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

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

#201

Post by Someone1234 » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

ripdog wrote: post #118

toothbrush wrote: post #33

"The woman who took the photograph, Adria Richards, soon felt the wrath of the crowd herself. The man responsible for the dongle joke had posted about losing his job on Hacker News, an online forum popular with developers. This led to a backlash from the other end of the political spectrum. So-called men’s rights activists and anonymous trolls bombarded Richards with death threats on Twitter and Facebook." Wow, this…

A taste of her own medicine. It shouldn't have happened, but at least she only got what she gave.

She tried, very intentionally, to use the social media "machine" to punish what she deemed deviant behaviour, the fact that that same machine turned on her is both unsurprising if you're paying attention, but also a little deserved.

While the original joke was childish, I cannot think of one adult working in any industry who's never said something in a similar vein (or pointing out someone else's phasing might have a double meaning, and so on). It really has nothing to do with gender politics, she was just on a quest and picked up any small examples she could find.

Nobody should have been fired. That's on the employers. However if anyone was going to be fired she deserved it the most, simply because she started this ball rolling on purpose, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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

#202

Post by infinite8s » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

I believe people are fundamentally unable to comprehend the impact of having anything they do or say available to anybody in the world to witness and critique (probably a reflection of Dunbar's number - as social primates, we've been limited to small social non-anonymous circles for the majority of our evolution).

The issue is that up until the development of the internet (and particularly the social internet), most people weren't subject to this degree of anonynous public exposure. Before twitter and facebook, news outlets were the only exposure, and because of scalability issues, they typically only targeted 'noteworthy' individuals to catch them off guard. So those people learned to hide behind PR individuals, and carefully guard their words and actions when in the public eye.

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

#203

Post by venomsnake » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

mynameisvlad wrote: post #50

lbarrow wrote: post #21

How was her life ruined? She lost her job, then got a new one. Her life seems fine.

Did you even read the article? - She was jobless for a period of time, and there's a lot of stress that comes with that. - Her family seemed to be set on disowning her for tarnishing their name. - She can't date without someone Googling her and most likely being turned off by what they find.

Turned off by what? A tweet ... unless for couple of million participants in the oppression olympics, for the sane people having said or done something offensive is not a big deal.

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

#204

Post by notahacker » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

Kenji wrote: post #153

matthewmacleod wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it difficult to believe you actually think that – it's not really a self-consistent viewpoint, given that what you describe as 'social justice bullying' is absolutely free speech.

What is a hinderance to freedom of speech is not the bullying itself, but the mindset behind it. If you can't make a foolish joke without having your entire life ruined and getting fired, then yes that is the very definition of lack of freedom of speech. Getting fired for a joke, come on? Action and reaction are completely disproportionate. But worry not, I will absorb the downvotes like a sponge for I know that my c…

As over the top as the internet lynch mob might have been, I don't think a private company opting to fire a PR director for badly misjudging a public communication falls into the same category as making blasphemy a capital crime.

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

#205

Post by TheHippo » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

interknot wrote: post #9

For whatever reason, the following snippet prompted me to see who the author was: Amid the hundreds of congratulatory messages I received, one stuck out: “Were you a bully at school?” As it turns out, the author is Jon Ronson. He's well worth checking out. I've particularly enjoyed The Men Who Stare at Goats (the book), The Secret Rulers of the World , and The Psychopath Test .

According to his wikipedia article he also is releasing a book called "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" on March 2015.

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

#206

Post by cheald » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #161

cheald wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 beca…

If you take that tweet in isolation and read it as a comparison of female developers to unicorns, then sure, I can see how you arrive at that conclusion. I think it's a faulty conclusion, and I think that its faultiness is further illustrated by his response to the whole drama, in which he explicitly clarified his stance of female developers. My reading of it is based on what I know of him, which does not consist solely of a Valleywag article and four tweets.

You're exemplifying the worst of the Twitter lynchmob problem here; you took a tweet, extrapolated it into a full sum of a person, and then don't bother to establish any further context and have decided that the author is a racist, sexist psychopath based on a context-free reading of a one-sentence statement. That's great for feeling superior to people, but it's pretty awful for useful dialog.

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

#207

Post by Mithaldu » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:03 PM UTC

As a german i have to ask: Why do people get fired over things like this? Are american worker employee protection laws so weak that there is no recourse whatsoever for them?

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

#208

Post by latestrevision » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

spain wrote: post #166

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."

It looks like the title was originally the former; probably a late change by a copyeditor.

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

#209

Post by rihegher » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

French guy here. This article only speak about employees in american company getting fired about some data shared on the web. But I would be curious to know what happened to people who faced the same situation working in continental european companies. It would be surprising if people would lost their jobs so easily. Either because I think it's culturally better accepted for private people (I mean not public figures) to have unappropriate expressions publicly, plus the law don't allow companies (at least in France) to fire someone on a basis of only one unappropriate expression not even targeting another employee or customer of this company.

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

#210

Post by 6stringmerc » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

Instead, she said, she just felt personally humiliated.

Well, if I'm wearing a Nike hat, Nike t-shirt, Nike running pants, Nike shoes, and a Nike employee badge and make a joke in poor taste at a bar / mall / airport / etc, and the crowd turns to look at me with contempt for the humor in poor taste, it might reflect bad on Nike. The personal humiliation part is being called out in public on making a bad joke. She wasn't just personally humiliated, she was professionally humiliated. Job in PR = maybe know about PR...at least the "Do's and Don'ts" for survival.

It happens, which is why I suppose my Dad taught me early on that if I make a joke at the expense of somebody who is bigger, stronger, and angrier at the world than me, they might punch me out. Can happen in a bar, a grocery store, a parking lot, a motel lobby...it's life. That seems to apply to the internet as well, albeit with some caveats...never let your private thoughts wave around a company banner...