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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

#111

Post by adwn »

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…

> A man makes a mildly sexist unfunny joke and the result is a woman is unemployed for six months and fears for her safety.

No, the reason for her unemployment and harassment was not the private joke between two friends, but her handling of the situation (i.e., the public shaming via Twitter).

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

#112

Post by easytiger »

moomin wrote: post #22
[deleted] wrote: post #9

[deleted]

It's very hard to sympathize with anyone when you're reading someone perform a character assassination on them.

JR is a journalist with no agenda whatsoever. If you knew anything about him you would know he is probably the most passive voice left in modern media

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

#113

Post by mantas »

throwawayaway wrote: post #74
adekok wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure about other EU countries, but mine grants a small amount of free lawyer hours to every resident. Those free lawyers are not AAA-grade for sure, but they take care of the formalities. Some people (low income, unions etc) are eligible for more hours and/or better free lawyers.

So in case of a simple case, it might end up being free.

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

#114

Post by iopq »

coob wrote: post #38
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it just me or are those both terrible overreactions from the companies' sides? No it's not just you, the responses from the companies were, as far as I'm concerned, illegal; the guy was fired for something he said (freedom of speech?), and she was fired through 4chan blackmailing her employer (as far as I could tell). Of course, I don't know what kind of employee protection people have; IIRC the IT business isn'…

Freedom of speech only apply to the state. The state cannot restrict your freedom of speech. Your employer can.

But there are laws against unlawful termination. What his company did could be considered unlawful termination.

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

#115

Post by S_A_P »

I really have trouble with this story. Nearly every aspect was overblown. However maybe I'm a curmudgeon but I don't have a social media profile for the very reason I don't want my business out there. I don't want to be Internet famous or even real life famous. Secondly how were they able to find someones Twitter profile without knowing her name? Search for #donglejokesarebadmmkay ? None of this makes much sense to me. The firings on both sides are crazy to me. I don't know that I have even heard anyone in my company even talk about Twitter much less check up on some scuttlebutt about a conference. It's the makings of reality tv drama. Asinine.

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

#116

Post by fpgeek »

theorique wrote: post #68
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…

"Not too bad, he's a white male. I'm a black Jewish female." Nice quote here. As you say, it really does make Richards look empathetic. /s But seriously, this is not good for her image.

No, she doesn't look empathetic, but, considering the broader context, how much empathy can you reasonably expect?

He lost his job and got a new one "right away" (according to the article). She also lost her job, was bombarded with all kinds of threats (death, rape, etc.), had to go into hiding and still doesn't have a new job (at least as of her interview for the piece).

I'm sure she could improve her image if she were better at faking some empathy, but I understand why she wouldn't feel much.

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

#117

Post by karmacondon »

CHY872 wrote: post #79

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 brogr…

"Both were at fault" is such a cop out. Hank did nothing wrong. According to his account in this article, he laughed at the phrase "large dongle" and said "I would fork that guy's repo" about a male presenter. If those are sins then hell is going to be a very crowded place.

There were a lot of things he could have said that would have been offensive, aggressive and sexist. But he didn't say any of those things. He made two very benign jokes. If that constitutes brogramming and is alienating to women, then there isn't anything to be done about it. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a juvenile sense of humor and giggling with your friends about funny words. He shouldn't have been made to apologize in the first place.

What's wrong is taking someone's picture and posting it along with vague details about an overheard conversation. I don't think that any of us would like that to be socially acceptable behavior. I don't care if two guys make stupid jokes, but I would be upset if people thought it was ok to take anything I said out of context and post it online along with my picture. Apportioning fault equally between those two behaviors isn't helping.

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

#118

Post by rors »

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 can buy that the joke was just inappropriate, and no doubt that she massively overreacted.

However, she was the one who ended up with the death threats. It's hard to reassure women that they're safe at tech events if the result of them making a social faux-pas are threats to their safety.

Have any white men on this site ever been on the receiving end of a campaign of intimidation and fear? I sure haven't. We then complain that women have an irrational fear of violence and intimidation? Sounds like a lack of empathy on our part.

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

#119

Post by probably_wrong »

stfu wrote: post #93
probably_wrong wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 or…

Do you really think that conferences' code of conduct should regulate what two friends are saying to each other privately?

Whether they should? I don't know. Maybe. Sexism in tech is a weird and hard problem, and if regulating private conversations helps solving it, then I'm cautiously willing to give it a try.

Whether they do? Yes. From the CoC[1]:

> Be careful in the words that you choose. Remember that sexist, racist, and other exclusionary jokes can be offensive to those around you. Excessive swearing and offensive jokes are not appropriate for PyCon.

> If a participant engages in behavior that violates this code of conduct, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the conference with no refund.

Presumably everyone was there under their own free will, so if they agreed to the CoC and then failed to respect it, well, that's not good.

[1] https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/

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

#120

Post by DanBC »

throwawayaway wrote: post #77
celticninja wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It might be lousy in the US but the limited amount of free legal care in the UK for non-criminal justice is very very good.

There are continuing restrictions on the availability of that legal aid though.

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