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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

#131

Post by mercurial »

interpol_p wrote: post #92
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…

I don't think it's a lack of empathy. It feels like anger at a system that caters to men in a field she very much enjoys and wants to be included in. Unfortunately Hank happens to be a fairly good guy who is defended by this system and oblivious to it. He's an unintended casualty of her anger at something bigger. I had many of the same reactions as you when I read her words. But I've been trying very hard to imagine…

> I don't agree with Adria's public tweet, and Hank got way more than he deserved (as did Adria) over it. But I can totally see how she could have been driven to do it, and I can even see how she would feel now — after all she's gone through — that she should not have to apologise for it.

She used her status and influence in an irresponsible way, and she consistently avoids any responsibility into what happens, while blaming her victim for what happened to her. I don't see the empathy here. I can understand why she would end up like that, and she sounds like she has a lot of issues to work with. But she comes out as an extremely unpleasant person.

> From that article it sounds like she came out of this worse than Hank, who got another job almost immediately. And you have to wonder — did Hank get another job so fast because our field is dominated by men, and they are likely to feel for him and have the same initial reactions as we do when reading this article? Unfortunately there are not many people who will feel for Adria. I'm sure she knows it.

I feel for her. She shouldn't have been put through this crap when she was a kid, and she deserved none of the abuse, death threats, etc, that got poured on her. At the same time, I do think she needs to behave like an adult and realize that she has a responsibility in what happened.

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #8

> “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 a…

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by hnyc »

celticninja wrote: post #54
moomin wrote: post #11

Let's be clear here, Jon Ronson spent a fair bit of time lying to Adria Richards to put together his book, his portrayal of the timeline is inaccurate and even if this wasn't the case it'd be a phenomenal amount of false equivalence: http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the-falsest-of-false-equi... TL;DR; Yeah he got fired, but he didn't get fired because of an internet backlash.

can you provide any supporting facts that Jon Ronson lied? I mean you say he lied about hsi reasons for interviewing her, i.e. said it was about sexism. However he has not lied about what she said or what actually happened. You do not deny that he has quoted her faithfully. To me it seems that she was expecting that her minority status would protect her, she goes to lengths to point out she is black, female and jewis…

In my opinion, her upbringing and life have everything to do with this. If it were not for how she was brought up and how she was treated during her life, she may or may not have done what she did. The only reason is not to try to engineer some sympathy, but there are other possible reasons as well.

If her backstory was a backstory full of mental illness, would you respond differently to what had happened?

Now, I'm not trying to say that racism or stereotypes are good, because they aren't. However, people's past are what shape people and can help others understand people's viewpoints.

Even because of her backstory, however, I find that pretty much everybody (except the reporter, who didn't participate too much) overreacted. In general, though, I find that many of Adria's thought processes were flawed, but that's not relevant to this reply (at least, I don't think so).

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

#134

Post by Vula_Design »

moomin wrote: post #11

Let's be clear here, Jon Ronson spent a fair bit of time lying to Adria Richards to put together his book, his portrayal of the timeline is inaccurate and even if this wasn't the case it'd be a phenomenal amount of false equivalence: http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the-falsest-of-false-equi... TL;DR; Yeah he got fired, but he didn't get fired because of an internet backlash.

This article is the worst kind of inflammatory journalism. I would never attempt to deny that there is a systemic patriarchy in place, or that white privilege exists, but tying every perceived injustice in the world to these braoder issues undermines the real issues that affect millions of people on a daily basis. As has been pointed out here by many other commentors, the behaviour of Hank and his friend was clearly outside conference guidelines and their being reprimanded for it is absolutely correct. Attempting to tie that to some sense of white (no race element to this story at all), male enitlement is absurd and frankly does a disservice to both the civil rights and feminist movements. When humour is made at the expense of a person in a position of relative weakness it is wrong. When she overheard someone else's (admittedly unfunny but by no means directly offensive to any race/gender/sexual orientation)joke and took offense then that was her personal reaction. Making her displeasure known to conference organisers was absolutely within her remit but turning herself into some sort of 'crusader' for a vague idea of 'rights and justice' in a public forum is problematic for me. Your article has done exactly that, by 'casually' mentioning the use of smart phones in the Ferguson case you are obviously attempting to equate what was, let's be honest, a minor case of a clash of senses of humour to the killing of a young man by the police. That is despicable. You then go on to mention the race of Lindsey Stone, despite the fact that it has no relevance to the case which she became known for. This sort of linking of every case of offensive public behaviour with what are real, and long running, issues of race and gender equality serve only to perpetuate a mentality of 'us and them' and undermine real cases of racism and sexism that still occur around the world on a regular basis.

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

#135

Post by byuu »

interpol_p wrote: post #92
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…

I don't think it's a lack of empathy. It feels like anger at a system that caters to men in a field she very much enjoys and wants to be included in. Unfortunately Hank happens to be a fairly good guy who is defended by this system and oblivious to it. He's an unintended casualty of her anger at something bigger. I had many of the same reactions as you when I read her words. But I've been trying very hard to imagine…

> jokes that make me feel threatened

I really don't see how hearing two guys in a crowd of 800+ people talk about big dongles would make one feel threatened enough for a comment like, "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 feared for her life over tasteless toilet humor in a crowded conference? Bullshit. Her Victorian sensibilities were offended over a crass joke. And now she's engaging in histrionics after the fact to justify her response.

Frankly, I'm really sick and tired of the pervasive image in America that all men are rapists and child molesters. You talk to a woman on an elevator, or you accidentally make eye contact with a child that isn't yours for a brief second, and everyone assumes you're a sexual predator because penis. Sure, I'll accept that men are more likely to be. But we're talking about 0.000011% of women versus 0.000018% of men here.

> Hank got way more than he deserved (as did Adria) over it

That we can both agree on. If anyone needs to be shamed here, it's these companies that we allow to put expediency over human lives. It's not okay to fire a father of three because someone managed to generate five minutes of buzz about them on Twitter. As consumers, this is partly our responsibility. And I for one will recommend strongly against ever using SendGrid to anyone who asks. It's too bad Hank didn't name his employer as well.

> Unfortunately there are not many people who will feel for Adria

Still, the complete and utter lack of empathy, along with playing the race card (way out of context I might add), is clearly doing her no good here. If I read her comments, I wouldn't hire her either.

And again, this is where it's good to separate your real name from your online identity. No, we shouldn't have to, but when employers behave like this, it's just proper diligence. We don't know Hank's real name here; his current employer may not even know about this incident. If Adria had done the same, maybe she'd be employed now too.

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

#136

Post by TuringTest »

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…

> And, "if I had kids, I wouldn't tell jokes"? Seriously?

This. Young netizens need to learn the meaning of "proportionate response". There were two adequate courses of action given the offence:

- Confront the guys, and shame them face to face for their behavior.

- If the goal was to change such misogynistic behavior of men at that kind of events (which is a reasonable and even courageous thing to do), the proper action should have been to describe the incident withholding the identities of the guys, precisely to not get them in such trouble. “Love the sinner, hate the sin”, as they say.

Doing the later would have achieved the desired goal while avoiding the whole nightmare to all involved. But linking their names to the notice of wrong behavior was an irresponsible thing to do; in particular, performing such public shaming on the internet, which never forgets and where things can go viral and turn against the one doing the shaming, as it happened.

Edit: Not to mention the disproportionate reaction of the employer, and of everyone that started bombing a company over this. Seriously guys, what's wrong with people when they're online?

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

#137

Post by maxerickson »

theorique wrote: post #25
Jem wrote: post #10

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.

The issue was that the sexual joke - a subtle and not particularly harmful one - was part of a private conversation between the two men. Richards inserted herself into that situation and made a big deal out of it. OK, you could say, she felt upset at their language, so maybe reporting it to the conference organizers was fine. But sic'ing her twitter mob on the men essentially invited the backlash that followed.

Is private the right word? I don't think they were trying to share their conversation with the rest of the room, but they also didn't go very far in trying to keep it from the rest of the room.

In a legal sense, private more or less goes out the window when you share something with a third party, a court would be unlikely to step in and protect the privacy of a conversation held in a shared space.

The internet conversation certainly doesn't have to use the legal definition, but "private" does sort of invoke the idea that the communication is intentionally being held close, and if you are talking in a room with other people, you aren't working very hard at that.

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

#138

Post by TeMPOraL »

warkid wrote: post #71
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.

There's this concept of Dane Geld, popularly known also as "not negotiating with terrorists". If you show that you're willing to bow down to a random DDoS attack and fire someone as ransom, it only validates this method of action against you.

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

#139

Post by byuu »

eloisant wrote: post #102
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…

There are differences between Hank in Adria. * Hank did a private joke while Adria took the issue to the public (tweeted to her 10,000 followers) * Hank was a developer while Adria was a developer evangelist, so she officially represents the company publicly. It's important to note that a lof of her Twitter followers probably followed her because of her position at Sendgrid. Which is why I can understand Sendgrid's d…

Ah, thanks for the clarification. Still, the article made it sound like the public firing was a direct response to the DDoS blackmail (corporate expediency) rather than about her actions. Of course, it is possible that it's like you said, and was in the works already.

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

#140

Post by Dewie »

> “Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?”

Men are afraid that a woman will change/ruin their whole lives with just their words.

Well, at least that is how "Hank" feels now.

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