Moderators, Rangers and Elders: Oh My!

The internet is on fire after a woman was threatened on the internet with rape and violence after successfully persisting in petitioning the bank of England to get a woman on one of their banknotes that didn't earn fame due to the luck of whose uterus she came out of. I'm not going to link to the current discussion or the petition that arose out of this latest all too familiar incident. But I will say I signed it but I left a comment.  This post is meant to elaborate on my comment.

I am 46 and sent my first message across the internet in 1986. I was a young university student studying math and taking a mandatory computer science course at the now quite well known for technology University of Waterloo. I didn't know that I was on the internet at the time and that term wasn't even coined yet. I was on an inter-university-governmental communication system that was spread all across North America. After 1986, when I was taking further courses in computer science (I ended up minoring in it, it fascinated me), I was exposed to vast repositories of knowledge and discussion on these systems. After graduating with my first degree and working for a year, I knew I had to come back and learn more. I chose to go into an engineering program at the same university that specializes in understanding systems. From 1991 - 1999 I pursued graduate work in the Management of Technology. I completed a Master's degree and am ABD on a PhD in the topic.

So I basically have over a quarter century of lived and studied experience in this space we now call the internet, or just the net. That's a fair amount and really makes me an elder.

I cringe using this word, elder. Inner voice: Who gives me the right to call me that? Newfound Voice, Calmly: "Your education and experience are legitimate, own it. Just because no-one is paying you to say or write this stuff doesn't mean it doesn't need to be said."

My personal growth in the last few years has taken me on a fascinating journey of self realizations and awakenings. The personal has become political in all sorts of ways. My longevity on the net has made me afraid of ego. I've been victimized online. I've only been not anonymous online for the past 8 years due to cyberstalking that occurred in around 1997. That terrified me and shut me up.

Even after I removed my anonymous shield I've been leary. However, my recent journey has led me to the point of I just don't care anymore. I will say what I want and if you think my motivations are ego driven I can assure you, with the core of my being, that they are not. What I see is driven by my raison d'etre, driven into me in my youth and surfacing regularly throughout my life:  I want to see the world left in a better condition than when I arrived. I don't want to be part of the problem anymore, I want to be part of the solution.

Pussyfooting around egos is not working. Ego is not part of the solution. Ego = ME. Community = WE. I have come to the point in my life, with Daughter grown, that I am willing to actually die for this belief in the necessity of community.

I see a lot of ego in Social Media. I might even argue that it is literally out of control. This latest fiasco over rape threats has highlighted this fact because some of the detractors to the abuse button petition are people who have benefitted from calling out abusers. If their 'skill' is replaced by a button, how will they garner attention? They don't say this, of course. There is a new Newspeak and many internet users are expert at it.

Back in the discussion board days there were moderators appointed that had experience and longevity and were respected by board group members. This doesn't exists in the mainstream social media sites of today and if it does on the lesser known platforms (like on reddit or 4chan) the sites themselves are still largely patrolled by men who think 'post your local weather girl pix' are fine. If I were to call that out I would be called a prude and told to get over myself. I have backed away from these environments long ago because as a woman I have been targeted for too long. 27 years is a long time and it is most of my adulthood. I am tired. But now I'm seeing that a critical mass of women is developing online and perhaps now is the time we can try and put measures in place that ensure online spaces are safe.

I believe all communication systems, throughout millenia, need appointed moderators. Moderators that might be paid but are appointed by users not shareholders in the capitalistic marketplace. Moderators that have a full understanding of the limitations and strengths of healthy terms of service agreements and can work with employees to improve them. In the early 90s there were tons of people kicked out of discussion groups for behaviours that today get called trolling and laughed off. A rape threat would have incurred banning them for life immediately.

I fear that our ego celebrity driven world is making the online space too toxic for women. I also fear that the online space is the only way women can gather enough in numbers to truly liberate future women from human trafficking and violence. Men run everything, still. Everywhere, still. Twenty years ago on the fledgling internet there was a much greater understanding of inappropriate behaviour online. The community was so small that 'policing' it was manageable. It is now out of control (like I said before).

I hope some social media company somewhere takes this suggestion to heart. We need moderators. If they are looking for a current very successful model in order to develop a strategy they could look at the Ranger community at Burning Man. It has long fascinated me and as with many things Burning Man, it is quite innovative.

Blonde, blue-eyed and bullied

She was shiny brand new and red and gave me the ability to get around quicker.  This meant I could explore more since I could now get around faster.  A dream come true.  I didn't have that tricycle for long but there was a huge amount of emotion attached to my ownership of it.

This is not instagram, this is me in 1972

I don't recall riding very much before the 'incident' occurred.  I remember realizing that a tricycle was a bit of a rip-off as a mode of transportation.  Running using your legs could get you places faster but the tricycle was a slightly improved version of walking.  I don't remember any of my neighbourhood friends having tricycles so it wasn't a peer pressured acquisition.  I had probably seen trikes on Sesame Street and imagined a whole new world of exploration opening up to me so I pestered my parents for one.

My mother has maintained, as did her father before her, that as one ages there are certain memories of early childhood that take on a crystal clear quality to them and they start to come back to you as you age.  In the last few months I've had two very powerful ones return to me.  I have not sought out these memories.  They seemingly have been floating around in the nethersphere of my mind and after being poked at and prodded at by seemingly unconnected current events they decided to park in a neuron or two in my brain and literally crystallize.

The family story about my shiny red trike goes as follows:

"She sold her trike at the park so we never got her another bike after that. That taught her a lesson for selling her brand new bike for a dime no less!"

Despite my protestations when later informing them of the 'truth' (my bike was stolen) I don't think either of my parents have ever really believed my version of events.

Yesterday I was mulling over my recent entrance into the land of urban bicycling.  I thought back, with enormous gratitude, to my aunt giving me her old two wheeled bicycle when I was about 10.  For years my parents had held to their promise and my younger sister was finally on a two wheel and my aunt took great pity on me and gave me her clunky, old lady bike (my sister had a cool bike, or at least much cooler than the one gifted me).  I learned to ride on that bike and am enormously grateful to my aunt now for providing me with it. I now ride my current old lady bike with pride.  It's all about mobility and the ability to explore and this new found mode of urban exploration is a new world and I am excited about it.

At the end of this mulling I reflected back to when my trike was stolen.  And then it hit me.  The crystallization.  I recalled, for the first time as an adult, the big kid telling me not to tell anyone about the stolen trike:  "Or else".  While he was delivering this threat to me I could see in the distance his equally big friend who was wheeling away my trike from the fence in the park where I'd left it with the other kids bikes and trikes.  My trike was shiny and red so there was no doubt that it was mine. I watched the trike disappear with a sinking heart.  I could not even share with my friends. I felt enormous fear and the certainty that this big boy would indeed deliver on his threat if I told.

So, clever child and problem solver that I was, I concocted a tale that laid the blame squarely on me so that this threat could never be acted upon.  I also wasn't that devastated since I had had the trike long enough that my eye was already on the bigger goal of a speedy two wheeler.  My reasoning process could not have foreseen the long term consequence of this fictitious tale and I would go 5 or more years before my aunt took pity on me and gifted me her 'old lady' bike.  Long after we moved away from that neighbourhood I tried to tell my parents the story of the stealing but I don't once recall ever adding the bit about the friend bullying me.  I think part of the reason I 'hid' that bit was because my younger sister would have pounced on yet another reason to ridicule me for being a wimp.

The two older kids that stole my bike probably regarded me as a cute little rich kid whose parents could well afford to get their darling girl another trike.  I do know that they lived in the area so I pretty much avoided that park again.   I didn't want to be questioned or threatened again.