Just recently, we received this comment from Anon on our latest post, An Encouraging Message:

Have any of you heard about the attack on Barry Eisler?  Anne R. Allen mentions it in her blog post, Gangs of New Media: Twitchforks, the Hive Mind, and “Social Lasers of Cruelty.”

http://annerallen.blogspot.com/2013/05/gangs-of-new-media-twitchforks-hive.html

And this one from Karig:

I was about to paste the link to that post into the “Contact Us” form. The Passive Voice linked to it today, and when I read it, I thought that it should be recommended reading for people here, for more reasons than its mention of Barry Eisler.

The link to the Passive Voice is here.

Anne’s blog post addresses the very problem that Stitch talked about in the GR Bully Culture where he compares the GR bullies to modern urban street gangs that form packs and roam around terrorizing anyone who crosses them.  If you haven’t already read Anne’s post, we highly recommend it.  Below, we highlight some of the more poignant points she makes regarding the gangs of new media.

She starts off saying:

I spend a lot of time here telling writers how and why to use social media, but I don’t often address the dangers. Yeah, they exist. I don’t know why, but otherwise sensible people can morph into irrational brutes when they’ve got their fingers on a keyboard and a connection to the Interwebz.

Bad behavior abounds in all social media. In an article in the NYT last week, Henry Alford said Twitter can be like “a crowded barroom that bristles with a certain kind of white male rage…marked by a hostility toward anything poetic or naïve.”

The easy anonymity of the Interwebz is usually blamed for the nastiness—and I admit things have felt safer here since I disabled anonymous comments—but I think the most egregious abuses spring from something far more dangerous: mob mentality. A gang of self-righteously indignant “groupthinkers” can do more damage than one lone anonymouse, even a sociopathic one.

“Groupthink” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a pattern of thought characterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values.” It’s also known as “the hive mind.”

Writers new to social media need to be aware that anybody can become a target of one of these groups—often people who have done nothing wrong—and we all need to be careful not to jump into online dogpiles of crazy, no matter how righteous the cause appears to be.

Here is a comment many who read our blog can relate to:

If you’ve ever become part of one of those mobs, you probably felt awful later. And if you’ve been the victim, you know their power to hurt, especially if the crazy invades your real home and affects your health and livelihood.

Anne goes on to talk about her own experience with cyber mobs and mentions research done on monkeys in social situations.  The research points to the natural instinct to “go along with the crowd” and how that can be dangerous in the cyber world, leading to witch hunts using the “cyber version of torches and pitchforks” that she called “Twitchforks.”  She cites two such attacks.  One on Barry Eisler:

A minor, but significant attack by a cybermob with Twitchforks happened recently at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. A bunch of agents, objecting to a keynote speech by author Barry Eisler, set off a swarm of nasty Twitter barbs against Mr. Eisler during his presentation.

The incident reverberated through the book community and serves as an embarrassing example of how even respected professionals can morph into a mob through the magic of the Internet.

And one on a reviewer:

Another more disturbing mob attack happened when superstar author Anne Rice had an over-the-top reaction to a bad review on Facebook and sent her fans to attack the reviewer—a young UK blogger with fewer than 100 readers. Rice’s hordes called the reviewer obscene names and pelted her blog with classy comments like “I hope you get herpes.” Kayleigh, the blogger, took the barrage of anger with grace. (I’ll bet she got a lot more followers out of this.)

One particular part of her post to which we wanted to draw attention is her warning about the hive mind:

That hive/gang mind that can do so much good can also be one of the most dangerous forces in the universe. It can make people do things they’d never dream of doing as individuals.

The hive mind is what powers pogroms, gang rapes, witch hunts, lynchings, war and genocide.

There’s a reason some of the most horrifying SciFi villains are semi-human creatures that share an unreasoning, destructive mind: like The Borg on Star Trek and Dr. Who’s Daleks.

I’ve seen dozens of good people attacked by gangs on social media in the past year or so. Usually for unverified infractions of murky rules. I’m not sure the people who sent me death threats even knew what I was supposed to have done. (I’m still not clear on that myself.) They only knew somebody told them the hive was under attack, and I was the designated villain.

Plus they were getting a rush from their own smug, self-righteous rage.

It’s that rage-induced high and feeling of superiority that is probably at the root of the problem. Anger management specialists tell us that self-righteous rage can trigger brain chemicals that mimic the high of cocaine. And it’s just as addictive. The angrier people are, the better they feel, so they feed their rage, often with unsubstantiated rumors their rational mind would recognize as lies. It’s why radio-ranters and conspiracy theorists are so popular.

Unfortunately a lot of those rage addicts feed their habit on the Interwebz.

What we call bully attacks, Anne calls “hive attacks” that she talks about here:

I saw one of those lasers aimed at an Internet friend this week. She was a much less high-profile target than Barry Eisler, so the “social laser” could get away with a lot more cruelty. She was erroneously accused of piracy (a buzz-word guaranteed to set the hive-mind swarming.) The accuser didn’t deal with her directly. Instead he tweeted a call for the hive to attack. The victim was humiliated and castigated by dozens of authors (some of whom I know to be otherwise sensible individuals.) One rage-fueled smugster even posted the home address where the accused author lives with her disabled child.

The victim had the sense to call the FBI. Which is what I should have done when the crazies started sending me photos of my house and telling me they were armed and they’d “get me.”

She and I join the hundreds—probably thousands—who have had our homes and families targeted by mindless attacks by various branches of the online book community. Yes, these people are our fellow writers, readers, and reviewers. And I’m sure they all think they’re doing good.

…

Terrorizing victims and their families in their homes seems to be a pattern with the booky hive-mind. As is the fake review attack.

Posting addresses and photos of family seems to come from a twisted misunderstanding of what used to be done to silence anonymous trolls—stemming from the outing of hatemongers like “Violentacrez”, who terrorized Reddit a few years ago. Some clever person discovered his real name and residence and posted them online to keep the troll from continuing to pollute the site with anonymous hate speech.

But somehow these literary vigilantes don’t see how that’s different from posting the personal addresses and family details of a fellow author or reviewer who is NOT anonymous in the first place.

You see that?  “Posted home address” and “homes and families targeted.”  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  A bit like what happened to two people we know (one a reader and one an author) that we mention in our post, More Bully Reviews.

The last point she makes is about “fake review” attacks on authors:

The other weapon of choice of the book hive is equally stupid and clueless. Wielding one-star reviews as weapons to assault the author’s character undermines the whole literary community by rendering customer reviews worthless.

Mind you, these cyber-militias claim to be standing up for the “integrity” of the writing community. They think writing fake, libelous “reviews” of books they haven’t read is a great way to show how honorable they are.

So true.

At the end of her post, Anne talks about what we can do about cyber gangs and how we can avoid being victims:

How can we avoid becoming gang victims?

You can’t. Not entirely. Barry Eisler’s speech was anything but incendiary. The accused “pirate” was actually promoting her favorite authors’ work. I was attacked for writing a piece on my own blog to help fellow Boomers who aren’t Web savvy. I admit I was naïve. But we’re all naïve about something.

However there are some things I could have done.

1) Contact law enforcement if your safety is threatened. The FBI has a hotline to report cybercrimes.

2) Delete out-of-control threads in your own blog before rage escalates. If a thread on your own blog gets out of hand, or a bunch of commenters gang up on another, just hit the little trash can icon. I used to think it was better to hang in there—and it probably was in the case of the Anne Rice fan attack—but when things get nasty on your blog, it can reflect on you. A lot of the stuff that made people most angry at me were things other people said in the blog thread, which were later attributed to me in the subsequent game of blog telephone.

3) But don’t delete messages and comments that are actually criminal. At least save a screen shot. You may need them for evidence. (I made this mistake. I thought deleting them from my computer would delete them from my mind. Doesn’t work that way.)

4) Stay away from gang-infested forums and websites. Any forum that projects a them/us mentality can be dangerous. For some reason, the oldest forums seem to be plagued with the most groupthink and snark. A whole lot of writers no longer feel safe at Absolute Write, so I’ve stopped recommending them. Ditto the Amazon Forums (the Kindleboards tend to be a bit more civilized, but don’t expect many warm fuzzies.) Reddit could be toxic in the days of Violenticrez. I don’t know if it has improved. I’ve also heard some Goodreads groups can get pretty nasty, but I belong to some great ones.

5) Look for community at moderated, helpful forums like Kristen Lamb’s WANAtribe,  Nathan Bransford’s forums, CritiqueCircle.com and SheWrites. (If you know of more good ones, do let us know in the comments.) I’ve left all the LinkedIn writing groups I belonged to because of idiots taking over the threads to stage one-on-one combat (and the misguided guys who think it’s a dating site) but I haven’t seen overt gang activity. Maybe some of you know some good groups there.

6) Be careful where you post comments. Some blogs are heavily weighted pro- or anti- self-publishing or pro- or anti- author and may be controlled by a hive mind. If you see name-calling or blanket dismissal of a whole segment of the population by a blogger, you have wandered into a private clubhouse of snark and your time will be better spent elsewhere.

The internet book community is ours to create. We can become a jungle of irrational, violent thugs, or we can behave like literate, civilized adults. If you have a personal problem with an individual, consider talking to him or her about it in a reasonable, non-accusatory way. If the person is misusing a forum, or you see criminal activity, leave the group temporarily and contact the appropriate authorities.

So, to end we want to say kudos to Anne.  We agree with her on all points and we do recommend her post as required reading for those who wish to have a pleasant online experience whether you’re an author, a reader, or both.

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