Confessions of a Tarring Survivor

Last night, instead of agonizing over an effective response to the readings, I was doing the same to a hurtful comment on YaleFML.  To my dismay (if not surprise), the website I'd casually taken to as a diversion from schoolwork had, like JuicyCampus before it, morphed into a launching pad for persecution against my character.  Calling me out by class year and my inadvertently scatological initials ("BS '12), some anonymous junior ("'11") had insinuated without basis that I belong on the YDN's spoof list of people who should be screened for STIs.

Such defamation, in the colloquial as opposed to legal sense, isn't anything new for me.   In fact, just the day before, I spent an hour on the phone with the founder of GoodCrush, a theoretically airtight service that allows Yalies and undergrads elsewhere to name up to five crushes and have them be notified only in case of a match.  Someone, again acting anonymously and maliciously, took it on himself to hack into my account, thanks to a glitch involving case-sensitivity with email addresses.  Without my permission or knowledge even, this person proceeded to rack up five crushes, all of whom were either close friends or exes of mine.  Fortunately, I'd maxed out on the crush quota prior to this misappropriation of my online identity.  But if the false crushes hadn't been relegated to a waiting list, and if they'd reciprocated with crushes of their own, I would've stood to be humiliated in the analog world.

That, presumably, was the attacker's intent: for my online reputation to bleed into the offline reputation that I'm comparatively capable of upholding.  Of course it's impossible to have total control over how others perceive you, nor would it be interesting to inhabit such a monolithic community where everyone thought of you uncritically.  I don't mind being subject to opprobrium, so long as there's a rationale and an identifiable source to it.  What's so disorienting about being the target of an online mob, by contrast, is the utter absence of those criteria both.  Often I worry not just that potential employers will stumble on embarrassing mistruths about me, but that I'm being prejudged as is for a "scarlet letter" imprinted on my personhood undeservedly, as though I've taken on new life as a campus-wide meme for promiscuity.  

All this notoriety because of a vindictive pair of suitemates, who've since withdrawn from Yale for psychiatric reasons.  Not that I can peg them definitively as the original culprits, since I never bothered--and likely wouldn't have been able--to obtain a subpoena from JuicyCampus while it was up and running.  Besides, it doesn't so much matter who the slander (or is it libel? neither?) originated with, because it's groundless by definition and requires only an unsympathetic, unrelenting mob to see to its perpetuation.

I was hesitant, for three reasons, to have this blog post turn on my own experience to a greater extent than on detached argumentation.  First, I risk being marked down for not identifying and chipping away at what I take to be a logical or legal defect in the readings (although I'll get to that in a moment).  Second, even before I was serially victimized online and grew guarded as a result, I've been careful not to let my personal life seep into the classroom.  Third, I don't want you, my classmates, to think any less of me--either because of the scurrilous content itself, or because the whiny, paranoid vibes I might be giving off in relating it to you.

But I've gone ahead with a revealing post because I've been cowed into silence for too long, and I'm sick of being bullied without reason or recourse.  On a practical level, I want to learn how to broadcast my story in a way that calls attention to the inadequacies of existing law, insofar as it's applied to online speech.  That's the proximate reason why I enrolled in this class, although I obviously have a foregoing interest in cyberlaw and civil rights in general.

Despite the self-serving appeal to Citron's argument that "cyber-attacks" ought to be combated through a strengthening of regulation, I cannot reconcile my particular desire for vindication with my principled commitment to the First Amendment.  As much as I'd like to clear my name, I can't bring myself to agree with David's stance that "malicious defamation is a greater problem than the protection of internet anonymity."  Like J, rather, I'm instinctually wary of any proposed laws that would obviate against anonymity, thereby chilling its constructive functions like "whistle-blowing" and whatever the modern equivalent is to pamphleteering.

Then again, going off what little I know about social psychology, I acknowledge that anonymity does serve to embolden and give cover to would-be abusers of speech, particularly when they act in concert.  And I also buy into Citron's reasoning, echoed by Eric in his post, that such abuses can demonstrably prevent the victims from exercising their own free speech rights (e.g. "denial of service" attacks and threats of violence).

Nevertheless, to agree with J a second time, I'm in favor of gradual regulation via social norms.  The alternative, namely legislative or judicial intervention, carries the risk of overbreadth by setting off more ills than it endeavors to cure.  

My question, then, not just for tomorrow's discussion but for myself as I move forward: Between remaining silent (like I ended up doing yesterday with the YaleFML remark) and pressing for all-out regulation, what tactics should victims of online harassment fall back on, in asserting their right to unimpeded speech?  A few examples come to mind, such as my obstructive strategy of pasting arcane documents, like the Mayflower Compact, into threads concerning me.  There's also Google's feature that lets you have a say in the ordering of search results about yourself.  

None of this may be enough to outsmart the mob at its own pernicious game, but I feel we're better off, in the aggregate, with an accommodationist approach--casualties and all--than with outright regulation of anonymous speech.