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Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

esquire.co.uk

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Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#71

Post by warkid »

near wrote: post #44

The world is replete with examples of why you should never use your real name with your online identity in any way (although in this case, the guy's employer found out over a photograph; which is even more troubling.) If there's anyone worse than Adria in this story, it's both Hank's and Adria's former employers. You don't destroy a person's life over a comment or a blackmail threat. But as they say, if corporations…

> If there's anyone worse than Adria in this story, it's both Hank's and Adria's former employers.

Worse? One (presumably) could've had a ruined business due to DDoS which could've led to much more layoffs than just one-I'm-very-sorry-for Adria. Hanks' employer could've had much more troubles than simply loosing money - by having a "black-jewish-feminist-hater" in his staff.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#72

Post by pluma »

throwawayaway wrote: post #24
oracle2025 wrote: post #19

One interesting aspect that seems to be completely left out of that discussion is the issue of labour protection laws. Firing someone in Europe for some minor issue like that would probably be a major legal issue here.

With enough money in the fired party's bank account, it would be. I think the only difference between Europe and the US in this regard is the amount of money required to get justice.

I don't think tech workers in the EU would find it prohibitively expensive to take an employer to court, though. Plus, legal insurance is pretty affordable at this income bracket.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#73

Post by Fiahil »

interpol_p wrote: post #57
[deleted] wrote: post #9

[deleted]

I initially had a similar reaction but then forced myself to take a step back. I think I can sympathise with Adria regarding her initial reaction. She's a minority surrounded by men who are happy to make these sorts of jokes within earshot. It sounds harmless to us, but I can't even imagine what it's like to have been at PyCon as a black Jewish woman. It must be very difficult to attend such a conference and then hea…

I don't really understand how you can be "pushed" to tweet a picture and then make a blog post about it, without feeling to be in a vengeful holy war.

Reporting a bad behavior to the conference organizer is ok. But, I don't see how -in the reality we live in- making a blog post about it will make the world a better place.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#74

Post by throwawayaway »

adekok wrote: post #70
throwawayaway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With enough money in the fired party's bank account, it would be. I think the only difference between Europe and the US in this regard is the amount of money required to get justice.

Having worked in Europe and seen the process at work, lawyers are cheap. Employees sue and succeed in their suits for surprisingly simple things. Europeans take employee protection very seriously.

so we agree, it's cheaper in europe to get justice, but not free.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#75

Post by Red_Tarsius »

adekok wrote: post #63
andrea_s wrote: post #29

““Maybe it was [Hank] who started all of this,” Adria told me in the cafe at San Francisco Airport. “No one would have known he got fired until he complained. Maybe he’s to blame for complaining that he got fired. Maybe he secretly seeded the hate groups. Right?” This paragraph really gave me chills... A lot of insight about her thought process, and a bit terrifying in my opinion.

It goes on: > “Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’” > “Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?” she said. Remind me when someone was last killed at a tech conference like she says? Very rarely, if ever. Did she feel bad about him being fired? Nope. > “He’s a white male. I’m a black Jewish female. He wa…

The irony is, such delusional behaviour does nothing but foster more doubt and double standards. If I were Hank, I would react exactly as he wrote:

> I asked Hank if he found himself behaving differently since the incident. Had it altered how he lived his life?

> “I distance myself from female developers a little bit now,” he replied. “I’m not as friendly. There’s humour, but it’s very mundane. You just don’t know. I can’t afford another Donglegate.”

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#77

Post by throwawayaway »

celticninja wrote: post #65
throwawayaway wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my point is rather badly explained, i mean to say that you need quite a lot of money on either continent to fight these type of battles.

no you dont, in Europe there is a lot of legal aid and support available to bring these to employment tribunals. you dont have to be rich to get justice over here (but as with everywhere it does help).

well free legal aid is worth what you pay for it in mine and other's experience. hopefully you won't have to rely on it someday. being rich certainly does help.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#78

Post by Cederfjard »

bluehex wrote: post #48
rors wrote: post #43

After reading this I don't like Adria Richards very much. She seems very self involved with a persecution context. However, she is still very much a victim of sexist online culture. Bad people can be victims too. A man makes a mildly sexist unfunny joke and the result is a woman is unemployed for six months and fears for her safety. That is 'not cool', and ironically only reinforces her and other women's belief that…

Was the joke even sexist at all or was it just sexual in nature? Inappropriate sure, but that's a pretty big difference in my book.

I'm not seeing any overt or implicit sexism either. Not even when she provides context, really:

> She explained the background – how she was a “developer evangelist at a successful start-up” and that while the men had been giggling about big dongles the presenter on stage was talking about initiatives to bring more women into the industry. In fact, he’d just projected onto the screen a photograph of a little girl at a tech workshop.

> “…I stood up slowly, turned around and took three, clear photos. There is something about crushing a little kid’s dream that gets me really angry. It takes three words to make a difference: “That’s not cool.” Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard.”

So "Hank" made a couple of suggestive jokes unrelated to the topic at hand, and just because the talk was about women in tech he's sexist and crushing a little kid's dream? Would that have made him a climate change denier had it been on global warming?

Maybe I'm missing something, because Adria's actions and reactions make very little sense to me.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#79

Post by CHY872 »

One important point here is that Adria's role was that of developer evangelist - a role that requires good community engagement. It's then not such a stretch to imagine that her ability to do this job well might be compromised in the aftermath of such an event.

It's thus not totally unreasonable for her to be let go for this, even if it's not her fault.

Having said that, I find both sides really depressing. The brogrammer/franerdity approach does alienate women, which is why it should as much as possible be suppressed (although it's a culture which itself is frequently hated on, so it'd be really easily to just end up with high school again). Meanwhile public shaming is also not desirable, especially when the act can easily be argued to be the product of a culture, not of an individual.

Both were at fault, but the guy involved shouldn't have lost his job over it, and Adria probably shouldn't have lost her job over it.

One thing that people don't mention is that the employers of both might have wanted to get rid of them for other reasons.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#80

Post by probably_wrong »

codecondo wrote: post #3

Say what you like, but Hank didn't do anything wrong here. In fact, he only expressed everything that had happened to him, and it just so happened that many people decided to stand up for him in what seems to be a situation of very, very poor judgement. On the other hand, great and naturally flowing writing by the author, really enjoyed swimming through the story!

> Say what you like, but Hank didn't do anything wrong here.

I think he did: there seems to be no discussion that he violated the conference's code of conduct. If we want to reduce the sexism in tech, I think reporting these instances is perfectly fine, and even commendable.

However.

She could have asked them politely to stop. If she didn't feel safe doing that, she could have talked in private to the conference's organizers. An e-mail would do. But she took it to Twitter instead, so everyone can point at them. I think she was in the wrong in doing that, and they both ended up suffering from it.

If there were a lesson to get from here, I'd say it would be "have you considered talking?". Or perhaps "do you really want to bring the Internet into our discussion?".

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