How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life • Hacker News Board

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#261

Post by ArkyBeagle » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

Then the whole edifice is inherently unstable and will collapse at some point.

I will still post economic or political-ish things, under my real name, but they're generally not very controversial, they're references to articles, book or blogs ( usually that I'd like to see read a bit more ).

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#262

Post by metaphorm » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

klenwell wrote: post #63

I like to think of self-righteousness as a drug. A subtle but lingering high. I know I get off on it from time to time. Post anything online and there's a chance you'll be someone's next fix.

I think this is very well stated and I'd like to see this idea presented more frequently in dialogue surrounding internet zealotry.

Simply put, a great deal of what drives the extremist behavior on the internet is straight up narcissism. The people participating in pile-on internet bullying campaigns feel good about themselves when they do so, and receive praise (from the internet mob that they have aligned with) for doing so.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#263

Post by fit2rule » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

jonifico wrote: post #94

I actually thought it was funny. If you get offended by a thing that's so over the top it just can't be taken seriously, you sir are an absolute moron. Hate how people are just looking to get excuses to get offended and show off their 'righteousness' at the expense of other people. Point is: It's a joke. Learn the difference.

I don't think anyone got truly offended, just that they saw an opportunity to do something interesting with Twitter - which is mostly a very mundane activity - and went with it. An opportunity to rally the pitchfork brigade can feel very empowering to people who spend a majority of their time 'socializing' with a facile society such as Twitter provides. If you ask me, the root cause of this cannibalistic mob desire is, fundamentally, dire loneliness.

When can you get 15,000 people to hate something you've decided is worth hating, its quite a buzz.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#264

Post by ryguytilidie » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #255

paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

> The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against him and he was forced to quit. Hahahahahahaha no. Eich paid money to political campaigns to ensure that some of his own employees and fellow citizens would not have basic human rights. Then, he refused to apologize for it and dodged the question when asked if he would do it again. That's not "expressing an opinion," that's nearly s…

Just curious why this is getting downvoted. Are people actually buying the whole "Eich is a victim because as a white multimillionaire he lost his job because he cared deeply about taking away the rights of others"...?

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#265

Post by jim_greco » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

wallyhs wrote: post #189

jim_greco wrote: post #105

1) It's an offensive tweet. Whether you intend something to be offensive or not doesn't make it any less offensive. 2) It's very easy to pass off casual racism as a joke or a misunderstanding of the medium after it blows up in your face.

You can't control what other people find offensive, and you can't avoid offending other people. You can control your own reaction to what you find offensive.

That's a very simple way to look at human interactions and it doesn't give you a licensce to go around saying whatever you want.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#266

Post by andybak » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

gearoidoc wrote: post #243

paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

Replace "offend the wrong person" with "do something really f*cking stupid" - which is what she did - and the outcome seems fair. No one deserves to be bullied or harassed but consequences need to exist to actions.

Fair? Do you really think so? If so you terrify me.

I've done plenty of really f*cking stupid things in my time. I'm very thankful most of them were offline or pre-internet.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#267

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

wallyhs wrote: post #189

jim_greco wrote: post #105

1) It's an offensive tweet. Whether you intend something to be offensive or not doesn't make it any less offensive. 2) It's very easy to pass off casual racism as a joke or a misunderstanding of the medium after it blows up in your face.

You can't control what other people find offensive, and you can't avoid offending other people. You can control your own reaction to what you find offensive.

[deleted]

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#268

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

gearoidoc wrote: post #243

paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

Replace "offend the wrong person" with "do something really f*cking stupid" - which is what she did - and the outcome seems fair. No one deserves to be bullied or harassed but consequences need to exist to actions.

[deleted]

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#269

Post by xyzzyz » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:41 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #255

paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

> The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against him and he was forced to quit. Hahahahahahaha no. Eich paid money to political campaigns to ensure that some of his own employees and fellow citizens would not have basic human rights. Then, he refused to apologize for it and dodged the question when asked if he would do it again. That's not "expressing an opinion," that's nearly s…

> Then, he refused to apologize for it and dodged the question when asked if he would do it again. That's not "expressing an opinion," that's nearly sociopathic.

Forcing someone to apologize for something that is not universally considered to be wrong is a good example of bullying. As is calling publicly his behaviour "sociopathic".

> He was clearly working against his employees' best interest.

This is hardly considered to be a firing offense for a CEO -- in fact, in many cases this is considered to be good by many people, e.g. by anti-tradeunionists when CEOs fights with unions.

> Many productive employees threatened to quit because they didn't want to be represented by a person who explicitly expressed hatred towards them or their friends.

Saying that he explicitly expressed hatred towards anyone is misrepresenting the facts, and is another example of bullying.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#270

Post by latestrevision » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:42 PM UTC

gearoidoc wrote: post #243

paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

Replace "offend the wrong person" with "do something really f*cking stupid" - which is what she did - and the outcome seems fair. No one deserves to be bullied or harassed but consequences need to exist to actions.

It appears that a big part of this discussion is about how we as a group are not sure if it really is a situation in which she "[did] something really f cking stupid", though.

Clearly, you do interpret her statement to be an offensive, racist remark, but by her own admission, she instead was commenting on how "[l]iving in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the third world. I was making fun of that bubble."

Whether or not her explanation for the off-color is truly genuine is up for debate, but scuttling somebody's life and career for something that only might have been a racist remark doesn't seem all that fair to me and (it would appear) a significant fraction of commenters here.