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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

#201

Post by singletonaccnt »

byuu wrote: post #135
interpol_p wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sensibilit…

Please don't use "pedophiles" as a synonym for "sexual predator". It's not the same, and it's very stigmatizing for people who are attracted to children but decide to not act on their feelings.

Here is a great thread on the parenting Stack Exchange that explains the issue: https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/18782/what-sho...

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

#202

Post by adekok »

edent wrote: post #124
adekok wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Remind me when someone was last killed at a tech conference like she says? Very rarely, if ever. I don't know of any killings, but there have been a number of (high profile) sexual assaults at tech conferences - see http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents My friends say it's a regular (and sometimes terrifying) occurrence at some conferences. And I believe them.

Then she should be afraid of sexual assaults, not killings.

And reading that page, I see most of the items are of this severity:

> An offensive tweet was made against the PyLadies group

Really? That's inappropriate, but it's not sexual assault.

In fact, there are 14 instances of the word "assault". Which by my count is no more than 10% of the items.

Over-exaggerating the problem is fear-mongering.

  This looks a lot like flailing around, trying to find reasons for being upset.
"I'm afraid of being killed"

It doesn't happen.

"Crap, I'm afraid of sexually assaulted, it happens a lot, here's proof!"

That actually disproves your assertion.

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

#203

Post by DanBC »

briandear wrote: post #195
tomp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's possible for women to feel this way. It's possible for men to feel this way as well. That doesn't make it reasonable, or something an emotionally mature person would feel and act upon.

Bingo! Her feeling of 'danger' was irrational unless there have been a wave of sexual assaults at developer conferences that I'm unaware of. She has no control over being offended or not, but she does have the ability to control her reactions to such offense. If it really bothered her why not just tell the guys, hey can you please not use that sort of humor around me?

It's frustrating to hear a bunch of white men who normally stick around groups of other white men talk about how someone who is very different - black, female, Jewish - is silly for feeling threat in situations where white men don't feel threat.

When people of your racial/religious group are murdered and attacked and harassed (and anti-Semitism is still a thing) her perception of threat is no doubt heightened.

It's unreasonable to expect her to confront people making dumb jokes if she feels threatened by them.

(However, her actions are not acceptable. She could have sought out conference organisers and told them.)

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

#204

Post by byuu »

edw519 wrote: post #148
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…

why you should never use your real name with your online identity in any way I believe exactly the opposite. People say horrible things hiding behind anonymity. Those of us who freely identify ourselves actually attempt (albeit sometimes feebly) to talk to others as if we were in person. If we just treated each other on-line like we did in person, most of this shit would never happen. - Proud self-identified member o…

It's not about what we should do in an ideal world. It's about the realities of the world we live in, where employers will fire you at the drop of a hat, regardless of whether you are in the right or wrong.

Using your real name doesn't win you any points. I could easily lie and say my real name was John Thomas. It sounds real enough. I could lie in real life with a fake name, too. Conversely, I have 18+ years of history using my pseudonym. It may not be a name chosen for me when I was born, but it has a very real reputation attached to it.

The lack of empathy you speak of is a consequence of hiding behind text over great distances, not of hiding behind fake names. People act more respectable when there's even the slimmest of chances the other person could physically harm them for their words; and/or when they can actually see the harm their words cause to another.

If you really have a pressing need to let your interviewer or employer know of your online achievements, speak to them in person about it with no audit trail.

The people who use anonymity to say horrible things are going to do so anyway. Go and search Google for "byuu 4chan". Now replace byuu with my real name. Why would I want my employer to be able to find those things?

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

#205

Post by JimmyM »

interpol_p wrote: post #186
hitekker wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." You can understand, yes, but that hatred-- and allow me to say that again-- hatred is not something that we can excuse on the basis of race alone. Adria really hates Hank; hated him so much that when she called down the twitter brigad…

See I don't get hatred at Hank, I mean, I did initially read it like that. But when I took a step back I started to see it as hatred of being excluded in a field you love. Hatred at the obliviousness of Hank — his inability to realise how vulnerable she felt simply attending a conference because she was in the minority. I think her view of Hank is to disregard him — kind of "Oh he'll be okay, the system's on his side…

> Oh he'll be okay, the system's on his side.

I think Ronson strongly suggests that this is in fact the case.

Ronson's a great journalist for acknowledging the complexity of a situation without attempting to offer answers he's unqualified to give, imho.

> “So you’re in your new workplace…” (Hank was offered another job right away) “…and you’re talking to a female developer. In what way do you act differently towards her?”

> “Well,” Hank said. “We don’t have any female developers at the place I’m working at now. So.”

> “You’ve got a new job now, right?” I said to Adria.

> “No,” she said.

Incidentally thank you for all your comments on this article. They're really thoughtful and have helped me understand what is clearly a very big issue much better.

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

#206

Post by fromtheoutside »

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…

To be honest his stories are about sexism, but not in the way some activists like to frame it, but still.

I agree, it's all about her minority status and backstory, I'd argue that because of that she wasn't able to handle the matter in a smarter way. It was dangerous to make a public example out of this guy and escalate things, which thanks to the internet is way easier than ever. If she'd felt stronger, had more middle class problem solving skills, she might have taken a smarter approach, one where she didn't expose herself to attacks.

There is one thing I learned, just because someone is poor, had it hard, doesn't mean she's right or a nice person and is equipped to handle situations appropriately.

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

#207

Post by fenomas »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #85

A good writeup with some more background information here: https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/ I found it interesting that apparently, Adria has done similar things in the past.

That blog post was as sensible a commentary as I've ever read on these kinds of issues, thanks for sharing.

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

#208

Post by maxerickson »

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…

The many people who called for Hank to be fired and sent intimidation and threats and participated in the DDOS are all worse than both Hank and Adria.

Hank's joke was perhaps inappropriate (it's impossible for those of us that were not there to even apply our own personal standards, volume, tone, etc. all factor into such things, and they are impossible to describe objectively).

Adria's response is similarly hard to judge. I don't think the incident as she described it deserved much remediation. Certainly not beyond the resolution internal to the conference where he apologized. But I also think that there needs to be room to make mistakes. Sometimes people really are jerks, and they should be called on it, even if sometimes there is not wide agreement that they were jerks.

But somehow, instead of focusing on the bile and rage that many internet participants see as part an parcel of participation, which are clearly inappropriate and not in any way useful, here we have dozens of comments picking at the details of what happened at the conference.

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

#210

Post by interpol_p »

lurknomore wrote: post #145
interpol_p wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly it. We find it so hard to understand how that joke is threatening. It's almost impossible to imagine. It just sounds like a dumb joke. But look at how Adria describes her feelings in the article: “Have you ever had an altercation at school and you could feel the hairs rise up on your back?” she asked me. “You felt fear?” I asked. “Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’” I…

If your mental/emotional state is at odds with the reality of your circumstances, therapy is in order, not scolding the hapless bystanders you blame for your delusions.

Are you suggesting she is delusional because she felt something that you cannot imagine feeling?

When a woman in our field says "I felt this way" we say "No no, she's delusional, therapy is in order." Instead of asking why and trying to understand what led to these feelings. This sort of behaviour doesn't help us become more inclusive.

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