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Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

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Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#241
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These platforms are seen as far right and extremist by a lot of people. Whether or not that assessment is accurate, it will distress a lot of people who do agree with that assessment. Depending on the demographics of the authors they represent, it may well be a significant negative for their business to be associated with those platforms.

A lot of people being the media in the US that pushes the narrative to the extreme. You could make the argument ( perhaps weakly for Parler now) that they are right leaning social platforms that contain extremes. The same way Twitter is left leaning and contains left and right extremes. Companies in the states appear to wear their political allegiances as a badge of honour eliciting an us-or-them reaction. Left and R…

> It's worrying and baffling that someone's source of income can be severed when there has been no evidence of misconduct.

Isn't this a feature of at will employment?. I know there are some protected attributes, but I was under the impression you could be fired for pretty much anything outside of those protected attributes.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a novel take at all, people have been fired for random takes that blew into shitstorms countless of times. You seem to be confused about my post, I'm not passing any judgement here in the sense of approving with the firing, I'm saying, if you make a post on some political event and you create some sort of backlash, even if you didn't do anything wrong, but you're being perceived that way, your place of work…

The person in question wasn't fired for "random takes" but rather being seen in the vicinity of services that have been seen in the vicinity of people making decidedly non-random takes on political matters. And now she, perhaps correctly, believes she is the victim of religious and political persecution. As for not being mass hysteria, from the outside looking in it's clearly exactly that. Firing someone because of a…

> The US left appear to be descendeding into full bore anti-conservative hysteria.

The corporate actors involved here are nowhere near the left, they are closer to the center-right; the problem the Trumpist faction is facing isn’t that the Left doesn’t like them, its that they’ve earned the firm enmity of the centrist factions that, even when they opposed conservatives them on certain issues, kept good relations with them because they knew the next day they might need them as allies against the Left. And, beyond that, they’ve also lost a substantial minority of the Right; the various long-time and recent Republican figures that have come out in opposition to the Trumpist faction – and not just in the usual intraparty opposition sense but to the extent of either making a dramatic exit from the Party and/or advocating for the defeat of not only its Presidential candidate but of its downballot candidates as long as the Party adheres to Trumpism is telling.

Shouting about the Left is, I’m sure, cathartic, but it is also very much irrelevant to what is going on here. That’s not where the change that is driving outcomes comes from.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#243
post #187
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to be doing what losers do when facing destruction: move away. You see movement in both physical and virtual spaces. In people and in companies to different states. In people moving to different social media. People stop fighting with you, they just avoid you. China is going to be the obvious dominant world power within Biden’s term.

In Germany there is the term "inner emmigration", if people oppose to the current system, but keep silent in fear of repression. This was coined during Nazi time, but also used to describe part of the opposition during socialism in East Germany. What it basically describes people who: - are opposed to the current political system (originally the Nazi regime) - cannot speak their opinion for fear of repressions . cann…

My guess is that the fallout of the right wing's promised "tickle down" economics and the neoliberal politics of thatcherism is making people angry.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#244
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better question is what percentage of Parler users fit the stereotype ? Based on what I've seen and people I know who were active on Gab and Parler I would venture to say it's not nearly as high as people think. The amount of people with truly fringe beliefs is pretty small, even when concentrated.

> The amount of people with truly fringe beliefs is pretty small, even when concentrated. And I'd personally much rather have this small group of people outletting their anger onto the internet instead of IRL. Pushing them further and further into a corner with ever expanding censorship and expecting them to become good tolerant citizens has always seemed like a fools game to me.

That distinction collapsed a long time ago, before the Internet stormed the Capitol.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#245
post #15

Reminds me of Dawn Frederick, a literary agent who was "cancelled" for calling 911 on looters who rammed a van into the gas station on her apartment block: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/p... This happened during the BLM protests this summer in St. Loius. The looters she reported were blocks away from any BLM protest, and other looting bands were setting fires on nearby blocks. Frederick w…

I honestly don't know why people use "post what you're thinking" style social media at all at this point. With employers being so sensitive, how can the cost/benefit analysis ever really result in a determination that it's a good idea to be active on Twitter/Facebook (or Gab, Parler, TheDonald.win, etc.)? Maybe that's part of what makes things get so extreme on those sites. The most reasonable people know enough not…

Blame the victims? If the majority are scared to publicly state their opinions, it's somehow normal that the ones that still do it get punished. They should just be more cautious what they post, right?

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have literally seen NYT bestselling authors talk about how they're super excited to publicly heckle an author at his next book signing. And join in on conversations promoting burning his book. His crime? Writing a female character who goes on the run, has limited food, and trains in martial arts--which leads to her losing weight. This was, apparently, fat-shaming and deeply sexist. The authors involved in these thr…

I assume you're speaking of the Scott Bergstrom debacle? Yeah, I remember that one. Link to Scott's interview that infuriated those authors is here: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/child... Don't want to dox anyone and post which authors had such horrible behavior, but I will say I personally witnessed those tweets discussing book burning, stalking, and public harassment.

Linking to someone's public posts isn't "doxing". Publicly sharing their personal details (private email address, home address, phone number, etc.) or other private information as a form if direct or indirect harassment is.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#247
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better question is what percentage of Parler users fit the stereotype ? Based on what I've seen and people I know who were active on Gab and Parler I would venture to say it's not nearly as high as people think. The amount of people with truly fringe beliefs is pretty small, even when concentrated.

> The amount of people with truly fringe beliefs is pretty small, even when concentrated. And I'd personally much rather have this small group of people outletting their anger onto the internet instead of IRL. Pushing them further and further into a corner with ever expanding censorship and expecting them to become good tolerant citizens has always seemed like a fools game to me.

> And I’d personally much rather have this small group of people outletting their anger onto the internet instead of IRL.

Venting anger on the internet and it producing no real change isn’t an “outlet”, its just a pressure cooker.

> Pushing them further and further into a corner with ever expanding censorship and expecting them to become good tolerant citizens has always seemed like a fools game to me.

Containing the various white supremacist / conspiracy cults isn’t about reforming them, its about reducing their ability to recruit and radicalize. While reforming those already in the cults would be nice, its mostly a lost cause. They aren’t, for the most part, going to become “good, tolerant citizens”.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#248
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Impact a company negatively" is your opinion as much as the reversal seems to be the opinion of the parent commentor.

It’s not an opinion, it’s basic logic and arithmetic. Shrinking the hiring pool by eliminating both Trump voters and also the non-Trump voters who don’t like the implications of the question. That’s a very large negative and is based on math, not opinion.

You are making a quantitative argument for a case that can very well be a qualitative one. Your statement is not sound and it does not follow. Maybe it consider this an opportunity to educate yourself in logic?

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, the best trick for pushing propaganda isn't fabricating stories, but choosing carefully what stories you publish and which ones you don't. The perfect example of that is Breitbart's infamous 'black crime' tag: Breitbart didn't need to invent stories, they'd just go and pick up out of the bunch of criminal prosecutions happening every single day in a country with >300 million inhabitants. But by choosing to focus…

It's true, although obviously it applies to the both sides. In fact, BLM protests were caused by exactly the same mechanism you're describing - liberal media was creating false narratives about police brutality towards black people. "Transgender murder epidemic" is an even better example, it was completely made up by the media. Look up the numbers and compare them with the general population.

Nope, and nope. Neither is true, and both are propaganda.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#250

The political correctness now required by both the US Left and Right is distressing. A big complaint of young people was that there wasn't any real difference between the two major US parties. Well, that's over.

To be honest, there still isn't one.

I am not from US, but from what I saw generally both parties act the same, the exceptions are basically a few personalities that warp the VOTERs around them, but not the people in power.

Trump for the GOP (that seemly only joined the GOP because he could win their primaries... if you take a look on his pre-GOP relationships he had strong ties to democratic party) and Sanders for Democrats (and he is not even officially in the party if I remember correctly, he in the Senate was listed as "independent that sits with Democrats")

Even AOC that famously claim to be socialist got nicknamed in some circles as "Fraud Squad" because despite claiming to be socialist she is voting along status-quo US politics (that is: generally pro-corporations).

Voters believe the parties are different now, but the people elected aren't that different, it is why in USA accusing someone of doing "partisan blocking" makes sense, it is because often when a party is blocking the other, they are doing so for shenanigans, not because they truly believe the proposal is bad, often both parties believe in the proposal but want to play political games.

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