Don’t Apologize: If the mob comes for you, stand up for yourself

If the mob comes after you, its time to pick up a weapon and slaughter them.

That’s what weapons are for.

Winston Marshall had to leave Mumford and Sons to be able to stand up for himself. For anyone willing to throw away a life's worth of investment into their career in order to speak their mind, that's a good piece of advice. For everyone else, apologize.

Or better yet, avoid getting into hot water. I have found HN to be a great barometer for what's "acceptable" and what isn't. Recently, I learned a valuable lesson - I shared an accurate statement about FB's targeting precision, which I am pretty sure nobody would have objected to. But as soon as I tied it to their financial results, it instantly offended one person and others felt they had to jump in as well.

Lesson learned: the fact that Facebook is printing money is such a thorn in the eye for many people that the minute it's brought up in an unrelated context, it will 1) derail the conversation, 2) get people to disagree with what would have otherwise been a straight forward argument, and 3) get people to vilify you.

So now that we know about this thorn, we can not just avoid it in future conversations, but we can also leverage it to our benefit. For instance, all you have to say is: "Man, I wish we could somehow get Facebook banned. Here's how effective their targeting is..." - and voila, everyone is agreeing with you!

Long story short - don't piss against the wind.

I’m not sure what to make of the back and forth here. Colorism overlooked by older generations, and someone looking back on not supporting unionization and having a value shift, juxtaposed with Maoist shaming to support someone who wrote a book saying antifa (a concept, not a group) is destroying democracy and a musician supporting that person stepping back from the spotlight seems a bit jarring. At first this seems like libertarian pandering, but my most cynical inner voice is saying the writer is a troll trying to get people who hold farther right ideals to get themselves canceled. And I guess the trickle down effect from that milkshake that hit the writer in the face is going to make me buy the book, so maybe that’s the point.

Apologies are pointless. Some dude will say "He's apologizing because he got caught not because he's sorry" and you can't prove otherwise because that's literally unfalsifiable. Then the mob will just jump on that bit. Don't waste your time.