Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

If there is a moral to the story at all, it is this: Using the Internet as a weapon is like swinging nunchucks studded with loosely-attached, razor-sharp blades. Everyone near you gets hurt, but especially you.

There is an entire subculture on the Internet entirely devoted to disproving, with a vengeance, the phrase "sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me". They are trolls, pursuing the idea that a carefully selected assemblage of words can reduce a person to a quivering wreck of human jelly.

Then there are the dirt-diggers and the doxers, who will scrutinize your life more carefully than a political party looking for a presidential candidate, and circle with a highlighter every embarrassing thing you have ever done.

There are the holy warriors, who will tolerate no heresies against their chosen cause, especially those done unwittingly, in apparent ignorance that a controversy even exists--for the holy warriors on the other side have, of course, already chosen their path to damnation.

And there are the cruel pranksters, who will summon a SWAT team to your house, looking for your cash, heroin, and slaves. They'll DDoS your employer until you are fired. They'll crack your passwords and post dick pics using your account.

But there's a delicate sort of detente with all these groups. They have, however twisted, a sense of justice. The very worst of them will leave the truly innocent untouched, as though it were all a game, the only legitimate targets are the other players, and cheaters must be punished. The trolls attack pompous, self-righteous windbags. The doxers expose those who abuse their anonymity (such as the trolls and the other doxers). The holy warriors mock those with unfounded or irrational beliefs. And the cruel pranksters follow Machiavelli's blueprint to make the Internet respected, through terrorism.

These are people who have probably never felt any sort of power before, in any other aspect of their lives. Doing one of those things may be the only time they have ever felt like they ever made a difference in the world, even if it was a difference with dubious worth. Before the Internet, those types of personalities would have to be board members for homeowners' associations or local government officials or on the council for their churches or civic groups in order to feel more powerful. That limited the scope of the damage they could potentially do.

All of this misbehavior that we see on the Internet is a symptom. The cause is (in part) the systematic disenfranchisement of the poor and middle class, around the world. And we turn upon each other, as though to prove that we still matter, somehow.

The lede that was buried in the article is this: BOTH OF THE PEOPLE CENTRAL TO THE STORY WERE FIRED FOR BEING VICTIMS.

That makes the spineless, sleazy companies that took the easy way out the real bad guys. They were the only ones in the entire situation with any real power, and they opted to stab their own employees in the back and leave them in the gutter for the rats. They opted to eject someone from a presentation over a single complaint from someone who was likely also violating the conference code of conduct.

There was no due process. There was no respect for the rights of those affected. There was only corporate expedience, and a complete lack of regard for those negatively affected by it. And they are getting away with it, because we continue to blame the victims.

I feel some real cognitive dissonance when I read about how this situation unfolded.

Allegedly Adria felt threatened, fearful for her life. Her reaction to this fear was to turn around, take a photo, post it on the internet and presumably stay where she was. Hank expressed confusion over how the organisers found out about it - if she'd left her seat that confusion wouldn't exist.

So we have a woman fearing for her life, sitting in a seat mere centimetres away from the threat, tapping out an accusatory tweet on her smartphone.

It might just be me, but in that circumstance with an obvious breach of conference protocol my first reaction would be to leave the immediate vicinity of the threat and find a conference organiser to raise the issue with.

Posting it online does nothing to defend against the immediate perceived threat - it just doesn't add up.

I'm not saying that Adria shouldn't have felt threatened, but her behaviour does not fit the profile of someone in that mental state. Beyond that, public naming and shaming is not the way to deal with this kind of a problem. Talk to an organiser, get the breach of conference policy dealt with in private and if you feel it's warranted, post about the experience and how it negatively affected you in a constructive way that doesn't cause a witch hunt.

All that this stunt has achieved is further marginalisation of female developers; the risk of having an offhand joke resulting in being publicly drawn and quartered just isn't worth socialising around them. If this case were handled properly - by talking to the conference organisers and dealing with the breach of policy - this wouldn't have become such a huge issue.

I don't understand why it had to be dealt with in public like this.

I personally don't see what Adria was originally offended by but I'm male so unless there's something in what Hank said that I won't see as offensive unless I'm female then I don't have a clue.

Yeah, she did: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425

> Your post makes me severely question your grasp of the legal system in the United States.

Question away, I don't live in the US and I have no intention to. I was under the impression that this could, indeed, be handled by a court of law or the police; today I learned, I guess :) but even so, I don't think it takes away my point.

Racism and sexism are very legal around here as well, because they are personal opinions. Wrong as as hell, but the state is (fortunately!) not in the business of righting wrong opinions. What is illegal (or considered as an aggravating circumstance) is making someone the victim of those opinions: firing someone because he's black or implying that someone can't be promoted because she's a woman and women are only good for sex and cooking.

> When people say you're hurting them, you need to accept that rather than trying to reason yourself into "well, I'm really not." That's just part of being a decent human.

I obviously do not disagree with this. I also believe, however::

* That this is not what happened in Hank's case. This was a private conversation that was overheard. Have you honestly never cracked a sexist joke with a friend in a bar? A racist joke? You sure you never laughed a bit too hard at that picture about Irish yoga? Alcoholism is no joke!

* ...and if empathy is indeed the solution, why would it not go both ways? When people say you're hurting them, why does it flow only in terms of "I'm sorry I hurt you, I am going to stop" and not also in terms of "He seems like an allright guy though; perhaps he didn't want to hurt me?"

I'm not talking out of my ass here: I have a very obvious defect in my left eye (crippling enough that I cannot e.g. hold a driver's license, and sometimes embarrassing enough that I drop or hit objects because my depth perception sucks), and I was the target of many mean jokes, both as a child and as an adult. I also understand, however, that there is such a thing as a harmless joke, and I am firmly convinced that not understanding that wouldn't mean "I'm accepting and acknowledging my condition". It would just mean I'm a bitter asshole. And, if I were to react with anger or disappointment when I hear someone behind me saying that the guy on stage should put his glasses on because the color scheme of his presentation is ridiculous, everyone around me would really be right to treat me like an asshole.

Upon hearing something along the lines of "In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king", the correct, normal reaction of someone who is socially responsible is not to instantly go into a fleeting rage of hurr durr this is offensive. I'm emotionally mature enough to tell when someone wants to offend me -- and if I weren't, I honestly don't think society should indulge me. We don't indulge many other symptoms of emotional immaturity. This shouldn't get special treatment.

> Have any white men on this site ever been on the receiving end of a campaign of intimidation and fear?

Yes. I find our macho, heteronormative culture very intimidating at times. Just asking someone out comes with the risk of assault (or worse). It's not a campaign, exactly, but it is something a lot of guys go through because of how they were born.

Intersectionality is a valuable concept because it handily avoids pointless discussions over who has it worse. We all find ourselves in situations where whatever privileges we have because of how we were born are meaningless.