Тег: Marshenkulova

Online bullying

I was asked to comment on the case of Zalina Marshenkulova.

I will briefly outline the facts. Till Lindemann filmed a music video that apparently contains (I haven’t watched it) sex scenes. Several actresses turned out to be Russian; they were deanonymized, their contacts were posted on 2ch (I don’t read it), and calls for violence were made right there. Zalina asked for the contacts to be removed, after which 2ch began calling for violence against her as well.

I’ll start by saying that calls to remove anything from 2ch are pointless. The main point of this garbage heap is that things are posted there anonymously and without censorship. If 2ch were to introduce systemic censorship, people would simply move their trolling to a less stifling platform. If the owners of such platforms are persecuted, people will start writing on the blockchain of some Steam or Voice.

I recommend everyone reread the chapter from Mechanics of Freedom published the day before yesterday about the public good. When someone writes a post on 2ch, it is a private good: the author receives all the benefits from the publication that interest them, and the opinion of others either doesn’t interest them at all or is one of the benefits for them. When someone tries to systematically fight certain types of publications on 2ch or deanonymize their authors, it is a public good. Such activity can bring small benefits to a large group of people, but the person who puts in the primary effort spends disproportionately more than the benefit they personally receive. Others spend nothing, except for the money to buy popcorn.

Public goods always suffer from underproduction. I have encountered a similar problem in my own chat. I positioned it as a place where one could chat with me on random topics or clarify something regarding the channel’s publications. No ideological filtering was intended; the only request to the public was to remain friendly. It’s unknown what the majority of the public wanted, but the targeted efforts of a small group were enough to turn the chat into a rather unpleasant place for me. I barely suppressed the urge to delete the chat, transferred the creator rights to another person, and since I cannot maintain friendliness toward its participants right now, I simply archived it. Mockery, stupid repetitive copypastas, attempts to fish for more personal information for deanonymization or to demonstrate my incompetence—all these are things that bring me no joy and are extremely costly to fight, so it’s easier for me to abandon the chat entirely than to try to ensure a pleasant atmosphere there.

But as soon as someone tries to bring something from the internet into real life, the situation reverses. An attempt to harass a person in real life over some nonsense attributed to them on the internet is the production of a public evil. All the costs fall on the perpetrator, while the internet just laughs, especially if the perpetrator fails in a funny way. It doesn’t even matter if they succeed in humiliating the target of the harassment in a funny way or fail miserably in a funny way. The attacker gains no significant benefit. For the defending party, self-defense is a private good from the production of which they receive all the benefits, and therefore they are fully motivated to invest in it.

It is thanks to this system of economic incentives that we have the internet as a space of relative freedom, including for stupid aggressive jokes—and offline as a space of relative safety, where one can actually get hit for stupid aggressive jokes. Responsibility for aggression online and impunity for aggression offline are not perceived as the norm. And the only thing we can do to ensure there is less stupid aggression on the internet is to work on the general softening of manners.

An example of stupid aggression from the internet

How Mikhail Svetov Dug Himself In

Miss Liberty

After Zalina Marshenkulova on Svetov’s show got drunk and just chatted about life instead of having a proper discussion, I didn’t expect her to prove herself to be a good debater, but I hoped for the best. But, my Goddess, how wrong I was! Of course, over three years, Zalina has become better at conveying her thoughts, and instead of wine, there was now water on the table in front of her, but the main factor in her success at the debates was still Svetov himself. It was enough to let him speak freely, and he dug his own grave, much like Rudoy did in the debates with Prosvirnin.

I consider the subject of the debate itself to be Svetov’s strangest and stupidest mistake. The title was promising: “Feminism: a struggle for rights or privileges?” But Mikhail didn’t particularly try to talk about the struggle, the rights, or the privileges. Already in the opening speech, I suspected something was wrong when he reduced his presentation to the trivialization of problems by feminists and some flaws in how Zalina managed her Twitter. This wouldn’t have been scary if it hadn’t turned out later that these essentially exhausted all his grievances with Zalina and feminism.

Mikhail came to talk about feminism, but spent the entire debate on how his opponent behaves on social networks; it was petty. Especially since he describes his own Twitter primarily as a private space and explicitly says that his influence on the discourse is greatly exaggerated, otherwise, he claims, we would have lived in a wonderful Russia of the future long ago. As a result of such an approach, Zalina’s rhetoric was often reduced to discussing tweets. As a viewer, I wanted to see a struggle between two points of view here and now, not archaeological excavations of someone’s posts and explanations for their words.

My favorite quote from the past debate:

While women die of anorexia, in the same way men die of melancholy. I absolutely do not want to draw an equal sign here, because both, of course, are tragic

Mikhail Svetov, fighter against the trivialization of problems

The phrase is so funny and wild that I can only address the men: don’t be melancholy, men, you are great!!!

I imagine the scene: a typical anorexic girl, who has spent several stints in psychiatric hospitals, destroyed all her internal organs, ends her fleeting life from dystrophy. And next to her, a man dies of melancholy, like poor Hachiko, because the girls wouldn’t give it to him, an incel, and therefore life is over. May the Goddess preserve you, two victims of social injustice, femine!

Svetov could have tried to return Zalina’s serve about death from anorexia, even with a take about similar problems among men, but not to cite melancholy as an example: no, damn it, men don’t die from torture in prison, their psyche isn’t maimed in the army, they aren’t bullied if they are fat or, conversely, scrawny. Melancholy is the main scourge of men!

Svetov’s story about men who ruin their lives for the sake of building a career looked about as convincing. And this in the context of discussing labor inequality! Like, don’t rush into the labor market, girls, it’s scary here, destinies are broken here, stay home, take care of your appearance. According to Svetov, it turns out that the most terrible male problems are some vague melancholy and their own privileges.

Speaking of privileges, by the way. What a topic for debate was missed! How I would have liked to see a competent analysis of the feminist myth about privileges. It is here that the feminist discourse about the all-pervasive patriarchy and the methods of fighting it is weakest. I would have liked to hear about the harm of legal privileges: Svetov only slightly touched upon the topic of maternity leave, and yes, Zalina answered the question about positive discrimination manifested in the leniency of cops toward girls at rallies. And yet, the struggle for benefits is exactly that part of the feminist discourse that can be most convincingly dismantled specifically from the positions of libertarian ideology.

Alas, the debates turned out sluggish, Svetov looked even weaker than in the argument with Kagarlitsky, and for a conversation at such a level, the high-ranking debating parties had no need to rent a hall — they could have exchanged barbs in cozy Twitter with equal success.

Ukraine as a trendsetter

Until now, this predominantly theoretical channel had only one post dedicated to the Ukrainian presidential elections, where I informed readers about the nomination of libertarian Gennady Balashov. But, as we all saw, a slightly different person won in the first round—Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the main character of the series “Servant of the People” about a populist’s journey from the people to the presidency.

If the world’s leading movie empire keeps even a slight eye on foreign election technologies, then I think a decision is already ripening in the depths of the Democratic Party to suggest that Kevin Spacey, the main character of the first five seasons of “House of Cards,” run in the primaries. Who, if not him, is capable of defeating Trump in 2020?

But those are overseas affairs, not very interesting. Meanwhile, here in Russia, and moreover, among Russian libertarians, we have our own professional screenwriter. How about filming a TV series “The New Federative Treaty” by 2024? I usually get lost in front of the camera, but here I’d even agree to an episodic role as “the girl with the sign.” I’ve already thought of the sign. It will feature Zalina Marshenkulova and the caption “Federation Pose: people on top.”

By the way, about the signs. The episode, of course, should be filmed at Lenin Square in Novosibirsk (the central square where almost no one is allowed except communists), and this is also an interesting technology that I haven’t heard of before. Imagine the announcements: “The filming crew of the series ‘The New Federative Treaty’ invites those wishing to appear as extras in the role of rally participants. Filming will take place then and there; the square accommodates up to 10,000 people. We cannot provide payment, but every participant will receive a souvenir badge. Please bring your own posters, flags, and other attributes.”

Switch from the Moscow bottle to the federalization of Siberia