Has this guy not been around on the internet long?
Everyone knows not to feed the trolls. They have no real power so they will try to get you fired, order pizza to your house, etc.
Best to ignore them and do something productive.
I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency
11–20 of 68 posts
Re: I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency
#12I suggest you be careful with your jokes or they'll put you on their list: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/weve-all-got-a-list
The people you've mentioned curate their own echo chamber. If you read their Twitter stream you can see that they block anybody who even tries to engage them from an ignorant-but-skeptical point of view. Then they crow to their followers about the ignorant "bros" they block to gain plaudits. It's a toxic atmosphere that is best avoided entirely.
Re: I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency
#13I think the core problem here is we have someone (Shanley) who is allowed to attack people on the basis of their gender, class, profession, etc. [e.g. https://twitter.com/ryan/status/474791621100199936 ] An example relevant to HN is: https://twitter.com/shanley/status/474601030986903552 "HN is fucking obsessed with me lol. what is wrong with you little boys? mad cuz i'm cute and would NEVER talk to you or know you ex…
The employer doesn't care because no one on the internet is going to look into the backstory.
It's realpolitik my friend, if you don't engage trolls you can't be bitten by them.
Re: I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agency is not a zero sum game. We don't have to reduce the agency of 'privileged' people. We just have to resist oppressive behavior.
Agency seems to be zero-sum to me. If I can command 100s of people who have to do whatever I please, then granting them freedom reduces my freedom. Giving someone freedom necessarily reduces the freedom of those who previously took advantage of their lack of freedom.
Agency is not zero sum. That's why you couldn't use it to make your argument and had to switch to using the word 'freedom' to construct a straw man.
Re: I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency
#15I think the core problem here is we have someone (Shanley) who is allowed to attack people on the basis of their gender, class, profession, etc. [e.g. https://twitter.com/ryan/status/474791621100199936 ] An example relevant to HN is: https://twitter.com/shanley/status/474601030986903552 "HN is fucking obsessed with me lol. what is wrong with you little boys? mad cuz i'm cute and would NEVER talk to you or know you ex…
The employer doesn't care because no one on the internet is going to look into the backstory. It's realpolitik my friend, if you don't engage trolls you can't be bitten by them.
I thought it was all about the noopolitic these days.
Re: I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency
#16I think the core problem here is we have someone (Shanley) who is allowed to attack people on the basis of their gender, class, profession, etc. [e.g. https://twitter.com/ryan/status/474791621100199936 ] An example relevant to HN is: https://twitter.com/shanley/status/474601030986903552 "HN is fucking obsessed with me lol. what is wrong with you little boys? mad cuz i'm cute and would NEVER talk to you or know you ex…
The employer doesn't care because no one on the internet is going to look into the backstory. It's realpolitik my friend, if you don't engage trolls you can't be bitten by them.
I guess. I just don't like the idea of cowering in fear because trolls will be trolls.
Re: I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The employer doesn't care because no one on the internet is going to look into the backstory. It's realpolitik my friend, if you don't engage trolls you can't be bitten by them.
I guess. I just don't like the idea of cowering in fear because trolls will be trolls.
No no, don't cower in fear, change tactics.
Re: I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency
#18If you follow the stream, not only does the tattler go after the person and get him fired, she stays at it trying to make him unemployable. Strange.
Re: I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess. I just don't like the idea of cowering in fear because trolls will be trolls.
No no, don't cower in fear, change tactics.
To what?
Pointing out a troll's hypocritical behavior seems to be the only one that is effective with both trolls and rational people.
Re: I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency
#20I think the core problem here is we have someone (Shanley) who is allowed to attack people on the basis of their gender, class, profession, etc. [e.g. https://twitter.com/ryan/status/474791621100199936 ] An example relevant to HN is: https://twitter.com/shanley/status/474601030986903552 "HN is fucking obsessed with me lol. what is wrong with you little boys? mad cuz i'm cute and would NEVER talk to you or know you ex…
For that particular tweet: this is what we call trolling. Shanley's MVC (which is a very interesting site that everyone should read, its proprietor notwithstanding) has a "feature" where they highlight the worst and most clueless comment on HN of the month. This entire imbroglio has doubtlessly netted MVC a very rich upcoming "worst of HN" piece. Joy.
Substantively: why should the previous behavior of the reporter matter one bit? If someone does something bad, whether a person complaining about it is "good" or "bad" is sort of besides the point, and digging into how evil that person is amounts to an all-too-transparent attempt at deflection. Shanley, for better or for worse, takes advantage of that to generate news. That means that even if you get provoked, external observers won't and shouldn't care enough to get caught up in whether Shanley's a bad person or not. (Your takeaway, by the way, should be "do not engage" because she's communicating with an audience that's not-you when she engages with you. Also: all comments on this story amount to engagement, hence the heavy flagging.)
My sympathy for the fired guy is very limited. He clearly fucked up, and immediately knew it and took it down (before she even posted her screenshot, it seems), either because a friend told him he was out of line or he realized it himself. Which does elicit a bit of sympathy from me, and if I were in her shoes, I'd have let it slide--there's more than enough misogyny in tech than to need to scrape the bottom of the barrel here. Despite that, he did fuck up. Freedom of speech is not an issue: if he had posted a long stream of tweets calling for Jews to be slaughtered, no one would be upset that his company let him go. She has just as much freedom-to-report-speech as he has freedom-to-insult-speech, and freedom of association is an equally important right.