Ah. Legomymalfoy has posted.

[icarus]

Legomymalfoy has posted.

Apparently the death threat some (but not all) of the candidates were warned about was aimed at her, which I thought might be the case. (And I was hearing hints behind locked posts from her friends that legomymalfoy was absent for good reasons that they couldn't talk about, candidates were asked not to talk about the threats, this was not hard to put together.) If you're going to send a death threat, you'd usually -- although not always -- send it to one of the main contenders.

My feeling about this? ithiliana says it better: Clusterfuck 2008: The Race for the LJ AB.

Comments

[tazlet.livejournal.com]

I thought the threat would be against legomymalfoy, probably some a**h*l*'s idea of 'just for lols', or, to tell you the truth, it had also occured to me that it might be a lying stunt cooked up by jameth and cambler.

[ladylawanda.livejournal.com]

Accusing someone of making death threats against a woman is pretty fucked up.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

That doesn't sounds like an accusation to me. More like the thought I had yesterday when I saw jameth's post about pedophile fiction: "Maybe someone has locked the real jameth-the-candidate in a trunk, hacked his account, and hired MsScribe to play the perfect foil to get Legomymalfoy elected."

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

At first I wasn't sure the death threat was real, but then one candidate after another had received the same email. So it had to be legit.

Then I figured it was either against jameth or legomymalfoy.

jameth mentioned getting weird messages but nothing he'd consider a death threat and seemed to be trying to figure out what this was about (asking the other candidates for info, etc.). That left legomymalfoy as the most likely candidate.

[tonksnymphadora.livejournal.com]

Are these people for real?

Hello? This is just a blogging site. No reason to ruin your life over this and threaten someone. Good for legomymalfoy for sticking to her guns.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I can understand losing all sense of perspective but when I read cambler's death threat report--

--I know I should take this seriously, and evince deep and abiding concern, but all I could think was "we have hit new levels of absurd."

What is a credible threat over the internet anyway?

[tonksn.livejournal.com]

Thank goodness someone besides me is goggling at the absurdity. Of course I am concerned for the safety of all involved because you never know when some idiot might just get an idea in their heads to do something crazy, but seriously, it is just a rep for LJ.

[tonksnymphadora.livejournal.com]

sorry, that is my gaming journal. Is having special night :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

No problem, I figured it was you. :D

For a threat to be credible, does the person making the threat need to indicate they know where you are so they can carry it out?

It would be hard for someone to make a credible death threat against me over the internet in that case. There are exactly five people on my f-list who've ever met me in person--and one of them's the boyfriend. About seven people on my f-list know my real name (and one of them's the boyfriend). Only the boyfriend has my address, although with a name, one can get an address if you work hard enough.

Other people are more open with their personal information than me, and go to cons and whatnot, or are friendly.

[tonksnymphadora.livejournal.com]

Who knows what happened but in these days, any sort of violent threat gets the attention of police fast, as it should be.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ah. So it could be the wording and apparent aggressive intent.

[tonksnymphadora.livejournal.com]

Being the daughter of a PI, it really isn't that hard to find out stuff about people. Eerily so. But words have a lot of power.

[elf]

I would not be hard to find. While I don't think my address is anywhere in my LJ, I regularly mention the city live in, the city I work in, names of places I shop, and so on. And I don't separate my fannish/pagan/LJ identity from my IRL one; it wouldn't be hard, with a bit of googling, to get my address.

And I'm relatively anti-social and somewhat paranoid. (The main reason I'm not more careful about life details? I live in a ghetto-ish area of Oakland; I fear no internet stalkers. If they can pick their way through the broken glass on the sidewalk and sidestep the used needles in the gutters, they're welcome to try to visit. Our home defenses are built for occasional neighborhood riots; I'm not worried about out-of-towners with a grudge.)

People who go to cons, who post reports about them, who manage fests and whatnot? Harder to hide. And a credible threat wouldn't necessarily mean knowing the person's address--a photo, and the knowledge of which Starbuck's they get coffee at, would be enough.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Or maybe they don't need to know where you are for it to be credible. I don't know. What does that mean?

[cambler.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter, though, as LJ didn't tell us.

All those of us who received the email were told was that a "credible threat" had been received, law enforcement was involved, and to tell them if we got anything more.

That's it. Nothing else.

Even when we asked if it was to anyone in particular, we were told "no comment." Asking for the police report number was met with "no comment." Asking if I should drop out for my own safety, I was told "do what you think is right."

So when a corporation tells you that a "credible threat" has been received, might have been made towards you, and that they've contacted law enforcement, what do you do? Chalk it up to lulz?

Really?

And anyone saying that I, or anyone else made this up needs to have their head examined. Never mind that the implication is insulting, making something up like that is pretty damned stupid, seeing as the truth would become known in short order when someone from LJ came forward and said, "What?!"

As it turns out, this ball was dropped by LJ. On their feet - and everyone else's feet.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Frankly, if I'd received a amorphous response like that, I'd have bounced it off the boyfriend and then decided, "Screw this election. This is not worth the grief."

By the way, I owe you an apology. I was wrong. I've since spoken with RPGers who've told me that it's not at all uncommon to have 100 accounts. They just don't use them all at once. Apparently old RPG characters collect like clutter in the garage. Hardcore RPGers will also have accounts "on hold" for future games, in addition to their current games. They usually have them set up to go to the same email for the convenience of playing multiple games at once. I was amazed, but I guess it's no different from my writing 150-200 fanfics.

[cambler.livejournal.com]

That's pretty-much what I did. I bounced it off the wife and we both agreed that it was ludicrous. I only chose to withdraw in a public manner in order to shine a little more light on the fiasco this has become.

Unfortunately, it might get even worse - but I'm under advice to now "shut the f**k up" and let LJ make their decision, so that's what I'm doing.

As for the account issue, I sincerely appreciate you bringing it up as you've done here. That shows class. The RP'ers I spoke with also told me that most go to the same email, but changing the email can be done pretty quickly if they're motivated to use the accounts to vote (which, to the credit of those I know, only one said s/he did, to the tune of about 200 votes).

[jameth.livejournal.com]

How many times did we go 'round and 'round about the # of RPG accounts that one might have? :D

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

At least 60 between Cambler and I in my LJ, lord knows how many in yours. :D Not fair to pin it on Legomymalfoy's supporters solely though. The RPGer I was talking to was a Squeaky supporter (though she did not vote multiple times). This is all over the map.

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

Um, and, if you want to screen this, it wouldn't be a bad idea.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Done, and thank you. That makes sense.