Today’s article was just a short one, and engaging in what makes everyone roll their eyes: seeing something happen on Reddit and writing an article about it.
To cut it short:
- Billie Eilish (famous singer) uploaded a picture of her old Nintendo DSi in gallery of images, to her Instagram account
- Someone shared that on Reddit
- Half of the comment section slid straight into shitty gamer dude Hell (the other half did not)
- Some man on Mastodon attacked me
- Post removed from Reddit when moderators spotted the comments
…this is a fast-forward of the oddness, but if you want to read over my ramble here, and see some shittiness, the link will help:
https://gardinerbryant.com/you-dont-look-like-a-gamer/
I see this shit all the time, and it is not only exhausting, but something no one should see (no matter their identity) should be subjected to. Anyway, read on if you’d like!
Hey dash! Cool article on an issue worth writing about. Thank you for sharing your own work here.
I have a question about something that surprised me: did you consider censoring user names of the people you used as examples of negative internet culture? From a perspective of journalistic best practice, I personally feel like this would have been better, mostly since you are making a point about general culture, not specific people. This became noticable to me with the reference to mastodon (less with reddit). Maybe because mastodon feels like more of a personal, less anonymous platform. Also, @f… (no thank you voyager, I won’t tag him here, even if you autocomplete the handle) is more singled out.
What I want to express is that I feel like that not censoring names detracts from your point of ‘online spaces are bad’ to ‘these people are bad’. This is especially true if the bad actor is a single person, as in the mastodon / ‘shut up about instagram’-section. This is the case in addition to the risk of people reaching out to the posters in question to worsen their day.
I like not censoring names. Hold people accountable for their words, name and shame. It’s nothing a decent googler can’t find by searching with quotation marks. People willingly put their posts online next to their usernames, they out to stand by it.