Harassing in general.

• Online Communities by John Suler, 12/2/97
  • harassing newbies by John Suler, 12/28/97
    
    

Harassing in general, seems a bigger problem in cyber space then offline. People hide behind the anonymity of their user-id and say or do things they wouldn't dare say or do off-line. What appals me is how it seems to be excepted online. If a woman was siting at bar or a lunch counter and some guy came in and said "wow baby, nice buns, spread em so I can have some lunch", everyone around would be incensed. The focus of those witnessing such an event would be to remove the offender. Yet, this behavior is often ignored in cyber space.

Hopefully most hosts (wizards as they are called within The Palace™ environment) would terminate such an offender but the attitude online seems very apathetic. When such an incident (online incident) was brought to discussion on one of the Palace™ email list, the predominate attitude was, "well, you can always mute the offender" or, "if you don't like it, you can disconnect". There was very little comment in support of the victim of that incident. In fact, she came under further criticism for being offended.

I am still appalled that such behavior was taken so lightly. Should we lower our standards in cyber space because "after all, you can always disconnect"?

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