A short statement regarding Ashley Williams’ abusers

It seems there is some drama in the Rust community regarding Ashley Williams’ recent appointment to the Rust Community Team.

Did Ashley violate the Node.js Code of Conduct, and is there an active censorship effort underway by the Rust Core Team to silence any dissenting voices and appoint Ashley as evil demon goddess overlord for life? It’s a Rust Conspiracy! The accusers are applauding those who have a “skeptical” view about this situation: The sheeple are woke!.

I see things a bit differently. The people cheering on abusers and perpetuating a cycle of abuse.

“Maybe if we follow her around the Internet endlessly harassing her, it will prove our point how that one thing she tweeted one time could possibly be in violation of a Code of Conduct.” There’s a word for people like that: Gamergaters. In my book, following someone around the Internet engaging in a harassment campaign forfeits your right to invoke a Code of Conduct.

This swarm of locusts of this nature descended upon a Reddit thread, and a Rust internals thread, and were all over my Twitter… for days! What is the right thing to do? Not delete their comments? Here’s an alternative hypothesis for you: this is Gamergate-esque abuse against a woman, and they’re trying to infect the Rust community with it.

I am sure there will be many rando dudebros in the comments defending other rando dudebros. Cue the “Gosh, I’ve never opined on a thread about Rust in my life, but I read your response and I don’t think you gave Ashley’s harassers a fair shake. I certainly don’t see any evidence of an ongoing targeted harassment campaign. How dare you call them a swarm of locusts. I understand there’s a woman being harassed here, but what you may not have considered is that she deserves it. You may not realize, but the Internet appointed me to make sure she never lives that tweet down. Gosh, how dare you class me as a repeat offender, I was only engaging in casual harassment. This is censorship, and it violates my First Amendment right to be an asshole!”

This is atrocious behavior, and these comments deserve to be deleted. The people making them need to go take a long hard look in the mirror and think about, if in fact, they are the baddies.

To those of you who are showing up to Rust threads just to complain about Ashley: GET OUT.