28 ms·

Life after an internet mob attack

• drknownuffin 5y ago
  Reading the list of "receipts" in the "wrongfully accused" link is heart-breaking. I can't imagine having to dig through my personal correspondence to submit to the court of public opinion, "see?! I wasn't a creep!"
• dvt 5y ago
  The best solution here is to completely disconnect from social media or (at most) have an incredibly sanitized presence. Unless your job or livelihood revolves around needing to engage with a random internet audience (i.e. you're an influencer, entertainer, etc.) stay away from having a public persona on Twitter/Facebook/etc. The only community I interact with candidly tends to be this one. I don't post on Twitter, Facebook, etc. because the vast majority of mainstream social media users (a) don't tend to have good-faith debates on any intellectually-interesting topics, and (b) will always find something to rip out of context and crucify you. But this is easier said than done. Dopamine's a helluva' drug.
  • gotoeleven 5y ago
    Social media is pure poison that exploits every frailty of human nature. And it is optimized to be this way, even if unintentionally, because that's what makes money.
    • alpaca128 5y ago
      To me it shows humans simply cannot (yet?) deal with such wide-reaching communication. It's fine in neatly organised and moderated forums. But those still have some sense of privacy, similar to how people at a workplace can freely talk about things that wouldn't be fine to say on live TV. But social media turns everything into live TV, potentially analysed with more rigor than any TV show ever witnessed, and with algorithms implicitly optimised to make the things most visible which generate the most powerful emotions. And it doesn't seem like the social media concept is going to disappear soon, it's just part of everyday life for many.
  • drknownuffin 5y ago
    I don't see how that would have helped OP. He wasn't called out for things he said or did on social media, barring a few people who piled on over extremely "sanitized" exchanges. I think your "best solution" aligns well with what the OP appeared to be doing, and he still burned. It's important to note that just because the mob forms on social media doesn't mean its consequences are limited to social media.
    • dvt 5y ago
      > I think your "best solution" aligns well with what the OP appeared to be doing, and he still burned. OP has a huge Twitter presence (600k+ followers), and I guess my point is when you have that kind of presence you open yourself up to being a "pseudo-public" person. Sometimes, you need to do this (if you're a politician, for example). But usually you don't. People will get more riled up when the person they're crucifying is famous - clout-chasing is a real thing. Although you (sadly) sometimes have exceptions to this rule, so you're right that it's not a complete solution.
      • polote 5y ago
        > OP has a huge Twitter presence (600k+ followers), He has 16k followers https://twitter.com/pasql https://twitter.com/pasql
        • dvt 5y ago
          Oops, mea culpa. I mistook another screenshot in his post to be his own account. Yeah, 16k isn't that much; pretty sad.
          • craigds 5y ago
            > isn't that much 16 thousand people follow him. That's way more than enough to be considered a 'public person'
            • sneak 5y ago
  • alephnan 5y ago
    > vast majority of mainstream social media users (a) don't tend to have good-faith debates This. Thank you. I have unconsciously wondered into such debates on social media cesspools, and approaching it like I do with HN, which is atleast more logical
    • FreakyT 5y ago
      I think a key reason is HN has (IMO) a well-designed vote-based moderation system. Flamebait tends to get downvoted/flagged pretty quickly, burying it where it belongs. Contrast that to pure engagement-focused social networks like Facebook or Twitter, which do the opposite: prioritize showing flamebait, because people are engaging with it and therefore it must necessarily be quality content!
      • hycaria 5y ago
        Reddit works the same yet does not has the same feeling at all except for niche subs maybe.
        • tomerico 5y ago
          Agree. Reddit has a unique ability among large social networks to bring up sanity and good discussion. If there is misinformation being being spread I'd expect information disputing it to be in the comments 90%+ of the time. (Except for the niche subreddits as you mentioned)
      • snowwrestler 5y ago
        HN does not have out-of-control mobs and flamewars because HN has dedicated human moderators who monitor hot conversations and use a variety of tools to de-escalate them. Voting manages the day-to-day and gives them signal to work with, but ultimately open communities (i.e. that anyone can join) need active moderation to remain stable over the long term.
  • ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    > The only community I interact with candidly tends to be this one. Same here. Even so, I make it a point to keep it positive, and about myself. Interestingly, that gets people painting me as "stuck up," or a "goody two-shoes," and they attack me anyway. Meh. Whatevs.
  • numakerg 5y ago
    Having a following on social media has great benefits for regular techies, not just influencers and entertainers, etc. It lets you magnify your resume to reach people with authority who you normally couldn't connect with. It helps you get spots at conferences, seats on cool new projects or positions that you can further leverage to increase your online fame and bump up your compensation. You can also use your following to get preferential treatment with companies and authorities, have your problems solved faster. Got your app removed from the Play Store with no explanation? Raise a stink on Twitter. That's one of the reasons why people are so quick to join the fray and throw a punch. They want to be that one quick Tweet that goes viral, gets them thousands of followers and builds their brand.
    • majormajor 5y ago
      You can certainly be both an "influencer" and a "techie" but what you describe is someone participating in the "influencer" side of things and no longer being just a "regular" techie. There are a lot of benefits of being an influencer, but it has its downsides too. (s/influencer/celebrity for a few decades ago...)
    • ipaddr 5y ago
      As a regular techie with a 16,000 person following you are not getting any of those perks. Your app will die. You may feel like you are raising a stink but a phone call would work better. Recruitors finding you on twitter is possible, submitting your resume ensures they have it is a better strategy. Making conference organizer friends on twitter or in person can get great conference speaker spots but not something the average developer does.
  • standardUser 5y ago
    I get my dopamine from Instagram. But I'm on Facebook because it is a unique source of connections and information and the anti-social media crowd seems unwilling to acknowledge this. I certainly understand if some people don't see Facebook that way. Maybe they don't have a need for certain niche communities or they don't care about keeping in loose touch with far flung friends and family. But I have found tremendous value in those things. That's fine if you don't, but at least acknowledge that many people do and simply saying "quit Facebook" doesn't help those people. And the problems persist.
  • f38zf5vdt 5y ago
    I think rejection from society at large is a fundamental human problem. We went from literal witch hunts to figurative ones, but the concept and human psychology has more or less always been the same. The graph of meaningful human relationships is always going to be small and consist only of bidirectional edges. It's a road to accepting that and forging self-worth based on the people you know and care about, and who know and care about you, not the people who will never know you let alone care about you.
    • loopz 5y ago
      Adults are, generally, prejudiced, biased and unfair. Most people will have no problem with favouring their friends, but vehemently accuse others of favouritism, nepotism, etc. By nature, we are suspicious of strangers, and rightly so, but it's also holding us back in everything. It takes active role models, introspection and life-long seeking of enlightened approaches, to break the mold. Few do, but when one do, many can follow.
  • slownews45 5y ago
    No kidding. Getting off facebook was game changing. I also just started blocking everyone strong on the outrage / offense scale (I used to be friends with a pretty broad section from right to left though I'm left). But everyone just lost their minds. HN is one of the better places by far, and I think it takes active action by someone at the top to hold the line. On here we also get extreme reactions still though - The only reason apple does X is because they are evil and want to spy on you etc. One idea you see in nature and also developing countries is camouflage. You basically give your kids a very generic name so they blend in, harder to search etc. In developing countries people really operate with nicknames a lot more and sometimes have multiple "real" names.
    • qsort 5y ago
      One of the things that IMO helps HN a lot is that it de-prioritizes politics (at least hotly debated topics,) in part due to the rules, and in part simply due to having something else to talk about. I don't think politics in general as a topic should be banned, but there is exactly zero intellectual gratification in reading a thread where I can predict without reading what the opposing sides are going to say and the respective counter-arguments. I just can't see how thread #32768 about affirmative action or thread #65537 about abortion can be more interesting than the previous one. You'll just be served defrosted opinions.
  • smegger001 5y ago
    Yeah I cut Facebook out of my life and went cold turkey after realizing it was not healthy place and now find it actively repellent to be on it. The only reason i haven't closed my account entirely is because Messenger and my D&D group uses it for scheduling. even that I use the web site and refuse to allow it a foothold on my phone.
  • v_london 5y ago
    Hey, since we're on the topic of better social networking, I wonder if a side project I've been working on for the past few months might be of interest to you. The website, Reason, is an app for helping people connect with others with similar interests through group chats. It's kind of like Meetups, but online and designed for people who would like to find semi-regular groups of friends and acquaintances to chat about some specific topic. https://www.reason.so/ https://www.reason.so/
  • sequoia 5y ago
    +1. I did exactly this a few years back when I saw a prominent member of the Nodejs community get savaged for linking to an article (exploring the idea that campus speech codes might adversely impact autistic people). I thought "if they can (nearly) take down this guy (a Nodejs technical steering committee member) for linking to a blog post, what are they going to do to me, Joe Nobody?" I was primarily a consultant at the time and relied on being invited to conferences to give talks & trainings in order to drum up new consulting work. Reputational damage would have been devastating to my income as a freelancer. So participating "in the public sphere" was just not worth the risk. I had no idea what view I express today might in the future be deemed unacceptable. Even just being visible on there makes you more of a target–it's harder to have a pile-on on, say, someone's blog. I miss twitter and facebook at times (quit facebook for different reasons), but overall it's a huge relief to not be contributing to those ecosystems.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • manquer 5y ago
      What if you need increase your reputation so you get invited to more conferences and talks then you may need to engage on social media ? perhaps sticking to purely technical posts may help, it is hard for me to say what drives engagement in these platforms. It is fine line to walk
      • sequoia 5y ago
        Yeah I stopped consulting and for a full time gig around the time I quit Twitter. You’re right I really couldn’t afford to quit while I was consulting, at least it seemed unwise at the time.
  • fairity 5y ago
    You're assuming that internet mobs only attack based on misconstrued online content, but that's far from true. I think the best solution here is to speak up on behalf of those who are unfairly attacked, in spite of the negative fallout from getting involved. The worst thing that can happen in cases like this is when nobody supports the victim. That can be profoundly traumatizing. For a more in-depth look at the impacts of internet mob attacks, I'd recommend this TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_when_online_shaming_goes_too_far https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_when_online_shaming_goe...
    • wolverine876 5y ago
      > I think the best solution here is to speak up on behalf of those who are unfairly attacked The reality is that there is no easy way forward, no simple answer: You don't know the truth any better than the mindless mob. If someone is accused of sexual assault or harassment, do you want to risk defending them, only to find out later that you guessed wrong? When the video comes out showing the crime, do you want your name permanently associated with trying to protect them? The witch hunt / lynching / mob attack is always the wrong act, regardless of what someone has done. Perhaps the best you can do is to point that out, but that is also difficult. People will not read the nuance and assume you are on the other side. And you only have so much social capital - when everyone blocks you after the first time you stand up, what do you do after that?
      • fastball 5y ago
        It's hard to know the truth from the outside looking in, but it is easy to be more mindful than a mindless mob.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • wolverine876 5y ago
    > The best solution here is to completely disconnect from social media I've thought about that, but your reputation is being destroyed. You'll offer no defense? You'll let everyone who you value get that impression of you? You'll allow it to become permanent, public record for anyone who ever looks you up with a search engine?
    • dylan604 5y ago
      People are going to believe what they want to believe regardless of information presented disputing. You can expend energy and effort and get frustrated by not changing anyone's mind, or not and have the same result. ???
    • jiofih 5y ago
      I think he’s saying you should disconnect before any of that happens. There is no defense against the barrage of a Twitter mob, doesn’t matter how hard you try. It also seems that the better the reputation you have, the more difficult it is to recover.
      • ryandrake 5y ago
        If you are not part of the platform it can’t hurt you. I’m not on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, any of these services, so the mobs can’t really get to me. They could be flaming me there right now and I’d have no idea and it wouldn’t bother me at all! Excising social media altogether pretty much removes this vector of harassment.
        • wolverine876 5y ago
          > If you are not part of the platform it can’t hurt you. I’m not on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, any of these services, so the mobs can’t really get to me. They could be flaming me there right now and I’d have no idea and it wouldn’t bother me at all! Excising social media altogether pretty much removes this vector of harassment. What if the people you know are reading it, and it affects your friendships, your job, your business partners, your reptuation?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• smoldesu 5y ago
  This is why your identity online should never be traceable back to your real name. It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on privacy, but the internet ultimately doesn't change if you use an alias. If you do so, employers will come back empty-handed when they try Googling you, and they'll have a harder time finding "that dumb Twitter post" that jeopardizes your job. None of this is to say that you should be a bad person online, or otherwise take advantage of anonymity. Being anonymous just gives you a healthy personal shield, and the option to "cash out" and walk away from that identity, if you so desire.
  • Zababa 5y ago
    > It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on privacy I honestly always tought it was common sense. > None of this is to say that you should be a bad person online, or otherwise take advantage of anonymity. Being anonymous just gives you a healthy personal shield, and the option to "cash out" and walk away from that identity, if you so desire. I wouldn't call it anonymity. You can read all of the posts I've made on hacker news by going through my posts (although I can't really prove that to you). My identity just isn't linked to who I am IRL, and both aren't linked to my twitter, and the three aren't linked to my discord. That means that I can be appreciated and judged as an indivudal on HN, but it won't have consequences on other platforms. On the other hand, if I make a really really popular twitter post I can't profit from it here. As you said, it's of course not a reason or way to be a bad person. I just think it's important for me to separate my different identities.
    • BitwiseFool 5y ago
      I would love a feature where usernames get obfuscated once the posts reach a certain age.
      • Zababa 5y ago
        I'm not sure I would like it here on HN but in general I can see why that's a good idea.
  • shadowgovt 5y ago
• orthecreedence 5y ago
  https://www.obsessivefacts.com/blog/2020-07-10-we-are-not-prisoners-of-groupthink.html https://www.obsessivefacts.com/blog/2020-07-10-we-are-not-pr... I found this compelling as a response to the idea of cancel culture. It's kind of interesting, but I think if anybody wanted to cancel me, they'd have a hard time. I have almost no twitter/facebook presence, no linkedin at all, most of my close friends and family don't give a shit about what a bunch of Twitter randos think, and I work at a small enough company that I'd probably get my case heard. I realize that some of that is luck and not just "positioning" but why give yourself a larger attack surface than you need to at a time when one wrong comment from 20 years ago can end you? Just walk away from it all.
  • drknownuffin 5y ago
    The issue is, as OP demonstrated, that this has nothing to do with your interaction with social media. Social media was the connective tissue that gave rise to the internet mob, but neither the OPs behavior on social media, nor his response on social media, had any impact on the outcomes. Nor were the outcomes limited to affecting his social media presence. As per the original article, OP got nailed for comments from a twitter account he didn't run, and whose true owner publicly confessed to owning it. That is, just because you walk away from social media doesn't mean that social media has walked away from you.
  • vaer-k 5y ago
    Cosby was (rightfully) cancelled with no presence whatsoever. Burying your head in the sand won't help you.
    • mikepurvis 5y ago
      I don't know if that's a super relevant comparison, given that he was a celebrity with a decades-long career in the public eye. What other random born-in-1937 person without a social media account would receive that level of interest or attention?
• Zealotux 5y ago
  A relevant TED Talk I always think of when reading about these stories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI Which makes me think: who are these people with enough time of their hands to be morality warriors on internet? Also who are these _friends_ who jumps on conclusion without allowing for a defense? I shouldn't be difficult, in this digitalized world, to provide solid proof of wrongdoing. I may not be the most aware of social cues, or maybe it's a cultural thing, but some of these people seems like absolute sociopaths.
  • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    > ... some of these people seems like absolute sociopaths. Maybe shy sociopaths? They wouldn't be a sociopath face-to-face, but give them the disconnect of being behind a screen, and the sociopathy comes out.
  • version_five 5y ago
    > Also who are these _friends_ who jumps on conclusion without allowing for a defense? I wonder if this person is referring more to their social group. I get the impression that there are groups of "friends" that are really more of a social group and are all walking on eggshells around one another re orthodoxy and and at the same time poised to jump on anyone who is perceived to do something against their group values. Sort of like the situation in 1984, Winston, Syme, Ampleforth, Parson, are all "friends" in some sense but effectively would denounce each other immediately for anything and feel the need to insert little "there is a war going on of course" type platitudes in conversation.
  • Zababa 5y ago
    > Which makes me think: who are these people with enough time of their hands to be morality warriors on internet? Maybe young people? I know that when I was younger (around high school) and more active on twitter, I supported everything progressive because I thought it was the right thing to do, without looking too much into the facts. Fortunately I never had a bigger reach than a few dozen of people with the same ideas as me, and never directly attacked people or insulted them or anything, but I wonder if it's because of virtue or just that I'm more shy than most people. I'm glad I grew up and don't do this kind of thing anymore, but I can't say I don't understand why people would do this. Maybe education about this would help? But on the other hand voices that says "there are two sides to every stories" often get drowned in righteous fury, and I'm not sure I would have listened to them.
• vaer-k 5y ago
  The problem is previously we didn't listen to victims, and allowed them to be silenced. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, and we are listening unconditionally, but (occasionally) bad actors are taking advantage of our good intentions. How do we find balance?
  • nathanaldensr 5y ago
    This is essentially why civilization has legal systems and courts. Unfortunately, legal systems and courts don't scale to internet (global) scale. You'll be "dead," metaphorically speaking, of an internet mob attack before your lawyer even calls you back.
    • shkkmo 5y ago
      We drastically need significant reform of our court system. We simply don't have the capacity to address the current demanda on the court system (which is why we need ao many plea deals.) We certainly don't have the slack we need in the system to be able to drastically expand the scope.
      • mordae 5y ago
        Nah, we just need some real mods on social media. We have them literally everywhere else.
        • vkou 5y ago
          The very same people that are complaining about cancel culture will without a shred of irony start to complain about moderator censorship. I've touched on this in another comment, in another thread - if we are going to assume that people have the right to say whatever the hell they want, how do you reconcile that with the rights of a mob to pigpile someone for speaking their mind? The short answer is: "You can't." The long answer is: "You can't, because when two groups are in such a conflict, you either explicitly censor one, or implicitly censor the other."
• cousin_it 5y ago
  If/when any of my friends get attacked by the mob, I hope I'll have the courage to stand by them publicly. A good recent test was the doxing of Scott Alexander. I signed the open letter against it with my real name and was happily surprised to see the names of many people I know. We should have more of these small but visible acts of resistance that let like-minded people find you.
  • jakelazaroff 5y ago
    The Scott Alexander controversy isn't analogous at all. That was entirely due to his public writing, not alleged private interactions between him and others.
  • lloydjones 5y ago
    The post, and your comment, IMO wrongly frames this as courage .vs. cowardice in standing up for friends. However, that fails to take into account any context of the particular “cancellation”. eg, A situation with damning screenshots of lewd DMs are pretty ‘smoking gun’, and the barometer of “good friends would publicly support me” feels like an insane expectation when (in this hypothetical instance) the person did a bad thing. Perhaps being cancelled isn’t the solution (because we’re all flawed) but the automatic expectation of character references come a scandal isn’t fair on one’s friends.
    • cousin_it 5y ago
      My view is more like "a true friend would help you hide a body", or the short story "Friends in San Rosario" by O.Henry. If I abandoned a friend to the mob due to "screenshots of lewd DMs", I'd have a hard time living with myself afterward.
      • lloydjones 5y ago
        That doesn’t feel like a worldview that would result in a fairer society or better personal conduct. If defending a person, in the face of prima facie evidence, has the result of preserving their reputation and status (and keeping the reputation and status of the accuser in their original state) then it doesn’t feel useful or good.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jollybean 5y ago
  I see this trending on TikTok with the 'Karen' thing but often you have no idea what was actually said or done, just a mob. I honestly think the Social Media Gods need to move beyond these memes because it's more witch-hunt than anything at this point.
  • christophilus 5y ago
    My wife was called a “Karen” for telling a (white British) man that his big dogs were not allowed off leash at the children’s playground. It’s gotten beyond absurd at this point.
• spuz 5y ago
  > So what are we supposed to do in a world that’s gone mad? Our symbiotic relationship with the internet has imprinted its glitches into our minds. The internet is a collective consciousness, and its mental health remains unchecked as it accelerates beyond our control. Somewhere along the way, it feels like we left compassion behind. I can understand why someone feeling the judgement of a mob would think this but it's clearly just a simplification of what's really going on. Each person in that mob is an individual with their own beliefs, thought process, context and so on. What can feel like an avalanche of hate may simply be many individual instances of misunderstanding or confusion. To believe the people who are against you are not individuals but a single angry entity is going to make it harder deal with psychologically and harder to come up with any possible remedy. I don't really know what the remedy would be but I would guess that it would involve a process of divide-and-conquer while addressing each individual's specific concerns.
• annoyingnoob 5y ago
  Happened to a friend of mine during college, before FB and Twitter. He was accused of stalking, was arrested and kicked out of school. He sued to clear his name and was reinstated at school. The lawsuit did cause the accuser and the school to issue formal apologies - but that didn't undo the damage to his reputation.
• polote 5y ago
  There are a lot of talks on HN about the toxicity of social media. And people are pretty angry against Google and Facebook. But to me the worse is by far Twitter. There are plenty of random people who have a disproportionate number of followers compared to the quality of their posts. And as a result can do these kind of mods. Which are amplified by retweets, something that barely exists in other social media. Random people can have too much power. As a society we should really prevent anyone to have more than a certain reach, like for example 5k people viewing a post. If you want to have a bigger reach you should apply to get a professional account and be regulated.
  • throwkeep 5y ago
    I agree, Twitter is the most destructive of the lot. It drives mob behavior and low quality interaction like nothing else. It doesn't get as much scrutiny in the press though, because it's the home of journalists.
    • smlss_sftwr 5y ago
      This is just a conjecture, but I think the 280 character limit on Twitter (or whatever it is now) is one of the key culprits behind the trend of deteriorating discourse not just at the societal level but even at a personal level. It's simply impossible to express nuance in a 280-character span and if you can't win over an audience within that limit, they'll just scroll past whatever else you have to say. Even if you personally have a more intricate perspective on the matter, you're forced to play by majority rules if you want to reach an audience and that quickly becomes a race to the bottom in a system that rewards whoever can come up with the best one-line mic drop instead of the best formulated ideas. I've noticed in my very limited experience with Twitter that it seems to drive "engagement" from opposing sides more so than Facebook's echo chamber, which is a breeding ground for confrontation (whereas long-form Facebook rants seem more so geared towards getting people on "your side" to egg you on). In theory our society needs that sort of cross-aisle engagement to reverse the trend of political fragmentation, but if all you have is 280 characters to make your case that just simply doesn't work. I wonder if there is a solution that could make it work, but given the trend of social media culture being driven by the lowest common denominator I'm inclined to think you'd need some sort of centralized moderating authority and that just brings us back full circle to traditional media outlets
• BitwiseFool 5y ago
  The most disturbing and insidious sentiment of online mobs is claiming that the targets are "just being held accountable". Or that such people are just experiencing "consequences". I really can't express just how cold and bloodthirsty such statements seem to be. It's the perfect combination of justifying vicious behavior while also absolving themselves of responsibility.
  • throwkeep 5y ago
    Well said. And notice how the refrain changed. For years it was complete denial with "cancel culture doesn't exist". Now the response is, "it's just consequence culture".
    • zxzax 5y ago
      Just to be clear, is it "cancel culture" or "consequence culture" when the legal system puts people in jail, or practices capital punishment? Or are those considered something different entirely? If so, why?
      • abnry 5y ago
        The idea of a justice system in a democracy is (a) the laws are agreed upon through the political process and (b) due process and impartial consideration are applied in casting a judgment. "Cancel culture" is primarily enforcing things that (a) have not reached the same political consensus as codified law, like laws against theft or murder, and (b) are enforced by impulse, hearsay, and mob mentality.
        • zxzax 5y ago
          I guess I'm confused, there are a lot of things in life that become known by hearsay and don't reach the same consensus as codified law. What makes this special? Would it really be any different if twitter actively had daily democratic polling on who should be criticized that day? And how would that be any different from "mob mentality," if large groups of users all decided to impulsively vote the same way?
• egypturnash 5y ago
  Protip: quoting Scott Adams, noted mediocre cartoonist turned right-wing gadfly, is not a good idea to convince me that multiple women accusing you of improper behavior are, in fact, full of shit.
  • Zababa 5y ago
    That's an expression of your biais against right-wing people rather than a failure of the author.
    • SyzygistSix 5y ago
      No, I find anyone of any political stripe that acts and posts like he does to be reprehensible.
      • Zababa 5y ago
        And I'm fine with that. If this was the comment I replied to, my reply would be "Could you elaborate on what you find reprehensible on the way he acts and posts?" to try to understand better what's the issue here, but that's it. I don't find your comment biaised against right-wingers.
        • SyzygistSix 5y ago
          His twitter feed for a start.
    • egypturnash 5y ago
      No, that's an expression of my considered and long-standing opinion that Scott Adams is full of a whole lot of shit, which dates to well before he started making worshipful posts about how Donald Trump is a mind-controlling wizard. The turn to right-wing gadfly is just icing on the cake.
      • toiletfuneral 5y ago
        Good lord I cannot believe this is being downvoted. If HN wants to defend that Scott Adams dork for his weird ass beliefs in his magical sexual powers, it says way more about the downvoters than the comment. Where's the defense? I'd really love to hear it right now.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  From the linked Notion "Receipts" page: > I've struggled to understand why so many people have piled on to these absurd accusations without facts. I watched a similar situation play out in real time. A friend had to fire an employee who wasn't submitting work or even responding to communications. The employe retaliated by using their moderately large social media presence to disparage my friend and her company. Strangely enough, other people with zero experience in the matter were piling on to support the claims. It seemed they felt obligated to amplify and lend credence to the allegations of one of their social media friends. The experience was extremely stressful for my friend, but ultimately the former employee cooled off and deleted many of the posts. It's hard to tell how much damage was done in the process, but I was stunned at how someone with zero evidence and an obvious axe to grind could rally such disdain for someone else with little more than a few unsubstantiated social media posts.
  • WDCDev 5y ago
    > I was stunned at how someone with zero evidence and an obvious axe to grind could rally such disdain for someone else with little more than a few unsubstantiated social media posts. I feel that this is due to the weird place victimization occupies in our culture combined with how anti-social social media is. It's extremely easy to issue accusations and threats and have them be read by literally millions of people. You would never dare vocalize these same threats and and accusations publically - and even if you did, in the pre-internet days, it would reach far far fewer people. At some point we to start thinking about strengthening our libel laws to act as a deterrent to this type of online behaviors. It's depressing to consider MORE litigation as the solution here, but I don't think we can depend on the good nature of people and rationality to ultimately prevail.
    • pjc50 5y ago
      > strengthening our libel laws This nearly always advantages businesses and the wealthy, especially in false or ambiguous situations, and whistleblowers of all kinds. Litigation is incredibly expensive and slow. Do people really want to spend a house worth and several years on this kind of fight? (This is why the US felt it necessary to pass laws against UK libel judgements being enforced, it was infringing on US standards of free speech)
• moosebear847 5y ago
  Guess this is a reminder why you shouldn't stick your dick in crazy. But imagine having to deal with someone like this after already getting married to them.
  • dang 5y ago
    Vandalizing HN threads like this will get you banned here. No more of this please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• cityzen 5y ago
  Talking about "a cancer which positively reinforces outrage and amplifies misinformation" and using a tweet from Scott Adams is quite ironic.
• temp8964 5y ago
  After reading through the post on notion, I found it "impressive" that OP has dated with so many toxic persons over years. Is this normal? Or is OP self an outlier to have had so many toxic relationships?
  • vernie 5y ago
    The trappings of having a terminally online social group, it seems.
  • yoz-y 5y ago
    Did I read the thread incorrectly? From there it seems that OP has dated exactly one person out of the bunch, another one was a friend and the rest acquaintances or passersby?
    • fastball 5y ago
      Rundown: - dated @boop - friends with @devonko_ - @ljmacfadyen is random twitter interaction - dated @saskiakeultjes
      • temp8964 5y ago
        Thanks! My impression isn't very accurate :-)
• 867-5309 5y ago
  >These days, I try to find the lemonade made out of the fucked up lemons. stealing this for my next confrontation with the in-laws
• almostgone 5y ago
  When these attacks take on a racial or gender-focused hue, I think they end up having a terribly ironic effect: further isolating the group they sought to protect (e.g., POC, women, etc). That is, they win the battle, but lose the war. Each of these stories reinforces in my mind to not associate with those that are higher on the oppression totem pole. I know it is not their fault, and I feel bad for doing so, but the risk/reward simply does not make sense. It helps that I'm a loner anyway. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26612918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26612918 for the effect I'm speaking of. People will continue to distance themselves as (primarily American) society continues to be a flashpoint and Twitter a flashmob.
  • WDCDev 5y ago
    Yes - and it's driving people further into tribes where the only way they feel "safe" is in and around their own "kind". This isn't civilization, but a regression and if it goes on for a few more generations it could be very damaging to our social fabric. I just hope it's a weird early-21st century "intellectual" movement that eventually dies out.
    • mcguire 5y ago
      I hate to point this out, but this isn't a "regression" and it's been part of our civilization since our civilization became a civilization. It's just a change in who the targets are.
      • fastball 5y ago
        I think it is entirely plausible that social media / attention mining / etc are absolutely making society less civil than it could be / has been.
        • mcguire 5y ago
          Than it could be? I dunno. Humans gotta human. Until relatively recently, women and people from racial and ethnic minorities were pre-cancelled. And if they got too noisy, there was far worse on the menu---the first year in US history without a lynching was something like 1952, and that's literal torture, mutilation, and death; not having people say bad things about you on the Internet. Was it more civil? Yeah, sure. It would only be spoken about in public rarely and the better classes of people would certainly never face it. It would certainly be more civil, as long as everyone stayed in their place.
• fxtentacle 5y ago
  What shocked me the most was his listing of "the quality of my relationships with people" and what looks like people pretending to be friends towards him while sacrificing him for publicity behind his back. I'd say the main point to be learned from this story is that you need to be very careful whom you consider a true friend, as opposed to just an acquaintance. Because they might not care as much about you as you care about them.
  • baby 5y ago
    This ^ your friends will have your back.
• falcolas 5y ago
  I wish this kind of behavior was new. It's not, it's just the latest version of Vigilantism. It's the result of people believing that the rule of law is insufficient; of thinking that they are a better enforcer of what they perceive as the rule of law. I'm not sure humanity as a whole can get away from this. Just being different is enough to trigger people's feelings of "other", to become the target of a mob fueled by hatred and fear. And everyone is capable of being different. But, while we're not going to get away from it as a people, we can get away from it as individuals. Don't join the mobs. Don't react to the initial outrage that we feel when reading something. Sleep on it, and prefer to let the law deal with it (or work to change the laws so it can deal with it) over taking it into our own hands.
• murat131 5y ago
  About 10 years ago I was harassed for months. In my case I wasn't able to find out who it was but they were able do some damage to my marriage and relationship with friends but above all to my well being. When they first started I tended to take my favorite approach in life against such things which is to just ignore the emails and the messages that were being sent to me as well as to my partner but when in a relationship with someone you can't choose not to play the game. This is all under the bridge now. Since then I've had almost zero social media presence. Internet as I learned about and explored in the 90s and 00s is long gone and what's left is a wasteland to spectate.
• kyleblarson 5y ago
  "So what are we supposed to do in a world that’s gone mad? " Step one: leave Twitter. It is a toxic cesspool.
• swayvil 5y ago
  Any appearance of civilized intelligence is pure imitation, as a rule. Ritual, conformity, hive-politics and gratuitous feces-throwing are still the dominant paradigm. Don't let the ability to operate complex machinery fool you.
• psychomugs 5y ago
  While the whole ordeal is awful, it's even more depressing that this is still better-case scenario by having evidence with the conversation receipts. The cynic in me interprets this as a form of pre-pre-nuptial relationship insurance.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• camillomiller 5y ago
  Had me for a while, then unfortunately lost me at the quote of Scott Adams. Adams is EXACTLY who I think anyone should avoid quoting at all costs, when you’re rightfully criticizing the Internet Morality Hordes. If you wanna know why, just scroll his Twitter timeline.
  • notacoward 5y ago
    I've lost as much respect for Scott Adams as anyone, so I'd agree that quoting him is ill advised, but the underlying sentiment is not wrong. Mobs do cause harm, not least because they make redemption harder than it already is. In a way, treating a Scott Adams quote as an automatic disqualifier is only making the OP's point.
    • pstuart 5y ago
      The quote presents as self-deprecation but reads as a non-apology (at least to me, and I too must confess having lost respect for Adams as well). Edit: for fun I checked out Adam's twitter posts -- and have no respect left at all.
      • vxNsr 5y ago
        Adams is very much not trying for an apology here he is mocking cancel culture and the inevitable non-apology that public figures will distribute.
    • tootie 5y ago
      They cause harm when they're wrong. Not when they're right. A mob went after Harvey Weinstein because after the first few accusations they rest realized they weren't alone.
      • exporectomy 5y ago
        Same is true of lynch mobs in real life. Sometimes they do kill actual baddies. It's the tendency to be wrong that makes vigilante justice a problem.
• rapht 5y ago
  Cancel the mob: make platforms liable for publishing (or linking to) any accusations not established by a court relating to an individual's morals or ethics, except when those accusations are made by an accredited press organization. OK to call someone an incompetent, not OK to call someone a child abuser, or even just a sexist or a liar, except if you're making a stand as a media organization (which the accused individual may then sue under libel laws) Penalty for platforms: $10k per offense -- 100 bad tweets published: $1m risk.
  • sneak 5y ago
    There is already a mechanism for conveying liability to the publisher (not the platform, but the tweeter/poster, as it should be) when they publish false claims of fact (ie lies).
    • rapht 5y ago
      Precisely: this does not work in practice! I see many reasons why, the first of which is just that most of the time the damage is already done by the time it goes to court, assuming you can find the real name behind the usernames that professed lies, and I'm not even talking about bots. That's why the liability has to rest on platforms -- and that's in addition to the publisher's liability. Edit: formatting
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • sneak 5y ago
        What you described also does not work, and perhaps does not work much faster. Under such a circumstance, Twitter would not be able to afford to permit any not manually-reviewed/moderated tweets to be posted at all, and would have to shut down.
• betwixthewires 5y ago
  1) be pseudonymous. People in my real life don't need to know what I do on the internet. Not like I'm doing anything untoward, but I am candidly discussing things with random strangers, including things some might view as beyond discussion, and you don't want some crusade against you for that. Your real life and your internet life don't need to overlap, and 99% of people get no benefit from them overlapping. 2) never capitulate, never apologize unless you genuinely did something wrong. This can be hard, but there's no other option. Also, never explain yourself. I've done nothing for which I owe anyone an explanation, least of all random people on the internet. 3) don't use main line social media. Nothing good comes from having an account on twitter or Facebook. 4) anyone who says they care about you that decides they don't even know who you are because some random stranger on the internet accuses you of something doesn't care about you really. At the very least they'd ask you if it is true before passing judgment. I know it can be hard even knowing this, the people you can trust are never exactly who you expect or want them to be. 5) the mob is only as powerful as you let them be. 6) sue. If someone slanders or libels you, sue them into poverty. The only thing keeping people from transgressing you is fear of reprisal. Make an example out of them. If it actually negatively affected your life and you have evidence that what they said isn't true, you may be entitled to compensation. In the age of the internet, you have to have a thick skin. It is required. I understand that some people take it hard and some even hurt themselves from the pressure, and I feel bad for those people, but the failure is that they let noise from the ether affect their emotional well being. You cannot do that. The internet is a resource of information and a communications channel. Nothing more.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • koheripbal 5y ago
    1 and 6 are mutually exclusive.
    • betwixthewires 5y ago
      Sure, if done right. But in the event it does happen, there are people in this world that are the reason we have prison as a deterrent. You must deter these kinds of people.
• tediousdemise 5y ago
  Twitter is a toxic wasteland of shit eaters. I avoid Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, pretty much anything considered social media. In fact, the only websites I use are email, banking, and HN. I don’t need social media. Social media doesn’t deserve my bandwidth, advertisers don’t deserve my attention, and my mind doesn’t deserve to be manipulated.
  • axiosgunnar 5y ago
    > In fact, the only websites I use are email, banking, and HN. and StackOverflow, I assume :-)
    • tediousdemise 5y ago
      How could I forget? Might as well add Google to that list too.
  • prawn 5y ago
    I think this must be true of Twitter in specific places (USA) or circles. I find it to be largely positive and can't think of the last time I saw a polarised debate on there. Not on FB so can't comment about that. Instagram is important for one of my lines of work and I find it a positive place.
    • Kye 5y ago
      There might just be a lag post-adoption in a place, or require some initiating event. It was great in the US for years until around 2008 when people who are professionally political got on for the election. Until then it was mostly hobby talk, like a bunch of small subreddits that occasionally talked to each other.
      • prawn 5y ago
        We have the professionally political on Twitter in Australia and they're very active, but we don't seem to have the extreme polarisation in politics at workplaces. I suspect that's part of it. Our political differences here don't seem as dramatic.
• nice2meetu 5y ago
  There is always another side to the story. I was friends once with someone who I later found out had schizophrenia. She used to say horrible stuff about what other people had done to her. Then came the couple of times some raging hot-headed guy would be banging on the front door of our house yelling at us and wanting to have a go because of the all the horrible things we had done to this poor girl.. It is amusing looking back but wasn't at the time, and it was scary how far people are willing to go even off hearsay.
  • somedangedname 5y ago
    This happened to someone I know - his then girlfriend had an abusive ex who threatened her, stalked her etc. All make-believe! The messages she'd used as evidence were sent from her own number saved under the ex's name. When caught cheating she disappeared and stuck the guy I know with the bill for a shared vacation. He then becomes the 'demon ex' and the cycle of grift continued.
• rossdavidh 5y ago
  The book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" by Jon Ronson, is an excellent look at this topic. He interviews a number of people who have been the focus of such "mob attacks", and spends enough time on each to show how they happen, and what the long term results are. It's an oddly thoughtful and reflective look at thoughtless and unreflective behavior.
  • JeremyNT 5y ago
    Not only is "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" an excellent book that demonstrates Ronson's immense empathy, it came out way back in 2015 when the problem was far less obvious. Ronson saw this all coming, and he warned us about what being attacked on the Internet can do to the real humans on the other side of the keyboard, who are far from the one-dimensional monsters that social media witch hunts tend to portray them as.
• hprotagonist 5y ago
  ... weirdly, the ones who adopted the sternest and most terrible Old Testament moral tone were the Modern Language Association types who believed that everything was relative and that, for example, polygamy was as valid as monogamy. The friendliest and most sincere welcome he'd gotten was from Scott, a chemistry professor, and Laura, a pediatrician, who, after knowing Randy and Charlene for many years, had one day divulged to Randy, in strict confidence, that, unbeknownst to the academic community at large, they had been spiriting their three children off to church every Sunday morning, and even had them all baptized. Randy and Amy had spent a full hour talking to Scott and Laura last night; they were the only people who made any effort to make Amy feel welcome. Randy hadn't the faintest idea what these people thought of him and what he had done, but he could sense right away that, essentially that was not the issue because even if they thought he had done something evil, they at least had a framework, a sort of procedure manual, for dealing with transgressions. To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy's fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz, society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any deviations from what they saw as the norm. Whereas people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How tos and README files, providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability. "Yo! Randy!" says America Shaftoe. "M.A. is honking at you." "Why?" Randy asks. He looks in the rearview, sees a reflection of the ceiling of the Acura, and realizes he is slouched way down in his seat. He sits up straight, and spots the Impala. "I think it's because you're driving ten miles an hour," Amy says, "and M.A. likes to go ninety." "Okay," Randy says, and, just as simple as that, pushes down on the accelerator pedal and drives out of town forever.
  • adolph 5y ago
    The thread of contemporary period people totally fell out of my mind. I need to pull it off the shelf and reread it. Thank you for the reminder.
• m3kw9 5y ago
  If you are confident, next step is to sue.
• m3kw9 5y ago
  If you sue and not a successful, you could create a case law against online mob incitements.
• mr_brobot 5y ago
  It's over, it's done \ The end is begun \ If you listen to fools... \ The Mob Rules (RIP Dio) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3__NN16uoXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3__NN16uoXk
• SavantIdiot 5y ago
  I wouldn't call OP's post "receipts", but rather "his curated receipts." What makes more sense? Some dude has been creepy and only showed the positive side in his defense, or three random unrelated women -- who he claims only ever had lovely, adoring exchanges with him -- decided to destroy his life for no apparent reason. I mean, the former case has a precedent for happening almost habitually in the past, you'd have to be willfully ignorant to ignore the context of the last several decades. EDIT: Not saying he's guilty, but I'm also not pretending we don't live in a world where institutions perpetuate and erase abuse. But the latter case deserves a response by the accusers. Unfortunately, if some guy walks up to a woman at an event and acts creepy, this demands that a woman record every moment of her life in case she has to defend herself if she calls him out... EDIT: Watching the points on this comment swing from negative to positive in the span of minutes is telling.
  • honkdaddy 5y ago
    Here's an example[1], from his blog post, about the interaction one of these women defined as "creepy". If this is the bar for unacceptable discourse between men and women, without being a mind-reader, I'm not really sure how one is ever supposed to win. [1] https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fsecure.notion-static.com%2Fea67dec6-4d3f-4ae2-ba1e-4f4d8ed9cd1f%2FCleanShot_2021-02-24_at_17.34.242x.png?table=block&id=424cbc08-a995-4d2c-8348-6a382deef2c0&spaceId=4df35c39-cb11-4523-a7a4-2c68a3fecc57&width=3580&userId=&cache=v2 https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazo...
    • SavantIdiot 5y ago
      That's his receipt. Not hers. Is that really 100% of the interactions they've had? You seem to be pretty confident there's only his side of the story.
      • Manuel_D 5y ago
        Then she should share receipt of the alleged creepy messages. The burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Causality1 5y ago
  This is why I keep my internet and real world personas completely separate. Accounts that communicate with my actual friends don't communicate with anyone else and vice versa. I can't imagine what a non-celebrity has to gain by daring to put their actual name anywhere online.
• alex_young 5y ago
  I don’t have any strong opinions about this ordeal, but the linked ‘receipts’ seemed a bit one-sided to me. Here’s one of the tweets he mentions without a link: https://twitter.com/boop/status/1332815338820472833?s=21 https://twitter.com/boop/status/1332815338820472833?s=21 @boob also calls to light this write up seemingly with more context: https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mitchell-and-bhoka https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mit...
  • randompwd 5y ago
    Linked receipts seem to be exactly that - receipts. I don't see what the confusion is.
    • alex_young 5y ago
      Why post images of tweets rather than link to the source? Seems like cherry-picking out parts of a conversation to me.
      • randompwd 5y ago
        > Why post images of tweets rather than link to the source? Because at least one of those users had already deleted their twitter account. Because if any other of the users delete their accounts, the tweets will disappear too. There's nothing strange about posting an inline image of something. > Seems like cherry-picking out parts of a conversation to me ?? It is a) better than not providing proof like the accusers failed to provide and b) those same accusers can post their own proof if it's contradictory.
• bobsmooth 5y ago
  This is why I avoid women whenever possible. Mitt Romney has the right idea.
  • toiletfuneral 5y ago
    grow up
• sens_topic_x 5y ago
  Somehow cruelty and hysteria have become socially acceptable. It is pure narcissism to make a spectacle, even in the case of someone with a real grievance. I'm writing this comment via throwaway because people need to understand others have given this a lot of thought and if you get cancelled, there are good people who won't put up with that bullshit. There is more than hope. A criminal defense attorney told me that more often than is comfortable to accept, accusers have a pattern of self-destructive relationships and the person they pick to accuse is just the most successful one in a line of many. The details are convincing because they really are true, but from other occurrences in their lives. The legal question is not whether or not the accuser is a victim of some kind, but whether the accused is responsible. In politics false accusations come with the territory and now a social media presence is politics. All this talk of believing victims is the worst idea of all because a person who makes a spectacle is the one who is the least likely to be telling the truth during their performance. The simple truth is that men and women often lie. Prosecutors lie, police lie, witnesses lie, reporters lie, managers lie, employees lie, lawyers lie, mothers lie, fathers lie, kids lie, custodians lie, and yet somehow it is acceptable to destroy someone's life on the word of someone (and their friends) who makes a public display of being a victim? Some victims are telling the truth, but everyone who makes a public display should be treated with extreme skepticism, and the louder they get, the less anyone should listen.
• randompwd 5y ago
  wow, although some of those false accusers deleted their twitter account - it's great to see the "Design advocacy @google" still active on Twitter and still employed by Google? Hopefully they can pop on here and tell us why they behaved like such a horrible human? or how they think their job search will go - i wouldn't feel safe working with someone like that - false accusations on a public platform against someone who was already being falsely accused. linked from the article https://www.notion.so/Receipts-f7b8a6a4be0b43c28bed79484f2425e1 https://www.notion.so/Receipts-f7b8a6a4be0b43c28bed79484f242...
• newbie789 5y ago
  It’s fascinating that something like this would happen without any context. I’m struggling to figure out what possible causes for four different women to draw such attention to themselves to highlight this. I suppose one option would be organized Mad Max-style roving bands of man-hating woke gangs that rove Twitter, hungry for blood. Another would be targeted and coordinated attacks as revenge for some sort of personal or professional slight. Or maybe the guy whose “proof of friendship over a decade” is four interactions total (half of which directly related to professional matters) might have given somebody a creepy vibe at some point. I suppose we’ll never know. According to this blog post, the matter is settled and he has been vindicated by this blog post.
• Anthony-G 5y ago
  > There’s irony to a progressive, fluid culture, dishing outrage in black and white. They’re against incarceration, but enthused to rip people apart, with no due process. A few years ago, I read Jon Ronson’s book, “So You've Been Publicly Shamed” which examined online mobs (I don’t think the term “cancel culture” had yet entered public discourse). He started off with the belief that social media was a force for good, allowing the powerless to band together and “fight the power” but then saw how it spiralled out of control to become a more toxic phenomenon and hurt ordinary people. In one of the earlier chapters, he explores the history of shaming (a method of societal punishment that goes back a long way). He pointed out that progressives and liberals influenced by Enlightenment values came to view incarceration as a much more humane form of punishment than the stocks and similar public shamings.
• xwdv 5y ago
  I really don’t understand how people get the nerve to just dox someone so publicly. They must really be hoping an individual will somehow remain sane and stable enough that they will not suddenly show up at your house or place of business and just kill you with a few well placed shots to the chest, especially if they’ve already been pushed so far to seriously consider suicide anyway.
• threwn_away 5y ago
  When I was mod of an internet community of fellow professionals I assented to the banning of a colleague who wasn't accused of anything that I found fault with but that was almost like something bad, which weirded people out. The person defended themselves in great detail when we asked them about it, going into very personal information, with trustworthy witnesses - nobody at any point, either accuser or accused, made any claim of behaviour that warranted this person being punished in any way IMO. But I didn't stand firm enough against the other moderatorship, who just didn't want anything to do with this person. I was feeling very Ned Stark and almost proud of taking on the task of handing the colleague the bad news myself that they were being expelled, never telling them I had misgivings. At some point I will have to apologise to them...
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  The artificial intelligence that is incentivizing conflict for monetary gain is a form of διάβολος (diabolos) -- (ancient description of behavior: slanderous, accusing falsely, etc.) This behavior contributes to torment (e.g. γέεννα)
• azinman2 5y ago
  I have no idea if this guy did or didn’t do these things. It’s also not my problem, so it’s not really for me to know. But his argument is one I think a lot about… how we’ve gotten to knee jerk reactions to everything with immense consequence for people’s lives via arguments that wouldn’t past muster in a real court, but become verdicts in public court. Mob rule and violence is one of the worst instincts in humanity, and is exactly why we have real courts with real laws and real processes. I know this presents difficulties for women, minorities, etc in many situations in which they’ve been wronged, but the solution isn’t more mob justice via Twitter. It’s to find ways to shift culture and laws to bring justice thru effective and measured means.
• madrox 5y ago
  I've learned a lot about the internet by reading the history of the wild west. The open frontier where the only rule was what you could do with your own hands. Then comes the frontier towns where the ability to enforce law was difficult at best. When justice feels far away, often we rely on mobs to fill that gap. This used to happen on a community scale...people would get run out of town. More or less, that's still what's happening, except the city limits are more conceptual. This is what it looks like when the justice system doesn't keep up with society.
• rkk3 5y ago
  He experienced an internet mob. But by calling out the people who made that happen in his "receipts" post, couldn't he be inadvertently sicing a mob on them?
  • valtism 5y ago
    He knows what he's doing. He's been harassing @boop for a long time now.
    • rkk3 5y ago
      Her initial claim of harassment, which kicked off the whole mess, was based on assuming malice from a meme twitter account which was actually run by a random guy in England. Personally I'd rather not assume malice for any of the parties.
• senbarryobama 5y ago
  Tech twitter deserves itself.
• sizzle 5y ago
  The only solution is to delete social media. Be a ghost. Devic Derive meaning from offline activities and not put so much stock into what people online think or say, and be invisible to them for good measure. Do not feed the trolls or take the bait.
• nautilus12 5y ago
  This is the first thing I've seen in 5 years that gives me hope for humanity
• RickJWagner 5y ago
  Back in the day, over-sensitive ninnies were mocked in the movies and television. Everybody from SNL to movie blockbusters provided good comedy by poking fun at, well just about everybody. Not today. Now you can't insult anyone without a woke mob coming to cancel you, wringing hands and wagging fingers on the same arm. The woke bullies are worse than ill-intented jokesters. I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• didibus 5y ago
  The saddest part of this, is that instances like this will overshadow the real scenarios of harassment and abuse, and victims of those will eventually be pushed back into having no voice and credibility once again.
• weeboid 5y ago
  Using Scott Adams to defend your position is … yah. Credibility destroyed.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• tha0xb3 5y ago
  Toxic "non-traditional background in software" leftist ex-girlfriend was put on a PIP at Adobe and subsequently fired for being a worthless bloodsucker starts foaming at the mouth to cover her obvious lack of worth is peak Bay Area/SV leftism.
• chmod600 5y ago
  It's hard for me to not think of politicians here and the incentives we are creating. Think back on Kavanaugh: what real evidence was there? No place. No day. No time. No witness to the crime aside from the accuser, some decades later. Cited witnesses did not corroberate. I understand the witness's account was believable to many people. (EDIT: if I knew her, I'd believe her and have empathy for her suffering). But if you step back and look objectively, there wasn't a lot there. And the media pile on was incredible. It was a clear signal to other politicians that the media is willing to not just unleash a mob, but to be a mob. That surely has a chilling effect.
  • ping_pong 5y ago
    I'm a staunch Democrat, but the Kavanaugh accusations were absurd and angering to me. There was nothing there to back her allegations at all. The witness she said was there, her friend, said she didn't remember the incident. She couldn't even remember where the alleged assault took place. She even got the year wrong and had to backtrack to a "more correct" date range later on. I think she has some form of false memory syndrome, which would explain why she believes so strongly that this event happened, but she has absolutely not even a single atom of proof. It's funny that a letter signed by 65 (SIXTY FIVE) women all stating that he was a gentleman was completely ignored by the media. The media hones in on a single woman who claims sexual assault with no evidence, meanwhile there are 65 women willing to testify on his behalf. It's incredible to me. If he were a predator, wouldn't you think there would be a single woman in the 40 years since this alleged assault would have come out?
• mleonhard 5y ago
  The website's font is unreadable to me. And its JavaScript defeats Safari's Reader View. How can I read the article? Solution: Zoom all the way out and then invoke Reader View. It seems that the page's JavaScript is constructing the page DOM elements on the fly. It's not a document, it's an application. I really really hope this style of website does not become more popular.
• alisonkisk 5y ago
  "Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas." People who think it's a good idea to non-anonymously discuss their personal life issues in Twitter / public social media are too dangerous to have in your life. Doubly so for the "Silicon Valley" "technorati".
• sar009 5y ago
  Cancel culture is mob justice.
• BryantD 5y ago
  I don't have any insight into this specific situation, but there's one element of the post I wanted to comment on: that Scott Adams "canned apology." Is there any sequence of events in which that tweet is useful? I see two basic paths here. One: you want to apologize in order to get people to stop yelling at you. Two: you want to sincerely apologize because you think you've done something wrong. In either case, you can't use the Adams apology, because... it's obviously pre-canned. It's not sincere. But worse, what if you didn't know about the Adams apology and you come up with something similar? Same problems apply and you didn't even know you were setting yourself up for it! This feels like an instance of the insincerity/shitposting problem. It's fun to be snarky. You can get a lot of laughs being snarky. In some cases, it's even useful to be snarky, because it tends to muddy the waters. But I think it's also usually corrosive to be snarky. I wish Adams hadn't done that.