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Streaming While Black

In: thoughts

10 Jul 2008

Today, the blogosphere got a taste of what a lot of us black live streamers experience all too often: anonymous cowards. These individuals choose to hide behind their anonymity, and flood corresponding chat rooms with all kinds of racial slurs. Unfortunately, Louis Gray had to witness such an event:

This afternoon, I caught a video broadcast with Wayne Sutton and Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net, where Corvida had the opportunity to share her story of asking Verizon to drop their relationship with Loren Feldman of 1938 Media, in light of his controversial video parodying African American bloggers. While both carried on a strong conversation around the issues of race, bigotry and getting ahead through hard work, their efforts were dwarfed by some of the most hateful, shameful, racist speech I’ve been exposed to in a very long time.

trollforblog While I missed the discussion over on Yahoo Live, it is an issue that I’m all too familiar with. It highlights an existing problem of race in the world, but also another problem of, what I call, Internet Bold Stupidity (IBS). A lot of people are entertained by purposely stating the most extreme statements they can think of, and feed off the dark energy of your reaction. This seemingly happens without consequence since they are sitting in the comforts of their own home.

I deal with this issue by doing the following:

  1. Moderate the chat room. If you chose to stream live, you must employ mechanisms to silence those whose goal is to interrupt your show. I chose Ustream.TV for this purpose since I believe their chat backend (IRC) has some of the most powerful moderation tools on the net.
  2. Realize what they are, and move on. Don’t dwell on their statements. Stay focused on what you need to do, keep a positive energy going.
  3. Do not feed the trolls. By acknowledging their statements, you are only fueling the fire. Encourage others in your chat room to do the same. Trolls typically want attention. Don’t give them something to feed off and they will go away. If they don’t go away, see step 1.
  4. Don’t give up. If you let these individuals deter you from what you are trying to accomplish, then they have conquered you. Don’t let that happen! Keep at it, and stay positive.

You can sometimes find me streaming on my live stream at live.bwana.tv. Our tight knit community there knows what’s up. There is a low tolerance for this type of behavior. While I’m saddened a lot of people have been abruptly awakened the reality of online abuse (in this case, race), I believe there are workable solutions to deal with these trolls. Will it ultimately address the underlining cause? Of course not. I do believe in the old saying “If you ignore them, they will go away”, only I’ll add, “and if they don’t go away, kick and ban them.” Others chimed in on this topic as well:

  • Shey SmithAre You Desensitized to Racism?
  • Jason KaneshiroRacial Comedy, Ethnic Stereotypes, And Hope For The Blogosphere
  • Cyndy Aleo-CarreiraSocial Media and Passive Racism
  • I hope that all aspiring black live streamers out there don’t let this deter them from expressing themselves online.

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    View Comments to Streaming While Black

    Avatar

    Louis Gray

    January 10th, 2009 at 6:05 am

    I am unfortunately aware that this is not new, or uncommon, but what I saw tonight made me livid. I will never accept this. Of note, during the rare time we were able to have real chat, I dropped your name to Shey, Wayne and Corvida as a peer I respect who also represents the black tech blogger community very well. I'm sure there are many many more. But I'm glad I know you and that you keep working hard in light of this complete garbage.

    Avatar

    bwana18751

    January 10th, 2009 at 6:05 am

    Thanks for the vote of confidence Louis! It's good to see people taking a stand against this garbage.

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    Scobleizer

    January 10th, 2009 at 6:05 am

    I totally agree. I have dramatically changed my views, too. No longer do I allow even mere jerks in forums I control. They are welcome to be jerks somewhere else, but if they can't be constructive and come for the conversations they are gonna get deleted more and more in my comment areas, FriendFeed clusters, and on the other sites I have something to do with. It's not just racism, either. The stuff aimed at Kathy Sierra and my wife were very awful things. I have no idea why people want to injure other people, but they do. Even if they don't use sticks and stones to do it.

    Avatar

    Webomatica

    January 10th, 2009 at 6:05 am

    Good post. A suggestion: all bloggers should have a comments policy in place, just in case a thread ever devolves into offensive ranting. I have this on my "about page" : "I reserve the right to delete: comments that are blatantly obscene, abusive, racist, sexist, or homophobic, and any comment that other readers might find extremely offensive or threatening." So far, though, I haven't had to implement it :)

    Avatar

    bwana18751

    January 10th, 2009 at 6:05 am

    I fear we may see retaliation to a lot of this bullying online, and it won't be pretty. Without any consequence to their actions, I don't see these individuals developing a conscience anytime soon. I agree Robert, I'm developing a zero tolerance for entertaining those who only want to create unwarranted ill-will.

    Avatar

    Jorge

    January 10th, 2009 at 6:05 am

    IBS, I like that. It's a persistent problem that many face whether they participate in forums or have their own blog with comments. All it takes is one stupid remark (racial or not) and the lemmings follow in line only perpetuating the problem. It's not a problem only faced by minorities, but when the attacks take on a racial tone it certainly doesn't make it any better. I'm a big fan of debate and intelligent discussion. When someone makes a senseless and baseless remark, it only demonstrates their ignorance and adds absolutely no value to the discussion. I think your suggestions for handling such remarks is right on target.

    Avatar

    Larry Kless

    January 10th, 2009 at 6:05 am

    Hey Bwana, I think your post will really help people set some controls for moderation when this type of ugly racist crap comes out from under their rocks. It's really unfortunate when an intelligent conversation gets hijacked by troublemakers who are there just to stir s*#* up. I'm with you on the zero tolerance and I'm glad to see a lot of positive conversations within the blogging community. Thanks for offering some real solutions.

    Avatar

    Ken Stewart

    January 10th, 2009 at 6:05 am

    You know, I had thought the communities I frequent a better place – void of such haters and malcontents… Sadly, the world we live in mirrors our online world all too much. I feel like saying I'm sorry for those that can't get past ignorance, but I would be ignorant, myself, for doing so.

    So I would have to agree, a zero tolerance policy is best… those idiots bold enough to post hateful comments, but cowardly enough to hide yell them from the shadows, really don't deserve to breathe the same air.

    Good on you, for maintaining the higher ground. I had thought such things a relic of days past, but sadly I was mistaken. For that fact, I am indeed sorry.

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