Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

> He noticed ruefully that a few days earlier the woman – her name was Adria Richards – had herself tweeted a stupid penis joke. She’d suggested to a friend that he put socks down his pants to bewilder TSA agents at the airport.

Lot of hypocrisy here! Neither person deserved to lose their job, the whole situation seems to have gotten completely out of hand. Funny how even the smallest hint of acknowledgement or response can keep the snowball rolling.

I remember when this story happened and after reading it all again, I still think that what makes it so terrible is the fact both sides were fired. One of them because he was behaving immaturely at a conference and another because her employer was getting ddosed.

Is it just me or are those both terrible overreactions from the companies' sides? The whole sexism discussion is perfectly valid and very important, we need to talk about what is wrong, but those layoffs were nothing but selfish pragmatic decisions. Hank's company didn't want the bad PR and Adria's didn't want the security trouble...

Another interesting article about online shaming:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw...

The things is that we often forget that there are actual human beings behind the tweets - sometimes with poor judgment skills, but often more misguided than malevolent.

> “Somebody getting fired is pretty bad,” I said. “I know you didn’t call for him to be fired. But you must have felt pretty bad.”

> “Not too bad,” she said. She thought more and shook her head decisively. “He’s a white male. I’m a black Jewish female. He was saying things that could be inferred as offensive to me, sitting in front of him. I do have empathy for him but it only goes so far. If he had Down’s Syndrome and he accidently pushed someone off a subway that would be different... I’ve seen things where people are like, ‘Adria didn’t know what she was doing by tweeting it.’ Yes, I did.”

A past of abuses does not justify Adria's reactions and lack of empathy. Moreover, the article describes her blaming Hank for the threats, despite the fact that he didn't engage in any vengeful behaviour.

I remember when this incident happened. I can't remember what my reaction was at the time (probably a combination of "let's not alienate women in tech further" and "sexual jokes are OK in the right context, and a conf is propably not it") but reading this excerpt - particularly reading about Adria's continued anger(?) at Hank - really shocked me.