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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

#271

Post by joshstrange »

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 wa

While I agree with most of your post I don't agree with this statement. In my opinion hiding behind a username not tied to your real identity is nothing more than a stopgap, eventually someone will link "byuu" with who you really are or more likely you will make a slip up and expose yourself. DPR did everything he could to conceal his identity while running SR and he still screwed up. Even if you don't make a mistake I believe that we aren't too far off from computers being able to analyse written comments/posts/tweets/etc and then link identities together based on writing style, posting time, and other metadata. It is because of this and the following two reasons that I nearly always post under "joshstrange".

1) I stand by what I have said and when I find out I'm wrong I like to publicly admit that. I'm not going to pretend I'm perfect, none of us are.

2) By posting under my real name I am less likely to say something that I will have to backtrack on, it would be a lot easier to spew off the cuff responses (which I'm still not perfect from doing) thinking that I was hiding behind some username that would never be linked to me.

Pretty much I think that one day all my other identities will be easily linked back to me so why try and hide?

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

#272

Post by iopq »

tbrownaw wrote: post #246
iopq wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are laws against unlawful termination. What his company did could be considered unlawful termination.

I thought that here in the US only applied to a specific list of disallowed reasons (race/gender/etc). Which don't include "being targeted by the Internet Lynch Mob".

It depends on your contract. If it guarantees employment and you're not an at-will employee, the contract will state reasons for why your employment can be terminated. It's possible that the contract might include "being targeted by the Internet Lynch Mob" as one of the reasons, but I doubt it.

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

#273

Post by akuchling »

imjoshholloway wrote: post #50
Red_Tarsius wrote: post #8

> “Somebody getting fired is pretty bad,” I said. “I know you didn’t call for him to be fired. But you must have felt pretty bad.” > “Not too bad,” she said. She thought more and shook her head decisively. “He’s a white male. I’m a black Jewish female. He was saying things that could be inferred as offensive to me, sitting in front of him. I do have empathy for him but it only goes so far. If he had Down’s Syndrome a…

What makes me laugh is where she says she's not to blame for what happened to Hank yet she then blames HIM for what happened to her. If she didn't send the tweet, he wouldn't have got fired. If he didn't get fired, he wouldn't have posted on HN about being fired. If he didn't post on HN then none of this would've happened. Basically it all stems from her original tweet.. I'm not condoning any of the behaviour but it…

That is in fact what happened. PyCon posted a statement afterwards (http://pycon.blogspot.ca/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappropr...) that said "Both parties were met with, in private. The comments that were made were in poor taste, and individuals involved agreed, apologized and no further actions were taken by the staff of PyCon 2013. No individuals were removed from the conference, no sanctions were levied."

The problem is that things didn't stop there.

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

#274

Post by interpol_p »

mercurial wrote: post #234
interpol_p wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider shaming them to be "fight," in this instance. I feel really bad for Hank, he totally did not deserve it. I also feel really bad that Adria felt so uncomfortable that she did something so rash. Both of their actions and reactions seem so natural to me. The upsetting thing is that our lack of diversity makes these situations so unavoidable.

> I would consider shaming them to be "fight," in this instance. More like shooting someone in the back. > I also feel really bad that Adria felt so uncomfortable that she did something so rash. That is where we differ. I do not believe her explanations. Not when she tweets the same kind of joke herself. > The upsetting thing is that our lack of diversity makes these situations so unavoidable. This particular situati…

> That is where we differ. I do not believe her explanations. Not when she tweets the same kind of joke herself.

I think that brings up a very good point. You can make these jokes when you feel safe.

Hank felt safe at PyCon, it was easy for him to joke right there in earshot of many like-minded people.

Adria felt safe tweeting such a joke from her own computer.

Adria did not feel safe at PyCon. This should be a huge problem for us. We should be questioning this, not Adria's mental capacity.

I don't believe Adria is a sociopath, or delusional, or any of the number of things she has been accused of being in this thread. I believe she is a rational individual, much like Hank, and that she felt intensely uncomfortable at PyCon due to her minority status. I believe she feels how she described — just like I believe Hank feels how he described.

> Adria does not even begin to recognize that she acted wrongly towards these two guys, and generally gave a bad name to feminists.

I don't think Adria is very focused on these guys, and for a lot of people that comes off as hatred or a lack of empathy — especially because we, as guys, empathise in particular with Hank. So her lack of acknowledgement is so easily felt as cruel.

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

#275

Post by Lawtonfogle »

maxerickson wrote: post #208
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…

The one thing 4chan trolls would love more than being left alone to their trolling is to not be.

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

#277

Post by mreiland »

joshstrange wrote: post #271
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 wa While I agree with most of your post I don't agree with this statement. In my opinion hiding behind a username not tied to your real identity is nothing more than a stopgap, eventually someone will link "byuu" with who you really are or more likely you will make a slip up and expose yourself. DPR did everything he could to conceal his ident…

For those of us who are older, the internet was a way to express ourselves without having to deal with the backlash of having views that weren't popular in your local community.

being liberal in a conservative community, for example.

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

#278

Post by pcthrowaway »

adwn wrote: post #125
interpol_p wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I initially had a similar reaction but then forced myself to take a step back. I think I can sympathise with Adria regarding her initial reaction. She's a minority surrounded by men who are happy to make these sorts of jokes within earshot. It sounds harmless to us, but I can't even imagine what it's like to have been at PyCon as a black Jewish woman. It must be very difficult to attend such a conference and then hea…

> as a black Jewish woman Feeling out of place as a black woman I can understand, but how does her religion segregate her from the rest of the audience? Is this difference visible from outside?

Read a little bit on intersectionality [1] and keep in mind that Judaism is a ethnoreligious group that has a history of being oppressed.

My personal take on the matter is that Jews also benefit from quite a bit of privilege, at least in the U.S. but it's understandable why someone with a fusion of minority backgrounds would be aware of how these work against them.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

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

#279

Post by rors »

BasDirks wrote: post #250
rors wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can buy that the joke was just inappropriate, and no doubt that she massively overreacted. However, she was the one who ended up with the death threats. It's hard to reassure women that they're safe at tech events if the result of them making a social faux-pas are threats to their safety. Have any white men on this site ever been on the receiving end of a campaign of intimidation and fear? I sure haven't. We then c…

"a social faux-pas" .. "Have any white men on this site ever been on the receiving end of a campaign of intimidation and fear?" Did you hear what happened to this "Hank" guy when he made a joke once, a "social faux-pas"? I heard there was an article about him on HN recently.

Andrea was sent pictures of her head superimposed on porn actors. She was sent rape and death threats. Was Hank sent death threats?

To be clear, my definition of 'a campaign of intimidation and fear' are threats to your personal safety and your life.

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

#280

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

> his inability to realise how vulnerable she felt simply attending a conference because she was in the minority

Aren't we granting too much power to minorities? Let me tell you a story that happened to me.

I once went to a Java developers meetup. I'm a Lisper, probably the only one that was attending, so I was a clear minority (that was 3 years ago, back before everyone jumped onto functional programming bandwagon and started replacing 'A's in their company logos with lambdas, etc.). I actually only went there because my friend was giving a talk about Git. That, and they had free pizza. But I digress.

Anyway, there was this guy showing an interesting library for Java, name of which I can't remember now, that was aimed at seriously reducing the amount of cruft and boilerplate one has to write, replacing common patterns with annotations. I thought it was a great idea, and wanted to congratulate him, but suddenly, the entire audience started criticizing. That it's wrong, it's not "the Java way", etc. I voiced my opinion, that it clearly improves readability, for which I heard that I "don't get the Java way of doing things". I think I might also heard someone telling me, "you're a Lisper, this is different, you won't understand".

Now should I be offended at that reaction? Well, I felt bad, but should I cry foul, and vent out on the obvious discrimination of concise languages? Should I Tweet about how misolambdic the people on that conference were? How they hate metaprogramming? Should I get someone fired from their job because they told me I'm a Lisper, and thus don't understand Java? I'm a minority after all. I can't even get a job in the field I love, and have to code PHP to earn my bread.

I don't think anyone would find affirmative answers to above questions reasonable. And yet in some cases, it's apparently fine to overhear a random joke and turn it into a mess that gets two people fired from their jobs, just because you're a part of a minority. Do we want a society that's afraid of minorities? Because in a way, it validates discrimination - when people see that the smaller group has a disproportional ability to cause damage, it makes people hate them, not welcome them.

Moreover, I believe that not being easily offended is the sign of being a mature person. You shouldn't let some passing airwaves upset you to the point of losing control.

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