Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What it's like to be cancelled

noahbradley.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 613 posts

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#601

Post by dcow »

rkk3 wrote: post #596
dcow wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not alleged, he published a written apology. The point is it's not legally problematic. He apologized because some people said he was being inappropriate. We have no evidence that there was actually sexual harassment by any legal definition of the term. There's nuance here. > These weren't random private parties, these were work & industry events Do you have a citation on that last part? I can't find any info…

> Do you have a citation on that last part? I can't find any info indicating they were work sponsored events with vendors and the like. https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi... > He apologized because some people said he was being inappropriate. We have no evidence that there was actually sexual harassment by any legal definition of the term. His apology is Screenshoted in the above link. "I wa…

nit: I can't find source material indicating these were actually industry events. The article mentions they are, but that's just twitter "journalism". If you are at a happy hour the Friday night on the first day of a conference, is that a work event? Probably depends on who you ask and their bias.

Anyway, it doesn't matter what you or I think about Noah's behavior. We would probably come to the same conclusion, you and I, if we were sitting on a jury together presented with facts. Neither of us want sexual assault to go unpunished. The point of my initial comment is that I don't think society benefits from extrajudicial groups and I do not consider firing someone, even if the mob was right, appropriate justice. If Noah is guilty of sexual harassment, that's a serious crime and he should be treated as a criminal. As a society we have mechanisms in place to handle these situations. A twitter shitfest is not the appropriate mechanism.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#602

Post by renaudg »

dcow wrote: post #584
rkk3 wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a very very fine line between "creepy" and "has game" and it usually comes down to how attractive you are which moulds how other people happen to perceive your advances. Yes, but not sure why that matters. The guy has a 6-pack does that change anything for you? https://twitter.com/noahbradley/status/1245397083529543680/p...

That was not my point. Furthermore attractiveness is subjective. Point is if that dude hit on you and you wanted that outcome, then it’s not problematic. If he hit on you and you didn't want it, then, these days, that’s all it takes for it to be problematic at least in the opinion of a few twitter users. This mode of operation is not realistic if you acknowledge humans get attracted to each other. If we approach soci…

See also : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxuUkYiaUc8

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#603

Post by rkk3 »

dcow wrote: post #601
rkk3 wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have a citation on that last part? I can't find any info indicating they were work sponsored events with vendors and the like. https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi... > He apologized because some people said he was being inappropriate. We have no evidence that there was actually sexual harassment by any legal definition of the term. His apology is Screenshoted in the above link. "I wa…

nit: I can't find source material indicating these were actually industry events. The article mentions they are, but that's just twitter "journalism". If you are at a happy hour the Friday night on the first day of a conference, is that a work event? Probably depends on who you ask and their bias. Anyway, it doesn't matter what you or I think about Noah's behavior. We would probably come to the same conclusion, you a…

> I can't find source material indicating these were actually industry events.

The initial tweet cited in that article specifically mentions "Massive Black afterparty" a arts studio, and "workshops" and "conventions".

>If you are at a happy hour the Friday night on the first day of a conference, is that a work event?

If it's in your field and sponsored by your company or vendors? yes. If its a a random event you are anonymously crashing? probably not.

>The point of my initial comment is that I don't think society benefits from extrajudicial groups and I do not consider firing someone, even if the mob was right, appropriate justice.

Ignore the mob spreading false rape allegations, it's a red herring. He apologized/admitted to being sexually inappropriate at work events, that is grounds to terminate for cause.

> If Noah is guilty of sexual harassment, that's a serious crime and he should be treated as a criminal. As a society we have mechanisms in place to handle these situations.

Sexual harassment is a civil violation not a criminal violation. Police do not investigate sexual harassment and people do not go to jail for sexual harassment... You are right we have mechanisms such as his employer terminating his employment or suing for damages.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#604

Post by rkk3 »

dcow wrote: post #600
rkk3 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "sorry I was inappropriate" is not the same as "this man harassed women in problematic ways". "I was terrible to women. I preyed on them, I ceaselessly hit on them, I pressured them into sex. Yes I was one of those creepy sexual predators you hear about"[1] He clearly admits to harassing women in problematic ways, for which his employer fired him[2]. It's pretty bizarre that you think it's not "real sexual harassme…

> Have you ever been involved in a lawsuit? They are an incredible pain the ass for both sides. I know I personally wouldn't want to waste 2+ years of my life on one for something like this. That's the point. It shouldn't be easy to call someone creepy and get them fired. If it really is such a problem then you should be willing to take the legal route. Invoking mob justice is a rash shortcut. I don't care if the mob…

> It shouldn't be easy to call someone creepy and get them fired.

Thats not what happened. He wasn't fired because someone said something on the internet, he published a written apology calling himself a "sexual predator" etc.

> If it really is such a problem then you should be willing to take the legal route

People shouldn't be able to report negative behavior, they have to sue for damages? That would be an extreme view.

> I take Noah's original statement with context. He says in the article we're discussing here that he doesn't believe he worded the apology correctly

In regards to the rape allegations from "pressuring someone to have sex" but that is still sexual harassment in a work environment.

>I'm trying to process Noah's reflection on the events, not the "in the moment" stuff from last year. It sounds like Noah is at a point on his personal journey where he understands people's reactions but doesn't believe events played out in a just manner, all things considered.

By his own admission in the parent article he was an asshole and regrets his past behavior he just doesn't want people to think he said that he raped anyone, which is fair.

> Taking things one level up, if Noah is guilty of sexual assault, it should be abundantly clear to him in the form of a conviction. I don't think it's a great situation to be in where it's not clear what actually happened and the door is left open for Noah (and/or others) to interpret events however he (they) wants. We potentially have an unpunished/unregistered sexual predator hanging out. Not good.

Sexual assault is not something he is accused of but the stats are something like 31% [1] of them being reported to the police.

>You need the law to step in and lay down the gavel.

sexual harassment is not a criminal offense

[1] https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#605

Post by silexia »

I enjoyed reading this article by a man who was canceled in social media and fired from his job. People had a knee-jerk reaction to a book he wrote in a goofy childish style to try to get laughs. They did not take into account the actual context of his book, they simply took a few lines out of it out of context and generated a whole bunch of Twitter rage. Apple, a pretty scummy company at this point in time, actually fired the man over it.

My company has a huge diversity of nationalities, religions, and every type of individual working here. If my employees launched a cancellation crusade every time they saw something they didn’t like in someone else, our company would crash and burn fast. We have employees from Pakistan and India, which have a lot of hostility to each other. We have employees who are Christian, Hindus, Islamic, among others. We have employees who are straight, gay, trans, etc. To protect everyone, we keep all of our focus on work rather than trying to browbeat people about politics or religion or anything else. All we care about is the performance of our company towards our goals.

The way to solve societal issues like systemic discrimination is to eliminate all traces of it and focus on a pure meritocracy. Attempts to use reverse discrimination are extraordinarily misguided and dangerous, and will lead to the worst kinds of backlash. We already saw that happen following world war I when the Germans were discriminated against and developed so much anger that Hitler was able to rise and bring on world war II.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#606

Post by gamblor956 »

koheripbal wrote: post #495
gamblor956 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of at least 5 women who stopped attending these events because of you, and their (near-)contemporaneous accounts of your behavior does not match your current recollections of your past behavior.

I'm not inclined to believe 3rd party rumors. If anything, your comment is exactly the problem OP is talking about.

In addition to actually witnessing Noah act like a drunken idiot, I was made aware of Noah's more inappropriate behavior contemporaneously with it happening...in two cases, within minutes of him playing drunken grab-ass, and in the remaining cases, the next day.

That being said, I'm also not surprised that people on HN side with a man with a history of sexually harassment over his victims.

For inexplicable reasons, the HN crowd seems to think that because they're awkward around women that the same thing that happened to Noah can happen to them, but being awkward around women is not sexual harassment. Just don't grab a woman's body without her permission or try to proposition her within minutes of meeting her, and you'll be fine.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#607

Post by visarga »

Jcowell wrote: post #589
lelanthran wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's telling that you think courts are objective... So, if you think that the court system, with it's experts, and centuries of experience, with fallbacks and checks and balances, with emphasis on applying the law with regard to precedent and societal input, with appeals and formal processes that must be followed ... is unable to be objective, what makes you think that random people with an actual specified bias is…

There’s a difference between able to be objective and being objective. Anyone who believe that’s American Courts, or rather, courts are objective is someone I hope has a really good lawyer if they ever go to court.

Are you aligning yourself here to the "master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" and proposing we distrust the systems in our society?

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#609

Post by aliasEli »

koheripbal wrote: post #454
mkr-hn wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably a better way to frame this in a context where journalists are increasingly under attack just for doing their jobs. https://cpj.org/2020/12/in-2020-u-s-journalists-faced-unprec...

I'm not sure if it's correlated - but journalists have also been doing a far worse job than I've experienced previously.

Due to a decline in income from advertisers many traditional media have fired a lot of journalists. The remaining ones are under great pressure to produce articles. So it is not surprising that the quality of journalism has declined.
Post reply on HN