Interesting article on public shaming and social media

[Cinemachinery]

Changed my outlook entirely. I find myself guilty of band-wagoning all too often in this regard. No more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magaz ... .html?_r=1

[Islandmur]

I remember some of those jokes making their appearances on our various boards and how anything resembling a defense of them was ridiculed. Nothing can be said now on the internet and be deemed an error or a joke or just a remark... no everything is a bid deal. If we treated our off line conversations this way we'd all be in our own hell.

[Anakin McFly]

Yeah. While I can understand the outrage, it's the disproportionate magnitude of the shaming and irrational targeting that particularly bothers me, as well as the evident glee that so many people take in the destruction of a perceived or real enemy. Someone says something bad, they should get criticised: maybe by one person, perhaps ten, perhaps even a hundred if it's particularly bad. But by a few million angry people from around the world, vilifying them as the absolute personification of everything that's wrong in the world, getting them fired, getting them stalked and harassed IRL, getting them slandered with new made-up accusations, getting their personal information released online, and even driving them to suicide? Never. The punishment does not fit the crime at all.

It's no longer an issue of justice - there is no justice in a system that takes pleasure in destroying a person's psyche due to a misinterpreted or mildly offensive (even very offensive) tweet, while people who continue ranting on in open, public bigotry and causing severe harm to thousands continue getting lots of money and fame and adulation. Even among ordinary people - I have seen far, far worse racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia etc and all-out terribleness on Twitter and other social media, whose culprits are never made famous and most of the time don't even have their words challenged.

It's not even an issue of deterrence, given how all it takes is one minor infraction - someone can be a gigantic asshole and make a thousand extremely offensive tweets and nobody cares, but then some other person who is otherwise the manifestation of goodness and benevolence says something once that wasn't the best thing to say and which they might have even regretted after the fact, and suddenly it's blown up and they're getting death threats from strangers around the world and used as the go-to name for cruel bigotry. A system truly meant as deterrence would make a distinction between intentional malice and accidental offence, even wrongful accusation; and it wouldn't equally target people on both sides of a given moral issue.

It's just schaedenfreude at some point, and becomes part of a larger culture of cruelty. Most of them are probably no better themselves, or even worse, but through this they get to feel morally superior to whoever they're targetting. e.g. I've seen people happily joining in the shaming bandwagon because someone said something sexist and it's a great excuse to freely insult them and feel morally superior, but then elsewhere saying outrageously sexist things. It's massively hypocritical, and there's such a lack of humility and understanding.

always relevant:
"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy." - Christopher Dawson

[Derived Absurdity]

I enjoyed that article. These types of group hatefests are really really disturbing. (Although one part confused me. At the end of the article he quoted her as saying that putting the spotlight on her again would only be a negative for her, and so he writes a whole story about her with her name in the title? What's up with that?)

One thing I noticed about this example - people say I'm extremely misanthropic, but it seems to me that these online bullies are far, far more misanthropic than I have ever been. Because I read her tweet when it first became famous and it didn't even occur to me that she was actually meaning it literally, that white people literally can't get AIDS or something. It seemed very obvious to me at the time that she was making fun of privilege and social obliviousness by stating something dumb in a sarcastic way. What kind of low opinion do you have of humanity that you would look at that tweet and immediately come to the conclusion that it was meant literally?

Of course now I consider the possibility that they didn't think she meant it literally - that they knew full well what she meant but they took the opportunity to laugh at her from afar and ruin her life anyway. That seems horribly plausible. Because that's similar to what happens in high school often, and these online hatefests are very reminiscent of high school bullies - they choose a target to hate and dehumanize and consider it their duty to go as far as possible. If you're in the group you get status points for hating her more - the farther you take it, the more points you get. You don't want to show any compassion and risk being ostracized by the group, do you? You don't want to lower your position in the pecking order? You want to be part of the popular kids, right?

I saw that in action during high school. It's the exact same thing as what's going on here. That's why I try to never take part of these types of things (except with things like, you know, gogo being an asshole, but that's because he's a sociopathic asshole and I wanted him gone).

[Dr_Liszt]

I remember Stelio yelling at us for some of these. I wonder what he thinks of this article now.

[Derived Absurdity]

If he thinks losing your job and your reputation and the respect of your acquaintances and being shamed by everyone everywhere for the rest of your life is proportionate retribution for one stupid tweet (and many of these weren't even stupid! she was clearly making fun of privilege, that guy made a silly joke to a guy sitting next to him, and that one woman flipped off a gravestone? Oh cry me a fucking river), then he's an asshole.

I sort of remember getting into an argument a while ago about that lady who dressed up as a Boston Bombing victim for Halloween. Yeah, that was a silly decision (although not really, because the theme of the costume party she was at was to be edgy, if I remember correctly), but she didn't deserve to lose her job over it. I remember I was horrified (yes, that's the right word - horrified) that people here thought it was ok that she lost her job over that. What the fuck, seriously. Compassion, people, fucking learn it.

[Anakin McFly]

It seemed very obvious to me at the time that she was making fun of privilege and social obliviousness by stating something dumb in a sarcastic way. What kind of low opinion do you have of humanity that you would look at that tweet and immediately come to the conclusion that it was meant literally?

Poe's law. Also, once something becomes public, you can't control your audience - which will include people who don't speak English fluently, people who are bad at reading comprehension, people who don't get sarcasm, and people who are surrounded with the kind of jerks who say stuff like that and mean it literally. Which is scary, because a lot of speech is meant for specific contexts and audiences. There are jokes I make with my friends which they know is innocent fun, but which my parents would be horrified by. Or all the jokes on these boards that would sound very, very bad out of context.

[Derived Absurdity]

Yeah. And if that tweet was instead some anonymous Youtube or Reddit comment, then I would probably think it was genuine, as there's a lot of dumb assholes on there. But she wasn't anonymous, she was in an important position in some company or other, she was obviously somewhat smart, obviously she wouldn't tweet something that mind-bendingly stupid unless she meant it sarcastically.

As an aside I don't like Poe's Law. I know what it used to mean, but nowadays it simply means when people are incapable of interpreting their ideological opponents in any kind of sympathetic light and instead think everyone who disagrees with them is so stupid that they can't be distinguished from a parody. "Ha, this woman thinks white people can't get AIDS! What a moron!" "Uh, you know that's not what she meant, right? She was actually highlighting the stupidity of that position." "Oh, well, Poe's Law! Hahahaha!" No, simply citing Poe's Law doesn't excuse your stupidity, bro.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

Pretty much what's already been said on this thread ..

The mentality behind this sort of "Hang em from the rafters" mentality has always mystified me. There's a point of ironic crossover where the people baying for blood in an attempt to display how morally superior they are become far worse than the offense.

I have no problem with calling out bad behaviour but how you do this speaks to the strength of your argument and your ability to articulate the wrong without resorting to going to ridiculous lengths to prove to the masses how much of a better person you are by being a complete irrational dick.

Frankly - it's why I'm uncomfortable with some of the dialogue this board has entertained in the past. People say something stupid or half baked and all of a sudden they are just the worst in every respect .. sure there's been some pretty shitfull stuff said on this board that provokes a reaction and rightly causes those statements to be called out .. but how you engage in this, the level of personal attack that it generates boarders on bullying or outright abuse and at that point - there are two wrongs and no right.

[phe_de]

My opinion: These shamefests on social media are the modern day equivalent of lynching.
And lynching has been around for centuries, and usually carried out by not very rational people; so maybe the fact that it exists is just more evidence for human stupidity being without boundaries.

When someone is lynched, their life is over. When someone is online-shamed, like Justine Sacco, their life is not physically over, but since she was fired and had trouble getting new jobs, and the Internet never forgets, we can say that her life was deeply affected.

And even I am not above human stupidity and vengefulness. While reading this article I found myself sort of hoping that someone would do to Biddle (the guy who first retweeted Sacco's tweet) the same thing as he did to her. The rational part of me knows that two wrongs don't make one right. But I'm only human after all.

[Anakin McFly]

While reading this article I found myself sort of hoping that someone would do to Biddle (the guy who first retweeted Sacco's tweet) the same thing as he did to her.

That happened, actually! After he made these tweets - during Anti-Bullying Month -
1. "Ultimately #GamerGate is reaffirming what we've known to be true for decades: nerds should be constantly shamed and degraded into submission."
2. "Bring Back Bullying"

and man, that one hit me hard. Particularly the repulsive idea that the behaviour of a group of people I'm decidedly against would in any way justify the severe bullying I was subjected to as a kid. One of my best friends has been diligently chronicling the GamerGate crimes against feminism and humanity, and she's a huge nerd who actually dropped out of school because the bullying got so bad and she couldn't cope. (she's also high-functioning autistic, and kids are cruel sociopaths.)

and Biddle's followup tweet: "wait a second.... I just found an old parchment from 1750 that declares today national SMASH A NERD day"

Biddle later said that it was "just a joke" and he can't believe that people thought he was seriously advocating for bullying, but... nah, I'm not buying that. Did he also miss the fact that both sides of GamerGate are mostly nerds?

Meanwhile, I found this article in which he makes fun of an ISIS hostage: http://newsfeed.gawker.com/how-a-mental ... 1680629032

and joking about child abuse: http://theralphretort.com/sam-biddle-an ... -01013015/

Class act, that guy. Apparently he's since been promoted.

[Cassius Clay]

I'm so overwhelmed by the obscene amount of tone deafness here - the original joke, the selective/specific narrative and agenda the article attempts to advance as truthy fact, the absurd equivalence to Adria Richards, the selective/misguided "compassion", trying to style an ironic racist tweet as some kind of satirical critique of white privilege(much like how Daniel Tosh obviously wasn't being literal when he made that rape joke...so, no foul right? I mean..is this the first time we are encountering white ironic racism? How typical and condescending to assume that people either took the joke too literally or knew she was joking and just didn't get it/were just being mean. No other options, huh?), and most of the responses on this thread - that I feel like I've suddenly stepped into the twilight zone. Insidious white privilege/supremacy at some of it's finest. I don't have the time or patience to go over all this. But, I'm sure someone will write an article or blog post breaking down and exposing the insidious agenda of this nonsensical article...which I will post later.

And phe_de is correct. A white woman from a wealthy family getting fired from A PR JOB for PUBLICLY saying racist/ignorant things is just like lynching.

[Cassius Clay]

Y'all will love this blog. It started last thanksgiving. I had mixed feelings about it at first. Then I asked myself, "why in the hell am I feeling sorry for bold racists, who are willing to post their vitriol on social media?" Even then I still felt weird about it, until I saw a couple police officers, a guy that works with inner city kids, and other white people in positions of influence getting in trouble/getting fired over it. Then it had my full support.

http://racistsgettingfired.tumblr.com/

Edit: One of the best one's I've seen involved a guy saying some of the worst things one can say on social media. I think it was shortly after Mike Brown was killed. "The nigger thug deserved it. The niggers killing each other, destroying their own neighborhood's...we need to ship them back to Africa". That sort of thing. Then when he discovered people had contacted his employer, he came back with his tail between his leggings, pulling a hilarious 180. "I'm sorry I posted offensive things. I could lose my job." I laughed my fucking ass off.

[phe_de]

And phe_de is correct. A white woman from a wealthy family getting fired from A PR JOB for PUBLICLY saying racist/ignorant things is just like lynching.

Good to see we agree.

[Cassius Clay]

And phe_de is correct. A white woman from a wealthy family getting fired from A PR JOB for PUBLICLY saying racist/ignorant things is just like lynching.

Good to see we agree.

[Dr_Liszt]

No well. I agree we all say horrible stuff in private. I've said horrible things to whitey, ogl and azzy. But they are my friends and they know how I'm like. But if someone else were to step in and crucify me for it, having them ruin my life and be public ashamed for it, of course I would feel is unfair.

Besides as I've said to them, when I say racist stuff I know where I'm coming from, and I know I am trying to give something back, is not like I think I'm entitled to be racist. I know what I am and I know I'm privileged and wrong.

(racism against the Spanish doesn't count anyway)

[Cassius Clay]

And I'm certainly not saying that she doesn't deserve to work, nor am I necessarily in support of her firing...but the tone deaf, simplistic, overly-sympathetic/charitable framing(downplaying the joke(s), making of false/offensive equivalences, shifting responsibility, lack of power analysis, gross exaggeration and conflation of the consequences/reactions - I mean...did the article not state at the end that the woman has a job?) is ridiculous.

[Cassius Clay]

No well. I agree we all say horrible stuff in private. I've said horrible things to whitey, ogl and azzy. But they are my friends and they know how I'm like. But if someone else were to step in and crucify me for it, having them ruin my life and be public ashamed for it, of course I would feel is unfair.

Besides as I've said to them, when I say racist stuff I know where I'm coming from, and I know I am trying to give something back, is not like I think I'm entitled to be racist. I know what I am and I know I'm privileged and wrong.

(racism against the Spanish doesn't count anyway)

Yeah...there's a huge difference between making private jokes within your inner circle versus going public with them. Not that all private jokes are necessarily okay, but a joke you make privately can have a completely different meaning when made publicly. When your close friends know you intimately, there's the context of your intent that can be inferred. A similar joke made publicly lacks that context, and I think we all understand that. I'm suspicious of a person's intent when they don't have the good sense to know that a joke like that (with no context or suspicious context) has terrible implications. If they lack to tact to even consider how their intent is communicated, then that speaks volumes regarding their callousness. And I feel no obligation to be charitable with them. And I'm not going to lose any sleep over a PR head damaging their PR career over insensitive, PUBLIC posts.

[Dr_Liszt]

I guess those people weren't aware of how public their posts are or if people overhear stuff. One of the women there thought only 100 or so people that she knew would see that. But I don't know, people are dumb on the internet.

I got angry at my mom one time because she was being very racist in the mall, of course no one was paying attention to us, but what if someone heard her? She wasn't being particularly quiet and I do understand it was a private conversation and the whole world doesn't pay attention to me, but it just takes one person to overhear you and take you out of context. But still if you are going to be an asshole, at least do it privately.

I do feel matters like these need to be discussed and a reprimand should be made, if anything this has helped us talk about these topic and raise awareness. But the whole harassment/life ruining thing goes a little too far.

EDIT: Also my point of view comes from a privileged perspective. I have no idea what racism is!

[Boomer]

My opinion: These shamefests on social media are the modern day equivalent of lynching.

[Cinemachinery]

it's the disproportionate magnitude of the shaming and irrational targeting that particularly bothers me

That's pretty much the sum of it for me - prior to the "instantly viral to millions" nature of social media in its various forms, a comment like those in the article would evoke outrage from a relatively local circle, it could result in the loss of a job, if it were public enough it might meet with community censure... to extend that to millions seems to result in some emotionally-scarring results. The rape threats, "kill yourself" stuff, campaigning for their unemployment... anonymity, censure and numbers are a rough combination. The comments themselves merit a negative reaction, yes, but, as you say, it's way out of proportion in some of these instances.

[Gypsy-Vanner]

Well, in retrospect I don't think anyone of us enjoys reading the comments on social inequality articles by douchebags.

While I think it's unfortunate that there have been some pretty dire consequences to those people who made ignorant public comments, I am not of the mind that the "pile on" mentality is wrong. White people have this ability to use the victim card like no other group of people. We have this ability to turn such incidents into "poor me" and society likes to eat that shit up like chocolate. If that scenario is starting to change and there are actual consequences to their ignorance and that they can't play the victim card anymore, well all the more better to teach the important lesson on racism/sexism/homophobia etc...

God knows I sure as hell didn't like the pile on that happened to me (no sexual innuendo) but I learned a pretty important lesson from it and that folks is the moral of the story.

[Cassius Clay]

http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the- ... s.html?m=1

http://www.contralbum.com/blog/2015/2/1 ... -the-point

http://groupthink.jezebel.com/i-dont-fe ... 1685563608

[Derived Absurdity]

http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the- ... s.html?m=1

http://www.contralbum.com/blog/2015/2/1 ... -the-point

http://groupthink.jezebel.com/i-dont-fe ... 1685563608

Everyone should really read those first two links, especially the first one. They really show vividly how dishonest and morally empty the original article is. I really didn't know all that about Adria Richards... I just assumed everything I was hearing everyone else say about it was mostly accurate. I don't really know why... I really should know better. I take back most of what I said here.

How typical and condescending to assume that people either took the joke too literally or knew she was joking and just didn't get it/were just being mean. No other options, huh?

There are. I apologize for that. Clearly many people actually were insulted. My problem was that I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that someone who works as a PR person for an online content conglomerate would be so dumb as to make a joke like that... so I guess I thought it was a natural thing to assume that she meant it as a satire. I don't know what she was thinking when she made it.

When I made that comment I was thinking of Sam Biddle and people like him... white middle-class liberals who very clearly don't give a fuck about any principled stand against racism or anything of the sort, and from what I could gather were the primary instigators of the backlash. It'd be hard to convince me that any of these people are anything more than petty bullies.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

That's pretty much the sum of it for me - prior to the "instantly viral to millions" nature of social media in its various forms, a comment like those in the article would evoke outrage from a relatively local circle, it could result in the loss of a job, if it were public enough it might meet with community censure... to extend that to millions seems to result in some emotionally-scarring results. The rape threats, "kill yourself" stuff, campaigning for their unemployment... anonymity, censure and numbers are a rough combination. The comments themselves merit a negative reaction, yes, but, as you say, it's way out of proportion in some of these instances.

For the point of clarity - this is really the only point I was responding to. I don't agree with any of the revisionist stuff in that article at all but, all that revisionist stuff wasn't, to me, the actual point. Even if we just agree that someone says something horrible or wrong minded or whatever ( so, remove all that wrong minded reasoning completely from the context of the article) there is a limit to the level of intrusion these statements should have on their lives. It's one thing to be called out on something you say or do that's stupid or insulting .. but we live in an age where saying something stupid now can get you fired from a job you are perfectly capable in or see death threats, or are otherwise opened up to a world of pitch fork wielding strangers hell bent on proving how much more moral they are than you by systematically, deliberately ruining a life.

It's a sign of the times really and there is nothing much to be done for it than to call it out as poor behaviour in response to poor behaviour and distance myself from it as something that has at its core, a sense of righteousness to it.

From a "Reasonable man" perspective, there has to be some sort of measure to any level of public interaction that takes into account predictable consequences. If I am a part of a mob that systematically destroys a persons life to the point where they no longer feel safe, no longer have a job and are systematically shunned from their community - then I am also part of a mob that is working to pushing a potentially robust person into say committing suicide.. I don't feel comfortable with that at all.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

White people have this ability to use the victim card like no other group of people. We have this ability to turn such incidents into "poor me" and society likes to eat that shit up like chocolate. If that scenario is starting to change and there are actual consequences to their ignorance and that they can't play the victim card anymore, well all the more better to teach the important lesson on racism/sexism/homophobia etc...

God knows I sure as hell didn't like the pile on that happened to me (no sexual innuendo) but I learned a pretty important lesson from it and that folks is the moral of the story.

Well - I think there are two distinct things going on here. I don't think these people should consider themselves "victims" of their own racism or bigotry or should be revising context to make it more palatable. I also don't thing there should be a world of strangers piling on with calls for them to be fired or doing everything in their power to ensure their lives are ruined. It's the difference in wanting a criminal to be jailed as opposed to wanting a criminal to be tortured. There is a wrong on one side of the coin, how does creating a wrong on the other balance that out?

What happened to you here was essentially done in the context of a handful of people who you know. Should we agree that you should have lost your job over it or have people picket your house or send death threats or spam your facebook? .. at what level of personal transgression does this all become a non commentable outcome of someone doing something stupid in cyber space?

At this point I do believe they do legitimately become victims of a format that has absolutely no accountability. People feel entitled to act like complete douches simply because they are enabled to do so with a level of anonymity and with the full support of an equally anonymous crowd.

Arguing that this is an overreaction or dangerous isn't arguing that the individual didn't commit a wrong.

[Islandmur]

Let me be crystal clear on my position. I don't care if these people are racists, sexists, on any ists in the world. Being a horrible person doesn't mean you shouldn't have a job or be ruined.

The only reason you should loose your job is for not doing your job (or other internal stuff, downsizing for example).

Saying stupid things on social media unless they involve your work (like that teacher that was saying things about her students online) shouldn't make you lose your job. Reprimand, sanctions etc... yes.

The outrage of people on social media by people in lots of cases just as bad if not worse than the idiot poster is just an ego trip on the most part of "i'm better than you". The people that are offended (and by that I mean the target of the pique) are generally the less aggressive ones. Their complaints are valid and they tend to stick to the point.

[BruceSmith78]

Since this is the only thing generating conversation around here lately I decided to read the article. I didn't finish it because, well, have I mentioned that I'm lazy? I think I got the idea but the fucker just kept on going.

Anyway, I really couldn't feel much sympathy for Justine Sacco. As Castor pointed out, she's a PR rep (which stands for public relations), and she made an ass of herself in about as public an arena as you can get. Her jokes were offensive. I actually think she deserved to get fired.

I felt bad for the woman who took ironic pictures in front of signs and posted them on a private profile, then had one of them distributed without her knowledge or permission by someone else and got a ridiculous, disproportionate backlash for something that didn't really sound bad at all. Ditto the Boston-bombing victim costume. Although that sounded like it was in slightly poorer taste, it certainly wasn't something to lose your job over. The article should have focused on these two people.

[phe_de]

http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the- ... s.html?m=1

http://www.contralbum.com/blog/2015/2/1 ... -the-point

http://groupthink.jezebel.com/i-dont-fe ... 1685563608

Good articles. Especially the first two ones.
The context of the Adria Richards story was useful to know.
Treating people not as individuals but as members of a group/race/gender is not helpful.

[Derived Absurdity]

So, um, the guy made a follow-up story or something to this article in the Guardian, now focusing on Lindsey Stone:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... jon-ronson" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There's nothing worth reading - in the middle he talks about Adria Richards again and he makes her look even worse than he did before - but the last few paragraphs are interesting. He talks about how Lindsey Stone went to some reputation-building company that helps game Google in hiding negative stories about people online and replacing them with positive things unrelated to the story, and shoving the negative things to page two of the search results where the vast majority of people don't bother to go. And he says she typed her name in Google and it worked.

Except, I just tried that, and from what I could see it was a complete fucking failure. Her picture is still the first thing you see, and it's scattered everywhere on Google Images. Literally every single story about her on the first page is about the photo. Every single one! And on the second page, it's still every single one with only two exceptions!

So, basically, dafuq, Jon Ronson?

[phe_de]

So, basically, dafuq, Jon Ronson?

Weird indeed. I also get plenty of results with the picture of Lindsey stone in front of the war memorial.
Maybe the clue is in the notes at the bottom:

This is an edited extract from So You've Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson, published next month by Picador at £16.99.

So he's advertising a book. He just lost more credibility with me.
Of course I don't know what's in his book; but after these tactics I'm not too keen to find out.

[Ptolemy_Banana]

and most of the responses on this thread - that I feel like I've suddenly stepped into the twilight zone.

You stepped into the non-asshole zone.

[Cassius Clay]

and most of the responses on this thread - that I feel like I've suddenly stepped into the twilight zone.

You stepped into the non-asshole zone.

See, sometimes, insisting on being a "non-asshole" in a particular context actually makes you sort of an asshole.

If this dude wrote about some psychopaths in an overly-charitable way(which he, apparently, has an actual history of doing)...and he wrote it selectively, dishonestly...made dishonest conflations...removed relevant contexts...shifted responsibility...framed psychopaths as poor victims...misidentified the problem...tried to style the victims and societal reaction as some insane foaming-at-the-mouth mob(conflating/reducing all reactions into one irrational mob)...ignored power imbalances....selectively exaggerated consequences and the power/looming threat of certain groups(fear-mongering)...made false and offensive equivalences...intentionally obfuscated the issue...and then everyone eats it all up, and concludes from it all that the problem is that we shouldn't react so negatively towards psychopaths because it could happen to any of us...yeah, that may be(according to some) the "non-asshole" thing to do, but that would be stepping into the twilight zone.

[Cassius Clay]

How typical and condescending to assume that people either took the joke too literally or knew she was joking and just didn't get it/were just being mean. No other options, huh?

There are. I apologize for that. Clearly many people actually were insulted. My problem was that I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that someone who works as a PR person for an online content conglomerate would be so dumb as to make a joke like that... so I guess I thought it was a natural thing to assume that she meant it as a satire. I don't know what she was thinking when she made it.

When I made that comment I was thinking of Sam Biddle and people like him... white middle-class liberals who very clearly don't give a fuck about any principled stand against racism or anything of the sort, and from what I could gather were the primary instigators of the backlash. It'd be hard to convince me that any of these people are anything more than petty bullies.

Cool. People do racist things all the time and insist they aren't racist. No matter how smart they are, or what position their in. It's like a disease.

And Sam Biddle is a piece of shit. He eventually wrote a sympathetic article about Sacco after he got in trouble for saying stupid shit. There were definitely a large amount of people(mainly white liberals) gleefully involved in the shaming for the wrong reasons(which is another thing about the article and it's reactions that annoys me because it irresponsibly conflates all reactions). And I believe the second article I posted alluded to that. There are powers that are interested in the "outrage" for their own selfish interests...to get attention/ratings/revenue...and many white individuals take pleasure in shaming an outed racists so they can prove how non-racist they are...to pat themselves on the back. I remember talking a little about this during the Paula Deen fiasco. That I felt uncomfortable about how it felt like a weird pretentious and performative exercise. Like she was being sacrificed for the sake of some false/backwards "progressive" idea that no one will learn anything from. There is almost a sense(an urge many white liberals have) to prove how post-racial society is by overcompensating when a racist is outed(and trying to prove how non-racist they are as well). Like they care more about maintaining the lie of a post-racial society than facing problems honestly. And if I'm charitable, I could say Ronson may have been trying to touch on this...but he doesn't seem to understand/diagnose it critically. And in typical white man reactionary fashion, blames the whole issue on some irrational social-justice mob coming for his freedoms/trying to destroy our lives. Instead of concluding with something like "we are all racist, we can point the finger, but we should also point the finger at ourselves...and not try to deflect and overcompensate for our own racism by pointing even harder at others..exploiting and perverting the outrage"...instead it's something like "some people said some offensive things that were probably taken out of context and so we should chill out with the outrage because it could happen to any of us". And that seems to be the mass, missing-the-point takeaway from this article.

Edit: What's also throwing me off is that there is so much obfuscating nonsense in his article that it is strange to focus on just the fact that some hypocritical white liberals might have overreacted.

[Cassius Clay]

http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the- ... s.html?m=1

http://www.contralbum.com/blog/2015/2/1 ... -the-point

http://groupthink.jezebel.com/i-dont-fe ... 1685563608

Good articles. Especially the first two ones.
The context of the Adria Richards story was useful to know.
Treating people not as individuals but as members of a group/race/gender is not helpful.

Cool. But, I have a feeling your last sentence means something different to you that it does to me.

As long as white supremacy exists, treating white individuals as members of a group is necessary...as the second article explains.

[Cassius Clay]

Let me be crystal clear on my position. I don't care if these people are racists, sexists, on any ists in the world. Being a horrible person doesn't mean you shouldn't have a job or be ruined.

The only reason you should loose your job is for not doing your job (or other internal stuff, downsizing for example).

Saying stupid things on social media unless they involve your work (like that teacher that was saying things about her students online) shouldn't make you lose your job. Reprimand, sanctions etc... yes.

The outrage of people on social media by people in lots of cases just as bad if not worse than the idiot poster is just an ego trip on the most part of "i'm better than you". The people that are offended (and by that I mean the target of the pique) are generally the less aggressive ones. Their complaints are valid and they tend to stick to the point.

What about police officers that say terrible things online?

[Cassius Clay]

And I feel it might need to be clarified again, that not feeling sorry(or taking issue with the misguided sympathy) for people who get fired from their jobs for incompetence(like a PR person)...or because their employer does not want to be associated with them due to their infamous terribleness...does not mean you necessarily want them to be fired, or are "calling for blood". So many obfuscations, false dichotomies, ignoring of important nuances...that it starts to feel intentional.

[phe_de]

As long as white supremacy exists, treating white individuals as members of a group is necessary...as the second article explains.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
I believe the second article was saying that it's not good to treat people as a "stand-in" for their race. That's what I believe too.
People are individuals.

[Dr_Liszt]

As long as white supremacy exists, treating white individuals as members of a group is necessary...as the second article explains.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
I believe the second article was saying that it's not good to treat people as a "stand-in" for their race. That's what I believe too.
People are individuals.

People are social creatures that operate in communities. I have no idea why this is so hard to understand for some people. As long as oppression exists you can't look at people as individuals.

[Cassius Clay]

As long as white supremacy exists, treating white individuals as members of a group is necessary...as the second article explains.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
I believe the second article was saying that it's not good to treat people as a "stand-in" for their race. That's what I believe too.
People are individuals.

Then, as I suspected, you read it selectively and still deeply miss the point. That's only one part of that particular point.

If you want to prevent people from being raced, the solution is as unavoidable as it is difficult: eliminate racial hierarchy. The truth is, as long as there exists a system of oppression which punishes people on the basis of race, white individuals will sometimes suffer a bit of backlash. To expect anything else is unreasonable bordering on infantile; whiteness has always been a double-edged sword.

By extension, you can never prevent a few white individuals from experiencing racialized, disproportionate backlash as long as our racial caste system exists. And, like focusing on gun accidents while ignoring gun murders, focusing on the rare backfiring of racism—rather than the horrendous costs it exerts when it punishes its preferred victims—manages to miss the point quite spectacularly.

[Derived Absurdity]

So... about the "no one should lose their job for being a horrible person" thing... I was going to mention this at the beginning but I refrained because it might be thought of as tangential at best to the larger point... but it's one of the primary reasons why I'm so primed to articles like these.

To take a broad perspective, and if it hasn't been obvious before it should be pretty obvious with discussions like these, it's worth pointing out that wage labor is one of the most efficient and insidious systems of social control in existence today. It forces you to rent yourself out to an employer and be subordinate to him/her in exchange for what is usually a pittance to keep you from losing your home and starving to death. For most people you have to enter a relationship of, essentially, domination and submission to keep anything vaguely resembling a dignified standard of living. The employee must obey the boss almost absolutely or hit the highway. The control one has over the other is unbelievable - you can't do anything the boss doesn't like, you can't act any way the boss doesn't approve of, you can't say anything the boss doesn't want you to say, even outside working hours. The employment contract is basically a leash to keep you from doing or saying anything your employer doesn't want you to. Piss him off and you might be fired and your life might be over.

The system of wage labor is one of the largest reasons there hasn't been, and is not going to be any time soon, any large or revolutionary social upheavals, at least in this country, because everyone is terrified of rocking the boat and losing their jobs. You don't need to do anything particularly radical to be in danger - anything the boss thinks will reflect bad on the company, no matter how slight, no matter how small, will be taken into account. It's a highly efficient mechanism for psychological control. This is something I understood when I was eleven and I don't understand why it's not obvious to most people.

With this in mind you can see why I'm so primed to be against the idea of "this person did something bad, he should lose his job!!" The last thing we need is to give employers even more power over people's personal lives. The employment contract shouldn't even exist at all, but while it does we should work to minimize the power disparity as much as we can, and creating a climate of "you can't say anything we don't want you to, because you might lose your job!!" is the exact opposite thing we should be doing. I'm not saying there shouldn't be any social mechanism for controlling hate speech and dangerous nonsense and whatnot... but holy shit, people, the employment contract should not fucking be it. We need to stop reinforcing it.

So, all of that is tangential to the larger issue, but that's why I was so primed to like this article. And I sort of agree with the "no one should lose their job for being a horrible person" thing, in that I don't think "jobs" as they currently exist should even exist and there should be some entirely different kind of lever of social punishment for being a horrible person.

[Cassius Clay]

Yeah...that's an interesting political point that may be worth deeper consideration. But, I doubt that most that insist that "no one should be fired for being horrible" are coming at it from that angle.

[Derived Absurdity]

I doubt it too, but that's the angle they should be coming from, IMO.

[Islandmur]

I'm against the idea of horrible people loosing their jobs, on the same principle that i'm against the death penalty.

As for the police comment again it depends of if the comments has something to do with their work or not.

Changing peoples attitudes will not come from these kind of stances (in my opinion) and to me the end all of everything should be to affect change.

[Ptolemy_Banana]

and most of the responses on this thread - that I feel like I've suddenly stepped into the twilight zone.

You stepped into the non-asshole zone.

See, sometimes, insisting on being a "non-asshole" in a particular context actually makes you sort of an asshole.

And sometimes you're just an asshole.

[Cassius Clay]

And sometimes you're just an asshole.

Agreed. And sometimes irony can be a bitch.

[Cassius Clay]

I'm against the idea of horrible people loosing their jobs, on the same principle that i'm against the death penalty.

As for the police comment again it depends of if the comments has something to do with their work or not.

Changing peoples attitudes will not come from these kind of stances (in my opinion) and to me the end all of everything should be to affect change.

What if the cops are just generally saying terrible things about black people?

[phe_de]

As long as oppression exists you can't look at people as individuals.

Yes I can, and I will.
The quotes provided by Cassius Clay justify it.

If you want to prevent people from being raced, the solution is as unavoidable as it is difficult: eliminate racial hierarchy. The truth is, as long as there exists a system of oppression which punishes people on the basis of race, white individuals will sometimes suffer a bit of backlash. To expect anything else is unreasonable bordering on infantile; whiteness has always been a double-edged sword.

Exactly. The racial hierarchy is the problem, because it does not treat people as individuals. If people were treated as individuals, there would be no racial hierarchy.

By extension, you can never prevent a few white individuals from experiencing racialized, disproportionate backlash as long as our racial caste system exists. And, like focusing on gun accidents while ignoring gun murders, focusing on the rare backfiring of racism—rather than the horrendous costs it exerts when it punishes its preferred victims—manages to miss the point quite spectacularly.

See above. The problem is the racial caste system. If it is upheld, its rules usually target people from racial minorities; and sometimes people from the racial majority. But what should be done IMO is not applying discrimination more justly; it's dropping the rules. The problem is not the imbalance of power within the caste system; the problem is the caste system itself.

Let's quote an En Vogue text.

Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color-blind, don't be so shallow

[Islandmur]

Perhaps you should read my post again as I already gave that answer. The previous post.

[Cassius Clay]

Perhaps you should read my post again as I already gave that answer. The previous post.

Well..."It depends" is a very broad answer. So, maybe I should ask a more specific question:

What if a cop posts things like "black people should go back to Africa"?

But, I have a feeling you're just going to say "it depends on if it has something to do with their work/directly affects it".