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Life after an internet mob attack

pasquale.cool

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Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#341

Post by bitwize »

bendbro wrote: post #241
philwelch wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever the talk of “consequences” starts, I’m reminded of a quote: “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” —Idi Amin

Yeah, the "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" response that some liberals give has always puzzled me. It is internally inconsistent for a liberal ideology. 1. They believe that "wage slavery" exists. That is, an employee may freely agree to employment conditions under a capitalist view, but under the liberal view, they have not freely agreed since various coercive forces exist that force them a…

> The idea that any consequence of free speech is acceptable is easily countered: the consequence of you calling an insane person stupid is they kill you.

"[John] Solomon is hiding because he is a coward who enjoys belittling other people from behind a safe veil of invisibility. His is like many sites on the internet, who mock and insult while lacking any courage to own their own words. In public, these cowards would not dare to say the same things, because they know full well that someone just might come after them, knock their yapping blocks off, or in a worst case scenario, go to their house one night and kill them." --Jennifer Diane Reitz, on someone who gave her webcomic a bad review.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#342

Post by kalkin »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #163

I wouldn't call OP's post "receipts", but rather "his curated receipts." What makes more sense? Some dude has been creepy and only showed the positive side in his defense, or three random unrelated women -- who he claims only ever had lovely, adoring exchanges with him -- decided to destroy his life for no apparent reason. I mean, the former case has a precedent for happening almost habitually in the past, you'd have…

There's quite a bit of irony in the number of HN commenters who are prepared to side with the OP instantly & without any apparent consideration as an innocent victim of... people online instantly & without apparent consideration siding with accusers.

His story didn't quite add up to me - no explanation, even speculative, of why several people in his life, who he thought he was friends with, might suddenly decide to attack him - so I found this interesting: https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mit...

I don't have a lot of sympathy for VCs who have access to actual capital but feel like an anonymous Twitter account making fun of them is "punching down", and it's not obvious that the non-OP people in this story are all behaving well, but we don't have to pick sides here, and it seems like there's plenty of reason to be cautious about fitting this into a narrative about online "mobs" "lynching" innocent victims.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#343

Post by exolymph »

cousin_it wrote: post #54
lloydjones wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post, and your comment, IMO wrongly frames this as courage .vs. cowardice in standing up for friends. However, that fails to take into account any context of the particular “cancellation”. eg, A situation with damning screenshots of lewd DMs are pretty ‘smoking gun’, and the barometer of “good friends would publicly support me” feels like an insane expectation when (in this hypothetical instance) the person did a…

My view is more like "a true friend would help you hide a body", or the short story "Friends in San Rosario" by O.Henry. If I abandoned a friend to the mob due to "screenshots of lewd DMs", I'd have a hard time living with myself afterward.

Just a heads up for any friends of mine reading this comment, if you kill someone, I'm not gonna help cover it up. Probably even if you were justified — you'll still have to take your chances with the court system. Good luck tho!

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#344

Post by imgabe »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #25

The most disturbing and insidious sentiment of online mobs is claiming that the targets are "just being held accountable". Or that such people are just experiencing "consequences". I really can't express just how cold and bloodthirsty such statements seem to be. It's the perfect combination of justifying vicious behavior while also absolving themselves of responsibility.

The "consequences" thing is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Literally everything is a consequence of something else. If you cut someone off in traffic, they might hunt you down and shoot you. That is a possible consequence. It doesn't mean it's a just or appropriate consequence or that we as a society should allow it.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#345

Post by toiletfuneral »

egypturnash wrote: post #322
Zababa wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an expression of your biais against right-wing people rather than a failure of the author.

No, that's an expression of my considered and long-standing opinion that Scott Adams is full of a whole lot of shit, which dates to well before he started making worshipful posts about how Donald Trump is a mind-controlling wizard. The turn to right-wing gadfly is just icing on the cake.

Good lord I cannot believe this is being downvoted. If HN wants to defend that Scott Adams dork for his weird ass beliefs in his magical sexual powers, it says way more about the downvoters than the comment. Where's the defense? I'd really love to hear it right now.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#346

Post by austhrow743 »

valtism wrote: post #312
dang wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EDIT: Watching the points on this comment swing from negative to positive in the span of minutes is telling. Please follow the site guidelines. You broke the second-last one: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . (Btw, it's not "telling" of anything but that the topic is divisive, which we all know already.)

Hey dang. I think this post need to be taken down. I've followed this drama before and after reading a lot from both sides, it's pretty clear in my eyes that there is an ongoing harassment campaign from Pasquale. I was really shocked to see this getting so highly voted on HN. I think this post covers a lot of what is happening - https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mit...

Do you have something better to show harassment? That post doesn't appear to. As far as I can tell it's about an account that replied to people patting themselves on the back with clap symbols, which seems rather benign. Although I may just be too removed from twitter and people who use twitter culture to get it.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#348

Post by wslack »

WDCDev wrote: post #57
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #29

From the linked Notion "Receipts" page: > I've struggled to understand why so many people have piled on to these absurd accusations without facts. I watched a similar situation play out in real time. A friend had to fire an employee who wasn't submitting work or even responding to communications. The employe retaliated by using their moderately large social media presence to disparage my friend and her company. Stran…

> I was stunned at how someone with zero evidence and an obvious axe to grind could rally such disdain for someone else with little more than a few unsubstantiated social media posts. I feel that this is due to the weird place victimization occupies in our culture combined with how anti-social social media is. It's extremely easy to issue accusations and threats and have them be read by literally millions of people.…

It's tricky because these accusations resonate because they remind us of things that really happen. (and in fact, lies can be formulated for maximum impact when truthtelling is usually more nuanced)

Because powerful people have strong lawyers, the tools that the falsely accused can use to clear their name can be used, to more effect, by the guilty.

There are no easy solutions here. The past looked calm only because people often had no recourse unless a newspaper took up their cause.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#349

Post by eyelidlessness »

imgabe wrote: post #330
eyelidlessness wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I... don’t understand what you’re trying to convince me of here? Are you trying to morally equate me hypothetically naming people who’ve abused me to stealing from them, if I couldn’t defend a non-legal claim of what happened in court? I sincerely do not understand what you’re saying should change.

I understand that you are telling the truth. Do you understand that sometimes people do not tell the truth? The question is what level of consequence are you saying we should inflict on people before some kind of evidence beyond an accusation is required? If it's "I tell my friends about what happened, and then they turn down opportunities to work with that person". I don't think anyone would or could sue for libel a…

No, I don’t think that’s reasonable. In the spirit of “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”, I don’t think adding more legal liability serves anyone. Moreover, it serves even less people who already have few resources to redress wrongs.

It’s not like this concept of “mob ruined my life” is some new concept, it’s something victims of abuse experience or withhold their stories to avoid, and have forever.

Remember when this claim was made about a now sitting SCOTUS justice? His life had been ruined? Not at all. But at least one of his accusers was so afraid for her life that she went into hiding. Imagine how much more dangerous it would be for her if she were legally penalized for “ruining his life”, which she didn’t do, but absolutely became a part of the anti-cancel-culture script. Imagine how that could be abused by someone in such a high place of power.

People who’ve been hurt by others don’t need to be legally scrutinized for saying so. If it’s in the court of public opinion, the truth comes out. We know this because the few cases where people lie are always repeated by people motivated to penalize truth telling.

I’m afraid to name people who’ve hurt me here, people no one on HN knows, because I fear retribution. Adding the possibility that I might be tangled up in years of legal battles I can’t afford simply for saying what happened is utterly terrifying to me. And that’s coming from a place of relative privilege where I don’t expect half the danger other accusers might expect.

No. There should not be legal penalties for describing abuse without legal proof.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#350

Post by zerocrates »

hexane360 wrote: post #209
lloydjones wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post, and your comment, IMO wrongly frames this as courage .vs. cowardice in standing up for friends. However, that fails to take into account any context of the particular “cancellation”. eg, A situation with damning screenshots of lewd DMs are pretty ‘smoking gun’, and the barometer of “good friends would publicly support me” feels like an insane expectation when (in this hypothetical instance) the person did a…

Speaking of Scott Alexander, this kind of thinking seems exactly like the kind of virtue signaling he writes about in "I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup". As the priest in the parable says: >It seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. You forgive a conventional duel ju…

> most of the left-right difference on this issue comes down to how strongly they feel about the infraction in question

I would say this is pretty clearly the case. Most of the time the question seems to be "is this cancel-worthy": the difference in your reaction to the "cancellation" of, say, J.K. Rowling vs. Nikole Hannah-Jones probably depends more on your feeling about what they've done than on your stance on "cancellation" itself.

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