My take on furry drama

[altivo]

It's time for furry fandom to grow up.

I see Sibe (or rather just news of him, as far as I can tell) is back again and people are pulling each other's ears and hair out over the troll once more.

When will we learn that this is just exactly what Sibe and his ilk want to have happen? We play right into the hands of a troll when we respond, and then end up flaming each other over it. Grow up folks.

No, I don't like Sibe, I don't approve of his behavior, and I don't want anything to do with him. So don't accuse me of taking his side. On the other hand, I can't resist pointing out the hypocrisy here. I'm absolutely certain that many or most of those who scream "OMG, Sibe!" at the very hint of his name, and condemn his piracy of art work, have shared and downloaded pirate copies of music and videos. Guess what, folks. It's the same thing, ethically. We have here a case of the pot calling the kettle black. And of course Sibe loves that.

The trolls are hungry, no, desperate, for attention. They want to stir up drama, make us fight among ourselves, get onto the news in any way possible (yes, even by being arrested and hauled off to jail.) The best answer to such behavior, whether in a two year old or a twenty nine year old, is to ignore it. Don't countenance it with recognition, and above all, don't let it polarize the community into factions who give each other black eyes over the stupidity and attention-seeking of someone who is, in the end, just an outsider trying to gather a following.

The same applies to Something Awful, Portal of Evil, Worst of the Net, VCL Horrors, and all the other sad little groups who can't think of anything else to do with themselves but throw sticks at people who aren't "just like them." The best and most powerful revenge against such folks is to completely ignore them. They can't stand it, and will look for targets that provide more entertainment when abused with sharp sticks.

Comments

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

If we don't maintain an active awareness of him, we are allowing him to do as he will. Sibe physically abused people, and not only does he deserve jail, but he deserves to be locked in for a very long time, hopefully life without parole. I am somewhat surprised that someone as pacifistic as you feel violent felons should be allowed to do what they want.

Awareness is important. If Sibe finds all the doors locked to him, if he sees a strong showing of unity and less vulnerability, he'll have to destroy himself even worse than he has to get what he wants, and then he will be in jail for life.

I feel its a crime not to warn others about him, especially young furs new to the furry community.

[songcoyote.livejournal.com]

Well, I was going to say one thing, but then I read chibiabos's response to your note and thought again.

If this person really has physically abused people then perhaps there should be warnings about his presence. I don't think these warnings should consist of "OMG Sibe!", as you put it, but rather a coherent and carefully worded statement that includes only known facts and offers the opinion that Sibe should be avoided. If you write (or say) something that isn't true or is unsubstantiated you could be liable for libel (or slander), but opinions that are clearly stated as such are much safer to express.

Now, all that aside, in general I do agree that it is indeed better to ignore trolls (no offense meant to the mythological creatures) and other people with a poisonous need for attention, difficult though this may be. I also feel that it is possible in many, though not all, cases for compassion to win through and, if not enable change in the afflicted individual, at least give people who end up dealing with him a sense of peace. There but for the fortunes of my upbringing, body and brain chemistry, and personal experiences go I, after all.

I'm truly sorry that some people experience things that cause them to become so extreme, and I send them my hope that they will find a way out of the pain they feel every day before it becomes too great to bear.

I may not always be able to demonstrate it, but I can at least try to enhance my capacity for and capability of demonstrating compassion.

Thanks for listening to my ramble. Back to work :)

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No question but what Sibe the individual is a bad guy who has a criminal record to prove it at this point. Unfortunately though, he's not alone in that respect. I think furries have demonized Sibe to the point that they are ignoring the other dangerous characters lurking around, and they would be wiser to engage in some wholesale generic education and protection than to waste their energies fighting with each other about Sibe (who apparently is in custody again for breaking a parole, so he's likely to be out of commission for some time.)

Practical action to teach both newcomers and oldtimers in the furry community how to be proactive and protect themselves from scams, abuses, ripoffs, and physical injury is certainly in order. Wasting the energy that could be put into that on vituperation against Sibe or running around twisting each other's tails is not, however, productive at all.

Banning Sibe from a convention, for instance, is like putting up guards to keep last year's horse thief out of your barn while not even watching for the new horse thieves who are seeking entrance. It's a waste of energy, and, worse, polarizes the energy in the community in counterproductive ways.

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

Again, Sibe is not being demonized; his criminal record is true. I've not seen anything said about him that was made up.

While my warnings against other people go unheeded because I can't track down their criminal records if anyone's manage to land a conviction against them (I know Setter Zeta Red, aka Blayze managed to weasel out of a genuine rape charge in Georgia, for instance), the fact I have no success doesn't mean I haven't been trying.

Shooting down the whistleblowers is, in my very un-humble and strong opinion, a tragedy and makes you partly responsible for carnage that follows. Unfortunately, yes, there is also a lot of bogus rumormilling, and that fuddles things, but the worst thing to do is not even try and let the predators do as they will.

Some people are very good judges of character, but then there are people like me who get blindsided so easily. I've been conned over and over again, and most of these predators operate under a veil of charm. Aarahk would make a fine Hollywood actor, he had his con down to a science after decades of sharpening it.

Your proposed inaction is akin to saying just tell women to never go into a dark parking lot alone, and have the owner of the lot have it lit, have a security guard available, and take no action to track known criminals in the area.

Its also akin to telling little boys in Catholic school that its up to them to protect themselves, no one else should bother to keep child raping priests in check.

Frankly, that's very disturbing to me.

People being made aware of very real, very specific predators in the furry community /is/ productive. Shunning warnings about it is counterproductive.

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

Oh, and here ya go:

http://furry.wikicities.com/wiki/Sibe

*nips your tail and holds on*

(and while we're at furry wiki and I got ya by the tail, http://furry.wikicities.com/index.php?title=New_Coyote&action=edit needs to be made!)

[songcoyote.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. What a record! He sounds like a very wounded person, and in spite of the trouble he may have caused, I do feel for him.

I'm not familiary enough with Wikipedia's community stuff to understand what it was you wanted me to do with that link. Talk about myself? Will it make a Wikipedia entry about me? I don't have a problem with that necessarily, even if it is a bit... well... prima canina, to mangle a phrase :) I'm just trying to get an idea of what the results would be if I make an entry there.

Thanks for the info and the wiki link. I'll be glad to investigate and (possibly) post there once I get some more info.

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote

[linnaeus.livejournal.com]

I appreciate what you're saying, but if you're saying that the fandom will not have "grown up" until it's least mature members have either grown up or shut up, you've got a long wait ahead of you. Every group, from the house of Lords to the Amish, has its goofballs. I'll happily acknowledge that those still giving this guy the attention he craves need better hobbies, but I don't thing they're representative of the vast majority of us who don't care.

I'd disagree with you when you draw moral equivalency between Sibe's awesome portfolio of lame attention whoredom and people who download mp3s, but I'm frankly not interested in the topic to put forth a coherent argument. ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm saying that the fandom will have grown to maturity when it becomes more proactive in educating its own members about ethics and caution and spends less time moaning and paw-wringing about one or two named individuals while ignoring all the others who are headed in the same direction (including some of its newer members, who might be redirected now, before they damage themselves and others.) This responsibility does rest with the more mature members of the community, yes. That is why I am speaking openly on the subject.

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

One of the 'more mature members' is at this moment saying we are demonizing Sibe, giving him an unfair rap and we really shouldn't worry about him.

Dear Rider.

[goldenstallion.livejournal.com]

Please stop and back off from Sibe and the rest of you, too.

I have known him ten years now and he has mental problems. He has been to shrink houses and they all let him back out saying he is sane enough but he is very suicidal and he is a hater of all of what he thinks is evil whether we be tree huggers, monsters, religious nuts or whatever he thinks. KKK is not where he is nor are zoophiles nor are furrys. He is very clinically insane in my opinion yet I count him as a friend. I met him on Furry years ago and we spent the night together talking and getting very deep into our innermost feelings, fantasies and thoughts about life and reasons and he is off the wall but he is also a friend.

Hell, and some of my friends are spending their lives in prison. So go figure and ignore me in this regard if you must. But consider this.

How far are you willing to go for what you believe?

Steed

Re: Dear Rider.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Note that I'm not attacking Sibe, though I don't like him. I'm suggesting that we should be working to keep others from victimizing community members in the future, rather than arguing about Sibe. Sibe himself is a moot point, in my opinion other than being an example.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

OMG, Sibe!

I'm not sure he got arrested just as a publicity stunt, this time or the last time. Seems like not the best way.

Unfortunately, if you make too much of a show of telling people to avoid him, that just makes more people interested in him. I'm not really sure what the best approach to take is.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, that's my point. We would do better to figure out what the weaknesses are that allow such individuals to victimize the community and its members, and attack those weaknesses, than to spend our energy arguing over what to do about one particular individual.

[typographer.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of what you say here. I still find the Sibe thing amusing simply because several years ago it was Nekobe and before that it was Hangdog, and so on and so on, and now most people don't even know who those people are.

As linnaeus pointed out, any community is always going to have Chicken Littles who run around screaming that the world is coming to an end. Some of those Chicken Littles will immediately accuse anyone who says, "You're focusing on the symptom, not the cause" as arguing that we should do nothing at all, leave people to their own devices, et cetera, et cetera. None of which is what you said, of course. Or even implied.

My own take on all of this is colored by a couple of very different perpesctives. I've been on staff of various conventions (more non-furry than furry, just for the record) and all of the fandoms have someone like Sibe/Nekobe/Hangdog/et al who has hurt people, sometimes criminally so, and is baiting others because negative attention is better than none at all, et cetera. And I can honestly say as a staff member, that the people freaking out about the troublemaker always, ALWAYS cause more headaches for the people trying to run the event than the troublemakers ever do. The last con I was senior staff on didn't have to retain an attorney because of the actions of the notorious troublemaker, we had to do so because of legal action taken by people who were freaked out about a notorious troublemaker. There's a good use of people's con fees, no?

I've also been in the other shoes: being threatened with both physical harm and a boycott of my publication by one of the whackos who was around years before Sibe. So I certainly understand the urge to warn others and the frustration of not feeling that I'm being taken seriously when I do.

And I've even been, in one sense, on the other side of the fence, as it were. A general science fiction con I've attended for about twenty years now, at one point there were people angrily agittating to have openly gay members banned from the con (this was 16 years ago or so) -- or at least kicked out of events like the dance or such if you were seen holding hands with a member of the same sex, et cetera (particularly ironic at a convention that had a leather-clad (hetero) slave auction for charity as one of its events, let alone all the scanty hall costumes, het couples groping each other in the lounge, et al). It isn't the same--I'm not implying that kicking out someone who assaults another person is "discrimination"-- but it makes me want to be very careful about taking drastic action when something less drastic will suffice.

FWIW

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the supportive views. I think we are pretty much in agreement on this, for many of the same reasons that you mention, and I'm glad to have your practical experience brought to bear.

As for the anti-gay attitudes in SF fandom, I thought those had died down much earlier than that. I'm rather appalled to hear that story. I have heard about the ways in which Walter Breen was treated by cons and fandom but that was much longer ago.

[amcbeagle.livejournal.com]

Today is my first time hearing about Sibe, interesting character.

Seems to be popular with all this attention off of one LJ entry. I should ask for his autograph.

Or is this an example of furry drama?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You can read a more or less factual report on Sibe here and I have no dispute with any of it. He's a pretty unsavory, unhealthy individual.

There's no mentioning his name within earshot of furries without some sort of drama erupting, but what you see here is pretty mild. A couple of communities have been set off to boiling temperature, complete with banning of individuals and deleting of messages in the last few days, apparently because of news of his latest arrest.

My point is that all the drama and fighting does no one any good. We should use our energy to educate and protect ourselves against ALL such individuals, rather than raising a lot of hue and cry against one and ignoring the rest. Besides that, Sibe's whole kick in life is getting just this kind of attention. If we react to him, it should be silently and effectively, rather than with hysteria and squabbling.

[hgryphon.livejournal.com]

Heh, I'm sure I'll find out what all this is about when I get home and check Sibe's journal... (It's not safe for work or school...)

I believe fully in the principle of the yin and the yang. There is, of course, a small amount of the yin that is colored as the yang and vice versa. That would be Sibe to the furry fandom. As much as he stirs up the hornet's nest and as much as people hate him, he serves a function in the fandom, at the very least reminding us how any of us could go completely counter to the fandom...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You may not find it there. Apparently he's been arrested and jailed again. The news of that event reawakened controversy in several places and furries are bashing each other again over whether he's a bad guy or not. It's my contention that he just loves to stir this stuff up, and now that he can do it without even touching anyone directly, his heart's desire is achieved. Therefore the most powerful defense against him would be for the community to stop reacting in that way.

[marzolan.livejournal.com]

Hmm... Well, I'm glad you said something 'Tivo... otherwise I would never had heard of him, even if you weren't trying to spread the alarm...

Persoanlly, I'd have to agree that it is wise to spread the alarm on known threats, ut at the same time not to lose sight that there are also hidden dangers out there waiting to strike...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't disagree that people need to be aware of Sibe. My real point was that every time his name is mentioned, a brouhaha like this erupts. Someone wants to defend him as a "good guy who is misunderstood", someone else wants to burn him at the stake, and the next thing you know, nothing useful is happening at all. Instead of action being taken to prevent future repetitions of what Sibe and others have done, or to educate furries about ethical behavior and caution, we get a bunch of furries beating each other up about Sibe. And Sibe, or whoever the current troublemaker is, gets to sit to the side and watch it all, laughing his ass off. (Or walk through the art show stealing stuff while everyone's attention is on the fight that he didn't even have to start...)

Friendships are destroyed, people descend into namecalling against one another, and nothing useful happens at all. The minidrama in these comments is a tiny example, and fairly restrained. But this kind of furor has literally torn communities and websites apart.

[duraji-synth.livejournal.com]

Not to rock any boats, but I'm a member of VCL Horrors and I typically don't find it to be a sad or hateful group. Instead, we tend to ask ligitimate questions about why some piece depicting some really weird fetish exists, or why people are drawing porn before they're artistically mature enough to do so. At least I believe in never attacking the artist, but only commenting on the art. I also tend to give constructive criticism for the less artistic pieces. Of course, if the artist stands up and talks with me, I always have a very civil conversation with them. I've even made some friends out of artists who have appeared there!

Yes, some people use the group as a place to hate furries. I use it as a place to remind myself that we are all flawed, and that there is such a bigger world than just us. Sometimes a weird idea that makes it into the horrors is something I end up really liking! :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Constructive criticism is OK. Poking fun is not. That's my take on it.

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I decided to be an old soldier.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

But as genebreshears pointed out above, Sibe will pass. Such crazies always do, only to be replaced by someone else. In this case I think he's shot himself in the ass too many times and the mundane officials are going to lock him up for quite a while.