This is pretty much a myth:
https://historymyths.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/myth-82-signs-saying-no-irish-need-apply-were-common/
NYTimes: "How one stupid tweet blew up Sacco's Life"
- Thread starter SteveO409
- Start date
- Status
This is pretty much a myth:
https://historymyths.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/myth-82-signs-saying-no-irish-need-apply-were-common/
Anton Sugar
Member
Damerman
Member
what the fuck are you on about?
Social media exposes you to "mobs"... so don't fuck with mobs. it's literally that simple.
i want to see an example of someone being "mobbed" by accident. i really do.
Mammoth Jones
Member
Yep. Don't you dare lose your temper even once on a train, plane or whatever because it'll be the defining moment of your life if it goes viral.
Does she deserve to be fired? Sure.
Does she deserve to have her entire life obliterated by one bad decision of insensitivity? No.
The original statement is true nonetheless, you don't need another skin colour for prejudices. That's a pretty American concept - how else would we discriminate in Europe in decades past?
A defence force for cyberbullying. How great.
You absolve the people in any sort of mob/gang-up situation (happens on GAF routinely) of responsibility for their bullshit. You're wrong. You shouldn't be defending this sort of behavior. No one should defend this, but defense happens quite often, and it often happens when people agree with the cause and are angry with whoever's behavior is getting roasted.
Hiding behind psuedo-libertarian "welp not protected from other free speech lol" justifications or, even worse, your point that "they exist, it can happen, so it's all your fault" to absolve these people of any blame for partaking in the dogpile is wrong and reeks of cowardice and dishonesty and condescension alike.
This isn't even a false equivalence: the initial party in the wrong has the brunt of the blame because they are responsible for their actions.
I do agree with your sentiment.
Damerman
Member
How are you going to hold 500-10,000 people accountable for attacking someone who says something controversial?
I'm sure getting mobbed is not fun... but if you don't have the automatic reflex of: "hmmm, maybe I'm taking this too far" in today's world... then something's gotta give.
What? Your article says it's true. Just that literal signs in windows probably didnt exist or were rare.
Really? You're going to get bent out of shape over those? A rape joke, a couple derogatory uses of the word "retarded," and a quote from a popular HBO show? Oh goodness, she mentioned masturbation! She alluded to being drunk! Mercy me, what a terrible human being!
Clearly her getting fired was all her fault, and a totally appropriate response to the atrocities she committed.
He's simply saying those doing the mobbing are doing something "wrong." Do you not agree?
I don't think he's completely absolving the people making the offensive comments; just addressing that the mob is kind of sickening as well.
Mass over-reactions are a known quantity out there; I can't really blame companies for firing people like that. They know how the mob acts, and they know they'll be accused of racism/whatever is the issue if they don't fire the person.
It's shitty, but it's reality.
(I'm not saying you are blaming the companies, just commenting)
DoktorEvil
Banned
http://news.yahoo.com/spike-lee-settles-retweeting-wrong-address-202747871.html
That's one high profile example .
Delta Assault
Member
Adria Richards seems like she'd be a lot of fun at parties.
Exactly this.
I even explicitly noted the person making the comment, doing the act, w/e is clearly bearing most of the blame for their situation because their actions are the beginning act, the but for causation, etc.
You can see this and still think people jumping on top of the pile are wrong, too.
How do you hold them accountable? Well, you don't. You can, though, not participate in that shit. You can, also, post how that mobbing is wrong (say when it occurs on GAF), instead of the tired defenses that get trotted out by posters all the time.
disillusion386
Member
An internet mob can totally go after you even if you weren't involved in any wrong-doing at all:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...w-social-media-identified-wrong-suspects.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmir...rong-lanza-how-media-got-it-wrong-in-newtown/
Damerman
Member
Of course. I'm a cynic Who belives in Asch conformity. I have no faith in humanity... Which is why i dont fucks with them. It would be a sensible thing if more people lived that way.
I think everyone reacted so poorly to Adria Richards because every office or work environment has somebody like her -- the stuffy, hypocritical busybody who thinks everything is offensive and insists on being passive-aggressive rather than directly addressing problems. Mobbing and dogpiling on her was just cathartic for many people since they can't actually go head-to-head with the Adria Richards in their life.
Damerman
Member
Yes i remember this. That was pretty stupid of spike lee. Like i said. Dont fuck with social media. I understand that these people could not help their situation, but this girl clearly was the catalyst of her own situation.
Delta Assault
Member
Yep. I mean, it's be one thing if that guy leaned in right next to her ear and whispered the joke to her while making nasty perverted noises. But that's clearly not anywhere near what the poor guy did.
Quoting because it bears repeating.
He wrote the apology article after he ended up posting a tweet about bringing bullying back for geeks (as in geeks should be bullied) and promptly had said internet mob calling for his head. It was not done out of empathetic care; to put it nicely.
No, lol, my bad. Didn't mean to be confusing. My point I am trying to make (and doing poorly) is that setting the "mob" upon her so that her employer would fire her will lead to someone's life being destroyed, because the mob cannot and will not show restraint. If the company had seen the tweet and fired her; that's fine. Trying to set an internet mob on her to "get her fired" is a bullshit reason. The mob's goal is to destroy, completely, thoroughly, and forever. See Biddle's Hot or Not comments after she got a different job, trying to shame a second employer into firing her so he could get his clicks and feel self-righteous. He knows that. He knows its not about anything more than his own clicks and trying be a self-righteous prick even though he himself ended up showing similar lack of tact just a short while later.
Part of me wishes Biddle had gotten fired for his dumb tweets, and hounded into every job he ever took for the next two years - just so he really understood what it is that he had done. But, no one really deserves that, even those who cause it.
Boston Marathon anyone? Or does trying to mob someone's family whose son is missing and tell them that he was a domestic terrorist not count? Especially seeing as the reason he was missing was that he committed suicide (IIRC). I'm sure that family just loves the internet mob.
Gotchaye makes some good points; remove some of the ability for companies to act and the mob loses the ability to blame them for not firing.
I think the caveat to an employment law like that would be for employees who interact with clients.
The other problem I forsee; what if their comments make coworkers feel uncomfortable working with them? These comments if they go "viral" could be destructive to both client relationships and internal relationships.
Delta Assault
Member
That was the one odd thing about this article. It seeks to be a sort of revision/exoneration for Sacco, fair enough, but then clearly seems to go out of its way to make Biddle the villain. Which, judging by his shitty blogging, might well be warranted, but such an angle will surely lead to the same sort of mob outrage and harassment against him that the whole article seems to be discouraging in the first place.
DoktorEvil
Banned
On her timeline of 170 accounts... vs Sam Biddle's Gawker influence(currently with 26K followers)
Not that I want to defend someone who really doesn't know comedic timing or is a ditz, but she didn't "fuck with social media". A bigger fish strayed from his pond and swam into her tiny puddle and fucked her life up significantly.
What I'm really curious about is how people recover from that.
Its easy to make Biddle the villain when he ended up doing the same thing he blew her up for later on. His job was to functionally shame people for dumb things they said, and then he went and did it himself.
Delta Assault
Member
Live by the shitty tweet, die by the shitty tweet.
Damerman
Member
i dont agree with this at all. Should the gawker guy be held accountable to some degree, definitely. But the woman exposed herself. This isn't poor comedic timing, this is some racially charged comment. This is like lighting a match in a gas station. Even if the gawker guy didn't catch wind of it, surely she would have lost some friends in the 170 follower circle.
Twitter isn't a tiny puddle unless your comments are private though; even with 0 followers you are still "Fucking with social media" if you post potentially offensive content.
Your attitude is exactly what confuses me; most tweets are 100% public and can be viewed by everyone in the world. Treat it accordingly.
God Dayumm
Banned
All I see is that her posts got progressively worse as her enablers were cheering on her. I don't doubt she would have published even worse "jokes" had no one called her out on her bullshit.
Biddle is downright criminal. It was disappointing to see people defend him in this forum
You do realize that someone could easily do the same thing with GAF posts, right?
I suspect the 170 people in her followers are friends who know she is from South Africa.
All the size of the other person's following does is call into question how much blame / how wrong that person's actions are for using their own pulpit to blow up the story. Given the influence and audience Biddle had, it makes his decisions to shame her that much worse.
But that doesn't absolve the first person of a damn thing. First, they said something stupid, and then, they said it on the internet, and on the social media portion of the internet, no less, where anonymity is (in the words of Facebook) an outdated relic.
DoktorEvil
Banned
Are most people aware of this when they sign up to Twitter?
That's for her friends to decide though, not the ire of Internet strangers.
I defecate on ONE airplane drink trolley and now I'M the monster.
When are you going to let it go?
Of course. Not sure what your point is.
The extra layer of anonymity a username / avatar provide is one reason I'm more lax on forums than I am on Twitter / Facebook. It's still a risk to be offensive on a more anonymous forum, but less of one depending on how much of your identity you reveal.
Yeah I was merely arguing against the proclamation that she wasn't fucking with social media. People with massive followings know they have more power than those without; but everyone is taking a risk with whatever they choose to post regardless of the amount of followers.
Who signs up for Twitter unaware of how it works? I seriously doubt many don't know this. They follow people.. they seek followers.. it's the entire point of making your own tweets.
Damerman
Member
i'm not sure what you are trying to say with this.
DoktorEvil
Banned
That's a very loaded assumption.
Plenty of people can't properly use all of the suite of privacy settings that Facebook offers.
It's not far off to think that most ignorant people(especially people in their 30s and 40s) wouldn't think anything they say or tweet isn't publicly accessible via Google search.
There are plenty of Gaffers who didn't even read the TOS before signing up who don't know that their past posts can be used against them..
Damerman
Member
i agree 100%, but is it so much to ask for her to be prudent with social media? I don't think so. The world of PR isn't just happenstance when companies need to clearly and concisely evoke the image they want. The internet is still a phenomenon considering the amount of novel ways we communicate across the entire world. I just think "ditzy" is too soft a word when u make jokes on a platform that was used to topple governments(read arab spring).
I'm simply assuming most people who bother to sign up for Twitter know how Twitter works; the goal of many/most is to get more and more followers. It doesn't use "friends" or "Family" labeling... it users followers/followed.. it's positioned quite clearly in a way that distinguishes it from Facebook or other social networks that revolve around connecting with people you know in real life.
Are you assuming that most people have no clue that Tweets are generally public?
That to me is the odd assumption; I'd also assume at least some people arent... but the majority?
And this convo is about someone who worked in PR... If you work in public relations and don't know how Twitter works...
I'm saying that if you know she is from Africa and a child of apartheid; that it comes across as a (bad) sarcastic joke rather than as racism.
I use twitter for sports news and to follow friends; I have no desire for followers in any way, shape or form. I doubt even a majority of twitter users are actively trying to gain followers and build some kind of "brand" as it were.
That sounds like a boring existence where you just present a wheel of yourself which conforms to some politically correct standard and thus the same as everyone else.
It shouldn't have to be like that.
DoktorEvil
Banned
Granted, but Twitter itself is only 9 years old. I'd posit that the majority of people that are casual social media users are not really knowledgeable on the amount of content that they can and cannot control/self-censor.
PR existed well before Twitter found it's way into that field, but yeah someone who doesn't know how to be P.C. and diplomatic shouldn't be in a PR job.
She's just one person and this is just one example of how powerful social media is and how effective it is at public humiliation.
I also think you've conflating PR and Advertising. PR would be closer to what a lobbyist does for a living.
Well a large percentage of twitter "users" don't post tweets; because it's not really designed for you to create a "social network."
That's why I think that most people know how it works.. unlike Facebook which is clearly positioned as a way to share things with friends and family.. where someone might just be oblivious to privacy settings... Twitter would just be an odd choice for that kind of behavior.
Either way not entirely sure what the point is; not bothering to figure out how something works isn't a very good excuse for posting offensive content either.
brotherbean
Member
I remember the good old days when someone had to get interviewed or write an autobiography to crucify themselves by saying something hateful or stupid. I for one am sort of enjoying this new level of transparency into the minds of people made possible by the likes of Twitter and so on. Now, why on Earth anyone in any sort of public consciousness would choose to drop that veil...who knows.
I don't like this idea of people being judged and crucified over a single action. I like the idea that people can learn through mistakes. The internet mob thing is a very, very dangerous thing in that regard.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
And yet twenty years ago the lady in the OP would have gone "Dear Diary - today I hope I don't get AIDS cause I'm going to South Africa" or some other inanity and likely no one would have ever read it. Things have definitely changed.
- Status