Few people will see your post, but the ones who do see it might be exactly the people who can hurt you the most — those who specifically sought it out in order to gain information on you.
If few people see your post, then this almost by definition means it is unlikely anyone will seek to “gain information over you”. The kind of people who obsessively try to collect information about other people tend to fall into two broad groups: anti-fans—which are people who were stans and then were shut out, or people who had some kind of direct personal relationship or interaction with the person that went sour.
Anti-Fans may be in some cases be catalyzed by someone “coming out of the closet” if they have been misrepresenting themselves in a way which was intrinsic and important to the ongoing parasocial relationship they had with their stans (think of cruxy things, like Bob Dylan going electric, or more recently MAGA supporters enraged over the lack of disclosure about Epstein). More often than not, it is actually provoked by something very different: the sudden radio silence or “taking a step back for my privacy”—in a sense, going into a closet. This lack of closure causes resentment and fans begin trying to find out everything they can to reach the previous level of exposure. (Does this remind you of “ghosting”?)
This behavior is very similar to stalker behavior is interconnected to domestic violence. A romantic partner or potential suitor is rejected, but unable to accept why—as it is said “To stalk is to seek relevance.” (Not all stalking behaviour is caused by a sudden step back, but it is the most common[1]. Erotomanic delusions almost always involve repeated exposure to the victim, which is why they tend to be very famous and powerful people like Kings, Late Night TV show hosts, famous baseballers, or movie idols: people for whom media exposure is great- in a sense their obsession is a subset of the media’s obsession. Victims are tends to be males who are older and wealthier than the stalker, stalkers tend to be women with low socio-ecoonomic status (which I would guess means less mental health support, less self-confidence, more likely to be victims of abuse too—but that’s my speculation) dreaming of ‘escape’)
Not so fun fact: “approach behaviour” of stalkers is a counterintuitive indicator of likelihood of harm—threats are less likely to lead to acting on threats[2]. This again leads me to suspect that one single blog post isn’t going to trigger an obsessive information gatherer. They need to already have some kind of investment in the confessor.
Simply put—a post unlikely to be seen by anyone means that no one is sufficiently invested in their parasocial relationship with you to obsessively seek information over you. What does trigger that kind of behavior—is suddenly ghosting an audience.
So a couple of years ago I wanted to write about why people get obsessive and start collections—and part of that lead me to collect a lot of anecdotes and research on stalking behaviour, vexatious litigants, chronic complainers, OCD and Schizophrenia. I wrote a first draft of the book but never polished it since the topic is too vague to be cohesive. Might turn it into a Youtube series. It’s less about stalking—more about collecting—lot’s of stuff about Pinterest boards, wardrobes, sneakerheads and the bus-ticket theory of genius. Hopefully you’re not worried why I have all this info now.
79% of victims were acquainted with their pursuer (N = 62), and half of all stalking emerged specifically from romantic relationships (M = 49%, N = 53). (meta-analysis of 175 studies)
The state of the art of stalking: Taking stock of the emerging literature. Brian H. Spitzberg. William R. Cupach.
″...stalkers who communicate hateful, threatening, or obscene messages or content are the least likely to physically attack their target. This is especially true when the unwelcome communications are made anonymously. However, if such communications persist, the risk increases with each successive contact. Stalkers who express a desire to meet their target in person and to travel for that purpose are much more likely to be dangerous. But paradoxically, those who express a desire to have children with their target are typically less of a threat.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/machiavellians-gulling-the-rubes/201810/the-many-stalkers-taylor-swift
This was an interesting read. Thank you for sharing your information. I personally wouldn’t have been worried about why you have all this information, as it simply reads to me like an essay by somebody who’s done research on an important topic.
The way your comment is written, the underlying narrative is that the only risk to consider with coming out online is turning a reader into a stalker due to that post in isolation, and that this risk is insubstantial. I think your argument is plausible for that specific risk. However, I am considering a wider variety of risks, including:
A person with a larger body of online writings who comes out.
A person who publishes their post to an audience or on a platform that’s more likely to generate unwanted attention.
A person who is being investigated and/or stalked online as a result of real-world activities, such as applying for a job or pursuing political office.
A person for whom coming out will create friction in pursuing real-world activities in the future that oughtweighs the benefits they gain from coming out online.
A potential sense of paranoia about having disclosed potentially embarrassing information online.
The reputational and perceptions risk for a controversial community of its high-status members advocating that its low-status members post embarrassing information online.
LessWrong and the rationalist community already has a controversial reputation and is often accused of being a cult. It is an online platform, which is capable of spawning hate-readers like r/sneerclub. It is also a real-world community with a notorious history of deeply exploitative behavior and what seems to be a higher-than-average fraction of self-identified participants or ex-participants with deep mental health issues. It has a history of scandal and has generated a substantial amount of negative media coveage, considering its small size.
Considering all of this, I believe that the LessWrong and rationalist community is not well-positioned to reduce the risks of coming out beyond the normal level available in the wider culture. In other words, if there’s an X that you don’t feel safe to come out about, then I don’t think LessWrong/rationalism in its current form is capable of helping you feel more safe about coming out about X. This is a heuristic, not a general rule, and if other people do feel LessWrong/rationalism helps them come out about their personal characteristics in a way other communities don’t, I’m interested to hear it. But for this reason, I think that high-status LessWrong members should not be encouraging others to come out in public about more things with little regard for risks. That seems irresponsible and likely to result in damage both to members and to the community as a whole.
I do think that it would be beneficial if LessWrong/rationalism worked to think through this problem and become the sort of community that is capable of effectively supporting its members in “coming out” in a way that improved the community, its relations with the rest of the world, and the health and wellbeing of its members. Basically, I like the vision of “generalized coming out,” but I don’t like the strategy John proposes in his OP for getting there for LessWrong/rationalism.
Thank you for that reply specifying the controversy and history within the lesswrong community—and therefore that being the chosen platform for “coming out”, does seem to me to increase the risks.
I have to reflect more on this. But I think it’s important to acknowledge your reply in the meantime.
I think my current question or crux is sort of “okay, but if you don’t have a substantial posting history—why will you become stalked out of all the others?”. And that is probably case-by-case thing that depends, even within the localized environment of Lesswrong, important factors like: what actual topic or taboo they are coming out about, even how much it resonates with the community so how it gets displayed on the front-page and therefore how visible it might be to r/sneerclub-ers, other aspects of their identity could also make them more vulnerable—even gender.
I think I need to think more fine-grain about this.
If few people see your post, then this almost by definition means it is unlikely anyone will seek to “gain information over you”. The kind of people who obsessively try to collect information about other people tend to fall into two broad groups: anti-fans—which are people who were stans and then were shut out, or people who had some kind of direct personal relationship or interaction with the person that went sour.
Anti-Fans may be in some cases be catalyzed by someone “coming out of the closet” if they have been misrepresenting themselves in a way which was intrinsic and important to the ongoing parasocial relationship they had with their stans (think of cruxy things, like Bob Dylan going electric, or more recently MAGA supporters enraged over the lack of disclosure about Epstein). More often than not, it is actually provoked by something very different: the sudden radio silence or “taking a step back for my privacy”—in a sense, going into a closet. This lack of closure causes resentment and fans begin trying to find out everything they can to reach the previous level of exposure. (Does this remind you of “ghosting”?)
This behavior is very similar to stalker behavior is interconnected to domestic violence. A romantic partner or potential suitor is rejected, but unable to accept why—as it is said “To stalk is to seek relevance.” (Not all stalking behaviour is caused by a sudden step back, but it is the most common[1]. Erotomanic delusions almost always involve repeated exposure to the victim, which is why they tend to be very famous and powerful people like Kings, Late Night TV show hosts, famous baseballers, or movie idols: people for whom media exposure is great- in a sense their obsession is a subset of the media’s obsession. Victims are tends to be males who are older and wealthier than the stalker, stalkers tend to be women with low socio-ecoonomic status (which I would guess means less mental health support, less self-confidence, more likely to be victims of abuse too—but that’s my speculation) dreaming of ‘escape’)
Not so fun fact: “approach behaviour” of stalkers is a counterintuitive indicator of likelihood of harm—threats are less likely to lead to acting on threats[2]. This again leads me to suspect that one single blog post isn’t going to trigger an obsessive information gatherer. They need to already have some kind of investment in the confessor.
Simply put—a post unlikely to be seen by anyone means that no one is sufficiently invested in their parasocial relationship with you to obsessively seek information over you. What does trigger that kind of behavior—is suddenly ghosting an audience.
So a couple of years ago I wanted to write about why people get obsessive and start collections—and part of that lead me to collect a lot of anecdotes and research on stalking behaviour, vexatious litigants, chronic complainers, OCD and Schizophrenia. I wrote a first draft of the book but never polished it since the topic is too vague to be cohesive. Might turn it into a Youtube series. It’s less about stalking—more about collecting—lot’s of stuff about Pinterest boards, wardrobes, sneakerheads and the bus-ticket theory of genius. Hopefully you’re not worried why I have all this info now.
79% of victims were acquainted with their pursuer (N = 62), and half of all stalking emerged specifically from romantic relationships (M = 49%, N = 53). (meta-analysis of 175 studies)
The state of the art of stalking: Taking stock of the emerging literature. Brian H. Spitzberg. William R. Cupach.
″...stalkers who communicate hateful, threatening, or obscene messages or content are the least likely to physically attack their target. This is especially true when the unwelcome communications are made anonymously. However, if such communications persist, the risk increases with each successive contact. Stalkers who express a desire to meet their target in person and to travel for that purpose are much more likely to be dangerous. But paradoxically, those who express a desire to have children with their target are typically less of a threat.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/machiavellians-gulling-the-rubes/201810/the-many-stalkers-taylor-swift
This was an interesting read. Thank you for sharing your information. I personally wouldn’t have been worried about why you have all this information, as it simply reads to me like an essay by somebody who’s done research on an important topic.
The way your comment is written, the underlying narrative is that the only risk to consider with coming out online is turning a reader into a stalker due to that post in isolation, and that this risk is insubstantial. I think your argument is plausible for that specific risk. However, I am considering a wider variety of risks, including:
A person with a larger body of online writings who comes out.
A person who publishes their post to an audience or on a platform that’s more likely to generate unwanted attention.
A person who is being investigated and/or stalked online as a result of real-world activities, such as applying for a job or pursuing political office.
A person for whom coming out will create friction in pursuing real-world activities in the future that oughtweighs the benefits they gain from coming out online.
A potential sense of paranoia about having disclosed potentially embarrassing information online.
The reputational and perceptions risk for a controversial community of its high-status members advocating that its low-status members post embarrassing information online.
LessWrong and the rationalist community already has a controversial reputation and is often accused of being a cult. It is an online platform, which is capable of spawning hate-readers like r/sneerclub. It is also a real-world community with a notorious history of deeply exploitative behavior and what seems to be a higher-than-average fraction of self-identified participants or ex-participants with deep mental health issues. It has a history of scandal and has generated a substantial amount of negative media coveage, considering its small size.
Considering all of this, I believe that the LessWrong and rationalist community is not well-positioned to reduce the risks of coming out beyond the normal level available in the wider culture. In other words, if there’s an X that you don’t feel safe to come out about, then I don’t think LessWrong/rationalism in its current form is capable of helping you feel more safe about coming out about X. This is a heuristic, not a general rule, and if other people do feel LessWrong/rationalism helps them come out about their personal characteristics in a way other communities don’t, I’m interested to hear it. But for this reason, I think that high-status LessWrong members should not be encouraging others to come out in public about more things with little regard for risks. That seems irresponsible and likely to result in damage both to members and to the community as a whole.
I do think that it would be beneficial if LessWrong/rationalism worked to think through this problem and become the sort of community that is capable of effectively supporting its members in “coming out” in a way that improved the community, its relations with the rest of the world, and the health and wellbeing of its members. Basically, I like the vision of “generalized coming out,” but I don’t like the strategy John proposes in his OP for getting there for LessWrong/rationalism.
Thank you for that reply specifying the controversy and history within the lesswrong community—and therefore that being the chosen platform for “coming out”, does seem to me to increase the risks.
I have to reflect more on this. But I think it’s important to acknowledge your reply in the meantime.
I think my current question or crux is sort of “okay, but if you don’t have a substantial posting history—why will you become stalked out of all the others?”. And that is probably case-by-case thing that depends, even within the localized environment of Lesswrong, important factors like: what actual topic or taboo they are coming out about, even how much it resonates with the community so how it gets displayed on the front-page and therefore how visible it might be to r/sneerclub-ers, other aspects of their identity could also make them more vulnerable—even gender.
I think I need to think more fine-grain about this.