NYTimes: "How one stupid tweet blew up Sacco's Life"

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So you have her exact thoughts and ideas on this during the time she tweeted it.

You are literally hard wired into her brain as soon as she sent that tweet.

You're making terrible assumptions of people to justify dehumanizing someone

Did you see her other tweets? She is bigoted in more than one way
 
No you weren't asshole, you were making a racist comment in a space you felt comfortable in. This is exactly the same situation as someone making a sexist joke in a space they're comfortable in because it is filled with nothing but men. It is who you are and you got caught with your guard down being a shitty human. Own up to it and work towards improving yourself damn it.

It's just a dumb joke. Of all the shitty things a human can do, I think dumb jokes are somewhere near the bottom of the list.

But of course this is the internet, where shut-ins with poor social skills who take everything at face value rule the roost.

See, a well-adjusted person reacts to a bad joke by ignoring it or leaving the area.
 
Personally I have more of an issue with the lady who misunderstood a techie joke and furiously went to Twitter, after taking a picture of the guy with a smile, to look for retaliation.
 
Why is the onus on her to take into account every human beings on earths potential understanding as a joke rather than people being a bit less quick to judge?

The onus is on both the speaker and the audience. The speaker has to know how they are communicating. The audience has to ask questions.

I don't like most of these firings but people have to learn how to talk to each other publicly now. We aren't celebrities but we have been given platforms to have just as big of reach.

With 100's of millions of people that could be in your vocal reach you have to understand you will anger a lot of people off even if it is 0.0001% of the online population.


Christ at the amount of straw man arguments and loaded questions in here. You people are being just as black and white and vilifying as the internet vigilantes you're rallying against.

Depending on the situation we have actively joined the mob. Most people here including myself were hashtagging has Justine Landed yet. Let also not forget Adam Orth. Now that guy deserved all the flack he got.
 
It's possible to simultaneously feel that Sacco brought much of this on herself AND that this new take on old school, angry mob-type shaming may not be the zenith in our cultural turnaround.
 
I never understand the reason Twitter is so popular... I don't even have an actively use Facebook account and I simply can't wrap my head around the appeal of twitting. all my friends are RL friends that I see pretty often and I have no need to express myself to the general public outside of GAF (where I can actually speak in length and accurately express what I want to say).

Because not everybody has friends they see all the time and many live far away? Admittedly some people use FB and Twitter as a crusade to make themselves feel important with friends/followers they've never met, but folks (like myself) have friends all across the state and world and this is THE best way to see what everybody is up to.
 
Personally I have more of an issue with the lady who misunderstood a techie joke and furiously went to Twitter, after taking a picture of the guy with a smile, to look for retaliation.

I have no sympathy for that woman. She decided to be malicious over a harmless joke and get up on her high horse and publicly shame him and it backfired spectacularly.
 
I have no sympathy for that woman. She decided to be malicious over a harmless joke and get up on her high horse and publicly shame him and it backfired spectacularly.

yep. And apparently she had a history of getting offended to silly stuff before as well. My issue is that she got an innocent man fired. Reading his account of never crying but going out of the convention and calling his wife in tears because he is a father in a family is heartbreaking. Quite simply, no excuse.
 
I think the people who are focusing on Sacco's specific comment or profession are overlooking the crux of the article. The point isn't that the reaction to her tweet was or wasn't justifiable: the point is that it is deeply troubling that an anonymous crowd on social media wields such an outsize influence on people's personal lives and livelihoods. It is also essentially random in that it only 'targets' those whose comments happen to gain traction; in fact, it's arguably worse than random because in two of the cases from the article we find that a particular person intentionally broadcasted the remarks in order to gain the attention of the crowd. So now instead of just a case of "well, bad things can happen when you're not careful about what you say" we have a specific and clearly effective tool for the bullying and driving out of particular targets. As far as I am concerned this effect is just an extension of the same factors that allowed Gamergate to become as noxious as it has.

Even if you agree with the crowd (as I do) that Sacco's tweet was wildly inappropriate, the whole mess reeks of "eye for an eye" reasoning of the worst kind. What is it that gives you as an anonymous person on the Internet with no personal connection to the tweeter the right to decide whether a particular poorly-considered comment is worthy of loss of employment or worse besides your ability to get away with it thanks to an anonymous mob? Did anyone who read the tweet actually suffer as much from it as Sacco did, or does the influence of the tweet in aggregate add up to that level according to some kind of utilitarian calculus? And if we are going by utilitarian calculus, do these anonymous hecklers benefit enough from this person suffering consequences to warrant "punishment"? I can understand people wanting a comment such as hers to face at least some negative consequence, but I would think most people would agree that losing one's employment is ridiculously beyond what would be a reasonable consequence. Have you ever told an off-color joke on the Internet? If it caused people to mobilize against you and get you fired and harass you, would you assent that you deserved what you got because you just should have known better? And heck, in the case of the dongle joke the comments that led to outrage came from an entirely secondary source. I would imagine that if the entire story were a lie, the results would have been largely similar, except perhaps backlash against the liar would have come sooner. Would that still be considered a just response?
 
yep. And apparently she had a history of getting offended to silly stuff before as well. My issue is that she got an innocent man fired. Reading his account of never crying but going out of the convention and calling his wife in tears because he is a father in a family is heartbreaking. Quite simply, no excuse.

So you agree there are messages that can be sent that should result in firing?
 
So you agree there are messages that can be sent that should result in firing?

Oh absolutely. And if I said otherwise then that's bad wording on my part. What I disagree with is:

A. The public shaming
B. The media attention
C. The joy/glee others get from seeing this individual suffer

But getting fired? Yes. No issues with that, when you join a company you know that you are representing that company and they can fire you 'at-will' at any moment. Well at least in states/countries that function that way. Take responsibilities for your action. Sacco faced reality and now has taken responsibility and gone and done things she never would have prior to this. And now she has learned to keep quiet. Everybody deserves a second chance.
 
Oh absolutely. And if I said otherwise then that's bad wording on my part. What I disagree with is:

A. The public shaming
B. The media attention
C. The joy/glee others get from seeing this individual suffer

But getting fired? Yes. No issues with that, when you join a company you know that you are representing that company and they can fire you 'at-will' at any moment. Well at least in states/countries that function that way. Take responsibilities for your action. Sacco faced reality and now has taken responsibility and gone and done things she never would have prior to this. And now she has learned to keep quiet. Everybody deserves a second chance.

Thanks for the clarification.
 
The reality of modern life is that we all live in the same small town now. Anyone who grew up in a small town, a really small town, knows what I mean. Everyone knows your business in a small town, everyone has an opinion, and something you do young is likely to follow you the rest of your life and have tremendous impact.

It sucks. It's one of the big reasons so many people haul ass out of their small town just as soon as they can. The anonymity of urban life is attractive. No one knows you, and if you get drunk and do something stupid, no one notices or cares, because there's always another guy over there acting drunker and stupider. And if it's big enough they do care, they'll forget next week when something else comes along.

It's shitty. It's awful to say something stupid and have the entire world land on your head, but I can't see that there's anything to be done about it short of not doing it yourself. Like pile-ons in threads, when you say something outrageous, people are going to react. Sometimes thirty or forty, sometimes ten thousand. It's not as if they've decided to collude with one another to destroy someone, it's just that everyone feels the need to express their own opinion on the subject, so you get a huge wave of individuals hitting you at the same time.

It's the nature of instant, hyperlocal communication, unfortunately, and I suspect it will get worse before it gets better. At the moment, there are still language barriers that reduce the size of the population that's going to land on your head, and still places where internet isn't widely available. In the near future, instant translation and acess to the net will become ubiquitous, and the entire multi-billion population of the world is going to see that thoughtless thing you posted.

To be clear, though, it isn't an angry horde firing people, it's their employer. If you want to protect people from getting fired for this sort of stuff, the idea that employers are allowed to fire people for things they do outside of the scope of their employment has to be seriously looked at. You can't stop the speech -- not only does that violate the law, but it's practically impossible -- but you can do something about the repercussion regarding employment.
 
The reality of modern life is that we all live in the same small town now. Anyone who grew up in a small town, a really small town, knows what I mean. Everyone knows your business in a small town, everyone has an opinion, and something you do young is likely to follow you the rest of your life and have tremendous impact.

It sucks. It's one of the big reasons so many people haul ass out of their small town just as soon as they can. The anonymity of urban life is attractive. No one knows you, and if you get drunk and do something stupid, no one notices or cares, because there's always another guy over there acting drunker and stupider. And if it's big enough they do care, they'll forget next week when something else comes along.

It's shitty. It's awful to say something stupid and have the entire world land on your head, but I can't see that there's anything to be done about it short of not doing it yourself. Like pile-ons in threads, when you say something outrageous, people are going to react. Sometimes thirty or forty, sometimes ten thousand. It's not as if they've decided to collude with one another to destroy someone, it's just that everyone feels the need to express their own opinion on the subject, so you get a huge wave of individuals hitting you at the same time.

It's the nature of instant, hyperlocal communication, unfortunately, and I suspect it will get worse before it gets better. At the moment, there are still language barriers that reduce the size of the population that's going to land on your head, and still places where internet isn't widely available. In the near future, instant translation and acess to the net will become ubiquitous, and the entire multi-billion population of the world is going to see that thoughtless thing you posted.

To be clear, though, it isn't an angry horde firing people, it's their employer. If you want to protect people from getting fired for this sort of stuff, the idea that employers are allowed to fire people for things they do outside of the scope of their employment has to be seriously looked at. You can't stop the speech -- not only does that violate the law, but it's practically impossible -- but you can do something about the repercussion regarding employment.

Besada; sounds like someone who came from a small town (too). :)

I also agree that the entire "firing people for things they do outside the scope of their employment" is something that really needs to be looked at. I feel it is just another way for employers to try to abuse their employees; which has been an unfortunate trend in the last 10 years or so. I'm glad I am in a union.
 
I think you vastly overestimate the profession's ability to anticipate every individual's reaction to any given situation.

I think you're underestimating the common sense of a public relations professional. Here's a clue, how many of them do you think aren't posting public, racist jokes under their name attached to their work profiles? Do you honestly think it takes a clairvoyant to reasonably understand what the reactions to a blatant, not even sort of but straight up blatant, racist Tweet would be?
 
To be clear, though, it isn't an angry horde firing people, it's their employer. If you want to protect people from getting fired for this sort of stuff, the idea that employers are allowed to fire people for things they do outside of the scope of their employment has to be seriously looked at. You can't stop the speech -- not only does that violate the law, but it's practically impossible -- but you can do something about the repercussion regarding employment.

One of the challenges though is that Internet mobs of opinion can cause trouble for a person outside of just getting them fired, especially the more aggressive members. I do like the idea of increasing the barriers organizations have to dismissing employees over non-work-related things, though. The only misgiving I have is that I think it would be somewhat easy to argue that placing these sorts of limits infringes on the organization's freedom of association and thus ends up being a speech issue anyway... didn't the Boy Scouts go through a legal debate recently about homosexual scout leaders where the legal question basically rest on speech concerns?
 
One of the challenges though is that Internet mobs of opinion can cause trouble for a person outside of just getting them fired, especially the more aggressive members. I do like the idea of increasing the barriers organizations have to dismissing employees over non-work-related things, though. The only misgiving I have is that I think it would be somewhat easy to argue that placing these sorts of limits infringes on the organization's freedom of association and thus ends up being a speech issue anyway... didn't the Boy Scouts go through a legal debate recently about homosexual scout leaders where the legal question basically rest on speech concerns?
It is a super tricky problem to solve, and treating corporations as legal entities with rights makes it tougher. Under current law, I suspect you would run into that exact problem. I don't think corporations should have constitutional rights, but the current SC disagrees with me, so there we are. If we treat corporations as people, and guarantee them the same rights, I think the issue essentially becomes insoluble in a legal sense.

You could mitigate some of the non-work related damage with tougher stalking/harassment laws, but again you'd have to carve pretty finely not to wind up in constitutional quicksand.
 
Yes, people often go way overboard in seeking to harm individuals who do a dumb thing or who express a belief they disagree with. The internet makes this terrible. Presumably a lot of this is the fundamental attribution error.

We can hopefully all agree that the vindictive twitter mobs that go after people we agree with are a pretty awful thing. But they're not awful just because they're not on our side. When the subject comes up, liberals who I otherwise agree with on most everything like to throw around "freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences" as if they've suddenly turned into libertarians who are okay with coordinated, abusive uses of social power as long as the government isn't involved. It's an absurdly disproportionate response in almost all cases and people who contribute to the problem ought to be ashamed of themselves. A commitment to a substantive right to freedom of speech requires meaningful tolerance of disagreeable speech, not this weak "well as long as we're not actually throwing them in jail it's okay" thing.

I'm 100% on board with making it much harder for employees to be fired for things they say outside of work. This is good for employees, and not just ones who say racist things - probably lots more employees get fired for talking about problems they've got with their employer (even as part of clearly political activity like advocating for a higher minimum wage) or for annoying their boss in ways that the boss should really just have to deal with. It's good for employers - they can reply to the twitter mobs by pointing out that they can't fire the person. The core social problem is the twitter mobs, though, and it's important to be clear that this is really ugly behavior.


One of the challenges though is that Internet mobs of opinion can cause trouble for a person outside of just getting them fired, especially the more aggressive members. I do like the idea of increasing the barriers organizations have to dismissing employees over non-work-related things, though. The only misgiving I have is that I think it would be somewhat easy to argue that placing these sorts of limits infringes on the organization's freedom of association and thus ends up being a speech issue anyway... didn't the Boy Scouts go through a legal debate recently about homosexual scout leaders where the legal question basically rest on speech concerns?

This isn't a very broad protection. General anti-discrimination law isn't going anywhere. You've got to be able to show that the anti-discrimination law doesn't make sense in your case because the sort of discrimination in question is central to your organization's mission. It's not going to apply to most companies. I don't think Hobby Lobby changes that in any real way. My understanding of the law here is that you could ban this sort of discrimination and it would be just as legally sound as laws against racial discrimination.
 
Yes, people often go way overboard in seeking to harm individuals who do a dumb thing or who express a belief they disagree with. The internet makes this terrible. Presumably a lot of this is the fundamental attribution error.

We can hopefully all agree that the vindictive twitter mobs that go after people we agree with are a pretty awful thing. But they're not awful just because they're not on our side. When the subject comes up, liberals who I otherwise agree with on most everything like to throw around "freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences" as if they've suddenly turned into libertarians who are okay with coordinated, abusive uses of social power as long as the government isn't involved. It's an absurdly disproportionate response in almost all cases and people who contribute to the problem ought to be ashamed of themselves. A commitment to a substantive right to freedom of speech requires meaningful tolerance of disagreeable speech, not this weak "well as long as we're not actually throwing them in jail it's okay" thing.

I've noticed this too and it's depressing every time. Specifically I am reminded of the controversy over the Mozilla executive (CEO) who had apparently donated to some sort of anti-gay-marriage organization some years before ever being elevated to the post. The left-leaning people who would generally be against this sort of bullying when it happens to the LGBT community started a chorus demanding the guy's resignation and a boycott, and ultimately he was forced out.

This isn't a very broad protection. General anti-discrimination law isn't going anywhere. You've got to be able to show that the anti-discrimination law doesn't make sense in your case because the sort of discrimination in question is central to your organization's mission. It's not going to apply to most companies. I don't think Hobby Lobby changes that in any real way. My understanding of the law here is that you could ban this sort of discrimination and it would be just as legally sound as laws against racial discrimination.

The issue I would foresee with this is that vigilantes like the one in the article who started a DDoS attack against the employer of one of the victims can cause material damages to the company, which I imagine would in many cases give the company a much stronger case for dismissing the employee. That said, the issue of someone holding the company's website for ransom via DDoS is a bit different of an issue than Twitter mobs.
 
I can't imagine being on the receiving end of the internet's wrath. I have a hard enough time when someone corrects me in a really polite manner here, so I don't think my fragile constitution could survive an event like that. Though I doubt I'd say such a moronic thing on the web or anywhere else for that matter.
 
There is a phenomenon where an individual thinks that the persona they communicate with on the internet is somehow completely disconnected from the self in the physical world. This might be true to an extent on an anonymous message board, but if there is one trace of date from the machine used to input data, and that site, then you'r linked to it. 4Chan is probably the closest to full anonymity, but there is still IP data. The Neo has ISP/College/Workplace e-mail accounts that really narrow it down. At least on these sites you don't usually broadcast your real life information. Detective work is required to identify people, and that's generally rare.

But on twitter and facebook, there's no reason for the phenomenon to exist, yet it keeps happening. You can't link yourself to something and expect full detachment from any effects caused by your actions.
 
"Okay, you can tweet unfunny stereotypical/racial jokes without anyone knowing anything about you other than you're ironically a senior director of corporate communications who created a PR nightmare just this once...BUT DON'T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN!"

Right, sounds like the mindset of a young person. Life does not and will not always afford you a second chance. This isn't some new thing introduced by the internet either, its been that way forever.
 
I think you're underestimating the common sense of a public relations professional. Here's a clue, how many of them do you think aren't posting public, racist jokes under their name attached to their work profiles? Do you honestly think it takes a clairvoyant to reasonably understand what the reactions to a blatant, not even sort of but straight up blatant, racist Tweet would be?

Also, PR professionals understand the power of personal Twitter accounts as well. She is 30 years old. Social Media is a huge part of every company's PR plans now.

The reaction to this is kind of messed up though, but it's basically an inevitability. Everyone thinks they are special on twitter etc. Their reaction to stupid racist jokes is narcissistically understood as ultra-important and a source for social change.
 
Yes, people often go way overboard in seeking to harm individuals who do a dumb thing or who express a belief they disagree with. The internet makes this terrible. Presumably a lot of this is the fundamental attribution error.

We can hopefully all agree that the vindictive twitter mobs that go after people we agree with are a pretty awful thing. But they're not awful just because they're not on our side. When the subject comes up, liberals who I otherwise agree with on most everything like to throw around "freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences" as if they've suddenly turned into libertarians who are okay with coordinated, abusive uses of social power as long as the government isn't involved. It's an absurdly disproportionate response in almost all cases and people who contribute to the problem ought to be ashamed of themselves. A commitment to a substantive right to freedom of speech requires meaningful tolerance of disagreeable speech, not this weak "well as long as we're not actually throwing them in jail it's okay" thing.

I'm 100% on board with making it much harder for employees to be fired for things they say outside of work. This is good for employees, and not just ones who say racist things - probably lots more employees get fired for talking about problems they've got with their employer (even as part of clearly political activity like advocating for a higher minimum wage) or for annoying their boss in ways that the boss should really just have to deal with. It's good for employers - they can reply to the twitter mobs by pointing out that they can't fire the person. The core social problem is the twitter mobs, though, and it's important to be clear that this is really ugly behavior.




This isn't a very broad protection. General anti-discrimination law isn't going anywhere. You've got to be able to show that the anti-discrimination law doesn't make sense in your case because the sort of discrimination in question is central to your organization's mission. It's not going to apply to most companies. I don't think Hobby Lobby changes that in any real way. My understanding of the law here is that you could ban this sort of discrimination and it would be just as legally sound as laws against racial discrimination.

Fantastic post. Thank you for stating some of my personal thoughts in an eloquent manner.
 
I read this last night and it's some scary shit. Sacco's tweet was a stupid joke, but isolated moments of stupidity (as determined by an anonymous mob) doesn't mean that you are a bad person, fully deserving to have your life turned around. Not to say that actions shouldn't have consequences, but consequences need to be proportional to them. People must be able to make mistakes, online or offline, without getting PTSD.

It makes me a bit sad to see the lack of empathy some people display in this thread in that regard. You've never made a mistake in public? What if you were set on by thousands of people you don't know for it, who are not willing to listen to your apologies or even give you the benefit of the doubt in not being a terrible human being? And not only that, they're not interested in any apologies or explanations, but gunning for making your life worse?

Mistakes should be opportunities for learning. A stupid or offensive joke likely deserves a reaction, explaining why it was or at least could be seen as bad, giving the offender a chance to better themselves. But, just maybe, if there already are a thousand, or one hundred, or even ten persons directly engaging the offender, hold off, because you are only adding on additional noise at that point.


Edit: Also, fuck those comments by the Gawker guy are so terrible. I'm glad he's apologised for them.
 
the tweet is mocking white privilege and ignorance of many whites in regards to africa and aids, she's saying the opposite of what your claiming.

Her family was ANC supporters and racial equality activists. People saw a joke completly devoid of context (she meant the opposite) and ruined her life because they felt the need to shame someone who didn't do anything but make a joke.

How do you know she didn't mean it? Her life turned upside down; to right it, many people would say anything to not be seen for what they really are.

“To me it was so insane of a comment for anyone to make,” she said. “I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal.”

“To put it simply, I wasn’t trying to raise awareness of AIDS or piss off the world or ruin my life. Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the third world. I was making fun of that bubble.”

Who is this "us" and what is this "bubble" of which she speaks.
Based on her tweet I'll hazard a guess........ white people in an upper middle and higher class bubble.
She's either truly daft or lying. Noway people could take it literal... gimmie a break. With those critical thinking skills it's no wonder she got let go.

So her family wasn't racist; that means she can't be?
I would love for the article to have mentioned what conversations were had with her family after this:
When Justine arrived at the family home from the airport, one of the first things her aunt said to her was: “This is not what our family stands for. And now, by association, you’ve almost tarnished the family.”



nb
I do not think she was deserving of the entirety of the furor directed at her.
I am undecided as to whether or not she's a racist.
Her Ethiopia trip = Damage control or genuine attempt to get away and get her mind right.
 
I feel like in a lot of the cases the backlash and the response is just a world too far, and I think that goes for a lot of things on the internet. Everything seems to be taken to extremes, to the point where a trivial mistake or a tasteless joke is met with an injustice being done to that person. People are very quick to judge and start brandishing words like "racist", "bigot", and a lot of the time the often equally hateful things said to the person in question are not called out on. It's not even about whether the person learns from their experience, or finds an error in their ways, it's about enacting some kind of mob punishment. Nothing good really tends to come of it, just resentment on either side.

I do find the sense of self righteousness and indignation carried by some on the internet to be absolutely nauseating. If people are truly honest with themselves they probably realise that they've told a joke in poor taste, said something insensitive or misjudged an audience, or even just said something in anger or haste that they're not proud of and wouldn't like repeating. Of course people should know better than to post their own style of edgy comedy on twitter but social media is still in its infancy, for some it's a world they don't really understand too well, the ground rules are still being established. I'm also not sure of this idea of some having a license to cover certain topics, themes and humour, as if artistic license can only be doled out to a few people while the rest have to be mindful of their position and tread cautiously.
 
The anonymous internet being full of self-righteous morality warriors shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Piling on has always been in vogue.
 
It is quite sickening how far this internet vigilantism has grown, especially when there is no possibility at actually defending yourself or having the context. The only one who received blowback, was because of sexist jerks. For instance, that Biddle guy seems to be making horrible jokes about people with no arms. There are people out there ruining people's lives for things they didn't even really do like the girl with the sign. She got her life ruined because they thought she was mocking this war memorial specifically.
 
Because not everybody has friends they see all the time and many live far away? Admittedly some people use FB and Twitter as a crusade to make themselves feel important with friends/followers they've never met, but folks (like myself) have friends all across the state and world and this is THE best way to see what everybody is up to.

then won't FB be enough already? maybe it's my age and the way I was brought up, but I still don't see what is so important that you have to relate to your friend (even if they're very far away) yet can't do it through email/text/phone call/Skype/FB, especially consider the letter limit on Twitter.

and on the subject of the mob mentality, yes it's wrong, but like I said earlier, when your message would be able to be view by the public, then you need to be extra careful about what you say. sure they might be taking things out of context and reacting in an inappropriate manger, but that's nothing new and had existed for almost as long as human history. one can avoid such a problem by simply thinking and choosing what you say and do carefully or set your message to private. this is a simple problem of choice just like a lot of other decisions in your daily life yet people keep saying this is different... this is still part of your life and still a kind of interaction with other people. just do what your would do when you're in the public. is that so hard?
 
How do you know she didn't mean it? Her life turned upside down; to right it, many people would say anything to not be seen for what they really are.



Who is this "us" and what is this "bubble" of which she speaks.
Based on her tweet I'll hazard a guess........ white people in an upper middle and higher class bubble.
She's either truly daft or lying. Noway people could take it literal... gimmie a break. With those critical thinking skills it's no wonder she got let go.

So her family wasn't racist; that means she can't be?
I would love for the article to have mentioned what conversations were had with her family after this:

You're mocking her intelligence but you must be massively dense yourself if you can't see she was clearly making a joke. It wasn't subtle.
 
Also, PR professionals understand the power of personal Twitter accounts as well. She is 30 years old. Social Media is a huge part of every company's PR plans now.

The reaction to this is kind of messed up though, but it's basically an inevitability. Everyone thinks they are special on twitter etc. Their reaction to stupid racist jokes is narcissistically understood as ultra-important and a source for social change.

Yeah, there are definitely two sides to this. All the people saying "companies should have better barriers between personal and private life" are generally correct. But when it comes to public relations, you are the face of the company. That's why they pay you. It's a job with great perks, but one of the downsides is that when you interact with the public, you're on the clock. Even a first year marketing liaison knows this. Somebody who is at her level absolutely knew that.

It's like the difference between Brian Williams, head anchor of NBC, telling a tall tale and Brian Williams, accounts manager for NBC telling one. One is tied to your job, one is not. Saying racist things in public, as a public relations professional is actively engaging in piss poor public relations management, and should be subject to disciplinary action by the company paying her to not do exactly that.

On the other hand, internet vigilantism has happened for cases that basically boil down to "I don't like this person." There are Tumblrs dedicated to doxxing people for a variety of reasons (and I'm assuming subreddits, etc.). That shit is scary, because all it takes is for one person to get upset at you or pick you at random for the lulz and it could ruin your life. A lot of companies won't wait to hear your side of the story if they start getting calls that you're doing horrendous shit online.

On the other, other hand, if I was black, I'd probably be pissed as hell at somebody cracking that type of joke. I don't feel bad that she got fired, but it's easy for me to say "take it easy" as a white dude .
 
What a dumb dumb.

The Internet isnt a place to make jokes!

It honestly isn't, at least from a place that can be traced back to you.
The written word is forever and can be misinterpreted,
 
I think it's kind of creepy that there are all these cases of women getting shit on by the internet, and the two mentioned that involve men either end up targeting women by the end (donglegate) or are because of a women (gamergate).
 
You're mocking her intelligence but you must be massively dense yourself if you can't see she was clearly making a joke. It wasn't subtle.

Certain people say this or some variant of it all the time and they're not joking. Not that it excuses the extent of the reaction, but you'd have to be fairly familiar with who she is to take it as a joke and even then, not like it's a great joke
 
My my frustrating thing about a lot of those cases is how valuable-adjacent they were. But didn't quite get there. You wanna use a dude joshing his bro at a tech conference with a dick joke as a jumping off point to discuss gender representation disparity in Silicon Valley yeah that's cool especially if you had a sincere emotional response to it, by all means share. Singling the dude out is pretty lame though. That space agency shirtstorm thing was the same way. There were a bunch of worthwhile articles "about" that dude that were really about constructing workplace cultures.

Sometimes it's ok to put the weight of some massive cultural problem on an individual's shoulders. But like, at Nuremberg. Never over a damn Tweet. It's so impossible to say anything truly provocative in 140 characters anyway. Gotta keep the stakes in mind.

When we think about these huge cultural weights and pressures and powers I find it useful to consider that even the people blowing it are hurt by whatever institution they uphold. Racists aren't living their best life because they're missing out on all kind of friendships and they're making their own world smaller. We should be about helping racists/sexists/clueless knuckleheads breaking out of the thought processes thatre holding us all back more than we should be about ostracizing people.

Certain people say this or some variant of it all the time and they're not joking. Not that it excuses the extent of the reaction, but you'd have to be fairly familiar with who she is to take it as a joke and even then, not like it's a great joke

She probably expected everyone who'd read the tweet was familiar with her she only had like a hundred followers before the conflagration.
 
The dongle incident was ridiculous. Really felt for the guy.

As for Sacco ... I agree with her firing but ruining her life? That's excessive.

And that idiot dressing up as a Boston Bombing victim - what an asshat.
 
Interesting read, I wasn't surprised really by how this all went.

If your saying something on social media/internet and do this while having personal information on display, worst case is you become a celebrity for a while.
I always wonder why people seem to enjoy spreading their thoughts out into the web/world for everyone to see while having your face/name attached to it. I do not understand why this is something that someone wants.
At the same time I don't want to know what someone is thinking at every minute of their lives.

The sentence at the end caught me off guard “I’m single; so it’s not like I can date, because we Google everyone we might date,” she said.

I suppose that's what people do these days but it still sounds crazy to me.
 
The end of the article is concise and gets to the heart of the issue
But perhaps she had now come to understand that her shaming wasn’t really about her at all. Social media is so perfectly designed to manipulate our desire for approval, and that is what led to her undoing. Her tormentors were instantly congratulated as they took Sacco down, bit by bit, and so they continued to do so. Their motivation was much the same as Sacco’s own — a bid for the attention of strangers — as she milled about Heathrow, hoping to amuse people she couldn’t see.
its two sides of the same coin. you can argue all day whether or not stuff like this should or shouldn't happen, condemn awful twitter mobs or discuss ways to mitigate the effects but this comes down to human nature.

As long as we have people jockeying for likes, views and followers, we'll have people say outrageous things for attention or have jokes taken out of context. We'll also have people ready to cannibalize their own within the social media bubble. As long as human beings are connected via the internet, expect to have "casualties"* like this. This is the price we pay for validating ourselves based upon the amount of attention we can garner online.

*30,000+ people die in accidents every year in the US. Safe to say no one is in favor of car accidents but it's the price we pay as a society for the convenience provided by personal vehicles.
 
I don't get this idea of going out of your way to shame others for doing something that isn't directly harmful to another person. It's really bizarre to me to spend that kind of effort and time on a person you don't even like, and to genuinely feel some kind of joy or satisfaction at another person feeling bad.

Did you not have to read The Scarlet Letter in high school?
 
So if people aren't paying you for your sense of humour, you're not allowed to give jokes? Crazy world.

No. I though this was obvious, especially since I already clarified, but I guess not. Comedians get paid to make people laugh. They get in trouble all the time, for the same reasons even, but as long as they have a fan base that still finds them funny they can continue what they're doing.

She is not a comedian. Her career success isn't based on people finding her funny. She's not prohibited from making dumb jokes, but she has nothing to fall on if she offends enough people. Like I said, which you seemed to have missed, she isn't getting paid for her sense of humor.

If you become a liability to your employer, shit's over. Look at what happened to Anthony Cumia.
 
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