Internet Stalking, Sexual Harrassment and Abuse, Violence against LGBT, and an Internet Celebrity

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An interesting person who puts a lot of videos about mathematics on YouTube is Vi Hart.  I didn't consciously look for her videos, but they occasionally popped up when I was looking at other things on YouTube.

I showed my students a couple of her videos, always hoping that the kids would note down the name and run with it on their own.  (I hate to have to package every freaking thing that they could be interested in and lay it at their feet.  My students seem to be of two types: the ones who follow up on things that are interesting, and the ones who sit back and wait for me to do it. Luckily, I have the courage to let some of them fail.)

Vi Hart is a musician, a mathematician, a singer, and a generally multi-talented personality.  But I was startled to see a video post by her this morning, in which she reacts with almost out of control grief to the death of an Internet girlfriend of hers who was shot down in Florida at a recent event.  This girl was also an Internet personality, evidently one whom Vi Hart got to know from her Internet gaming days, and as a fellow-YouTube personality: Christina Grimmie.

The link to Vi Hart's video is at the bottom of this post.  It is about the trend towards--or at least the large number of incidences of--guys on the Internet who feel that they have a right to at least have a chance at a relationship with an Internet personality.  In other words, it is about Internet stalkers.

In the process of trying to explain her feelings about the Grimmie girl's shooting (she subsequently died), shortly followed by the shooting at the Orlando night club, Vi Hart reveals a little of her life story (there is a little more on Wikipedia).  She makes a large number of observations, many of them having to do with violence toward women becoming so unbelievably common, domestic violence being so condoned by law-enforcement, and how increasingly people act out their hatred.  Before our society became so open to the media, people who acquired a hatred for some sector of the population did not feel a need to actually put their feelings into action.  That has begun to be commonplace only since the last twenty years or so, essentially the lifetime of Vi Hart.

This video should not be a basis for assessing Vi Hart as a media personality; it is --probably appropriately-- raw, unassimilated emotional response to two horrific events in close juxtaposition.  If she were to try to make a similar statement in a few months, it would look very different, but I suspect it would be more bitter.  Miraculously, whatever bitterness that is in this video is softened, because of not being more focused.

I have always been intrigued by Vi Hart, despite some of her abrasiveness that occasionally comes through; in particular, she seems to have it in for math teachers!  I try to imagine what it would be like to know her, and though sometimes it feels as if she would be an awesome friend for me, at other times I definitely see signs that we would have insurmountable philosophical differences!  How is it that I can see, even in her videos, more of her personality than these poor deluded guys can, who imagine themselves to be the perfect mate for Vi Hart?  She shows us numerous e-mails from guys who simply say: marry me.  There have always been foolish guys (and gals) out there who seem to have personality myopia.  But these days, it's almost as though you can hardly turn around without stepping on them.  But, notoriously, guys are eager to rescue helpless virgins who seem unhappily trapped anywhere; in this case, on the World Wide Web.

One thing we have to learn is to open our eyes, and open them again, as Terry Pratchett would say, and see people for real.  Everyone, even the most obnoxious, deserves to be seen for what they really are, or really are as people.  Falling in love with an image you create yourself is something you should keep to yourself, and not inflict on that image.  By all means, create fantasy friends for yourself.  But never forget that they're fantasies.

The video is here.

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Gun Control Yet Again: How could we miss?

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It turns out that I have been a little naive about gun control.

A hostile comment on Comedy Central points out that fully automatic assault weapons have been outlawed since 1934, and Wikipedia corroborates this.  It appears that to follow the progress and the failures of gun control one has to be an expert on guns.

In 1994, a ban on a certain category of assault weapon was enacted and passed under the presidency of Bill Clinton, but the law had a 10-year sunset provision, and thus expired (presumably in 2004).  Evidently weapon manufacturers were able to circumvent the law by making very minor alterations in the features of their weapons, this making them fall technically under the category of allowed weapons.  It was argued that weapons manufacturers could not reasonably be held to a standard higher than the law itself.

So, to be effective, a law has to anticipate all measures that gun manufacturers might take to circumvent its application.  This is like having to spell out what it means to kill somebody.  Reading the gun laws in Wikipedia (look under Federal Assault Weapons Ban, Gun Laws, and Gun Politics) was a painfully difficult undertaking, since the amount of technical detail was oppressive, especially to one who is uninterested in guns except to get rid of the bloody things.

As is typical with Wikipedia articles on contentious subjects, the articles mentioned above have been written by multiple authors with evidently conflicting viewpoints, and, in many cases, limited language skills, resulting in convoluted grammar that is often difficult to follow, and occasionally positively misleading.  One thing is clear: writing skill and interest in firearms do not go together.  A clear, uncluttered article on the present state of gun control from the National perspective, with a clear definition of gun categories, would be very useful.  It is useless to include the interested parties, since pro-gun groups have proliferated over the years (the NRA, the GOA, the Pink Pistols), and some have supported some measures, and opposed others, and become merely an additional layer of confusion on top of everything else.  The delight that gun fanciers have in talking about stocks and spent cartridges and tumbling projectiles would be amusing, if the issues were not so horrific.  It is a dirty business, jealously protected by many dangerous people, but sane people must get into it, or gun violence will continue to escalate.

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