Excellent blog addition from a 202er:
1. read this CapTimes story about an alleged crime in the dorms
2. read this response to it on the Critical Badger blog
3. digest the debate in the blog comments
4. weigh in through our comments
The poster sent this as an accompaniment to the Discussion Arena reading on digital heckling. What do you think of the response here?
Friday, February 22, 2008
Heckling at Home
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8 comments:
When I saw this post and the subsequent posts on the CB, I was shocked. Yes, Bensen made a HUGE mistake and should be adequately punished and removed from the dorms as a result. However, to suggest people IM him insults and complaints and hurtful things in general is pretty awful. The only people, if any, who deserve to lash out against this boy are the people whom he threatened or assaulted. The general student body is free to form their own opinions on him, but to take his AIM off Facebook and encourage others to bother him for no real reason other than to make him feel worse about his actions is not appropriate.
Anyone who reads the CB knows that comment was taken down rather quickly.
However, Brandon has a public facebook profile on which he bragged about being discussed in the media. His friends also called him famous for the attention. It does not seem unfair to post that *public* profile.
What's not appropriate is the family members and friends of Brandon calling people who found Brandon's behavior wrong (remember, he drank underaged and almost killed someone) "retards" and trying to shift blame.
What I found ridiculous was how quickly the discussion digressed into a chance to harass other commenters. Half way through the posts they were just making fun of each other and barely talking about Benson if you can call the vast majority of those knee-jerk reactions a discussion. These people just like to hear themselves talk.
This Bensen kid has posted a link to THIS blog post on his facebook along with several others.
It seems like he is milking this publicity. That he is proud of it and is trying to let everyone see it ... that's upsetting.
Not only should no one suggest that they harass him on aim and facebook, people really should probably ignore someone who seems to be enjoying this in some perverse way.
One of his older facebook profile pictures shows him holding up a citation with $250. He seems to be PROUD of his crimes and all this attention he is getting is probably very very bad.
Is the media coverage making something worse here? It just might be.
I think the author of the story is the real problem, there are grammatical errors everywhere, how did this get published?
In response to the above: If that is in response to my post, please note, I write in blogger prose in order to post content quicker. The commentary on my blog is not intended to be a tightly written, grammatically perfect piece. This should be evident in my following comment.
As for the subject of this post, I want to thank this website for driving more content to my blog. However, I am disappointed in the way inductive logic was used to call my commenter’s “hecklers.” Certainly, some of the comments on my site (not made by me, but visitors) were absurd and ridiculous, coming from those who agreed with my commentary and from visitors opposing my coverage, specifically the friends/family of Mr. Bensen (one going so far to call us “retarded” for caring about this story). Yet, many people shared their thoughts, no matter how raw and angry, and should not be construed as heckling, especially as outlined in the article assigned for your J202 reading. I would argue the majority (meaning 50% + 1) of comments on this post were on topic, responsive, and at times even contained several deliberative qualities. I would argue some of the comments that may be defined as light “trolling” were merely people using internet persuasion to drive home a point. For example, one commenter used repetition to argue Brandon nearly killed someone. Heckling to some? Perhaps. To me, it is a 21st Century form of rhetoric and did not cross the inherently ambiguous line of unfair comments on my website.
Several of the many “positive” contributions from the comments, came when members of Brandon’s dorm posted on the blog, one going so far as to defend the angry comments, arguing that even as his peer, he objectively found Brandon a threat before this incident occurred. This person also questioned Brandon’s personal promotion on Facebook of the media coverage he was receiving from the event. Only on a local blog in Madison would this in-depth commentary and unique insight be possible. Relying strictly on the quotes and framing from the Capital Times and Badger Herald would in my mind be irresponsible for those seeking a deliberative public sphere.
And perhaps there is a larger question here. If for a moment I were to concede the majority of comments constitute heckling, I would be skeptical of placing blame on myself the blogger in this situation. I believe many of us have an unrealistic Habermasian standard that we seek for online deliberation. Over 1,000 unique visitors read this blog post and quite a few chose to write comments. Perhaps the problem with antagonistic commentary lies not with the blogger, but the intensely hateful society from which we develop these thoughts. Ever try watching a political TV like Crossfire? How about the way an American Idol contestant is ripped to shreds? People love it. The anonymous comment feature on my blog allows a forum for this – of course, I do edit posts, including removing a call to harass Brandon via AIM – and in my pseudo-experiment on the human condition, I have found people are all too happy to show their true colors behind such a wall.
With that said, I encourage all campus journalists to continue reading my blog if you have an interest in the day-to-day affairs of campus and the city of Madison. Thanks for stopping by. We are blessed with a healthy and diverse blog network in Madison. You should take the time to check it out.
-CB
While I think it is fair to get the story out there and the critical badger did it well, I think the blog quickly fell to name calling and got off topic with people fighting amongst themselves. After a while the posts stopped mentioning Bensen. I think he should be kicked out and punished, but that is up to the University, not some anonymous bloggers attacking his facebook and aim.
Wow, poor kid. He will probably drop out....college students can be so rough sometimes on others.
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