How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life • Hacker News Board

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#161

Post by ForHackernews » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #115

ForHackernews wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Pax Dickinson wasn't one stupid tweet, it was a pattern of awful shit over years. At some point, it's not a careless lapse anymore, you're just a d-bag. A few examples: "In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of niggers. It's his own fault for dressing like a whore though." "aw, you can't feed your family on minimum wage? well who told you to start a fucking family when your skills are…

The first tweet, which seems to be the one that people reacted most strongly to, is pretty clearly a lampooning of Mel Gibson. I suspect most people missed that, though. It's distasteful, but it's not exactly Dickinson himself expressing racist, victim-blaming sentiments; it's a mockery of them. The second is a pretty standard libertarian talking-point (which is more "personal responsibility rah rah rah" than "yay, s…

> the fourth I suspect you're misinterpreting as "Tech managers don't want to hire women", when I think it's more "Tech managers don't care about the gender of their developers"

You're giving that the most contorted, charitable reading possible. In your reading, the reference to a "unicorn" is nonsensical. I would argue the accurate reading is: "Tech managers don't spend time worrying about hiring talented women because [like unicorns] they are mythical and don't exist."

Now, the further implications behind that statement might be:

a) Talented female developers are rare--we need to make serious efforts to improve the educational pipeline and get more young girls interested in programming.

b) Talented female developers are rare, but it's not the tech industry's job to worry or care about that.

c) Talented female developers aren't rare, but [usually male] hiring managers are too blinded by sexism to recognize them.

> regardless of the reality of his actions.

That's the thing. We don't know the reality of his actions. Based only on his tweets (I don't know him personally), he certainly sounds like he might be the kind of guy who would discriminate in his hiring. He might not even do it consciously, he'd just think "Well, I only hire the best" and in his mind, "the best" does not include women.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#162

Post by chris_wot » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

taylorwc wrote: post #147

chris_wot wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think she knows that now. I guess you aren't the sort of person to ever make a bad judgement call in public. Like not even a single occasion.

I sure as hell have. Many times. And every time, no matter how much I hated it, I had to face the music and deal with the mess I had created, regardless of whether it was my original intent.

I was probably a tad harsh there. Sorry about that. I guess it's a matter of degree - she wrote something she thought was ironic which came across badly, but instead of getting a chance to face up to the music and explain her side, the entire Internet went insane and she lost her job.

It seems a little much.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#163

Post by justincormack » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:24 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #126

On a tangental meta point: this is a good, solid piece of reportage [1] which is increasingly uncommon. The author talked to a number of people over a long period of time and uncovered subtleties that typically are ignored these days. A particularly nice touch was to use of a relatively recent historical reference from the mid 18th century. Mob justice and public shaming go back millennia and it would have been easy…

Apparently he is about to publish a book about public shaming, so this article was pulled out of a broader set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Ronson

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#164

Post by goblin89 » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:25 PM UTC

“This American penchant for absolution via irony is foreign to them.”

(Late D. F. Wallace, Infinite Jest)

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#165

Post by teraflop » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:26 PM UTC

jim_greco wrote: post #105

1) It's an offensive tweet. Whether you intend something to be offensive or not doesn't make it any less offensive. 2) It's very easy to pass off casual racism as a joke or a misunderstanding of the medium after it blows up in your face.

Even if we were to take the offensiveness of the tweet as a given, the reaction seems insanely disproportionate.

It's great to push back against casual racism, but I don't think anything is gained by turning it into a lottery where any given tweet has a one-in-a-million chance of provoking a national-scale, life-destroying burst of outrage, and the rest are ignored.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#166

Post by spain » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:26 PM UTC

Interesting article, though I wonder why the title here on Hacker News is "How One Stupid Tweet Ruined Justine Sacco's Life" whereas the title on the actual article is "How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life."

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#167

Post by golemotron » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #158

golemotron wrote: post #137

I think that public shaming can be laid directly at the feet of Social Justice. It would be great if people who want to make things better for minorities chose a different tactic - private communication rather than public ostracism.

SJW here. Private communication works well if the problem is specific people behaving badly in private, and public ostracism is, in fact, inappropriate. But usually the goal is to establish a changed social norm, and to combat an existing one, which needs to be done in public; ostracizing an individual is not the goal (and, to be clear, isn't a good thing!). Someone brought up the example of Ben Noordhuis and node.js…

Essentially, your argument is that the ends justify the means, right? Or, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? The issue is that we now know that things blow up in social media so we should adjust our behavior to be ethical.

The case of dongle-gate at PyCon is a good example to talk about. We should now understand that attempting local solutions outside of social media is far preferable. Individuals (on either side of an issue) should not be cannon fodder for social causes. Inviting/creating that sort of public ostracism is extremely irresponsible. I hope that we (collectively) are learning that lesson.

Maybe protecting individuals from social media attacks can be seen as a social justice cause? The most vulnerable minority is the minority of one.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#168

Post by potatolicious » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

ripdog wrote: post #109

potatolicious wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN isn't completely made up of MRA types, but if you've been noticing there are a lot of them here (along with your more typical "SJWs out to get us" types). HN is in general no longer held with the same regard it was a couple of years ago. Note the number of progressive, well-respected regulars who've left this place behind. There are other avenues to discuss tech and tech issues without ancaps, MRAs, and anti-SJW c…

If you're internet-dogpiling people or taking creepshots and getting people fired for jokes not even directed at you, I will happily internet-fight you for being an awful person. It's amazing how self-described "progressives" can come in here and happily defend this kind of behaviour. I hope you find a nice new website and never have your views challenged again.

I... what? Hold your horses, there's an awful lot of projection here.

I haven't come in here to defend internet lynch mobs - there's literally not a word in my post condoning it.

The bulk of tech progressive aren't the ones spoiling for a Twitter fight, they're the silent majority that's reading posts on HN, rolling their eyes, maybe sighing a little bit, and moving along with their lives. They're not orchestrating backlashes, brigades, or downvote chains, or any such devices. The most they're doing is emailing a link to some comment to their friends with a "sigh, HN again" quip - and I've received many such messages.

Heck, I know people who read HN - but only the links - knowing what a cesspool the comments are going to be. Heck, this is me on most days.

These are the people I'm talking about - the ones who've largely left this place behind because the tone of the community has shifted to one where any talk of race, gender, or even age (or in fact any talk of institutional problems in the industry) is automatically the work of professional victims (and a largely fictional narrative of a "social justice warrior") out to oppress techies. The general tenor of the community here now has a very distinctly reactionary twist, which has caused people to bail for greener pastures.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#169

Post by dsp1234 » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:28 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #26

Two things: Don't be too clever. People trip over themselves to feel offended. Two, you really don't have freedom of speech when you can get mugged by being obnoxious online. Not being malicious -just obnoxious. Yes all the tweets quoted in the article were obnoxious and leveraged stereotypes but I don't think people should be flogged for being like that. I remember all the obnoxious Polish jokes growing up. They wer…

you really don't have freedom of speech when you can get mugged by being obnoxious online.

Ken White has quite a few posts about freedom of speech vs the Internet. I think this quote is apropos to that type of comment.

Speech Is Not Censorship: Put another way, as we often say here, speech is not tyranny. Freedom of speech does not (and cannot, under any coherent legal or philosophical approach) involve freedom from criticism. Free speech does not mean "I have a right to say whatever I want without social consequences." [0]

[0] - https://www.popehat.com/2012/10/16/a-few-words-on-reddit-gaw...

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#170

Post by will_brown » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:29 PM UTC

In addition to the research of 18-19th century public shaming, it would have been insightful to look at Court Opinions from early Freedom of Speech cases.

Believe it or not this mob response is exactly what is meant to keep speech in check, of course the Court's verbiage is not mob rule, rather "the market place of ideas." The law only cares about the Government not prohibiting speech, otherwise the Court's generally expect the speech itself to be accepted/promoted or rejected in the market place of ideas.

One example of accounting for ones words which didn't rise to the level of Court Ordered public shaming, is Lincoln's ridiculing local politicians through anonymous letters. On one occasion when Lincoln's true identity was found out, Lincoln was challenged to a dual. Lincoln himself did not want to dual, and was lucky enough that on the day of the dual the dual was cancelled. From that point forward Lincoln never wrote a critical letter of anyone, and made it a point never to criticize anyone for anything. This is a story that is more fully described in How to Win Friends and Influence People.