We have a long, long way to go
I just read a piece of email spam which has left me feeling hollow.
Trigger warning: this email contains references to sexual assault and/or violence against women which may be triggering to survivors.
An image of the message can be found here.
Like most people who take part in public discussion on the Internet, I get a lot of email spam. A great majority of it is filtered away without my having to even think about it. A few get through now and then, and these I can generally recognize by their subjects, so I don’t even look at the message body. I just save them to train my spam filter with.
Every once in a while, I’m unsure about whether a message is spam, or my fingers are just on auto-pilot, and I open up a piece of spam by mistake. Usually, this is just a minor nuisance, but in this case it was an emotional hazard.
I still dont understand why people bother spamming any more. I get a lot of spam and its very annoying.
shanefagan
26 July, 2009 at 20:07
Are you sure you want to include the URL in that?
Matthew Garrett
26 July, 2009 at 20:10
Stopping spam MISERABLE FAIL
ethana2
26 July, 2009 at 20:50
My mistake. Fixed now. See apology below.
mdz
26 July, 2009 at 23:25
I think you should remove the URL link. It isn’t really appropriate to be putting a link to spammers site – especially one for disturbing porn site. You do know that this has appeared on Planet Ubuntu?
James
26 July, 2009 at 20:16
I agree, remove the link, you just became that spammers best friend.
Bryan Quigley
26 July, 2009 at 20:22
It’s comment spam that bugs me, there’s been quite a surge recently, all with “link” as the website and a short message like “Hi, great site!” proceeded by a six letter code – like the ones which were spamming the Ubuntu wiki.
Bugs me because I can’t see the significance in the six characters!
Dougie Richardson
26 July, 2009 at 20:23
You need to redact that link.
Nathaniel Kabal
26 July, 2009 at 20:45
I don’t think the url is a terribly good one to have in Planet.
Nick Ellery
26 July, 2009 at 20:46
Yeah, take that link down.
ethana2
26 July, 2009 at 20:50
Thanks for the spam in my feed reader. Really appreciate it! Now I have had your “emotional hazzard” passed on to me.
I wonder if anyone will report you to your provider for sending out a link like this?
BTW, if this is an “emotional hazzard” how do you make it through the day if you happen to catch a news cast that mentions rape, killing, child abuse, etc?
Chuck
26 July, 2009 at 21:16
It is awful enough to acknowledge that sexual violence is a routine occurrence in our lives.
It is another thing entirely to see people attempting to create a market based on it, which is what I saw in this spam.
mdz
26 July, 2009 at 23:14
Can you point to your post(s) complaining about the movie, television and game markets that creates a market based upon maiming, torture, murder, genocide and other aberrations against the general niceties of our lives that much of what passes as entertainment today employs?
Chuck
27 July, 2009 at 01:57
Your comment reads like silencing tactic, and your question seems rhetorical. I might as well ask you why you haven’t commented derisively on any of my other posts on women’s issues.
Please, stop looking for an angle to undermine me, and just take what I’m saying at face value. I was calling attention to something which reflects something horrific about contemporary humanity.
mdz
28 July, 2009 at 00:17
The thing is, these other things that I point out are just as horrific about contemporary humanity. Organizations spend in the high end multimillion (Billions? I don’t know the current amount for sure) dollar range to produce and advertise the “entertainment” that I described. Worse, they make a profit spending that much selling that material to the general public.
Your complaint is that a horrible action is being marketed via your inbox. I’m pointing out that things just as horrible are being marketed in other more potent and direct ways to many more people. They just do not arrive in your inbox as a piece of spam that likely gets filtered out for more people before they receive it in their inbox and a smaller amount actually opens those spam messages that makes it that far. /You/ relayed to the spam to the Ubuntu community.
Far from trying to undermine you I want you to realize the extent of how bad things are and where your complaint needs to continue to reach its next logical steps. If you want to raise awareness of the marketing of human horrors, a piece of spam that few people receive and even less read and pass on to others is just the tip of the iceberg.
Chuck
28 July, 2009 at 02:38
As for why I didn’t comment on any of your other women’s issue posts is because I didn’t feel a need to as they were your opinions on the matter and I didn’t feel a desire to comment. If they were posted to the planet they didn’t make any great impression on me one way or another.
This time, with the link to a rape video that you provided, on a site that has people of all ages reading it, I really felt that crossed a line of decency and I should voice my thoughts on the matter.
Chuck
28 July, 2009 at 02:57
I for one am none too thrilled to have read this without having received a Trigger Warning first.
Blood pressure elevated and feeling really hateful now.
Matt, I know your heart is in the right place here, but it really doesn’t serve the people within your audience who are Survivors to trip and stumble into this shit.
Oh yeah, and do take the link down please.
Calyx
26 July, 2009 at 22:00
Oh, and Chuck, your scare quotes are really pathetic and transparent.
A little self education and sensitivity about PTSD perhaps is in order here.
Those of us who do get through the day do so by dint of a radical combination of courage, strength will, and alchemy, a brew which I suspect is far more potent than whatever it is that animates you.
Calyx
26 July, 2009 at 22:12
What “scare quotes” do you refer to Calyx?
I was responding to and asking about his phrasing of those words which I quoted. I really do wonder how if the mention of the word rape (presumably and logically the trigger) in a piece of spam caused such distress as to impose the imagery on the Ubuntu Planet readers how does he get through the day seeing the same types of stories on most daily newscasts and in print news.
For you to become defensive about the question I asked someone else is weird. I was looking for information from mdz and asked. How do you propose I get more information without asking a question that states what I’m looking for?
Chuck
26 July, 2009 at 23:08
Your comment did read as if you were questioning the validity of my response: how could I feel the way I did about X because of Y and Z?
Passing this on to my readers in the way that I did was a mistake on my part.
mdz
26 July, 2009 at 23:24
The validity was not in question nor do I see where it was implied.
It was a simple ‘What makes this reference any different than any other that you see of same or similar issues’. Your post, the original and updated, did not touch on the reason that you acknowledged in this thread which is the marketing of the violence over the reality that it happens daily.
Chuck
27 July, 2009 at 02:01
Ah, see, I personally thought Calyx was referring to the “I wonder if anyone will report you to your provider for sending out a link like this?”. Which to me screams of the common psuedo-threatening silencing tactic that is “You stuffed up big time and now someone can punish you for speaking out. Serves you right!”
Melissa
27 July, 2009 at 04:32
I am very sorry for posting that material without an appropriate trigger warning. I have revised the original post in hopes of framing the offensive content more appropriately.
My intent was to call attention to something which I found completely abhorrent, and should have taken into account that others would feel the same way. I regret having inflicted on others the very offense to which I objected.
mdz
26 July, 2009 at 22:17
What a wonderful example of a proper apology, Matt.
Melissa
27 July, 2009 at 05:21
It’s a shame the url is no longer valid. I chose as an informed decision to click the link and read it. However, it’s now gone.
Shame, i would have liked to know what the content was, to make you feel so hollow.
Daviey
26 July, 2009 at 22:47
I was in a great hurry to fix it after having read the comments, so there was a period during which things were a bit broken. Sorry for that.
mdz
26 July, 2009 at 23:11
Ah! It now seems to be a valid link. Thanks for sharing.. I can totally see why that hit you so hard. It’s an unpleasant reminder how awful some people in our societies can be.
Daviey
26 July, 2009 at 22:56
Kind of ironic that your “trigger warning” can be a trigger itself.
jpv
27 July, 2009 at 00:16
It may be that this post (which I only saw in its edited form with the trigger warning and without the URL) is that often sighted but actually rare beast: a post that shouldn’t go to the Planets.
People argue this all the time, either that the Planets should contain only technical material, or that the Planets shouldn’t contain certain political commentary. I don’t have a strong opinion either way about that (or rather, my opinion is that Planet editors should state their inclusion policy, which for Planet Ubuntu is ‘Subscribed feeds ought to be at least occasionally relevant to Ubuntu, although the only hard and fast rule is “don’t annoy people”‘), but it seems that posting triggering material to a Planet isn’t a great idea, because it’s just too far outside the emotional defenses people are going to bring as a reader. Technical disputes, yes, political disputes and personal criticism possibly (with Planet Ubuntu’s charter they should expect it), expecting to be triggered[1] not so much. It’s too unusual.
So I agree with jpv that even the warning is problematic given this blog’s normal readership and some of the venues it appears in. My own reaction is not strong though, so this is just a thought. (mdz: it sounds like you were pretty badly upset yourself, how crappy.)
[1] For people who don’t know, “being triggered” means having post-traumatic symptoms, or similarly strong vulnerable emotional responses. It’s a possible response to reading about sexual violence, especially if you weren’t expecting to.
Mary
27 July, 2009 at 05:02
Pathetic post … if your blog can’t filter post out of a Planet feed, then you shouldn’t post it. I read Planet Ubuntu because I want Ubuntu related information, not the personal afflictions/desires on a totally unrelated topics. For that I’ll follow Planet Ubuntu feeds to the authors blog and follow their un-related discussions from there.
I find you post, and it’s syndication to Planet Ubuntu, as abhorrent as the original topic itself. This post/feed to Planet Ubuntu is as much spam as the original email you received. Why receive a spam, and then spam us? Regardless of the topic, or how abhorrent it is, it’s unrelated to Planet Ubuntu and thus spam by any definition!
Jason
27 July, 2009 at 05:58
Yes, it’s such a pity that “Planet Ubuntu is a window into the world, work and lives of Ubuntu developers and contributors”.
I mean, surely their entire world, work and lives should be 100% Ubuntu technically oriented with absolutely no deviations into non-technical aspects such as social issues that affect the Ubuntu community.
For shame.
Melissa
27 July, 2009 at 08:18
“I mean, surely their entire world, work and lives should be 100% Ubuntu technically oriented with absolutely no deviations into non-technical aspects such as social issues that affect the Ubuntu community.”
That’s exactly the point; the only vague relation that this post has to the Ubuntu community is that it has to do with the Internet.
If I wanted to know his every thought and feeling, I’d subscribe to this blog directly. Instead, I subscribed to Planet Ubuntu, and Planet Fedora, and Planet Mozilla, etc, etc; all of which I have bookmarked under the title “Dev Blogs”. This indicates that my intention was to have direct access to technical discussions related to these topics.
The people who manage the planets seem to be woefully lax with the postings allowed there; for every good technical post I see, I get ten other posts talking about what someone had for lunch, or how far someone biked that day, or a post full of what someone considers to be photography.
So the state of relevant posts on the Planets is bad enough as it is without people trying to say that this sort of rambling actually makes sense.
By the way, sensitive topic or not, ending your post in “for shame” does not automatically place you on some sort of moral high ground. Just thought you should know.
Greenspan
27 July, 2009 at 12:43
And now emotions are running so high that even simple wit like sarcasm is passed over.
Sensitive subject indeed and I agree with Mary that it probably shouldn’t have hit Planet, but I certainly don’t agree with Jason – this is not a “pathetic” post and it doesn’t make the poster “abhorrent”. Perhaps the nature of the post just hit a nerve with a few people expecting more chat about Ubuntu itself.
Scaine
28 July, 2009 at 01:01
Or perhaps readers of Planet don’t expect to be subjected to video rape? In either actual or promotional fashion. “sympathetic sadness” and “disgusting” are both definitions of “pathetic” and “abhorrent” respectively, and both apply to this post and it’s subject and, more importantly, it’s syndication on Planet.
Jason
28 July, 2009 at 03:00
The role of Planet Ubuntu has never been to be purely Ubuntu related – it’s supposed to give you insight into the *people* working on Ubuntu, whether they’re engaging in technical discussion or not. If you only want to see Ubuntu related discussion then Planet Ubuntu is not the correct forum for you to be subscribing to.
Matthew Garrett
27 July, 2009 at 12:53
So it’s acceptable to you that the role of Planet Ubuntu is to expose readers to video rape?
Jason
28 July, 2009 at 03:02
Jason,
Matt made a sincere apology for that mistake already and put up a Trigger Warning. Most people have accepted the apology and moved on.
It would be a great help to all if you did the same.
Melissa
28 July, 2009 at 15:23
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