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The original complaint claimed that he was a groper. That's sexual harassment. It's illegal. It's incredibly toxic and creepy, and people who do it are out of t

The original complaint claimed that he was a groper. That's sexual harassment. It's illegal. It's incredibly toxic and creepy, and people who do it are out of touch cretins who make everything worse. Citing that no one officially lodged a criminal complaint isn't a counterpoint. Most sexual assault isn't pursued. Serial creeps are plying their trade right now. But yeah, if he's associated with a brand and he's going to important trade events for that brand and being a despicable creep, in every dimension that is grounds for being fired. Mob mentality and so-called cancel culture are deeply unfortunate, often doing more damage than the things they are angered about. However creeps have negative consequences when they come under scrutiny, especially when it encourages others to note other creepy incidents.

noahbradley 5y ago
I never groped anyone.
- deft 5y ago
  Noah you are saying this now but your original apology says the opposite. Which is it?
  - rkk3 5y ago
    Where do you see that in the original apology? https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admits-to-being-a-sexual-predator-at-art-industry-events/ https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi...
    - tptacek 5y ago
      Follow the links from his Wikipedia page and you can see Twitter threads where he responded directly to allegations like this with links to the apology.
      - rkk3 5y ago
        Not very helpful, even with digging I don't see what you are talking about. Please post the link. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Bradley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Bradley Live Twitter reference Link https://twitter.com/Blackdeerly/status/1274715678444945412 https://twitter.com/Blackdeerly/status/1274715678444945412 Dead Twitter reference Links https://twitter.com/noahbradley/status/1274670378296774658 https://twitter.com/noahbradley/status/1274670378296774658 https://twitter.com/abigbat/status/1293860934600003585 https://twitter.com/abigbat/status/1293860934600003585
        tptacek 5y ago
        You can simply follow the first Wikipedia footnote on "cut all ties", in the opening paragraph of the article.
        rkk3 5y ago
        Ok since you don't post links I'll assume you are referring to: 'Bradley’s statement came the morning after concept artist Betty Jiang posted accusations on Twitter about a “bald headed crusty assed ‘well known’ artist who went around groping female devs,” saying that she hoped “to never see you and your shitty v-neck shirts at any workshops or conventions.”' He apologized for a lot of things, but I don't see him admitting to or apologizing for groping anyone. https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admits-to-being-a-sexual-predator-at-art-industry-events/ https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi...
        tptacek 5y ago
        As I said: you can see screenshots of threads where he was accused both of "groping" and of taking advantaged of intoxicated women at events, and he responded with a link to the apology. Follow the first footnote from the Wikipedia article, and then click the screenshot on the first message in the Twitter thread. I have no way of judging the veracity of either side of this argument, but it sure looks like the allegations against him were specific --- at the time.
- defaultname 5y ago
  I wasn't there. I don't know you or any of the other players. I know nothing about this beyond basically the synopsis. Yet what is cited as the origin of the torch mob -- a twitter thread -- has a lot of pretty clear accusations by long time Twitter users, some of whom are fairly well known figures.
  - overgard 5y ago
    "Long time twitter user" is a pretty awful metric for credibility.
    - defaultname 5y ago
      Someone with a chip on their shoulder didn't create a bunch of accounts to invent a narrative is the point. It's absolutely an input to consideration. And FWIW, to use Animats' argument that lack of court proceedings is evidence, surely there's a lot of actionable libel in some of those twitter threads if they are invented. If there isn't such proceedings, is that proof that they're all true? I think we've hit a halting problem!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- reedf1 5y ago
  Hey man - be careful reading stuff alright? Probably best to just take a breather from reading stuff about yourself, it can't feel good. Humans weren't designed to be yelled at by more people than you can fit in a room.
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    Public apologies are the new porn and bullying people into providing them is a real addiction for some. These depressed people use "consequences" as a brief hit of superiority, allowing them to escape the reality of their own failed lives. ...and as quickly as it picks them up, it is gone again, and they then need to search for that next dose of "justice". Complexity, self-reflection, nuance, are all distractions from what is an emotional addiction. And like any addiction, you cannot satiate it by giving it more of what it craves. Apologies attract more of them, and they go back to hit the apologizer for more "consequences", like trying to get the last little hit, even if they can see there's nothing left. Don't engage these people. They are worthless.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      I don't think this is the only reasonable reading of the situation, and your framing here is pretty inflammatory. We're supposed to get calmer and more careful in our writing as topics get complicated; see the guidelines at the bottom of the page.
      - koheripbal 5y ago
        This person's career was destroyed because of an online mob. ...and that mob is not psychologically healthy. The online vengeance mob is a toxic and destructive part of our world.
        tptacek 5y ago
        I don't think "online mob" is the only reasonable reading here, and the claim that the people telling the other side of this story must be psychologically unhealthy is also inflammatory, as is talking about its "toxicity" and "destructiveness". This isn't shedding any more light, or rewarding curiosity, which are the goals of the site.
- broberts01 5y ago
  I don't think anyone is inclined to believe one way or the other. It is a gray area and with the way you described what you did, it certainly seems plausible. You even say you were drunk and did stupid things. It is plausible that you wouldn't even remember doing it.
  - stavros 5y ago
    Right, but until someone, you know, actually comes out and accuses him of it, shouldn't we assume he didn't?
- gamblor956 5y ago
  I know of at least 5 women who stopped attending these events because of you, and their (near-)contemporaneous accounts of your behavior does not match your current recollections of your past behavior.
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    I'm not inclined to believe 3rd party rumors. If anything, your comment is exactly the problem OP is talking about.
    - gamblor956 5y ago
      In addition to actually witnessing Noah act like a drunken idiot, I was made aware of Noah's more inappropriate behavior contemporaneously with it happening...in two cases, within minutes of him playing drunken grab-ass, and in the remaining cases, the next day. That being said, I'm also not surprised that people on HN side with a man with a history of sexually harassment over his victims. For inexplicable reasons, the HN crowd seems to think that because they're awkward around women that the same thing that happened to Noah can happen to them, but being awkward around women is not sexual harassment. Just don't grab a woman's body without her permission or try to proposition her within minutes of meeting her, and you'll be fine.
- croes 5y ago
  That's what a groper would say.
lelanthran 5y ago
> Citing that no one officially lodged a criminal complaint isn't a counterpoint. Most sexual assault isn't pursued. Serial creeps are plying their trade right now. Actually it is a counterpoint. If someone accuses me of a crime, then refuses to pursue any prosecution of that crime, and then expects me to suffer consequences for that crime, that's a gross injustice. That's why we have a justice system.
- verifex 5y ago
  The problem is that there is no justice system for things that are not illegal, but are ethically or morally bad. Society in the US and in much of the western world has agreed that the only official punishments due for anything are when laws are broken. No law broken, no punishment. This is actually a weakness of our society when the lawmaking bodies choose to sit on the sidelines when the ethical or moral values of the society change, but the laws do not. This is not to say that I endorse lots of new laws to accommodate punishments for people that break moral or ethical values that our society holds, but that without a system that can handle these problems in any capacity, society picks up the slack using whatever tools necessary. As of right now, our society has picked up and run with the idea of ostracism. Trying to guide how our society treats people who break moral or ethical values is a right we have mostly all agreed that lawmaking bodies are in charge of. Unfortunately, most lawmaking bodies in the US, and maybe other parts of the world, are too concerned with outrage-farming for trying to win re-election. I wish I had a good answer here, but honestly, our society has a lot of social problems we are dealing with poorly right now, and this seems like a low-priority one, unfortunately.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > The problem is that there is no justice system for things that are not illegal, but are ethically or morally bad. That's not a problem, that's a feature! After all, do you want to be punished for breaking someone else's moral code? Whether you like it or not, the legal system and the sets of laws is the only moral and ethical yardstick we have gotten society to agree on. If you want your particular set of morals to have a punishment then work within the guidelines to get it made into a law. If you can't garner enough support for your moral position to be made into law then maybe it's not as moral as you think.
koheripbal 5y ago
> Citing that no one officially lodged a criminal complaint isn't a counterpoint. Most sexual assault isn't pursued. Your argument here is that he's guilty until proven innocent.
- defaultname 5y ago
  If we're going to use that terminology, note that the common phrase "innocent until proven guilty" applies to the court, and only to the court. That it must treat you as innocent until a guilty judgment is rendered. It isn't some universal right or something, and has zero bearing on this conversation. I'm not saying he's guilty or innocent. But if someone says "he did nothing illegal because he hasn't been charged" [which the comment I replied to claimed], eh... By some estimates only 5% of sexual assaults are reported to police, so it's a sensitive topic. But that's orthogonal anyways. My core point was that if someone was a creep and causing discomfort at trade events while associated with a brand, it doesn't need to be illegal to have negative consequences.
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    I definitely agree with you there. If my child came to me sobbing that someone abused them, I would not wait for a court to decide the "truth" before I started caring for and protecting my child. Whether the person who hurt them was ever convicted wouldn't me material to my opinion on the events.
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    > "innocent until proven guilty" applies to the court No. The legal system codifies societal values we have. One of those values is that accusations without evidence, like rumors and gossip, are poor reflections of reality, and should never be used to judge someone's character. Witch hunts were real, remember?
    - foldr 5y ago
      There's plenty of evidence in this case, just possibly not enough to pass the threshold for a successful criminal prosecution. People get fired all the time for doing things that aren't illegal, and where there is strong but non-conclusive evidence of wrongdoing. For example, if I consistently take time off for being "sick", I'll eventually be fired, even though the company obviously won't be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I wasn't sick on the relevant days.
naravara 5y ago
In Noah Bradley's case, a lot of people just disliked him because of a reputation that he was a self-important jerk who jumped on every opportunity he could to self-promote and had some annoyingly devoted fanboys (a similar dynamic follows Elon Musk). When the cancellation was in full swing I got the distinct impression that a lot of people were piling on to settle scores or because they just hated seeing him and his fanboys spamming up his stuff all the time, regardless of whether they actually knew him to be a creep or not.

noahbradley 5y ago

I never groped anyone.

deft 5y ago
Noah you are saying this now but your original apology says the opposite. Which is it?
- rkk3 5y ago
  Where do you see that in the original apology? https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admits-to-being-a-sexual-predator-at-art-industry-events/ https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi...
  - tptacek 5y ago
    Follow the links from his Wikipedia page and you can see Twitter threads where he responded directly to allegations like this with links to the apology.
    - rkk3 5y ago
      Not very helpful, even with digging I don't see what you are talking about. Please post the link. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Bradley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Bradley Live Twitter reference Link https://twitter.com/Blackdeerly/status/1274715678444945412 https://twitter.com/Blackdeerly/status/1274715678444945412 Dead Twitter reference Links https://twitter.com/noahbradley/status/1274670378296774658 https://twitter.com/noahbradley/status/1274670378296774658 https://twitter.com/abigbat/status/1293860934600003585 https://twitter.com/abigbat/status/1293860934600003585
      - tptacek 5y ago
        You can simply follow the first Wikipedia footnote on "cut all ties", in the opening paragraph of the article.
        rkk3 5y ago
        Ok since you don't post links I'll assume you are referring to: 'Bradley’s statement came the morning after concept artist Betty Jiang posted accusations on Twitter about a “bald headed crusty assed ‘well known’ artist who went around groping female devs,” saying that she hoped “to never see you and your shitty v-neck shirts at any workshops or conventions.”' He apologized for a lot of things, but I don't see him admitting to or apologizing for groping anyone. https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admits-to-being-a-sexual-predator-at-art-industry-events/ https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi...
        tptacek 5y ago
        As I said: you can see screenshots of threads where he was accused both of "groping" and of taking advantaged of intoxicated women at events, and he responded with a link to the apology. Follow the first footnote from the Wikipedia article, and then click the screenshot on the first message in the Twitter thread. I have no way of judging the veracity of either side of this argument, but it sure looks like the allegations against him were specific --- at the time.
defaultname 5y ago
I wasn't there. I don't know you or any of the other players. I know nothing about this beyond basically the synopsis. Yet what is cited as the origin of the torch mob -- a twitter thread -- has a lot of pretty clear accusations by long time Twitter users, some of whom are fairly well known figures.
- overgard 5y ago
  "Long time twitter user" is a pretty awful metric for credibility.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    Someone with a chip on their shoulder didn't create a bunch of accounts to invent a narrative is the point. It's absolutely an input to consideration. And FWIW, to use Animats' argument that lack of court proceedings is evidence, surely there's a lot of actionable libel in some of those twitter threads if they are invented. If there isn't such proceedings, is that proof that they're all true? I think we've hit a halting problem!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
reedf1 5y ago
Hey man - be careful reading stuff alright? Probably best to just take a breather from reading stuff about yourself, it can't feel good. Humans weren't designed to be yelled at by more people than you can fit in a room.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  Public apologies are the new porn and bullying people into providing them is a real addiction for some. These depressed people use "consequences" as a brief hit of superiority, allowing them to escape the reality of their own failed lives. ...and as quickly as it picks them up, it is gone again, and they then need to search for that next dose of "justice". Complexity, self-reflection, nuance, are all distractions from what is an emotional addiction. And like any addiction, you cannot satiate it by giving it more of what it craves. Apologies attract more of them, and they go back to hit the apologizer for more "consequences", like trying to get the last little hit, even if they can see there's nothing left. Don't engage these people. They are worthless.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    I don't think this is the only reasonable reading of the situation, and your framing here is pretty inflammatory. We're supposed to get calmer and more careful in our writing as topics get complicated; see the guidelines at the bottom of the page.
    - koheripbal 5y ago
      This person's career was destroyed because of an online mob. ...and that mob is not psychologically healthy. The online vengeance mob is a toxic and destructive part of our world.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        I don't think "online mob" is the only reasonable reading here, and the claim that the people telling the other side of this story must be psychologically unhealthy is also inflammatory, as is talking about its "toxicity" and "destructiveness". This isn't shedding any more light, or rewarding curiosity, which are the goals of the site.
broberts01 5y ago
I don't think anyone is inclined to believe one way or the other. It is a gray area and with the way you described what you did, it certainly seems plausible. You even say you were drunk and did stupid things. It is plausible that you wouldn't even remember doing it.
- stavros 5y ago
  Right, but until someone, you know, actually comes out and accuses him of it, shouldn't we assume he didn't?
gamblor956 5y ago
I know of at least 5 women who stopped attending these events because of you, and their (near-)contemporaneous accounts of your behavior does not match your current recollections of your past behavior.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  I'm not inclined to believe 3rd party rumors. If anything, your comment is exactly the problem OP is talking about.
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    In addition to actually witnessing Noah act like a drunken idiot, I was made aware of Noah's more inappropriate behavior contemporaneously with it happening...in two cases, within minutes of him playing drunken grab-ass, and in the remaining cases, the next day. That being said, I'm also not surprised that people on HN side with a man with a history of sexually harassment over his victims. For inexplicable reasons, the HN crowd seems to think that because they're awkward around women that the same thing that happened to Noah can happen to them, but being awkward around women is not sexual harassment. Just don't grab a woman's body without her permission or try to proposition her within minutes of meeting her, and you'll be fine.
croes 5y ago
That's what a groper would say.

lelanthran 5y ago

> Citing that no one officially lodged a criminal complaint isn't a counterpoint. Most sexual assault isn't pursued. Serial creeps are plying their trade right now. Actually it is a counterpoint. If someone accuses me of a crime, then refuses to pursue any prosecution of that crime, and then expects me to suffer consequences for that crime, that's a gross injustice. That's why we have a justice system.

verifex 5y ago
The problem is that there is no justice system for things that are not illegal, but are ethically or morally bad. Society in the US and in much of the western world has agreed that the only official punishments due for anything are when laws are broken. No law broken, no punishment. This is actually a weakness of our society when the lawmaking bodies choose to sit on the sidelines when the ethical or moral values of the society change, but the laws do not. This is not to say that I endorse lots of new laws to accommodate punishments for people that break moral or ethical values that our society holds, but that without a system that can handle these problems in any capacity, society picks up the slack using whatever tools necessary. As of right now, our society has picked up and run with the idea of ostracism. Trying to guide how our society treats people who break moral or ethical values is a right we have mostly all agreed that lawmaking bodies are in charge of. Unfortunately, most lawmaking bodies in the US, and maybe other parts of the world, are too concerned with outrage-farming for trying to win re-election. I wish I had a good answer here, but honestly, our society has a lot of social problems we are dealing with poorly right now, and this seems like a low-priority one, unfortunately.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > The problem is that there is no justice system for things that are not illegal, but are ethically or morally bad. That's not a problem, that's a feature! After all, do you want to be punished for breaking someone else's moral code? Whether you like it or not, the legal system and the sets of laws is the only moral and ethical yardstick we have gotten society to agree on. If you want your particular set of morals to have a punishment then work within the guidelines to get it made into a law. If you can't garner enough support for your moral position to be made into law then maybe it's not as moral as you think.

koheripbal 5y ago

> Citing that no one officially lodged a criminal complaint isn't a counterpoint. Most sexual assault isn't pursued. Your argument here is that he's guilty until proven innocent.

defaultname 5y ago
If we're going to use that terminology, note that the common phrase "innocent until proven guilty" applies to the court, and only to the court. That it must treat you as innocent until a guilty judgment is rendered. It isn't some universal right or something, and has zero bearing on this conversation. I'm not saying he's guilty or innocent. But if someone says "he did nothing illegal because he hasn't been charged" [which the comment I replied to claimed], eh... By some estimates only 5% of sexual assaults are reported to police, so it's a sensitive topic. But that's orthogonal anyways. My core point was that if someone was a creep and causing discomfort at trade events while associated with a brand, it doesn't need to be illegal to have negative consequences.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I definitely agree with you there. If my child came to me sobbing that someone abused them, I would not wait for a court to decide the "truth" before I started caring for and protecting my child. Whether the person who hurt them was ever convicted wouldn't me material to my opinion on the events.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  > "innocent until proven guilty" applies to the court No. The legal system codifies societal values we have. One of those values is that accusations without evidence, like rumors and gossip, are poor reflections of reality, and should never be used to judge someone's character. Witch hunts were real, remember?
  - foldr 5y ago
    There's plenty of evidence in this case, just possibly not enough to pass the threshold for a successful criminal prosecution. People get fired all the time for doing things that aren't illegal, and where there is strong but non-conclusive evidence of wrongdoing. For example, if I consistently take time off for being "sick", I'll eventually be fired, even though the company obviously won't be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I wasn't sick on the relevant days.

naravara 5y ago

In Noah Bradley's case, a lot of people just disliked him because of a reputation that he was a self-important jerk who jumped on every opportunity he could to self-promote and had some annoyingly devoted fanboys (a similar dynamic follows Elon Musk). When the cancellation was in full swing I got the distinct impression that a lot of people were piling on to settle scores or because they just hated seeing him and his fanboys spamming up his stuff all the time, regardless of whether they actually knew him to be a creep or not.