[Ads-l] "cybercad" article - help?

[Nancy Friedman]

This is from "Net.Wars" by Wendy M. Grossman (1997, NYU Press):
https://opensquare.nyupress.org/open-square-reader/cloud-reader/epub_content/9781479812905/ops/xhtml/24_Notes.xhtml#rfn8_16

>>The second, written up at the time (the summer of 1993) in *Time*
 magazine,16
<https://opensquare.nyupress.org/open-square-reader/cloud-reader/epub_content/9781479812905/ops/xhtml/24_Notes.xhtml#rfn8_16>
concerned
a “cybercad” who ardently pursued several women on the WELL, apparently at
the same time, into face-to-face (or, as the WELL likes to call them, F2F)
encounters of the most intimate kind, then dumped them unceremoniously.
Retiring to the private women-only conference to miserate and discovering
they had company, the women decided to out him publicly as a warning to
others. The man in question eventually said he had thought the rules were
“different in cyberspace”17
<https://opensquare.nyupress.org/open-square-reader/cloud-reader/epub_content/9781479812905/ops/xhtml/24_Notes.xhtml#rfn8_17>
—a
clear case of someone’s being unable to find the boundary between
cyberspace and real life. He may have *met* these women in cyberspace, but
the rest of the relationships took place in the physical world. It seems to
me it ought to be pretty clear that the moment you pick up that telephone
to direct-dial, you’ve changed jurisdictions. Such a case doesn’t mean you
shouldn’t meet people online or give them your home phone number; but it
does mean you should exercise the same caution you would with someone you
met casually in a bar. The women on the WELL acknowledged this with great
disappointment and a sense of betrayal: they had believed online was
safe—the other side of expecting the rules to be different in cyberspace.<<

(The footnote is not helpful!)

And this is from a footnote in "City of Bits," published by MIT Press in
1995:

>>Then, in summer 1993, the news media reported widely on "The Case of the
Cybercad" on the WELL (a popular Bay Area online conferencing system).
After he teleromanced several women at the same time (without telling them
of the others), the women tumbled to his deceptive game and publicly
denounced him in a WELL conference space.<<



Nancy Friedman
Chief Wordworker
web: wordworking.com <http://www.wordworking.com>
substack https://fritinancy.substack.com/
Medium <https://medium.com/@wordworking>

tel 510 652-4159
cel 510 304-3953
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On Thu, Aug 29, 2024 at 9:49 AM Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:

> What are the references to this supposed article that you've found?
>
> There was indeed a widely reported incident in the summer of 1993
> involving a man who behaved caddishly on The WELL, but it's not clear to me
> that there was actually an article in Time _called_ "The Case of the
> Cybercad"; I've just seen this as a description of the incident.
>
> A main article about the incident was by Jonathan Schwartz on page A1 of
> the Washington Post of 11 July 1993; it was titled "On-Line Lothario's
> Antics Prompt Debate on Cyber-Age Ethics", and the last line, quoting
> "Lizabeth", one of the person's targets: "I don't think he's anything more
> than I've called him, which is a cyber-cad."
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
>
> On Thu, Aug 29, 2024 at 09:33:21AM -0700, Nancy Friedman wrote:
> > I'm researching the term "cybercad" (a man who takes advantage of women
> > online) and am looking for an article published in *Time *magazine in the
> > summer of 1993 headlined (possibly) "The Case of the Cybercad." I've
> found
> > references to it but can't find the article itself in *Time*'s archives
> or
> > the Internet Archive.
> >
> > Any ideas? Or any other antedating of "cybercad"?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Nancy Friedman
> > Chief Wordworker
> > web: wordworking.com <http://www.wordworking.com>
> > substack https://fritinancy.substack.com/
> > Medium <https://medium.com/@wordworking>
> >
> > tel 510 652-4159
> > cel 510 304-3953
> > bluesky/mastodon/instagram  Fritinancy
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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