Post by desertsage on Nov 5, 2014 23:26:30 GMT -5
Wanted to see what people thought.
If you've read the Coffee Club stuff, you have an idea of where this came from. Please, Input here is so important.
So, here's the post:
I've spent the last week and change trying not to write about this.
Frankly, trying not to think about this.
Above all, trying not to let it continue to effect me as it did in the direct aftermath.
If you know of us and know of our company and our posts and our teas, you are probably aware of a couple things.
For one, we make teas to three purposes - one, to help people (and taste as good as we can manage) and, two, just to taste good. The third purpose is to make them as clean and healthy as possible. We do not believe in chemicals or weird additives that are relatively undefined.
Sounds like a pretty pure set of motivations, right? Our only agendas so far have been helping people to feel better, bringing a little joy with the flavours, and mixing a daub of geekery in with our green-ness here and there.
Probably not the kind of agenda you would think would draw hatemail and death threats.
Unfortunately for those with a relatively sane and balanced mindset, we have received both.
The hatemail is pretty easy to weather. We've always assumed some portion of it comes from rivals, and beyond that, there are always a few extremists on whatever side of the spectrum who will come out of the woodwork to yell at you. Especially if you are doing good things without using their particular verbage to do it.
As a friend of mine said recently, "If you're pissing off the fanatics of more than one religion, you're doing something right." She is not the only one of our friends and family and clients who have become aware of this circumstance who agree with her basic premise.
The death threats are a different matter entirely.
It boggles my mind that anyone would want to threaten us. We aren't harming anyone, we aren't doing anything wrong.... We're MAKING TEA. How that is immoral, I have no idea. Yes, we integrate science and tradition. No, we do not integrate a higher power into our tea, unless you want to count the fact that your higher power must have created the plants we use so adeptly, and set the framework for the science that supports the way we use them.
Our first two death threats came into our business communications and were dealt with accordingly. The third did not. The third came to my personal email. It is not an email that is attached to the business at any point, or one that is attached to any of my social media forums, whether business or personal. Finding that email took digging.
Beyond the usual ranting, there were things about this one that were new. It was pretty graphic, as far as the hows and whys and wherefores - and worse, it talked about how I must have infected other people. Like my family. And how that infection would have to be stopped.
I freaked out, a bit, that day. My partner and I called all of our actual family, and I contacted the friends I could without using my computer. At that point I figured that the computer itself must have been hacked, because it took me a bit to calm down and trace the most likely path for finding that particular email address.
Anyway, interestingly enough, this post wasn't spawned because of what happened to me, what happened to us, or even the threats against the company we have been working so hard to make real and viable.
This post is about what the entire experience I just ranted about made me realize.
You see, we had it relatively easy. Yes, this individual (I'm going to attempt to remain polite and civilized, here) found my personal email. Yes, there was an image of our house included. However, we run a business, our address has to be known by Etsy and for our international customers, so that last part was easy.
However, there was no followup. There was no sharing of our information. There was no making the concept of hating us go viral. The threat was minimal. Once I took a step back and thought about and we gave it a week, I knew that.
It didn't feel like it after it had happened.
Which made me think about something that has been making me angry for quite a while now. And this recent experience made me angrier than I had been before.
Before this particular death threat I could only imagine what it was like to be "doxed," I could only imagine what it ACTUALLY felt like to get an online death threat, I could only imagine what it felt like to feel hunted through the internet. None of them until this one had actually felt entirely real.
So I am actually grateful, on a strange level, to whoever it was who did that to us, to me.
In large part because it gave me a pinhole view into what some of the people afflicted by the whole Gamergate fiasco/embarrassment/movement have experienced.
I put this together and it made me so angry. Neither my partner not I are particularly given to over-reaction. Paranoia, yes, we've both got some markers for that, but not edge of panic over-reaction.
That day we there was panic. And given we did not receive a fraction of the treatment some of these women have received for... what? Being women in gaming culture? Thinking maybe we had a right to more regularly fully realized characters? Maybe armor that was not specifically laid out to show you where to stab? Maybe indicating to the gaming industry that women in it are a good thing, and since we're there, we might like to be treated like human beings with rights?
A fraction of it. I need to stress this again, because it is overwhelming important. There is a whole different type of fear that opens up when it isn't in front of you. I watch horror movies, mostly they make me laugh. Frankly, I have been known to tell people that the only horror movie I have ever seen is 'The Stepford Wives.'
But this experience. This was the monster under the bed, the mobile army men in the closet, the weird zombie-man rising from the lake, and the sort of thing that Freddie would have had more of a field day with than anything else in my history. Which is impressive, given my history.
And we received ONE email.
Yes, it was a personal account that should have been safe from the vitriol we'd seen other places, but it was only one.
As far as I know, they have not coined an offense yet for cyber-rape, but they should. Rape is all about power and control and fear, most of the time. The kind of cyber-crap that women have been receiving because of Gamergate has to do with power and control and fear.
This needs to stop.
I don't expect that we will be the ones to catalyze that stopping happening, I have no idea what level of impact we can have.
But, to bring this back around to the beginning, I make tea. I make tea to help people. I make tea that tastes good. Sometimes, we combine these things in a particular way, and we create a tasty tea where the primary purpose of it is to generate revenue for a charity we decide on that the tea donates to.
We had been playing with the idea of creating a ChariTea for this issue, even before the most recent death threat. That experience made it gel.
So, we have a series of requests, for those of you out there who find cyberstalking and cyberbullying and cyberdeaththreats and cyber-what-the-hell-ever to be wrong.
For one, as embarrassing as it is for someone who is, to one extent or another, a geek - my videogame foo has laxed in the past few years, and my tastes are relatively narrow. I enjoyed Baldur's Gate and its spinoffs, I enjoyed watching my partner play the original Resistance, I have played Final Fantasy for long enough that it kind of indicates my age, and I liked Mass Effect. Many of the other games I've enjoyed didn't even really have bonafide characters other than the ones you created. (Civ? Anyone?)
Since we want to create a ChariTea for this issue, we need input on two fronts. The first is the character we should use to frame and create the tea. We've received a lot of suggestions, but not many of them overlap, and my own knowledge is too limited. Additionally, I know I am still reacting to my own experience, and thus want to cut out more of the characters I feel are over-sexualized than is necessarily appropriate. We want ideas on this. We want data. If nothing else, tell us the games we should play to meet the female characters who would be able to stand as an icon for this issue.
Secondarily, we want input on charities to attach this to. There are a lot out there for the basic premise, we want to find a consensus on the best.
So, if you read this, and you are a woman and you have opinions on any part of this matter, please let us know. If you are a guy, and you think this whole mess is reprehensible and you have opinions, please let us know. The more detail, in either case, the better. If you are, however, someone who agrees with the things that have happened, and think that death threats and hatemail are just part of doing a thing, don't bother to contact us. We'll file the data, but probably not in the way you would prefer.
Please. Share this. Talk about this. Tag this. Let people know. Make it viral.
I make tea. I got threatened for making tea. Now I want to make a tea that will contribute to the battle against this kind of crap. Help me out?
If you've read the Coffee Club stuff, you have an idea of where this came from. Please, Input here is so important.
So, here's the post:
I've spent the last week and change trying not to write about this.
Frankly, trying not to think about this.
Above all, trying not to let it continue to effect me as it did in the direct aftermath.
If you know of us and know of our company and our posts and our teas, you are probably aware of a couple things.
For one, we make teas to three purposes - one, to help people (and taste as good as we can manage) and, two, just to taste good. The third purpose is to make them as clean and healthy as possible. We do not believe in chemicals or weird additives that are relatively undefined.
Sounds like a pretty pure set of motivations, right? Our only agendas so far have been helping people to feel better, bringing a little joy with the flavours, and mixing a daub of geekery in with our green-ness here and there.
Probably not the kind of agenda you would think would draw hatemail and death threats.
Unfortunately for those with a relatively sane and balanced mindset, we have received both.
The hatemail is pretty easy to weather. We've always assumed some portion of it comes from rivals, and beyond that, there are always a few extremists on whatever side of the spectrum who will come out of the woodwork to yell at you. Especially if you are doing good things without using their particular verbage to do it.
As a friend of mine said recently, "If you're pissing off the fanatics of more than one religion, you're doing something right." She is not the only one of our friends and family and clients who have become aware of this circumstance who agree with her basic premise.
The death threats are a different matter entirely.
It boggles my mind that anyone would want to threaten us. We aren't harming anyone, we aren't doing anything wrong.... We're MAKING TEA. How that is immoral, I have no idea. Yes, we integrate science and tradition. No, we do not integrate a higher power into our tea, unless you want to count the fact that your higher power must have created the plants we use so adeptly, and set the framework for the science that supports the way we use them.
Our first two death threats came into our business communications and were dealt with accordingly. The third did not. The third came to my personal email. It is not an email that is attached to the business at any point, or one that is attached to any of my social media forums, whether business or personal. Finding that email took digging.
Beyond the usual ranting, there were things about this one that were new. It was pretty graphic, as far as the hows and whys and wherefores - and worse, it talked about how I must have infected other people. Like my family. And how that infection would have to be stopped.
I freaked out, a bit, that day. My partner and I called all of our actual family, and I contacted the friends I could without using my computer. At that point I figured that the computer itself must have been hacked, because it took me a bit to calm down and trace the most likely path for finding that particular email address.
Anyway, interestingly enough, this post wasn't spawned because of what happened to me, what happened to us, or even the threats against the company we have been working so hard to make real and viable.
This post is about what the entire experience I just ranted about made me realize.
You see, we had it relatively easy. Yes, this individual (I'm going to attempt to remain polite and civilized, here) found my personal email. Yes, there was an image of our house included. However, we run a business, our address has to be known by Etsy and for our international customers, so that last part was easy.
However, there was no followup. There was no sharing of our information. There was no making the concept of hating us go viral. The threat was minimal. Once I took a step back and thought about and we gave it a week, I knew that.
It didn't feel like it after it had happened.
Which made me think about something that has been making me angry for quite a while now. And this recent experience made me angrier than I had been before.
Before this particular death threat I could only imagine what it was like to be "doxed," I could only imagine what it ACTUALLY felt like to get an online death threat, I could only imagine what it felt like to feel hunted through the internet. None of them until this one had actually felt entirely real.
So I am actually grateful, on a strange level, to whoever it was who did that to us, to me.
In large part because it gave me a pinhole view into what some of the people afflicted by the whole Gamergate fiasco/embarrassment/movement have experienced.
I put this together and it made me so angry. Neither my partner not I are particularly given to over-reaction. Paranoia, yes, we've both got some markers for that, but not edge of panic over-reaction.
That day we there was panic. And given we did not receive a fraction of the treatment some of these women have received for... what? Being women in gaming culture? Thinking maybe we had a right to more regularly fully realized characters? Maybe armor that was not specifically laid out to show you where to stab? Maybe indicating to the gaming industry that women in it are a good thing, and since we're there, we might like to be treated like human beings with rights?
A fraction of it. I need to stress this again, because it is overwhelming important. There is a whole different type of fear that opens up when it isn't in front of you. I watch horror movies, mostly they make me laugh. Frankly, I have been known to tell people that the only horror movie I have ever seen is 'The Stepford Wives.'
But this experience. This was the monster under the bed, the mobile army men in the closet, the weird zombie-man rising from the lake, and the sort of thing that Freddie would have had more of a field day with than anything else in my history. Which is impressive, given my history.
And we received ONE email.
Yes, it was a personal account that should have been safe from the vitriol we'd seen other places, but it was only one.
As far as I know, they have not coined an offense yet for cyber-rape, but they should. Rape is all about power and control and fear, most of the time. The kind of cyber-crap that women have been receiving because of Gamergate has to do with power and control and fear.
This needs to stop.
I don't expect that we will be the ones to catalyze that stopping happening, I have no idea what level of impact we can have.
But, to bring this back around to the beginning, I make tea. I make tea to help people. I make tea that tastes good. Sometimes, we combine these things in a particular way, and we create a tasty tea where the primary purpose of it is to generate revenue for a charity we decide on that the tea donates to.
We had been playing with the idea of creating a ChariTea for this issue, even before the most recent death threat. That experience made it gel.
So, we have a series of requests, for those of you out there who find cyberstalking and cyberbullying and cyberdeaththreats and cyber-what-the-hell-ever to be wrong.
For one, as embarrassing as it is for someone who is, to one extent or another, a geek - my videogame foo has laxed in the past few years, and my tastes are relatively narrow. I enjoyed Baldur's Gate and its spinoffs, I enjoyed watching my partner play the original Resistance, I have played Final Fantasy for long enough that it kind of indicates my age, and I liked Mass Effect. Many of the other games I've enjoyed didn't even really have bonafide characters other than the ones you created. (Civ? Anyone?)
Since we want to create a ChariTea for this issue, we need input on two fronts. The first is the character we should use to frame and create the tea. We've received a lot of suggestions, but not many of them overlap, and my own knowledge is too limited. Additionally, I know I am still reacting to my own experience, and thus want to cut out more of the characters I feel are over-sexualized than is necessarily appropriate. We want ideas on this. We want data. If nothing else, tell us the games we should play to meet the female characters who would be able to stand as an icon for this issue.
Secondarily, we want input on charities to attach this to. There are a lot out there for the basic premise, we want to find a consensus on the best.
So, if you read this, and you are a woman and you have opinions on any part of this matter, please let us know. If you are a guy, and you think this whole mess is reprehensible and you have opinions, please let us know. The more detail, in either case, the better. If you are, however, someone who agrees with the things that have happened, and think that death threats and hatemail are just part of doing a thing, don't bother to contact us. We'll file the data, but probably not in the way you would prefer.
Please. Share this. Talk about this. Tag this. Let people know. Make it viral.
I make tea. I got threatened for making tea. Now I want to make a tea that will contribute to the battle against this kind of crap. Help me out?
