He may have used those words, but they aren't 'meaningless', they do have value. They represent that some group of people that he considered peers or an audience appreciated what he was doing. And so by having a large amount of karma he felt good, that's not meaningless.
I could not agree more, I know from past experience that being part of a group of peers whom you feel value your input can be a very rewarding experience, to say that it is meaningless would be to say that he didn't care at all. They have a meaning, both to him, as what he then felt was a valued individual in the community; and also to me.
It's very easy for people to say that Reddit karma is pointless and has no value to people, but when I look at myself I see myself making comments on another website (http://hackerne.ws) where by, if the other users feel I have made a contribution which added something to the discussion, they reward me by clicking on an up arrow next to my name, it's like they're giving me a virtual thumbs up.
So yes, it made him feel good and it's important to feel appreciated by the audience to whom you perform. Feel free to take away my hard earned karma if you disagree, but bear in mind that it will probably make me die a little inside, at least, for a few minutes, before the rush of internet-adrenaline wears off.
news.ycombinator.com is too slow for me, I don't know why but I get a lot of latency trying to connect and it can take several minutes to load a single page.
hackerne.ws is the only way I can reliably connect to this website unfortunately
I disagree. I'm a mod on a reasonably large subreddit and I regularly get approached about promoting certain brands or blogs. I've never accepted any of the offers as I don't agree with gaming the system but undoubtedly plenty of people have.
Marketeers are getting wise to Reddit. They know if they hit a sweetspot the reddit can make or break their brand over night. Soliciting "reddit celebrities" is naturally going to be a tactic many people employ.
Reddit karma is (mostly) useless, but I think the poster's point is that they are meaningful to a great number of people, otherwise they wouldn't be accumulated and fought over with such zeal.
People's egos are tremendously important to them, and the people around them.
Again, the point is that these things that people fight over have meaning, even if they can't really be used for anything.
The crusades arguably were fought over things that had a lot of meaning, even if they didn't have a lot of utility. It'd be hard to argue that the crusades had no meaning.
I'm a long time Reddit and mod for a big subreddit - it's not meaningless. There are TONS of perks you get when having a high comment karma count. Physical, actual benefits.
This is where I don't get the duality of how people perceive the internet as a medium.
We want the products we build that aren't (to counter your definition) "in the real world" to give us salary, a future, wealth, whatever... but you flip the viewpoint and someone doing something they wish to do "not in the real world" is completely meaningless (and this implicitly has no value). The fact that people achieve A surely means there are endless scenarios where B is not true.
This would make more sense if reddit karma corresponded to respect. I post some really lengthy replies on reddit that take a lot of time to put together and are really helpful - these usually get 1 or 2 upvotes at best. I was slowly building comment karma and then I posted a 9gag link in a comment and tripled my karma overnight. It took 20 seconds to post.
And as far as the value of link karma - well look at the stuff that gets the highest votes on the site.
I'd have to lean towards reddit karma being meaningless/worthless/whatever you want to call it.
Say you're playing a video game, and trying to collect points. It makes a difference whether you play at the easy or expert level, because the points are not fungible, and are only a reflection of your performance rather than an objective measure.
If you care about what you are writing, whether it's genuinely helping someone, or it's trying to explain the counterpoint to some popular misconception on an issue, simply getting a positive score, or a score > -4 where it effectively disappears, could keep your effort from being a complete waste of time. And yet, even if you were all-knowing and all of the readers were misinformed, downvotes and upvotes still matter because they are an indicator of how well you made your point and how well it is being received.
In Anderson Cooper's case, does he follow his ratings exclusively for the ad revenue they facilitate, or is it rewarding to see how many viewers he is reaching? Furthermore, do the ratings numbers mean as much to him when they are a thousand households shown a personality during a daytime talk show and a thousand households shown an in depth story? I can see how both would be rewarding, even if they had no effect on his earnings whatsoever.
> What about the respect of your peers? Do you also find that completely meaningless?
Did you ever take a look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs? People evolve in different ways: For some, "respect of peers" is a need. It might well explain the demographics of reddit, for example.
"Meaning" is purely subjective idea. Meaning is an intellectual concept that has no physical analog. Things in the physical world don't have meaning. They just are. We, as in our minds, assign meaning to them. The electric current that makes up the Internet is a physical thing. Again, we give it meaning. Arguing about meaning is like arguing about art.
Yes, it's certainly meaningful when the DailyDot's "most important Redditor of the year" is a racist, sexist, pedophile. Says a lot about Reddit that they supported and profited from him (and people like him).
I've read some comments in other places to the effect of complaining about free speech rights. As I always say, everyone has the right to say/post what they want (within legal boundaries) ... but everyone else is 100% free to react to what you say/post as they see fit. So the fact that he was fired is that freedom being exercised.
Gawker's behavior is shocking, not in terms of free speech, but in terms of journalistic ethics. This story is, in the most literal sense, fabricated news.
The point of the article wasn't that there existed trolls on forums getting a kick out of being as offensive as possible. It can be summed up as "Hi Brutsch, I'm about to try my best to ruin your life, how do you feel about that?". The article was about the article itself (more precisely the previsible consequences of the article's publication). This is trolling, not journalism nor any self-respecting form of news reporting, and the guy who did that stands on no higher moral grounds than Brutsch.
At least Brutsch had no illusion about the value and ethics of what he was doing, wasn't purposefully ruining someone's life, and wasn't making money out of it.
So neither of them likely broke any US law, but the filthiest asshole isn't Brutsch IMO.
Gotta disagree with that. What this kid was doing on a micro-level hurt and affected far more people than Gawker ousting him. Plenty of trolls have been made public before, but outside of the risk of finding a job and the initial backlash, they aren't doomed to lifelong persecution. Whereas his words and actions could have prompted someone to hurt themselves or just cut themselves off from the world.
People hurting themselves over trolling is an education issue. Education on the part of the troll for one, and education on the part of the victim as well. Children, teens, and young adults need to know that life is not over if you get trolled. Too often I see someone hurt themselves over online comments and lawmakers/advocacy groups begin clamoring for new regulations to clamp down on anonymous trolls online. That's the wrong approach.
I don't like what VA did, I find it distasteful. But that's his prerogative, and he literally hurt no one online. If anyone was hurt by his actions or comments while he was on reddit, then there is an education issue that needs to be solved. Electronic bits on a screen, even if they represent real words, cannot hurt you. It's the actions taken offline that hurt.
> People hurting themselves over trolling is an education issue.
You can tell someone plenty of times that they shouldn't take something to heart, but it takes a lot more than "education" to give them confidence and self-worth. On edit, I don't mind calling him a kid. What he did was childish.
I think it would be interesting and worthwhile to study the effects of trolling on different personality types, to see if there's some kind of link between taking trolling to heart and some other factor. Say, a root cause for being offended. I believe it's upbringing and education, but I have no data on that. It's just a random guess.
I do know that there are millions of people who have no adverse reaction to being trolled. I also know that there are a lot of those people who also have low self esteem and very little confidence. I believe these people are people who understand what the Internet is, understand the psychology of Internet trolls. They know that it's a joke, or at worst they know that the troll is harmless. An annoyance at most. And they know they can do the same thing right back again.
The issue seems to be in when the two major subcultures online clash: the ones who know the Internet's darkest reaches and have an understanding of how awful the Internet can get, and the casual Internet users, the Facebookers/MySpacers/etc. It's like nudists strolling through The Vatican.
I would say that pseudonyms do more than just allow us to be anonymous with our opinions, but it also allows us to be anonymous with our emotions. In that sense, everyone has - or realizes - their jimmies are likely to be rustled at some point and it's best to shield your real identity from that person hitting the fan. But I agree I think we need to do a little bit more to figure out who gets hurt and why, and what we can do to curb that or provide them with some sort of kiddie pool to wade in. Sounds kind of silly, but I think it'd help.
> At least Brutsch had no illusion about the value and ethics of what he was doing, wasn't purposefully ruining someone's life, and wasn't making money out of it.
What do you mean by "purposefully"? Do you believe that all (or most) of the harm in this world is caused intentionally, by people who deep down in their hearts, think they are doing the wrong, evil thing?
I agree with you that Mr. Brutsch seems like a decent guy overall with just a very eccentric sense of dark humor. But I think you're being naive to think that him just wanting to have old-fashioned trolling fun precludes the possibility that people that he could be hurting people unwittingly. And no matter his intent, he and his activities are fair game for a journalist to expose.
Brutsch claims that to his knowledge, no one has been hurt by his trolling or administering of the content in question. And so we just believe him? This is the same person who, until five days ago, thought he could do this undetected even though he attends real-life Reddit meetups and posted his phone number and complete work history on the Internet, so pardon me if I worry that he may have several blind spots.
The degree of objective and conscious evilness in Violentacrez' behavior is debatable, indeed, but that's not the issue. At least that's not what makes this story newsworthy IMO.
I think that Gawker's "journalist" ought to get more flak than Violentacrez, because the latter doesn't pretend to be anything but an asshole, whereas Chen pretends to have the higher moral ground. Chen needs a tougher reality-check about what a gigantic scumbag he is, even though Brutsch sounds quite delusional himself about his actions' outcomes.
It all came down to Reddit members and mods protecting a friend and influential person of the Reddit community. It even spilled over to HN where every Gawker article was flagged heavily due to HN affiliation... I'm surprised this one is on the front page.
I can't believe Gawker is still seen as the "Good Guy" by a lot of people on HN. The hypocrisy of Adrian Chen complaining about /r/CreepShots is astounding.
I do not like all of Gawker and I similarly don't like all of Reddit (/r/jailbait and hundreds more). The article about Violentacrez was a legitimate and well written piece of investigative journalism. I know this because I actually read the whole thing and there have been hundreds of real news agencies and reporters using it.
As to whether this Adrian Chen guy is a hypocrite or not, I don't care. Gawker is a horribly trollish site, with occasionally good content. We know this. All I'm saying is that Reddit has not always been this way. Reddit has _always_ been against censorship (remember the Sony PS3 root key fiasco?).
Btw, I went to the Gawker link and it's full of Lindsay Lohan pics and news stories about people similar to Violentacrez (without pics).
> I similarly don't like all of Reddit (/r/jailbait and hundreds more)
Are you saying that you don't like reddit because it had a subreddit that doesn't even exist anymore, or are you saying that you don't like that reddit took a 180 on their "no censorship, period" policy once the media started turning up the heat?
This is actually a really good point, and it's one that a lot of people miss. For Americans, I think the confusion largely comes from the conflation of "the First Amendment" and "freedom of speech". It is correct and valid to say that the First Amendment only applies to the US government. It is incorrect to say that freedom of speech can only be infringed by governments.
The thing is, there's nothing magic about governments. They are just institutions with lots of power. Ideas like "freedom of speech" are meant to level the playing field so that people with little power are able to propose and discuss challenging ideas that can reshape society without being steamrolled by the powerful.
Gawker certainly isn't as powerful as the US government, but they are way more powerful than some guy with a lot of karma on reddit. And if they abuse that power to try to ruin his life, they are stepping on his rights.
For them to do so isn't (and shouldn't be) illegal. But we should express strong disapproval for that behavior.
Yep, you're 100% correct that freedom of speech, and the first amendment aren't one and the same. But what you're advocating is precisely what I'm talking about. Gawker is free to bring a spotlight to this guy's actions, just as you are free to express disapproval for their behavior, and they are free to not care what you think until you make a big enough noise about it that they start losing advertisers. This cycle will continue until someone bows out, which makes you the "more powerful" party that is stepping on Gawker's rights to print what they like.
As long as the government can't limit my freedom when I say something ... I'm good with the above scenario.
"Mr. Brutsch, who was fired from his job following Gawker’s expose, is now soliciting programming work in the porn industry."
I don't know the porn industry all that well, but it does seem slightly unlikely they'd want someone with a history of pre-18 sexualisation on the team given how hard they have to fight to stay legal.
I did a bit of work in porn for a while back (when I was young and needed the money).
In one of the description of a video the editor wrote "was 17 just a day ago" to "barely 17" making the mistake to not change the number as he changed it. The forums blew up, complaints started pouring in and it was one heck of a day. The description was online for 20 minutes at most and complaints continued to trickle in for a few days after.
That being said some porn distributors wouldn't mind hiring the guy since his name would most likely not appear anywhere. It really depends on how good he is... and if he's on reddit all day long that's probably not a good thing either.
The porn industry is very well aware of the age of its performers. Pretty much any porn company will point you to its 18 USC Section 2257 record keeping (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257). As a random example, on the front page of the site www.bangbus.com there's the following text:
"All girls appearing on this website are 18 years or older. Click here for records required pursuant to 18 U.S.C 22557 Statement."
Oh I know that side of it, but given that they have to be careful to stick within the legal framework I'd be interested how many would take the risk with a guy who's been accused of teenager sexualisation on a large scale on the internet. I'm sure a few won't care of course, he didn't break any laws after all.
Your post didn't say anything. What is this risk? Be specific, I have no idea what you think this magical risk is. You think the porn industry has "programmers can't find teenagers attractive" regulations?
"Free Speech" is not relevant to this situation. Free speech rights are limits placed on the government. The only rights you have on Reddit are whatever rights Reddit grants you. And they are free to change those on a whim, or apply them as unfairly as they want.
The US Constitution describes how that human right is protected in the United States from the US Government.
This doesn't mean that Brutsch did anything right or wrong, it's just a description of how freedom of speech is different and embodied in culture and is not just some form of right given to us by the The First Amendment.
One very helpful side effect, however, was that he exposed Anderson Cooper for the integrity-free yellow journalist he is (at least for those paying close attention).
Huh? Did anyone's view of Cooper change over this stuff? I can't imagine anyone who had any respect for him before would change their mind over it, and anyone who would be upset about his "journalism" recently would never have had any respect for him in the first place.
Yeah, my view of him changed. I used to think he was a relatively benign centrist pundit, and I didn't have very strong opinions about him. That changed.
It's not free speech, he was enabling stealing girls' pictures and posting for the internet to wank over. Free speech would be speaking out to advocate that, but actually doing that? We don't have complete freedom of action, and quite rightly so.
