411–420 of 480 posts
1) be pseudonymous. People in my real life don't need to know what I do on the internet. Not like I'm doing anything untoward, but I am candidly discussing things with random strangers, including things some might view as beyond discussion, and you don't want some crusade against you for that. Your real life and your internet life don't need to overlap, and 99% of people get no benefit from them overlapping. 2) never…
Had me for a while, then unfortunately lost me at the quote of Scott Adams. Adams is EXACTLY who I think anyone should avoid quoting at all costs, when you’re rightfully criticizing the Internet Morality Hordes. If you wanna know why, just scroll his Twitter timeline.
> Had me for a while, then unfortunately lost me at the quote of Scott Adams. It's interesting to me you didn't just say "quoting Scott Adams is a mistake," instead you "were with them until they quoted Adams," implying a single quote you disagree with invalidates all their points. Are you saying you believe they deserved it because those were consequences for being the person they are, ie. someone who quotes Adams?…
I'm worried about what I call Internet Morality Hordes, and I think that's a very complex issue. Anytime you criticize this phenomenon (which is important to do, like with everything) there's a flurry of things you can be accused of by the Court of The People of The Internet: victim blaming; not being able to recognize your mistakes; involuntary sexism/racism; inability to recognize your own privilege.
Now, the problem is that all these accusations can be right in some cases. What we see is that the morality hordes tend to flip the tables the opposite way, and they use this accusation to condemn anyone based often on the victim's report. Saying that an accusation of a victim of anything should be carefully waged before taking it for granted (as it should be in a society that lives by the rule of law) you can be accused of defending the alleged perpetrator, and so on. You dare say the victim should explain better what happened? Monster! You've never hit a woman, but you have conservative views about marriage? Bigot! Just to clarify: my views are full-on progressive, pro-LGBTQ (I'm part of that), and mostly socialist-leaning. Yet I want a world where my conservative neighbor can argue for its view of the world in a democratic way, trough debate and peaceful confrontation. That's not what the hordes want.
Back to the D'Silva story. The guy who's writing the story started doing exactly what I describe, strategically framing the discourse the right way. Then boom, he quotes one of the more controversial, misogynistic, "cancel culture will kill us all" assholes you can find on Twitter. Someone who's exactly the perfect explainer of how, in this day and age, you should NOT talk about the issues he raises. I want to live in a world where people like Scott Adams are free to say things that I consider to be bullshit. But I also know that we live in a world where, if you want to bring your point across in a productive way about this issues, you don't quote someone backward-thinking like Scott Adams.
Therefore: he got me until he quoted Scott Adams.
Sorry if this all sounds a bit confusing, it's a complex issue I'm still trying to wrap my head around. I also want to point out that nobody deserves Internet Mob Attacks, whether they are guilty of what they were accused of or not. Just don't quote friggin' Scott Adams.
Had me for a while, then unfortunately lost me at the quote of Scott Adams. Adams is EXACTLY who I think anyone should avoid quoting at all costs, when you’re rightfully criticizing the Internet Morality Hordes. If you wanna know why, just scroll his Twitter timeline.
I've lost as much respect for Scott Adams as anyone, so I'd agree that quoting him is ill advised, but the underlying sentiment is not wrong. Mobs do cause harm, not least because they make redemption harder than it already is. In a way, treating a Scott Adams quote as an automatic disqualifier is only making the OP's point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“It is absolutely essential that we believe Jussie Smollett. If we don’t, other people who haven’t been attacked might not have the courage to come forward.” https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/4/wokes-on-you
That’s a Titania McGrath quote. She’s fictional. A parody.
>who haven’t been
It's clearly a parody
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So what would that look like? Would employers no longer field public complaints about potential problem employees, under any circumstances? In effect, they would be required to always side with the employee in case of a dispute?
It would look like France, Japan, or, y'know, most industrialised countries. Employers would be required to give cause for any firing, and follow a documented process in which the employee has certain rights (e.g. the right to be assisted by a union representative, see the evidence against them, respond to allegations).
As usual with legal stuff, the answer really seems to depends on the nature of was posted, and the employment contract that is in place.
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That seems to hinge a lot on having a specific and consistent definition of what "related to the job" and "part of their work" means that won't unfairly affect some companies, maybe there is an established legal definition of that somewhere?
The legal system manages to work out vague definitions. Here's an excerpt from New Zealand's employment law regarding unjustifiable dismissal: "The test is whether the employer’s actions, and how the employer acted, were what a fair and reasonable employer could have done in all the circumstances at the time the dismissal or action occurred." How's that for specific and consistent! Yet it still provides protection ag…
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I mean, to me that sadly is nothing new. I've known my share of people who just assume by default that people they don't know are jerks, and are hostile toward them. I don't know what you would call it. Untrusting? I can't see where you would cross that line and all of a sudden start calling it "cancel culture" or "consequence culture" or whatever. Is it because it's happening online now?
The part that is new, or at least recently en vogue again, is how this behavior is seen as a positive. It is explicitly encouraged by current social dynamics. It is even encouraged to some extent in academic or "intellectual" circles.
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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…
This happened to a friend of mine recently. Some woman posted their conversation to an instagram story, saying all my friend wanted was sex and implying that people should stay away from him. It seemed like she thought she was doing something courageous, when in reality she's kind of a monster. The dude did nothing more than unfollow her on insta after she strongly hinted that there would be no possibility for romanc…
This is why your identity online should never be traceable back to your real name. It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on privacy, but the internet ultimately doesn't change if you use an alias. If you do so, employers will come back empty-handed when they try Googling you, and they'll have a harder time finding "that dumb Twitter post" that jeopardizes your job. None of this is to say that you should be a bad perso…
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So what is the solution there? Should twitter and facebook have their own internal legal system, decided upon by democratic vote as I was just describing? What would make it inherently less tribal if they did that? Would that stop large groups of people from all deciding to vote as a block and criticize one person all at once? Or is the goal something else? Surely, if this problem were theoretically solvable by a soc…
- Social media should not allow the broadcasting of unproven allegations that individuals have committed crimes, just as conventional media is barred from doing so until the cases have been heard in court. - Utility-like services should not be allowed to refuse service to individuals without clear reason.
#2 is already true in some cases, but as usual, the real answer is something like "it depends."