One particular kind of Internet bully yanks my chain good and hard: the kind who fights more or less fair in public, but sends harassing email in private. It’s not always as simple as bozofiltering somebody, though I’ve certainly done that; masters of the art are good at joe-jobs and building stoolie/sockpuppet armies, and if something material is at stake (rather than the usual Internet teapot-tempest), it may not be possible to bozofilter at all.
It so happens that there is an absolutely infallible tool for recognizing such a bully by their public actions. If you see someone complain that a private email has been made public, or even so much as mentioned in public—I guaran-damn-tee you, that’s a bully upset that private hectoring and threats are suddenly making the public rounds. Damaging to the image, don’t you know.
(Certainly there are times when going public with a private email is lousy behavior, notably when both parties have consciously agreed that a correspondence should be private. And flagrant misrepresentation of a private email is plain old deceit. But lacking that, email is not in my opinion so sacrosanct that other concerns never trump the illusion of privacy—and lest we forget, it is an illusion.)
The most outrageous (and unintentionally funny) variant on this tactic is when the bully beats its chest gorilla-style about copyright violations. Yes, publishing private email may be one. No, it’s not an actionable one, at least not in the States; let us all recall, copyright violation is a civil offense, not criminal (except under rare and weird circumstances), and the States don’t have “moral rights” for authors.
Just try taking a copyright case over a private email to court. I double-dog-dare you. There are no monetary damages to consider (a private email has as near zero market value as makes no odds), so the judge will laugh herself sick, if she doesn’t charge you with contempt or barratry. The appropriate response to such a copyright threat is always a shrug and a bluff-calling “Cool. See you in court.”
And as I hinted parenthetically earlier, abusive email is to my mind a considerably greater sin than publicly acknowledging or even publishing same. A talented bully can get away with murder for ages—target many different people, use sockpuppets or stoolies, whatever—because it counts on its victims being too nice to call its behavior out in public. Once one worm turns, though, things have a way of changing. Also, evidence made public can be built upon later, and lets victims know they’re not the first or the only.
So beware. Do not engage a bully in private email; there is no win in it, ever, because bullies fight dirty. Also, don’t go public without warning the bully first (preferably directly in private as well as indirectly in public): “Please do not email me again. If you do, I will repost your words.” Incredible though it seems, people believe the injured-innocence schtick bullies pull. If you warned but the bully still bullies, though, reposting is generally okay in the pitiless eye of the public.
Which leads me to my disclaimer. I have the disclaimer I do in my sidebar because I’ve seen one or two of these bullies in action, and have been a potential target of one in particular as long as I’ve been blogging. Do I make a habit of reposting private email to CavLec? Of course I don’t. I get lots of email (which helps explain but does not excuse how bad I am about answering it); when was the last time you saw any posted here? I’ve done it, yes, but I’ve asked first, and the reposting had nothing whatever to do with bullying.
(The one exception I can think of is this post, whose reposted email was only an indirect form of bullying, the oh-so-very-reasonable “you’re a total effing loser but I love you anyway in my condescendingly superior fashion!” kind. The writer of that email may deserve an apology from me, though I doubt he cares.)
I tell you what, though—the disclaimer works. Like maggots, bullies don’t like their under-log lifestyles exposed. I can think of one bully email I’ve gotten in the last couple-three years. (Didn’t repost it. Wasn’t important or interesting enough. I fired back a snarktastic response—happened to be in a suffer-not-fools-gladly mood that day—bozofiltered the guy, and let it go.) If you are running into this problem, I strongly recommend such a disclaimer. As CavLec was granted to the public domain ages ago, you can even grab my wording directly, if you like.
Because bullies just chap my hide. Get up my left nostril. However you want to put it. Less bullying in the virtual world is a good thing.
