Monday, November 7, 2011
Feminist Question of the Week--Internet Discussions
Obviously, the internet has great blogs (like this one) to help spread the positive messages of feminism and other social causes, but how do you and how can we use facebook and other such sites as a way to change sexism? How do you respond (without causing the worlds biggest meltdown) to offensive material on places like facebook? Or do you just leave it alone so you don’t start a fight (I admit, I do this a lot)?
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For me, the big question to determine whether or not I respond is whether or not I think the person was trolling. Trolling, in Internet usage, refers to someone posting content for the purposes of getting other people angry (hence my usage of it in a comment last week). It's not about creating a dialogue or genuinely answering a question; it's about getting a rise out of someone else.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of face-to-face contact makes it really difficult sometimes to tell what someone's intentions are. I tend to be much more ready to respond on a site like NAW than on Facebook, simply because NAW is "my" (our, really) domain and we set the boundaries for safe discussions. If someone's trolling, the best response is usually to ignore them simply because they're looking for a reaction- ANY reaction- instead of an actual discussion.