| It all turns on whether he knew, or should have known, the affects of his actions, accepting Poet's attribution of her anxieties to him. If it were deliberate from the beginning, and an attempt to either do her harm or "muscle" her into yielding, then the people most inclined to beat upon CH are justified. But what if he never had reason to anticipate such a bad reaction? After all, he is not a shrink, and he did not consider his activities to be like Vendit's. Well, it is still the case that as he went along, and she reacted badly, he should have gotten an inkling that he was tapping into some sort of alarm, and thus gotten the clue that he was exacerbating a propensity towards high- level anxiety. That seems to be where we are. It is insufficient to talk about treating the world of SI as a "playground" when someone is getting freaky right before your eyes, and you have information which should make it clear to you that she is vulnerable. It should be taken into account that CH did go through quiet periods, and may have thought that that established that he was not cyber- stalking her, and that he lives on the other side of the country from Poet, and may have thought that would protect against real fear that he might become a literal stalker. So I would say that he has not acknowledged enough culpability, when he shouldn't have remained clueless, but that there are valid reasons for him to have not appreciated fully the effects of his actions. Thus, I think that Chris should be more forthcoming in admitting that he became rancorous and was, to a degree, simply mean to Poet, and that others should acknowledge that he was probably not fully aware of the consequences of his actions....... |
