Another well-written article on Sacco

[Cassius Clay]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/postevery ... ter-child/

[Gendo]

See now this reminds me of the whole Charlie Hebdo thing. Something bad happened, and it caused people to rally in support of the person to whom something bad happened; but the person to whom something bad happened isn't what we should be holding up as a hero.

[Cassius Clay]

I actually had that exact same thought a few days ago.

[Derived Absurdity]

So, was that article brigaded by the Breitbart mob, or are the comments on the Washington Post always that way?

[Cassius Clay]

I didn't even read the comments. The article is written so well - and articulates it's points so precisely - that I'm even surprised that there are people still saying ignorant shit. White supremacy is unreasonable. And you can't reason with the unreasonable

[Anakin McFly]

+1 to Hebdo comparison.

But the fact that perpetrators of far worse racist/sexist/homophobic etc harassment get away unscathed every hour, while Sacco's singular, allegedly-ironic tweet attracted the internet rage mob is precisely what I find disturbing.

So I make a different analogy than the writer does: my question is not why we were quick to empathise with Sacco rather than the marginalised victims of worse harassment, but rather why we were quick to demonise Sacco rather than the perpetrators of far more intense harassment. I don't actually think that Sacco is that nice of a person, from what I've read. Sam Biddle seems even worse. My sympathy here is not at all borne from 'aww, poor white woman'.

But I don't believe that the harm inflicted on her was at all reasonable in proportion to what she did, and... why her? What about all the people running racist hate blogs out there? What about the moderators at Stormfront, whose names we don't even know? Or the people who spend hours on subreddits devoted to posting racist bile? That's what felt unjust to me, and why I sympathised with Sacco - not because as a rich white woman she evoked more pity than marginalised victims of online harassment (the fact that the writer considers them analogous implies that they're on the same side of the moral coin, when the opposite is true: racists on one side, victims on the other), but rather because she made a single dubious tweet and attracted all the internet rage, while people who make it their life's purpose to actively and maliciously ruin the lives of minorities would have deserved it far more than she did (and even then, not). And how much of that was because she was an easy target, as a relatively unknown woman? Whereas, say, doing the same kind of character assassination to a rich, powerful, racist white man would have been too unsafe?

[Gendo]

My guess is that Sacco was more demonized than worse perpetrators for the same reason that some internet jokes become memes and others don't; or some YouTube videos go viral while others don't. Now I don't know the full extent of those reasons, but at least a big part of it is just random luck. Basically, Stucco just happened to go viral, and you can't really predict what will go viral.

[Cassius Clay]

Actually, I think one of the articles I posted did mention the fact that there are people in power who have said stupid shit, and that attempts to shame them were fruitless because they were too powerful...and some other's who have been forced to resign.

[Gendo]

Actually, I think one of the articles I posted did mention the fact that there are people in power who have said stupid shit, and that attempts to shame them were fruitless because they were too powerful...and some other's who have been forced to resign.

But there are still probably hundreds of equally stupid or worse things written online every day which simply don't get noticed and don't go viral. It's just the nature of the internet.

[Cassius Clay]

Yeah...black people that are active on twitter get called "nigger" every single day. You can't get everyone. But, a lot of it is anonymous people. Part of the reason the Sacco pushback picked up steam was because of her job. And also because of the fact that she was in the air while this was happening...so there was entertainment value in the eager anticipation of her landing and finding out.