Was the Ben Walsh Facebook post about refusing Serco a hoax?

Lefties have been all asquitter on Twitter about a Facebook post from a coupla days back. It purported to be by some guy called Ben Walsh.

In it he said that he worked for one of Victoria's biggest fencing companies. Apparently an order from Serco for fencing mesh came in. Ben twigged the material would be used in a detention centre. He objected to the sale and told his boss, who agreed with his stand. So Ben called Serco back and refused the sale. Some time later the Serco bloke rang again pleading for them to reconsider because he'd been given similar treatment elsewhere.

You can read it here: Post by Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC).

Lefty cartoonist First Dog on the Moon used the text in a strip that was shared on Twitter and retweeted by Scott Ludlam and others.

We all need to be a little like Ingrid the Grapefruit RT @SenatorLudlam:and @firstdogonmoon has done it again pic.twitter.com/F8lXHJDgLK #auspol
— Peter Tonoli (@peter_tonoli) February 26, 2014

Some tweeps have pondered whether the cartoon came first and the FB post was mocked up afterwards. But it seems likely the FB post was inspiration for the cartoon and not the other way around.

Not surprisingly some lefty tweeps have taken the post as dinkum and touted Ben as a hero for his actions. Others were not completely convinced but hoped it was real.

I'm pretty sure it's a hoax, and felt that way when I first read it last night. Firstly, most people just wouldn't take that stand at work. They'd be out of a job quick smart.

It wouldn't happen at one business let alone several, regardless of the political beliefs of employees (and employers for that matter). Business is about sales, not politics.

Anyway, there's no real popular groundswell of support for the green-left position on asylum seekers. If anything it's the opposite.

Also, I couldn't find the original post, or this Ben Walsh character on the social network.

I think maybe he's real and wished it to happen then wrote it as if it did. Then he freaked out when it went viral and increased his privacy settings. Or it was an outright hoax to start with.

The whole post is about having the courage of your convictions, right? So if it were dinkum he'd be glad about the exposure and jump at the chance to publicly proclaim its validity wouldn't he?

Another case of the Left being duped, I reckon ...

UPDATE: Tweet claims it was a hoax with pic of new Ben Walsh post in which he admits to deception. But that's clearly a hoax itself.

labor troll Ben Walsh confesses about faking a major post is this the new Labor we expect to see #pmlive #auspol pic.twitter.com/zh01qUsuIH
— Miney (@BigMiney) February 26, 2014

Duelling dupers? Or all concocted by this one guy?

UPDATE: This tweet linking to an image of a post infers that Ben Walsh is a real guy, Ben Smith.

Did trolls kill Charlotte Dawson?

It goes without saying that the death of Charlotte Dawson was a sad event. Suicide is always depressing. Of course when something like this happens lots of people look for something, someone, or some group to blame. Not surprisingly social media trolls have been seen as the major culprits here.

I don't think there's any doubt that the massive amount of abuse she copped online was a contributing factor in her death. But can you say they killed her, as many people on Twitter and elsewhere have been claiming?

No way. She killed herself. If you believe that adults are responsible for their own actions then you have to accept that it was she who made the final decision to end her own life.

Yes, there were many factors that brought her to that point. And we can argue about the extent to which one or more of them contributed to her death. But if you say that she had no power whatsoever in this equation and it was all due to the actions of others you're just deluding yourself.

I'm no shrink but it's pretty obvious from recent coverage of the tragedy that several factors were at play. There was Dawson's ongoing struggle with depression. There was the fact that almost everyone in the country knew about her parlous emotional state for years thanks to ongoing mainstream media attention. More specifically there was the recent stress of a 60 Minutes report about former partner Scott Miller and his drug problems. This clearly dredged up many deeply painful memories for her. There was the fact that her career was floundering. And there were the trolls.

It seems to me that "blaming the media" for her death would be just as rational as blaming trolls. The way they cynically exploit the suffering of well known individuals such as Dawson and Miller for ratings while simultaneously wringing their hands about it just makes you wanna puke. The fact that these reports are done with the full cooperation of the vulnerable individuals concerned is not an ameliorating factor. Maybe such troubled souls are doing it for the cash or the attention, or both. This just makes the whole thing even more creepily predatory in my opinion.

As well as compounding her humiliation, the ongoing media coverage of Dawson's struggle with mental illness made her even more of a target for trolling. We've all heard the term "don't feed the trolls". Well, a lot of that food was being supplied by the shows that made piles of filthy lucre from "documenting" her battles with them.

The same can be said of a lot of this hand-wringing in the wake of her death as well as the campaign by nanny-statists to make her into a martyr and increase censorship of social media. Rather than landing a powerful blow against trolls in general, all these things will embolden them further.

It's pretty clear that trolls genuinely wished her dead. So by arguing that their harassment of her was the main cause of her demise, you're basically saying: "You won trolls." (Actually, I read several tweets that used almost those exact words.) All that'll do is ensure that they'll redouble their efforts to emotionally destroy their next target.

Much better to just ignore these pathetic people in my opinion. Don't give them the power they don't have by telling them that their putrid online harassment actually succeeded.

Misogynists and nut-jobs smear a Labor favourite

Julia Gillard really thinks she's on a winner with this tactic of smearing anyone who has questions about her role in the AWU scandal as a misogynist, nut-job, or idiot. It's a typically cheap, nasty tactic that her party has used earlier  -- for example when Tony Abbott was snapped with a placard behind him saying she was "Bob Brown's bitch". Her ministers all went into overdrive equating this one little incident with ugly "American style" lunacy and hatefulness.

Cynical ALP spin doctors were right in thinking that Oz hacks would run hard with this angle. After all, lazy, sneering Aussie journos have been milking the cow of anti-Americanism for decades now. There's a ready made smear machine all fired up and ready to go!

And it's a powerful machine, considering how many in the press gallery are tragic, jelly-backed Labor luvvies. But the tide is turning. Huge numbers of Aussies have had more than a gut-full of the way the MSM are acting like spin doctors for the Government on this.

So they're turning to social media and the blogosphere instead. Larry Pickering's websites and Facebook page are getting eye-boggling numbers. Have a squizz at the comment threads and you'll get some idea of just how many people are fired up about this. Then there's Michael Smith's blog. It's only been up for a coupla weeks but it has already garnered over 200 000 page views.

There's a big shift happening now. No wonder Gillard is packin' death. She won't sue, though, because that would risk the whole sleazy affair being opened up and investigated even more thoroughly in the long term. Hence she's employing what she thinks is a tried and true tactic with the "nutjobs and misogynists" smear. But it's another error of judgement from someone who's made many already. 

Of course no one will end up being shot in the streets as a result of this unrest. But I can't help thinking this is a little bit like the recent Twitter and Facebook revolutions in the Middle East. Autocratic rulers tried to perpetuate their narrative through official mainstream media channels that they controlled completely. But it didn't work because everyone just turned to the internet and Twittered and Facebooked their way to freedom instead!

Inside Facebook doco confirmed my perceptions about the site

Watched the documentary Inside Facebook last night. It was an interesting insight into the workings of the social networking site. Zuckerberg is clearly a technologically brilliant young bloke, as are many of the people who work there. But he struck me as being emotionally immature. And the whole enterprise seemed strangely soulless.

He kept talking about how he wanted to help people connect with each other more, but I think his site might be having the opposite effect.

If it's about keeping in touch with old friends, and making new ones, then why do people spend so much time looking at their stuff and checking their updates online? Why not spend time with them in the real world?

And the fact that so many people spend so much time playing games on there is a bit of a worry. In the doco an overly keen gamer happily bought a flashy container for the poop of one of his favourite characters. It was as sad as it was funny. 

Many pundits have said that spending so much time on the site -- almost as if it's a parallel life -- is damaging the psychological health of millions of Facebook addicts. I think they've got a point.

While you can also go overboard on Twitter I think it's a far better site. It's not a replacement for social interaction. It's all about connecting with others who have the same interests, and sharing information. It's much more serious and focused.

On Twitter you can learn heaps, connect with experts, promote blog posts and do a whole lot of other productive things. But on Facebook people seem to waste their time piss-farting around, playing stupid games and "poking" each other.

There's no contest as far as I'm concerned.