Ban the ban

[imomus]

In A sneer on the face of a judge last week I railed against the obnoxious "zap the weakest link" social structure replicated in reality shows like Big Brother. That very day, after the post went up, a banned Big Brother contestant named Sree Dasari slashed his wrists. The newspaper coverage focused on whether people with "underlying mental health issues" should be screened out. Few commentators seemed willing to draw what seems like one fairly obvious conclusion: that there is something cruel and undesirable in the Big Brother format itself, and the politics it implies.



Because it was an example closer to hand -- a medium "we" control -- I added a paragraph to the sneering judges piece about a Big-Brother-like Suggest Ban feature added to a bulletin board: "ILX, a bulletin board I used to frequent, added a "Suggest Ban" button a couple of years ago, allowing users to vote other users "out of the house", hence declaring people with unpopular opinions "the weakest link" and waving them "goodbye". It gets used to boot out anyone with a mildly divergent take. That isn't exactly pluralism, now, is it, boys? In good societies, surely everyone has something to contribute? And just what are the implications of this "eliminate the weakest link" idea for immigration, for dealing with the homeless and the socially excluded, for integrating the talentless?"

I've just learned that Bimble, a contributor to that board, shot himself a few days ago. He had recently been SB'd -- temporarily banned. According to people close to Bimble (a manic, enthusiastic, gender-reassigned post-punk fan living in Seattle), the ban did contribute to his decision to take his own life. In the thread about this, though, although many posters wished they'd been more attentive to Bimble personally, nobody suggest-banned the practice of suggest-banning.



Now, I can understand why. Yes, such a suggestion -- on an RIP thread -- would have brought an angry swarm of posters and moderators telling the person who made it not to politicize a recent death, and even suggest-banning him for suggest-banning suggest-ban. It would probably be pointed out that Bimble had underlying mental health issues, that there were other factors involved, that it's un-useful to point a finger of blame in the days following the suicide of a deeply disturbed person, that bipolar depression episodes can be triggered by anything, that you can't set the rules of a whole community by the mental state of its weakest member. All true, all true. But you can and should look at whether there's anything structural you can do to prevent similar things happening -- to similarly weak people -- in future. I think the "let's suggest-ban suggest-banning" conversation is one that particular online community needs to have at some point over the coming weeks. And I think a "political" response is not out of order here. The politics of exclusion are deeply relevant to cases like Bimble's and Dasari's.

There's an article about BBC motoring show Top Gear in today's Guardian which touches on the same issue, but shows the risks on the other side of the equation. Top Gear's obnoxious, provocatively right-wing presenter Jeremy Clarkson, testing an Audi and a comparison car whose make isn't revealed, calls the second vehicle "the perfect car for anyone whose business is selling pegs and heather". A pie and a key is laid out on the car's bonnet, and the humourous theme of the piece becomes that this is a car for "pikeys" -- slang for gypsies.

The language Guardian commentator Jodie Matthews uses is similar to the language in my paragraph about ILX. "In good societies... everyone has something to contribute," I said. Jodie says that using the term pikey "fails to value the contribution that Gypsies and Travellers make to British culture. It implies that various and diverse groups of people can be easily and lazily labelled, and that with this label comes particular behaviour. It makes some individuals feel like outsiders."

There's a problem here, though: the euphemism treadmill. The term "gypsy" -- used as if it were unproblematical throughout the Guardian article -- is itself considered as offensive a term, by some people, as "pikey". More recent PC usages for the same micro-population ("traveling people" and "Roma people") are either too vague or not widely-enough adopted to be clear. And the inclusiveness language that Matthews (and I) adopt is particularly bland: "everyone has a contribution to make" is a pretty wishy-washy sentiment to trade for the rather pleasurable (if stereotypical) specificity of the phrase "people who sell pegs and heather". I'm not sure that people who say "everyone has a contribution to make" necessarily like and know Roma people better than people who talk about "selling pegs and heather".

What alarms me most about Matthews' piece -- though I'm obviously siding with her against the obnoxious Clarkson and his right wing populism -- is this bit. Clarkson's appeal to nudge-nudge, wink-wink racism, says Matthews, "has been a strategy of racist discourse since at least the 19th century. It was effectively employed by George Smith of Coalville in his anti-Gypsy campaigns of the 1870s, and even by those who sought to romanticise Gypsies in the late 1800s."



While I agree that the vilification and the exoticisation of outgroups often does involve the same stereotyping, I don't think you can cluster them both as undesirable. To be romanticised is beneficial to a people, a community, a nation. It does wonders for your tourist takings, for instance, and generally lures people to educate themselves further about your specific differences. An anti-racism that attacks positive affect as vigorously as negative affect seems to me utterly misguided -- motivated, perhaps, by the fear of difference it's not too hard to tease out of statements like "everyone has a contribution to make". If the soft right consigns difference -- with a few affectionate racist jokes -- to a place where its stigma is at least visible (if damned to the "natural" predations of Social Darwinism), the soft left fudges it in an abstract fog of equality of opportunity, which is finally nothing more than the opportunity to be the same as everyone else.

Comments

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

> an abstract fog of equality of opportunity, which is finally nothing more than the opportunity to be the same as everyone else.

You can't work towards having the right to difference until you've fully achieved the right to be the same. I'm not completely sure women have managed complete equality yet, and gays certainly haven't, so it'll be a long while before Roma do.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You can't work towards having the right to difference until you've fully achieved the right to be the same.

Could you say more about that, McGazz? How does it work out in the real world?

[(Anonymous)]

Bimble wasn't suggest banned.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

so, bimble (http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=71&threadid=73499) is a thread in which his exact tally of suggest bans is calculated, and he is banned for a month.

And, from the thread I link above:

"He sent me a couple of e-mails towards the end of July. Evidently he was banned from ILX at the time?"

"I was just pointing out that bimble had got over being temp banned."

"He told chatz last week that he didn't mind being banned for a month and he enjoyed the time off ilx. He did say he didnt know if he would come back straight away. Now sadly we will never know."

"He was deeply upset about having been banned from ILX."

"he was a very stubborn person and refused to tone down his posting, even when he was reasonably asked to do so. i don't want to turn this thread into a thing about what happened on ilx before he was banned..."

weak, weaker, weakest.

[(Anonymous)]

'...that you can't set the rules of a whole community by the mental state of its weakest member. [...] But you can and should look at whether there's anything structural you can do to prevent similar things happening -- to similarly weak people...'

weak, weaker, weakest.

a cursory dig around his blog and ILX legacy would seem to contradict your thoughtless description.

Re: weak, weaker, weakest.

[(Anonymous)]

Someone has died here, Momus. We're talking about grieving people, not an online abstraction.

Do you really think this is the time or the place for unnecessary, ill-informed, potentially staggeringly hurtful musings about a community you're no longer part of?

I can take small comfort from the fact that nobody really cares one iota about your opinions on anything, I guess.

Do us, and yourself, a favour and shut up.

Simon

Re: weak, weaker, weakest.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

If you can't identify people's weakness, you can't take steps to protect them. Yes, Bimble was weak. He was out of control, lurching from crisis to crisis, needing constant reassurance from people around him, strangers and online aquaintances. He was promiscuous and alcoholic, and many of his posts -- on this thread (http://ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=40&threadid=72858), for instance -- are clearly a cry for help.

Those cries, and Bimble's emotional intensity and obvious neediness, were annoying to people. That's also understandable. Rather than blaming the people who hit the Suggest Ban button, though, I would question the politics of there being an SB button at all. In the parallel world ILX where there is no SB button, people don't have a quick and easy "zap" option. They engage, negotiate, argue, socialise. It seems to me that that contact is what Bimble craved above all.

You know, the politics which opposes itself to Social Darwinism is not a politics in which we pretend weakness and need do not exist. Socialism and Social Darwinism have in common that they agree that weakness and strength and other differences are real. Where they disagree is what they do next: go with the flow, or try to reverse the existing power imbalances.

[bongo-kong.livejournal.com]

I don't think you'll find more, ahem, extraordinary people than in the Big Brother house. It's probably one of the few shows on tv that encourages eccentrics, albeit a sub-set that want to be on the telly. The ones that dont want to be on tv tend not to apply to reality tv shows.

Yes, it must be disheartening to sign up to a popularity contest then find out you're not that popular. It would only be cruel if you were forced to do it against your will.

Are you really saying that TV commisioning should be a completely inclusive process? That audience enjoyment play no part in scheduling? What about people that are dull or stupid or fixate on loony conspiracy theories? Should they get equal air-time?

At one time an Oxbridge degree and a master of RP were the necesary qualifications to be on tv. Nowadays you just need people to enjoy watching your output.

Yes, I'd rather that C4 put on something a bit more considered but that costs quite a lot of money so this is what we get instead. When nobody watches any more we'll get another show that we like better. This is surely better than a free-for-all on the airwaves or a return to a patrician elite that decides what we watch.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That audience enjoyment play no part in scheduling?

Audience enjoyment -- as the history of asylums-as-circuses, executions-as-theatre, cock-fighting and bull-bating, or a reading of "Lord of the Flies", reveals -- is pretty cheaply and grimly achieved, though.

This is surely better than a free-for-all on the airwaves or a return to a patrician elite that decides what we watch.

I actually think reality TV is exactly what a patrician elite has decided you will watch.

[(Anonymous)]

To be romanticised is beneficial to a people, a community, a nation.

Well, this is one of your key themes, isn't it? And obviously personally important to you as a non-Japanese-speaking nippophile. But I just don't think it stands up. Exotification is a closed circle of justification. It (usually) involves the powerful defining the non-powerful, then telling the non-powerful that the definition is positive. Let's not forget that Uncle Tom in the original novel was supposed to be a positive stereotype of a black man. Just because you think some kind of simplifying characterisation is good and positive doesn't make it so. The world is full of fucked-up rationales of this type. Racists aren't all deliberately malicious, more often than not they think they're doing the right thing. Removing Aboriginal kids from their parents in Australia was thought to be a good thing socially for the kids at the time, but of course it was fucked up.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It is a key theme of mine, yes. Exoticisation is an invitation to admire the other and learn more. "Alluring" and "verminous" -- even if they were to be based on exactly the same stereotypes -- are clearly positions leading to different outcomes in terms of actions. They can't be lumped together.

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm. There's an irony to the fact that you seem to be screening anonymous comments, presumably with the intention of "banning" the ones you don't like!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Screening is on because one extremely aggressive comment came in just as I was heading out the door and I didn't want the thread to be a pit of poison when I got back.

Non-malicious anon comments will make it through no problem.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

About the "SB Button"...

It seems to me that whether there should be a mechanism by which commenters are rooted out on a message board, should depend on the extent to which the community has a problem with trolls/spam/etc.

In the case of a community that has a lot of trolls, I actually think it's perhaps beneficial to give the power of a ban to the users, rather than having that power centralized in one or a few leaders.

If there aren't very many trolls, it may not be worth it to have such a function.

Such a function should be used in response to abuses, however that might be defined by the general community, not as retribution for simply having a different opinion. I think communities generally develop informal ideas of what range of discussion/conversation they consider "valid," such that it becomes obvious when an outlier is openly flouting those conventions in a way meant to disrupt or harrass the community, or otherwise engage in non-constructive expression. Who defines the boundaries? The community, hopefully. And hopefully those boundaries aren't narrow or shortsighted or bigoted or whatever else, but that they are instead reasonable and somewhat generous. In any case, I think one who falls outside of these formal or informal community guidelines could be designated a "troll" by that specific community.

In a perfect world, I'd say that we should accept all ideas. Those ideas that are patently stupid would just be filtered out by the obviousness of their stupidity, and hence would have no effect. But the world isn't perfect, and the internet is rife with examples of stupid ideas bogging down otherwise productive debate/discussion. Nobody has an absolute right to say whatever they want on a message board owned and administrated privately. Can a community hurt itself by excluding some views hastily and without proper judgment? Sure. But I'd never argue that it's always a bad thing to exclude ideas. It depends on the community, and what the excluded ideas are.

It strikes me as a bit misguided to use an outlying, extreme example to make the entire case against ILX's "SB button." Just because a person commits suicide doesn't mean he didn't deserve to be banned from a message board before said suicide occurred. What was he saying? Was he being offensive? Was he being obnoxious? Was he being disruptive in an unconstructive way? Hindsight is a bitch, because we're always incline to ask ourselves "Did something we did/said make him do that?" or "What if we hadn't done X?" The bottom line is that it happened. Only if we believe that the "SB button" itself makes people suicidal can we argue that the effects of the "SB button" were known, and therefore that this person's suicide could have been prevented. It's a shitty situation, but I don't blame the button.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What was he saying? Was he being offensive? Was he being obnoxious?

As far as I can see, he was zapped because he posted too many YouTube videos -- and in particular three iterations of Culture Club's War Song. He also talked in an overwrought, manic way about his sex life. But Bimble was always a very, very positive person, as far as I can see. There was a sort of Sally Bowles quality to him. He didn't attack other posters. He just got rather manic and over-posted when drunk or lonely. These were not ban-worthy offences.

But, you know, it's their board. And it's a "place" (I should say an "ethos") I left. I have no doubt at all that, had I stuck around, I would have been banned too. When I see posters I like -- Tuomas, for instance, who was banned after defending some Flash Mobbers -- being chastised by the hivemind then crawling back gratefully, it makes me think of films starring Malcolm McDowell in which he's thrashed by the prefects and has to say "thank you", or chemically deviolenced then spoonfed by a minister. I may have been somewhat masochistic to join that BB in the first place (they had, after all, slagged off my appearance in a Cool or Fool feature), but I wasn't masochistic enough to stick around for that sort of treatment.

[(Anonymous)]

Alright then, so how far do you take this? I mean, the Suggest Ban button only suggests that someone is banned, and I assume it alerts moderators to watch the user, and if many suggestions pile up, then he will be banned.

You seem to question the right of a group to exclude deviant individuals, which sounds like a beautiful ideal, but how do you deal with disturbed characters who are a real, physical danger to society? And though this idea primarily suggests murderers, etc. one could also imagine a scenario in which a lunatic with a seemingly appealing idea rises to power very quickly.

Before long, you end up in an argument that's for/against Socialism.

So, Momus, how do we fix Socialism?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The SB system says that when someone gets 50 suggest bans, they get a one-month ban from the board. It became a beauty contest on ILX, and people were getting bans for trivial, non-disruptive things, or simply because they weren't popular enough. Check this thread (http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=40&threadid=69667), in which perfectly reasonable liberal views from Tuomas get him banned amidst cries of "Trollmas" and flashing gifs:

[(Anonymous)]

My previous post didn't seem to appear on the page, or is it on another page?

I also have something to say about this idea that romanticising a culture is a good thing for that culture. It might be true in that it encourages people to learn more about said culture. However, this is only different from discrimination when said culture has achieved an equal economic/cultural power.

I'm a Mexican, and I've had quite a bit of experience with people from developed countries. However interested in romanticising my country, they are always condescending and understand that they are coming from a more advanced culture, which is (mainly) true. As someone above said, I don't think difference can be properly celebrated without first achieving equality. Moreover, views that your kind of stereotyping encourage tourism, etc. are rather shortsighted and, I think, hinder progress rather than advance it.

After all, "People who say no one's better than anyone think that they're better for saying it."

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Best way to counter my arguments: quote my own lyrics back at me!

; - )

[(Anonymous)]

Apart from the insensitivity of referring to a person who you did not know at all (correct me if I am wrong here) who has very recently committed suicide as "weak", there are some egregious oversimplifications in this article.

Your argument that somehow you can determine a cause (or even a potential cause) for suicide is a gross example of intellectual laziness. In the hands of someone of a different soapbox blame seeking mentality, any of the other factors listed could be used as a blunt argumentation tool. In the hands of a conservative critic, the same speculative meandering could be used to argue against gender reassignment surgery, or the dangers of post-punk music and its "depressing" or "self-destructive" leanings. The problem is that this sort of reductive self-referential approach takes a complicated situation like the decision to end ones life and reduces it to a dumbed down causal examination.

Obviously there are myriad reasons to find this article galling, not the least of which is the opportunism you display in deciding to fit a tragic real life situation you know next to nothing about into a half-considered polemic in order to give your musings some sort of gravitas. But stepping away from the ethical aspects, the transparency of how poorly constructed your logic is should be shameful to someone that presumes to be a voice of high-level cultural criticism.

jj

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that you should show up here, JJ, just as I was quoting your reasons (upthread) for considering Tuomas, on the Flash Mobbing thread, a "troll" simply because you disagreed with his argument that flash mobs were motivated by altruism. I think we're going to have to put this down to personal and political differences. But I really hope the "ban, ban, ban" faction at ILX now does a little soul-searching, whatever the reasons for Bimble's death were.

[(Anonymous)]

"I can't help but see a parallel here, in which your desire to substantiate your points trumps concerns of accuracy."

Welcome to Click Opera. And more floundering around with binaries--ultimately settling for some mealy-mouthed quasi-post-structrualist position (i.e. exotification leads to tourism, that is, mostly white people walking around looking at "colored" people and buying souvenirs--then sneering at their "different" ways).

As for Said's not taking into account "western" art history studies of the "orient": it actually makes his point, since much of that "study" has been making over-generalizations about such art.

[(Anonymous)]

"I can't help but see a parallel here, in which your desire to substantiate your points trumps concerns of accuracy."

Welcome to Click Opera. And more floundering around with binaries--ultimately settling for some mealy-mouthed quasi-post-structrualist position (i.e. exotification leads to tourism, that is, mostly white people walking around looking at "colored" people and buying souvenirs--then sneering at their "different" ways).

As for Said's not taking into account "western" art history studies of the "orient": it actually makes his point, since much of that "study" has been making over-generalizations about such art.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Exoticising a culture shouldn't be a problem as long as you're not advertising Uncle Ben's sweet and sour sauce by getting a bunch of chinese actors to dress up in "mandarin jackets" to do kung fu stunts. But then, crude stereotypes only reflect badly on the people presenting them not the culture being depicted. These advertisers aren't restricted to artistic platitudes because Chinese culture is shallow and lacking, they're restricted because they're artless dicks.

The well known mangaka Kaoru Mori is a self-professed Anglophile. I've read her mangas and I've never been offended by her exoticising of England. I don't see why exoticising should be offensive if it stems from someone seeing beauty in another culture.

I would generally argue that unless you want to look like a complete pleb, your exoticising should be well-informed and have a bit of complexity about it.

I know I sound like a snob in this comment, and I don't care. I don't think I can stomach another commercial trying to sell me stir-in noodles with a bunch of twats doing tai chi in the background. They're incessant here.

[(Anonymous)]

In the song "Gold Digger", why does Kanye West say "We want hen fap?".

[(Anonymous)]

A similair thing happened to a poster called Masonic boom and she was threatening suicide too, it's an evil thing and this dude wrote a spot on post whoever he is

[(Anonymous)]

die in a fire momus

[imomus.livejournal.com]

We're thinking of adding that functionality to Click Opera in a handy button.

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, you disgust me. Really. That someone who professes to be so intelligent can't see how offensive and appalling his behaviour has been here is sickening.

As I said above -- a point you seem to be ignoring in the pursuit of some kind of twisted, smug point-scoring -- someone has died here. God knows, there aren't many times when your facile brand of narcissistic faux-intellectualism has any merit, but the immediate aftermath of the death of a much-loved and much-missed friend and ILX regular is categorically not one of them.

If there is discussion to be had among ILX users, it should be done among ILX users -- not sparked by the insensitive, ignorant comments of an observer. (And, for what it's worth, I don't believe there is such a discussion to be had; the Suggest Ban feature has been debated at epic length on many ILX threads and I do not believe that what happened here changes that one iota, largely because Bimble's temporary banning *was not a direct result* of that feature. But that's a point you refuse to accept, because hey: why let the facts get in the way of your posturing?)

That you can't seem to appreciate how objectionable your behaviour is here ... you know, it could almost make me worry about you. Have you cauterised your emotions somehow? Are you so completely lacking in empathetic feeling that it doesn't occur to you that what you're doing here is nothing more than voyeurism disguised as some kind of self-aggrandising morality tale?

When I was a teenager, I had nothing but admiration for you. Today I feel nothing but revulsion -- tinged, I have to admit, with a strange kind of pity.

Simon

[imomus.livejournal.com]

God knows, there aren't many times when your facile brand of narcissistic faux-intellectualism has any merit, but the immediate aftermath of the death of a much-loved and much-missed friend and ILX regular is categorically not one of them.

It's my reaction to Bimble's death, take it or leave it. I'm not one for laying flowers on graves. I'd rather suggest structural ways you might prevent making people feel desperate and isolated enough to take their own lives in future. I have done that by suggesting you guys ban Suggest Ban. That's it. Nothing "faux-intellectual" about it. It's very, very practical.

Bimble's temporary banning *was not a direct result* of that feature

Do you mean because he achieved his 51 SB points on two separate account IDs? If so, that's hair-splitting and obfuscation. It's clear what happened with the ban from the so, bimble (http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=71&threadid=73499) thread. I even hate the tone of that thread title. It exactly sums up the sneery judges tone I was writing about last week, and its tone is very markedly different from the tone of the RIP thread. I just wish some of the good vibes on the RIP thread could have been felt while he was still alive. I'm completely against "appropriate tones at the appropriate times" and completely for people just being a bit more humane at all times. Yes, Simon, I mean you too, with your withering definition of "pity".

[(Anonymous)]

for someone as ignorant and careless as this blog post makes you seem, i doubt that you actually have any idea of the facts of how & why bimble was banned. he was temporarily banned for three days from the gay thread because he rarely posted topically in the thread, and when he was asked to post topically, and to keep his music posts confined to the board called i love music, he would agree, but eventually would slip back into incessantly posting about music in the thread. this was of course his nature, but if you read the thread to read about the lives of the gay posters, it became tedious and annoying and ultimately ground the thread to a halt, as his posts broke up any sort of discussion that did not pertain to his posts.

after many many weeks and months of asking him to stay on topic— and having to deal with his incorrect personal attacks on me— i made a thread asking him to be temp banned from the gay thread, in the hopes that he would come back in a few weeks and stick to posting in a topical fashion. i sincerely hoped that he would, as his posts about his life as a transgender were genuinely educational. on the night that he was banned from the gay thread, he made another thread— drunkenly, i presume— protesting this ban. when people tried to reason with him, they were met with a stone wall, as he only saw his banning as some evil plot to ban bimble, because i did not share his taste in music (or something). when that thread was locked, he started another, and eventually he accumulated enough suggest bans to be banned for a month. he was not banned for being a dissenter, or however you are insanely attempting to portray this. he was banned for spamming and unwittingly trolling, and whether he saw it that way or not, that's what it was, and ilx has a very long history of banning people along those guidelines.

bimble's ultimate flaw wrt ilx (besides his drinking, which led to lots of his problems on the board) was his inability to see any fault in himself and his unwillingness to listen to the opinion of other posters, many of whom were his friends. this is what eventually led to his banning, and it was perfectly reasonable.

as this sentence in your post— "I think the 'let's suggest-ban suggest-banning' conversation is one that particular online community needs to have at some point over the coming weeks"— outlines, you have little to no idea of what happens on ilx daily, and thus i am not surprised that you have absolutely no idea of the circumstances regarding bimble's ban. but why let that get in the way of you using it as a prop, right?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Nobody could read every single thread on ILX. But I have read threads designed to raise these very issues. On the Changes to ILX thread, Keith, who programmed the Suggest Ban mechanism, says it's the best thing he's ever done and discourages people from debating the issue. He doesn't sound very budge-able on the topic, but of course that was before the Bimble tragedy. To maintain that attitude after Bimble would be stubborn indeed.

I also think the word "troll" should be avoided. It's a bit like the word "terrorist". As soon as you reach for the T-word, you can start dehumanising a person, and there's really no end to the indignities you can subject them to, apparently with a clear conscience.

Bannerdashery

[(Anonymous)]

—I'm suggest banning your "em dashes." Here—have some of mine! I'm happy to share.

[ohshitman.livejournal.com]

Related to the Sree Dasari incident, but unrelated to the suggest-ban issue: I wondered if you'd heard about reality-show-contestant-turned-murderer Ryan Alexander Jenkins and what your thoughts were.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tv_reality_background_checks

It seems to me that in this instance its not so much the politics of the format of the show that contributed to Jenkins' actions, but rather its tendency toward sensationalism that led to the producers of the show choosing Jenkins. Again, the article focuses on background checks and mental health screenings - yet unbalanced, unhealthy, unpredictable individuals are exactly what the producers are looking for, isn't it?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, I saw that, and considered adding a link to this thread; glad you did, and I think you're right about the producers.