty tactics.

Michael: For instance, the only thing I'll remember about that John Clarke person is he was accused of mouthing sexist filth... Even if he didn't do. So the marketplace of chatter and ideas sorts itself out, doesn't it?

Izzy: Except that everyone gets screwed other than the anonymous trolls. I mean, it's a crappy equilibrium. By the way, I don't think the antisemitic stuff on the site has been anywhere near the Kathy Sierra comments. Partly because it's not directed at anyone specific.

Joey: With that punim, what neo-Nazi could say no?Michael: But freedom of speech is about preserving the equilibrium at all costs—to avoid a far crappier state of affairs. Well, a tirade about how the Jews are subhuman riff-raff that takes Joey's column as its cue, I would argue, is directed at Joey. Even if his name is never mentioned.

Izzy: But it's not a threat aimed at Joey. It's not "I hope someone kills Joey, that dirty Jew." We regulate speech all the time, though.

Michael: Again, though, I didn't see anything constituting a real threat in that Sierra post – people were too haphazard and clumsy in their rhetoric (or perhaps too careful) to be properly accused of that. Expressing a wish to see someone beheaded is not quite the same as saying you're going to behead him.

Izzy: According to the law, it is, though. And that picture... I know photos are messy – we deal with that all the time talking about story art. But that picture seemed very clearly to take pleasure in sexual violence done to her.

Michael: Of course it did. But that pleasure would have been taken anywhere, whether or not there was a material outlet for it to be viewed by others. I’m not defending what she's had to put up with…

Izzy: You're just saying that there's nothing anyone can do about it. And that it's a bit whiny to try.

Michael: But I do think her response was disproportionate to the slander she's endured. You mentioned Gawker earlier. Jessica Coen once told me she got emails like that every day. Every day. No one in her position - as a snarky gossip maven - could expect otherwise without failing at her job. No, not whiny.

Izzy: "Unseemly and absurd."

Michael: “Unseemly and absurd about the woe-is-me attitude engulfing this Sierra business” – yes. Read what other bloggers are saying. They're acting as if she's Rosa Parks.

Izzy: I know, I read all about it yesterday

Michael: One guy's vowed to stop blogging for a week because of it - now how is that going to make the bad trolls disappear? If anything, it'll encourage them.

Izzy: But it'll also encourage everyone else to frown further on trollishness.

Michael: They already do frown on it! They're victims of it.

Izzy: Well, online, traffic is everything, right? They can choose not to frequent the sites that allow or promote lots of troll behavior.

Michael: That's not going to happen for the very reason that Sierra's plight is now top of the news roundup. People are lured by the antisocial and base.

Izzy: To a certain extent.

Michael: Look, when I organized the Pro-Denmark rally, I had to talk to the cops who were afraid of what might ensue should some metropolitan Islamist types decide to show up and disrupt our event. It was either: be cowed by what I oppose, or oppose it all the more vigorously for the very threat of being cowed by it. I chose the latter.

Izzy: But if someone did attack you, that would be illegal.

Michael: Of course it would. And if someone attacked Sierra, they'd go to jail.

Izzy: Right. But also, if someone attacked you, you'd have every right to be upset or pissed off about it. It wouldn't be histrionic or unseemly.

Michael: Attacked physically or verbally? Because I can evidence enough of the latter where I kept my powder dry – at least publicly.

Izzy: Either way. As long as the verbal attacks constituted some kind of real harm.

I mean, listen, good on you for being a tough guy. I just don't think there's anything wrong – and think there's a lot right – with being loudly opposed to misogynistic online abuse. Part of the problem is the larger system. Women do take it less well than men, because in general we're more vulnerable. If we were less vulnerable, it wouldn't be an issue.

Michael: I don’t know, Izz. This day in age, you post a Mohammed cartoon, you run the risk of losing your head - whether it's attached to a male or female body. But as I concede in my post, women have a harder run of things on the net. I can’t argue with that.

Izzy: Interesting example – I had no idea Islamist violence is the biggest threat facing people of either gender today. But now that I think about it, I do recall reading that men are more often victims of violent crimes. It's just that there's this whole other way of being vulnerable that men don't have to deal with.

Michael: But the issue is altering our current plane of evolution to try and stop troglodytic men (and by the way, I’m not 100% certain all those comments directed at Sierra are coming from men) from committing the worst adrenal-gland run-off to print.

Izzy: Oh, I bet some of those comments are coming from women. But anyway, I guess I just think it IS possible to get trolling to stop. Be right back – there are brownies upstairs!

Michael: Damn, the one fucking day I might have one...

Izzy: Actually, maybe we should end this here. Can we agree that brownies are better than trolls? And leave it at that?

Michael: Yes, brownies are better than trolls.

Izzy: Sweet. I am totally with you.