the autoadmit lawsuit
Jun. 17th, 2007 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
faceless_wonderso, the dumbest lawsuit ever got filed this week, but i haven't really had the time yet to comment upon it.
two whiny students from yale law filed a lawsuit against a bunch of people on autoadmit, a pretty-much-unmoderated and anonymous law student message board.1 i can't believe they could take so seriously what a bunch of anonymous trolls are saying about them.
it's the internet, and people need to not be stupid. sure, would it be nice if internet trolls were not posting all that flame? sure. but, it's inevitable. people will post flame, and people will post ridiculously untruthful flame about real people. the subjects of it need to get over it, and so does everyone else.
i can't honestly believe that either of them lost job opportunities, or their dignity, because of what some people said about them on an anonymous message board. people doing hiring can't be that stupid, to take comments made on a website known across the legal community to be a cesspool of anonymous sexism, racism, and everything-else-ism at face value. if you are a student at yale law school, and you didn't get any job offers, there's something else wrong with you--it's not because of the internet posts.2
and, i'm sorry, you don't have a cause of action for claiming things like "i had to take time away from school and my job to find a summer position through something other than OCI." welcome to the real world, bitch. welcome to what most law students have to do.
suing people for being boorish internet trolls is not going to stop people from being boorish internet trolls. it's not going to do anything to make the lives of these thin-skinned girls any better. it's not going to get them a job. it's not going to do anything.
the one thing i've learned about stupid, loud idiots on the internet, after thirteen years of being online? if you be quiet and ignore the trolls, they'll go away and find another target. if you give them attention, they will keep pounding away at you. clearly these two girls did not ignore the internet trolls, so they kept pounding away. the fact that they're now suing only makes them more of a target, and more of a source of ire, on the boards.
***
1 full disclosure: yes, i do regularly read autoadmit, and post on it. no, i'm not one of the posters named in the lawsuit.
2 one of the posters who got named in the lawsuit got named just for making a comment to the effect that it's laughable to think that one of the plaintiffs didn't get a job because of posts on a website that "no lawyer takes seriously." that's ridiculous that he got named for saying that--you shouldn't be sued for speaking the truth. in fact, several of the people who got sued didn't say anything terrible or pornographic--i think the lawyers just picked some of the H.I./B.H. threads and sued everyone who posted in them. it was so poorly organized.
two whiny students from yale law filed a lawsuit against a bunch of people on autoadmit, a pretty-much-unmoderated and anonymous law student message board.1 i can't believe they could take so seriously what a bunch of anonymous trolls are saying about them.
it's the internet, and people need to not be stupid. sure, would it be nice if internet trolls were not posting all that flame? sure. but, it's inevitable. people will post flame, and people will post ridiculously untruthful flame about real people. the subjects of it need to get over it, and so does everyone else.
i can't honestly believe that either of them lost job opportunities, or their dignity, because of what some people said about them on an anonymous message board. people doing hiring can't be that stupid, to take comments made on a website known across the legal community to be a cesspool of anonymous sexism, racism, and everything-else-ism at face value. if you are a student at yale law school, and you didn't get any job offers, there's something else wrong with you--it's not because of the internet posts.2
and, i'm sorry, you don't have a cause of action for claiming things like "i had to take time away from school and my job to find a summer position through something other than OCI." welcome to the real world, bitch. welcome to what most law students have to do.
suing people for being boorish internet trolls is not going to stop people from being boorish internet trolls. it's not going to do anything to make the lives of these thin-skinned girls any better. it's not going to get them a job. it's not going to do anything.
the one thing i've learned about stupid, loud idiots on the internet, after thirteen years of being online? if you be quiet and ignore the trolls, they'll go away and find another target. if you give them attention, they will keep pounding away at you. clearly these two girls did not ignore the internet trolls, so they kept pounding away. the fact that they're now suing only makes them more of a target, and more of a source of ire, on the boards.
***
1 full disclosure: yes, i do regularly read autoadmit, and post on it. no, i'm not one of the posters named in the lawsuit.
2 one of the posters who got named in the lawsuit got named just for making a comment to the effect that it's laughable to think that one of the plaintiffs didn't get a job because of posts on a website that "no lawyer takes seriously." that's ridiculous that he got named for saying that--you shouldn't be sued for speaking the truth. in fact, several of the people who got sued didn't say anything terrible or pornographic--i think the lawyers just picked some of the H.I./B.H. threads and sued everyone who posted in them. it was so poorly organized.
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In the interest of furthering debate...
Date: 2007-06-17 04:01 pm (UTC)I guess it's one thing to speculate on whether a girl's breasts are fake, but the whole herpes thing and the talk of raping her, even if the posters weren't serious, just seem way, way over the line. Honestly, maybe I'm thin-skinned too, but if someone said that stuff about me by name on a public website, I'd be really, really pissed off/hurt/kind of scared. It seems like the case for damages is pretty weak, but I'm thinking that something like that would cause me a pretty significant amount of emotional distress. Also, if the moderators of autoadmit are/were law students, they really ought to know better than to allow someone to post what really look like threats of rape against a specific person.
I honestly don't know how serious all those Career Services people were about employers Googling you before they hire you, but I have to think that if they did, seeing that sort of thing would stick with you, even if it's just subconsciously. I hate to admit it, but if I had two potential employees and one had all this stuff posted all over the internet about her... I don't know. I might at least suspect that there was a reason that people hated her so much that they would post stuff like that, even if it wasn't true.
Forgive me for being incoherent - I NEED COFFEE! I hope you're having an awesome summer in Chicago.
Re: In the interest of furthering debate...
Date: 2007-06-17 08:25 pm (UTC)(it has, of course, never gotten to the extent with me as with the other posters...but you can't be a female poster on that site, or a female mentioned on that site, without them saying some pretty ribald things. then again, i don't think you can be a poster of any gender on there without anyone hurling some terrible insults...that place is a cesspool.)
i'm having a great summer in chicago, so far...how's pittsburgh?
Re: In the interest of furthering debate...
Date: 2007-06-18 04:27 pm (UTC)The other issue I have with this suit is that emotional damages are vastly overblown and out of proportion, and people fail to take responsibility for their own actions--including blatantly ignoring direct consequences of their own actions. Some forum is full of nasty trolls, and you post there, therefore you will get trolled at some point. If you don't want to be trolled, don't post there. You aren't special like that. If the mods allow trolling all over the place, they aren't likely to delete the threads or comments trolling you specifically. Chill out and move on.
Re: In the interest of furthering debate...
Date: 2007-06-18 05:05 pm (UTC)If I read it wrong and these girls had been posting on the board under their full names, then I think you're totally right that they should have known what they were getting themselves into.
Re: In the interest of furthering debate...
Date: 2007-06-18 05:21 pm (UTC)Re: In the interest of furthering debate...
Date: 2007-06-18 05:24 pm (UTC)I still think "emotional damages" is frequently misused. This shouldn't be "give me money and it will be better somehow." This should be a harassment case.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 08:14 pm (UTC)