Awkward internet ettiquite problems

[conuly]

Here I was, about to upvote a funny comment in response to something totally innocuous when I glanced at the username. Blondeangel88.

Huh. Was I about to... upvote a comment by a NeoNazi? Or was this somebody who simply has blond hair, likes to be thought of as a nice/sweet/innocent person, and was born in 1988? There was no racist or fascist undertone to this particular comment... but did I really want to dredge into their comment history to find out for sure?

I didn't upvote her. I mean, the comment wasn't that funny, so it was all a non-event... but I still feel weird and awkward about it. I really wish I didn't know that NeoNazis have a thing about numerical symbolism where 88 = "Hi, I'm a Nazi!". Then I could be blissfully ignorant and not overthink this sort of thing.

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Comments

[nodrog]

Not just advertising, either.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all




        WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December
        2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of
        “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including
        “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

        What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart
        had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist
        techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them
        false, from American prisoners.

        The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way
        Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as
        torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the
        base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency…

--------------


But y’ know, this kind of thing is always a gray area.  Consider:  The US Armed Forces (and presumably NATO generally) have very good, detailed studies on the effects of extreme cold temperatures on the human body.  They’ve used this information to develop equipment and procedures that have saved toes, fingers, lives!  The value:  Proven.  The source:  Nazi experiments on Jews and POWS.  Oops.

Horrible! But - good science.  They ran controlled, repeated experiments, took careful notes, compiled exhaustive data.  Useful data.  Life-saving data.  Should it be discarded, just because we don’t like how it was obtained?  The sin be on their heads.

Some would argue the same situation here.  Who cares who developed these techniques; what works is good, right?  The immediate problem is, does it work?  And has it, ever?  The TSA’s practice of treating American citizens as criminals hasn’t caught a single terrorist in fifteen years, and they routinely miss test ‘threats’ they’re supposed to catch.  If Red Commie Torture™ doesn’t work either, what does that say about the “good guys” now using it?

[dewline]

That they're giving up being good guys?