How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

Post by Kalium » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:48 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…

Post by gearoidoc » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

latestrevision wrote: post #270

gearoidoc wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace "offend the wrong person" with "do something really f*cking stupid" - which is what she did - and the outcome seems fair. No one deserves to be bullied or harassed but consequences need to exist to actions.

It appears that a big part of this discussion is about how we as a group are not sure if it really is a situation in which she "[did] something really f cking stupid", though. Clearly, you do interpret her statement to be an offensive, racist remark, but by her own admission, she instead was commenting on how "[l]iving in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the third world. I was…

Post by coldpie » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #269

coldpie wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against him and he was forced to quit. Hahahahahahaha no. Eich paid money to political campaigns to ensure that some of his own employees and fellow citizens would not have basic human rights. Then, he refused to apologize for it and dodged the question when asked if he would do it again. That's not "expressing an opinion," that's nearly s…

> Then, he refused to apologize for it and dodged the question when asked if he would do it again. That's not "expressing an opinion," that's nearly sociopathic. Forcing someone to apologize for something that is not universally considered to be wrong is a good example of bullying. As is calling publicly his behaviour "sociopathic". > He was clearly working against his employees' best interest. This is hardly conside…

Post by Kalium » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:51 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #201

ripdog wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by j2kun » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:51 PM UTC

vertex-four wrote: post #218

j2kun wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's still niche media manipulating the voice and attention of the masses, as illustrated by the article. There is so much bigotry and racism that goes unnoticed in the depths of comment boards and bad blogs. Why aren't the masses also voicing about any of this? Because they aren't speaking briefly enough to be easily criticizable.

> There is so much bigotry and racism that goes unnoticed in the depths of comment boards and bad blogs. Why aren't the masses also voicing about any of this? They do. Constantly. It's just that most of the time, they're talking about or rather than individual people.