A Prescient Message

Shane Koyczan is a spoken word artist that has been around for a number of years now. He has released about 4 albums of work, some that are with and without musical accompaniment. I've been watching with interest as the music portion of his presentations have continued to evolve. Early in August he released his latest (and I think strongest) compilation titled Silence Is A Song I Know All The Words To.

This week he released a video that has been mapped to one of the pieces on that album. The title of the poem is Troll. This video is landing at a time where this problem in the world of games is coming to a very public climax. Originally I believe this was written in the wake of Amanda Todd, but having it come out in the middle of a conflict where individuals are being targeted with such a venomous fervour is almost too coincidental (though it is only a coincidence).

The main message to take away is hopefully one where we can all learn to not be so instantly awful to each other. We all seem to agree that this medium is our preferred form of interaction, it seems so counter-intuitive to be this awful to people we share a love like this with.

I'm currently at work so I'll have to watch the video later.

On the topic of the recent controversies, I think it is now more important than ever to denounce the poisonous people within our community that hijack conversations to threaten and terrorize the minorities within our community, to bully them until they are so exhausted that they quit the industry and the community. This is not acceptable any more, it's disgusting and wrong and the only way to stop it is if we all join together to collectively shun them, to make it clear that they are alone in their perverse point of views and that the vast majority of us do not support these views.

There needs to be better representation of our community. There needs to be better ways to shut out the trolls perverted bullies. There needs to be better support and embracing of the bullied. The fact that the "gamergate" discussion was overshadowed by the misogynistic bullying of Zoe Quinn is shameful and we should be ashamed as a community that it was allowed to happen. Unfortunately the extent that these bullies will go to, committing crimes with wanton abandon, seemingly impervious to any disciplinary action, means that it will only continue. It means that standing for what we believe in becomes a dangerous action, opening ourselves up to the same attacks.

Harassment on social media needs to become a serious crime and the perpetrators need to be publicly tried and punished, if we don't get a handle on the more destructive elements of our community then it will only get worse.

Just watched the video, powerful stuff. His voice sounded familiar and after seeing the other videos of him on youtube pop up I remembered that I saw his TEDtalk where he presented one of his poems on bullying, a fantastic, resonant performance. I think I'm going to delve deeper into his work. I'm surprised no one else has responded to this thread, it seems so little threads are of any substance these days and the ones with the potential to create some meaningful discussion quickly devolve into circular arguments.

This video is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it.

It's a shame the people who need to see it, won't.

Great song. It's really poignant about how awful trolling can be. A troll in itself is a facet that some people where so brazenly that seems to be who they are.

Wonderfully producer and performed I hope more people, and the people who need to to, see it. The idea that people treat other people so badly that they take their lives is absurd and horrifying maybe one day we'll live in a world where we don't need to see a video to remind us of that.