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

[Nancy Friedman]

Bluesky to the rescue (@QPheever):
https://time.com/archive/6723534/heartbreak-in-cyberspace/

It's the right story, although it doesn't use the term "cybercad."

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
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On Thu, Aug 29, 2024 at 10:00 AM Nancy Friedman <wordworking at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
> bluesky/mastodon/instagram  Fritinancy
>
>
>
> 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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