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How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

nytimes.com

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

#351

Post by mynameisvlad »

venomsnake wrote: post #334
mynameisvlad wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If so many people were offended on the internet, is it that big of a stretch that people in real life might be turned off too? Just because you or I don't think it's a big deal does not mean that others might share the same opinion. I could easily see how someone might be turned off, especially before actually meeting the person.

Actually yes. Internet is not real and is the place where everyone overreacts. As long as she is above the hot/crazy line, she won't be turned down dating for such a petty "offence"

You do realize that a concept in HIMYM does not accurately apply in real life, right?

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

#352

Post by 21echoes »

gearoidoc wrote: post #283
latestrevision wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Her explanation does sound like it was crafted by a political PR group - which makes sense considering her profession - but I'm still happy to take her word for it. However, it's pretty easy to see how it could be considered a racist and bigoted tweet and I'd expect her to have realised this before sending it. EDIT: I totally agree that scuttling someones life on career off the back of one tweet is unfair - I 100% ag…

if the joke had come out of Louis CK's mouth, its intention would have been obvious.

given that, as she said in the article, "only an insane person would think that white people can't get AIDS", and the phrasing is obviously comic (dour opening, sudden & glib reversal, edgy punchline), I literally cannot read the tweet as bigoted or racist. Is the joke off-color? yes. Is it obviously self-deprecating, and aware of the fucked-up-ed-ness of white & first-world privilege? yes.

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

#353

Post by mcantelon »

coldpie wrote: post #255
paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

> 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…

>That kind of person does not belong in a position of power

That position of power, and Mozilla as a whole, would likely never have existed without Eich.

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

#354

Post by [deleted] »

coldpie wrote: post #255
paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#355

Post by [deleted] »

FD3SA wrote: post #142

Humans are sexually dimorphic primates. Primates form status hierarchies spontaneously. Status is zero sum. Higher status males mate with the majority of females. Low status males do not reproduce at all. We are descendants of 40% of males and 80% of females. As religious and legally enforced monogamy decline across all societies, we will see increasingly vicious status wars across all human societies. This writer is…

[deleted]

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

#356

Post by celticninja »

Nicholas_C wrote: post #232
celticninja wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

set up a twitter account and dont link it to your real name. sign up through a vpn, say waht you want and dont worry about it. unless what you say is actually illegal no one can really track you down without getting your login IP address from twitter. People get tracked down because they link it to their PSN/XBOX/FB account or reuse usernames between twitter and somewhere else they have left personal details. I have…

Do you not interact with friends on Twitter? Not having that takes a lot of the fun out of Twitter.

Nope. I interact with them on WhatsApp, text message, email, phone and in person. Twitter is like a crappy version of text messaging on a feature phone for chatting with friends.

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

#357

Post by ForHackernews »

cheald wrote: post #294
ForHackernews wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> illustrated by his response to the whole drama, in which he explicitly clarified his stance of female developers. I mean, obviously he's going to say that. I'm not sure how much stock you want to put into after-the-fact PR damage control. I think actions speak louder than words, and I'd reserve judgment before hearing from some of the women developers who he's hired (he has hired women, right?) about how he was to…

Well, there are both of these, in which the women who worked with him defend him (Julie Sommerville in particular): http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/11/ladyboss/ http://www.amyvernon.net/glimpse/why-ive-joined-glimpse-labs... If you didn't think that Dickinson was being a racist, misogynistic, victim-blaming rape apologist, why those tweets in particular? This whole discussion is happening in the implict context of the…

> why those tweets in particular?

Because those are the tweets that got him fired. Obviously!

Fine, let's say Pax Dickinson is a completely wonderful guy without a bigoted bone in his body.

He still showed monumentally bad judgment. I don't buy your premise that losing your C-level position (and being unable to find another one) after carrying on for years the way he did is such a "profound and disproportionate impact". He demonstrated repeatedly that he's not willing to comport himself in a professional way in public. I also dispute that he is "effectively unemployable". He can certainly go get a job at McDonalds, because he's demonstrated that he's unqualified to be a corporate executive.

Edit: After reading the links you sent, it seems like the women he's worked with don't have a problem with him. So maybe he's not an asshole, he just plays one on twitter.

Still, you've really shot your own argument in the foot here:

> Shevinsky told me just the other day that she was still a bit uncertain about Dickinson after returning to Glimpse. “I was hoping he wouldn’t blow his second chance, because a third chance would be a challenge.” Now he’s co-founder of a company with a strong female CEO and a strong female advisor

Tell me again about how he's "effectively unemployable" and has disproportionately had his career destroyed forever?

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

#358

Post by latestrevision »

coldpie wrote: post #327
ll123 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The young offspring of a human

At what point does a set of reproducing cells become an "offspring"? It's a hard question to answer and there's no bright line. I understand the opposition's argument, and I don't feel nearly as much animosity towards them. There is no legitimate argument against gay marriage.

I'm gay (& partnered, fwiw), and I'd have to agree that there certainly aren't any good arguments against gay marriage; at least, not any arguments we'd accept in a wealthy, industrialized, western society at the beginning of this millennium, but do keep in mind that the great, great majority of the world does not agree with that assessment.

So, what makes an argument legitimate? In order for one to suggest that there is no legitimate argument against gay marriage, you'd have to rationalize what it is that we in the west know better than those living in less-wealthy, less-industrialized societies outside our corner of the globe.

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

#359

Post by protomyth »

geofft wrote: post #227
celticninja wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but really what we see with these crusades by SJW's is just an opportunity for bullying, usually by people who were once bullied and now want to get their own back. A lot of it is bandwagon jumping by the majority of people, who may or may not have a dog int he fight, but just want to cause a fuss. It is these people that call the employers, DDOS employers websites etc and then everyone lumps them all together as SJW…

That would be extremely nice, if it worked. Then the entire question about distasteful means wouldn't come up, which would be better for everyone, because distasteful means are still distasteful. Unfortunately, that's not how changing minds works, in practice. http://www.contralbum.com/blog/2015/2/5/political-correctnes... See the section starting "The second great flaw...." (And yes, I get the irony of trying to con…

So, looking at your link and I find and interesting line. "42% of Americans still believe we found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" is presented as 42% of Americans are stupid and uniformed. It would seem those "informed" people are not readers of the New York Times as they have an article[1] detailing the WMDs found and the effects on our soldiers. Perhaps these "correct" people don't have friends who served or never served themselves? I suppose they can go with the Mother Jones approach and say there was no "active WMD program". But, that probably wasn't the question asked and I sure families of those veterans would say some were found.

Seems if you only have 140 characters, a short conservation snippet, or a single data item then you might not get the whole story.

Summing up the article as "the end justifies the means" seems appropriate and, to me, is still the simplest definition of evil.

1) http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleea...

2) "In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."

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

#360

Post by xienze »

Mithaldu wrote: post #207

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?

The employer-employee relationship in the US is generally "at-will", which means either side has the right to end the relationship for any time and for basically any reason.

But the actual reason why these people are getting fired is because employers are scared shitless of these digital lynch mobs. To them, _not_ immediately firing a person who makes an offensive joke means the employer tacitly approves of the employee's behavior and thus the _employer_ becomes a target.

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