31 ms·

The untold impact of cancellation

• piker 1y ago
  > a charitable foundation to promote Functional Programming in Africa Niche
• cbeach 1y ago
  This is an account of the impact of "mob justice" within the Scala community, which Jon Pretty faced in 2021, and devastated his career and mental health. At the time I was taken aback at the lack of due process, and how one-sided accounts from ex-girlfriends could be used to destroy a man. Now, years later his story still chills me and makes me sad about the divided and sinister state of the Scala programming language community.
  • gddgb 1y ago
    [dead]
• jphoward 1y ago
  At the bottom it references a GitHub where people have previously added signatures against Jon Pretty - and now the maintainer says "NOTE: This repo is closed. Do not open issues; they will be summarily closed and ignored." - i.e. telling people they shouldn't even TRY to amend their signatures. Regardless of what you think of Jon Pretty, how is this justifiable? Telling people they can't unsupport something because you're not open to issues, but also not removing it?!
  • readthenotes1 1y ago
    It seems pretty justifiable to me so that people can't erase their misdeeds. Good apologies require more than memory-holing an injurious attack.
    • jphoward 1y ago
      Yeah but because it's a GitHub repo is has an inherent audit trail for that, so it's not really erasing misdeeds... indeed it highlights those people in diffs!
  • bsuvc 1y ago
    > Telling people they can't unsupport something Yes. I have no involvement in this drama (it's the first I've heard of it actually), but signing your name to something matters. Choose carefully what/who you support. A repo owner is not obligated to accept contributions. All of those people are free to create their own repo, post on social media, or write an article recanting their support if they choose to do so.
    • djrj477dhsnv 1y ago
      He's not "obligated" to do anything but it's still immoral to abandon maintenence of something like that. If he can't be bothered to maintain it, then he should delete it.
      • lelanthran 1y ago
        > He's not "obligated" to do anything but it's still immoral to abandon maintenence of something like that. If he can't be bothered to maintain it, then he should delete it. Morality is subjective (that's why we have courts; which don't respect the individual and differing moralities of the parties involved, it has its own moral bar, for better or worse). In this case, I feel it is more moral to record all the members of the mob. Maybe this would cause them to think twice before joining the next mob. I mean, if we are going to have witch-hunt mobs, then the lesser evil is to not allow anonymous mobbers.
      • Cthulhu_ 1y ago
        > If he can't be bothered to maintain it, then he should delete it. Not necessarily, plenty of projects have been put in an archive state because they are 'finished', superseded, forked, etc. This isn't code nor a living document, it was a one-off operation.
      • fmajid 1y ago
        I don’t know if the allegations against Jon Pretty were valid or not, but those who piled on against him can’t escape accountability for mob behavior (assuming Pretty was innocent) if it becomes embarrassing. At most they can say “I supported this but no longer do”, not expunge all traces.
  • netruk44 1y ago
    FWIW that statement (“do not open issues”) was added over one year ago, but the owner has also approved pull requests removing names as recently as 8 months ago. So I think pull requests are still accepted, but issues are not.
  • henryaj 1y ago
    It's interesting looking at the messages of recent commits of people removing their names: - Upon reflection, I don't think this letter was the right approach for this situation. Although I cannot retract my initial decision to sign it, I would appreciate having my signature removed from the document. - We had good intentions and reasons for concern, but there was no due process, and the consequences of that can be awful. Please accept my withdrawal. - The goal of providing safe spaces is laudable and necessary, but I expected to see further process outcomes from this effort. Perhaps some sort of SIP or scalarum iustitiae processus. - I no longer believe the way this letter was the right way of dealing with the situation. And while I cannot undo signing it, I would like to request removing my signature.
  • yawaramin 1y ago
    It says don't open issues, not don't send pull requests.
• oldpersonintx2 1y ago
  [dead]
• blueflow 1y ago
  To prevent things like these from happen again, you should never believe allegations of sexual misconduct. Refuse to bother about this, redirect people to the police and courts, let them do the job. Don't be like these people who put their signature on those letters - be a good person. The justice system exists for a reason.
  • matheusmoreira 1y ago
    Why are you being downvoted? You're right.
  • cedws 1y ago
    Leaving justice to the courts is common sense. Innocent until proven guilty.
    • pixxel 1y ago
      [dead]
    • schnable 1y ago
      Unfortunately, it is not common sense. Innocent until proven guilty is a very modern concept and still not practiced in much of the world. Human nature is tribal, we trust (or don't want to contradict) members of our groups, and we get a kind of a rush from "othering" people and ostracizing them, especially in a mob. It takes work to protect the integrity of our justice system. This applies to the members within it and for those outside of it--neither should sacrifice or attack its credibility for short term political or personal gain. It also requires proper education that focuses on the good, not just the failings.
    • Ylpertnodi 1y ago
      Looking at several DNA cases - guilty, until proven innocent.
      • cedws 1y ago
        Can you explain?
• anonymars 1y ago
  Sorry this isn't related to the content (because I'm having difficulty reading it), but is it just me or is this font absolutely atrocious? It's way too thin in the best case, and omits the horizontal lines (e, A) in the worst case Edit: okay, vastly different experience on phone vs desktop. Looks normal enough on the monitor except, as someone points out, the weird f and j
  • Paul-Craft 1y ago
    I don't see anything outrageous about it other than the lowercase 'f' and 'j', which are quite annoying.
    • Hendrikto 1y ago
      Lowercase “h” and “s” are also very strange.
      • Paul-Craft 1y ago
        They're a little different, as are some of the numerals, but I don't find them nearly as distracting as "f" and "j."
  • Hendrikto 1y ago
    Absolutely. I normally don’t care much about fonts, but this one is so weird it is actually hard to read.
• etchalon 1y ago
  I'm not seeing anything in the post with any legal resolution or "proof" the accusations were false. Whatever case he had was settled out-of-court. It doesn't seem like the accusing parties were asked or agreed to take any action retracting their claims. So, as observers, what we're left with is two people accusing someone of something and the accused saying they're innocent.
  • xyzal 1y ago
    https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf
    • swiftcoder 1y ago
      That doesn't appear to involve the accusers at all - the consent order is against 4 signatories of the open letter, and merely states that they didn't have proof of the accusers claims?
      • wulfstan 1y ago
        Yes; that is correct. They are admitting they made an accusation without evidence or an investigation to support the claim. This is a civil matter and says absolutely nothing about the truth or otherwise of the claims made.
      • maeln 1y ago
        Arguably, the open letter was the most damaging (since it was the one who ostracize them from the scala community). And I guess he sued the signee who were in the same country (UK from what I understand). Suing people cross-country is a mightmare.
    • verelo 1y ago
      The closing remarks by the defendants seem to be what the parent comment is looking for.
      • etchalon 1y ago
• seebeen 1y ago
  I've followed the initial controversy when it began. Changed my view on cancellations forever. A really sad story, but also a cautionary tale.
  • ofjcihen 1y ago
    What ended up being the reason for the false allegations if I can ask? Like, why did they really get together and do this to this poor guy? Edit: From the downvotes I’m guessing this isn’t actually resolved? This is the first I’m hearing about this saga.
• huhkerrf 1y ago
  Things seem to have cooled down on the cancellation front since the peak fever of 2020 and 2021, so I don't see it as much anymore. But for a while, the rejoinder of the cancellers was always, "well, he can just find a different job" or "he got a different job, cancelled yeah right." As if the job was all that mattered. We are social creatures. Shunning and ostracism have a significant impact, even when happening by people we don't know, especially when it's a pile-on. I'm not saying there's never a reason to shun someone. If people do something terrible, cut ties with them. I don't think that's what a lot of this is, though. If it was, it wouldn't happen on such flimsy evidence and it wouldn't happen to people others don't even know. Most cancellations are a blood letting, where people are trying to feel powerful and the cancelled (or even the wronged) don't really matter.
  • huhkerrf 1y ago
    That's also why, generally, apologies don't matter. Go look at an apology of a "cancelled" person. How many replies are about how the apology sounds hollow, or how a PR person must have written it?
    • exasperaited 1y ago
      It's surely not your contention that said apologies sound hollow because there is nothing really to apologise for and therefore it is inherently untrue? There are some challenges with media-based apologies because they can only be done at all through media PR systems, of course, and there's an impact therefore on the shape and style of an apology that Marshall McLuhan might have written about if he were still here. So there's an element of apology fatigue that will prompt some of those replies. But even then, apologies that sound hollow or sound written by PR generally are somewhat hollow or written with help from, or experience of, PR. Usually the PR of a law firm, right? It is wholly possible to apologise in ways that do not have those qualities, and wholly possible for people to recognise them.
      • huhkerrf 1y ago
        >It's surely not your contention that said apologies sound hollow because there is nothing really to apologise for and therefore it is inherently untrue? I can not understand at all how you got that from my message. As for the rest of what you're saying. Yes, there's a way to apologize in a way that don't have those qualities, and it's apologizing directly to the people you've wronged, if you have. Apologizing to a faceless group is pointless.
• rikafurude21 1y ago
  > And in that one moment, I lost most of the life I knew. I offered my resignation from my developer advocacy job because it became untenable and it was damaging my employer, even though we both knew there was no cause to terminate my employment. So he just left his job for no reason? This seems compeletely self-inflicted. The following paragraphs are about he "had to" drop various projects - Why would you just drop everything?
  • zwily 1y ago
    The reason is listed in the second half of the block you quoted.
• clarionbell 1y ago
  I do hope that some members of the mob will reflect and repent. That they will be more hesitant next time. But unfortunately, I have a feeling that they are mostly going to double down. Real monsters are walking free of consequence, while innocents are ruined. Society is so obsessed with moral puritanism, and completely blind to the absurd corruption at the top. If all that energy expended on cancelling people was instead used on genuine political action, we wouldn't be in the trouble we are now at. If more people were reasonable at the time and didn't jump to conclusions, they would still have the high ground. Instead they became the boy who cried wolf.
  • y-curious 1y ago
    The members of the mob are thus because they seek to avoid reflection on their actual lives. I don't think there will be much learning; We will see them at the next mass movement.
  • Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    I dunno if they will; it can be a case where "if you're not for us, you're against us", that is, what would the consequence have been for people not signing it? Or what if they retract their signature? There will be people out there tracking and logging all of the signers and their actions.
• zarzavat 1y ago
  To paraphrase an Internet aphorism, don't have personal relationships with mentally unsound people. There are many ways to ruin someone's life, cancellation is but one of them. If someone really wants to ruin your life, they will find a way. The most effective way to avoid that is to screen your partners aggressively.
  • y-curious 1y ago
    The aphorism you're referring to, is it "don't commit your code to an unstable repository"? Yes, being policed by the mob is terrible.
    • cindyllm 1y ago
      [dead]
    • bluefirebrand 1y ago
      I think the aphorism is "don't stick your dick in crazy"
  • titanomachy 1y ago
    This is great advice, I’ll start applying it as soon as I figure out a universal test for “mental soundness”. All people are imperfect. Many people act in ways that don’t make sense to me. But labeling someone “crazy” and refusing to associate with them is a big judgment to make.
  • bobsmooth 1y ago
    This is why I generally try to avoid women.
    • bluefirebrand 1y ago
      This is being down voted but people should take note When the risks of some behavior are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as being higher than the benefits, people withdraw We wonder why there is a loneliness epidemic, meanwhile we make every effort to make relationships seem like a possible minefield
• king_magic 1y ago
  cancellation often doesn’t feel that much conceptually different from cultural revolution struggle sessions.
• figassis 1y ago
  Not excusing anyone who jumps at judgement, but this illustrates the importance of protecting the integrity of due process. People have over time seem many cases of due process being corrupted by money, power or just incompetence. Many times it has happened to them. Due process is often opaque, complex and lengthy so they decided to bring that in-house and make their own judgements. I have learned to fight the instinct to judge because many times I judged very very sure of my conclusions, only to find put some time later how completely wrong I was. It's scary, how a rational person can feel so righteous and yet be so wrong. As a rule I try never to make a decision on the same day I receive information. You'd be surprised how much your opinion can change once you digest your info.
  • ZpJuUuNaQ5 1y ago
    >People have over time seem many cases of due process being corrupted by money, power or just incompetence. Many times it has happened to them. Due process is often opaque, complex and lengthy so they decided to bring that in-house and make their own judgements. I doubt that's the case here. People just love maltreating someone for a "good cause". It's the most delicious of moral treats.
    • netsharc 1y ago
      > People just love maltreating someone for a "good cause". It's the most delicious of moral treats. My theory is that people do it (hey I do it too) to get the kick of "look at that piece of shit, I'm glad compared to them I'm a better/smarter/etc person.".
      • bilbo0s 1y ago
        look at that piece of shit, I'm glad compared to them I'm a better/smarter/etc person I mean, that’s the entire basis of human ego. That’s never going away. It’s the reason we have in-groups and out-groups. Nations and foreigners. We had slaves and free people for this very reason. If the requirement is to get rid of that kind of thinking, then get ready to simply deal with this forever. Because that type of thinking is human nature, and it’s never going away. We need fixes that acknowledge and align with human nature.
• Artoooooor 1y ago
  I am so enraged when allegations alone cause some people to act as if they were conviction. All these people should now restore all lost things bit by bit. Lost money, job, experience, health, contacts, opinion of all people that they managed to break. Acting based solely on accusations is acting in bad, not good faith.
• djrj477dhsnv 1y ago
  And this is why I always prefer anonymity, whether it's in online discussions, contributing code, or even casual dating. Otherwise one mistake or the malignant intent of another can cause irreparable damage to my personal reputation.
• wulfstan 1y ago
  I have no idea who is telling the truth in this situation, and unless you are the person who has been accused or those who are the alleged victims, neither do you. For situations like this where the allegations fall short of criminal misconduct, a thorough process run by someone independent of the situation needs to a) to evaluate the claims made b) determine whether they are justified c) issue a clear and open report on what took place for the benefit of the community involved. As far as I can tell no investigation has been carried out to verify or falsify claims made by the individuals concerned. But - it is worth stating very clearly that history is replete with examples of men who have used their senior position in communities to take advantage of women, and if what these women say is true, it would be utterly unsurprising to me. The High Court judgement in this situation is a civil matter; nobody has been "cleared" of anything. In the absence of an investigation, you can read the original statements made by the women who made the accusations of wrongdoing [here](https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-harassment-in-the-scala-community-9245b4a139de https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara...) and [here](https://killnicole.github.io/statement/ https://killnicole.github.io/statement/), and you can form your own opinion about who is telling the truth based on what little there is to go on. EDIT: s/judgement/opinion/
  • netcan 1y ago
    Well... unfortunately the world does not come equipped with a "figure out the truth and report back" button. We have some truth-discovering methods... but they are hard, expensive, and often return empty handed. Science. Courts. Fact finding commitees. Etc. So... you can't have that. What we have is heresy, and a "how to act" dilemma in circumstances where truth isn't known and will not be known. Im going to encourage you not to form your own opinion on who is lying. Read the accusations of you want.. but don't pretend you are in a position to judge... only to execute.
  • postexitus 1y ago
    The high court judgement is against part of the lynch mob, not the original accusers. Given their original statements are still up, I would assume they are still behind their words and neither the judgement nor his side of the story invalidates their experiences.
• verelo 1y ago
  Brutal. I’m not sure which way the truth on this lies but the reality is this not the way to go about it. Brian Clapper needs some accountability in this, I’d like to hear why he isn’t backing down or removing the repo.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• dsign 1y ago
  Oh yes, that most tried and tested way of destroying people by accusing them of having improper sex. Remember Julian Assange anyone? And what about the Middle Ages and all the burned people? Remember that time Philip IV of France accused the Knights Templar of having sex with each other, in order to cancel them :-) ? That was a good one, though I'm sure Philip had state reasons in addition to a drunken stupor. I can't comment on this particular case, other than by acknowledging that, sadly, this won't be the first or last mobbing. I hope that Pretty does well and that the people who rushed to condemn him never again get laid.
  • burnt-resistor 1y ago
    Yep. Sadly, it doesn't work as well on horrible rich people, even when they did literally rape children. It's like having money is insulation and grants privileges rather than noblesse oblige.
• EverydayBalloon 1y ago
  [dead]
• kayodelycaon 1y ago
  Unfortunately, this kind of thing isn’t exactly new. I nearly ended up in jail in high school because of an accusation. The only thing that stopped the school police officer from dragging me out the door in handcuffs was me knowing the principal of the school. He was able to figure out where the rumor came from. I’d bumped into a girl during gym class and since I was a sheltered Christian kid new to public school, I didn’t know “second base” had another meaning. I’ve also had a friend who struggled with depression kill himself after there was an accusation of him having illegal images. I don’t know if it was true. I just knew I couldn’t mourn his death while everyone I knew was celebrating it. I also know a friend who stopped doing foster care after a child with a long history of compulsive lying and false accusations accused them of sexual abuse and CPS believed the child.
  • mzajc 1y ago
    > I didn’t know “second base” had another meaning. Out of curiosity, what's the other meaning? I assume the primary one has to do with baseball bases.
    • sireat 1y ago
      First Base - Kissing Second Base - petting above waist Third Base - petting below waist Home Run - sex 2nd,3rd base can vary a bit, but Home Run analogy has been around for a long time.
    • derkades 1y ago
      Not really well defined obviously, but here's some information: https://www.wikihow.com/What-Are-the-Bases-in-Dating https://www.wikihow.com/What-Are-the-Bases-in-Dating
• Aurornis 1y ago
  I do not know anything about this author’s situation and won’t pretend to, but I did watch a sexual misconduct accusation play out in person once. The speed at which everyone assumed the story was true and turned against the accused was basically instant. However there were some key details about the accusation that didn’t add up. The accuser tried changing the details of the story once they realized others were noticing the problems with the claims. It also became clear that the accuser had an ulterior motive and stood to benefit from the accused being ostracized. The accuser also had developed a habit of lying and manipulation, which others slowly began to share as additional information. This was enough to make the situation fall apart among people who knew the details. However, word spread quickly and even years later there are countless people who only remember the initial accusation. Many avoided the accused just to be safe. The strangest part was seeing how some people really didn’t care about the details of the situation, they viewed it as symbolic of something greater and believed everyone was obligated to believe the accuser in some abstract moral sense. It remains one of the weirdest social situations I’ve seen play out. Like watching someone drop a nuclear bomb on another person’s social life and then seeing how powerless they were to defend against it. In this case it didn’t extend to jobs or career. Their close social circle stuck with them. However I can still run into people years later who think the person is a creep because they heard something about him from a friend of a friend and it stuck with them.
  • huhkerrf 1y ago
    > The strangest part was seeing how some people really didn’t care about the details of the situation, they viewed it as symbolic of something greater and believed everyone was obligated to believe the accuser in some abstract moral sense. It's what happens when we see people as stand-ins for their group, but we can't see the individual behind it.
  • echelon_musk 1y ago
    Reminiscent of https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hunt_2013 https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hunt_2013
  • RangerScience 1y ago
    I've seen four "in person", one very public (just purely IRL public). I didn't see anyone (with one exception) pick sides immediately; although most people's "picked" side was "not involved". (The one exception was a community organizer who definitely has Been Through This Before). For three of those, I did my own homework - a lot of asking around, and then a lot of conversations with both people. In the end, most of that didn't matter: the accused ended up damning themselves (or not!) pretty immediately when I talked to them about it.
• bravesoul2 1y ago
  Surprised he cant get a job. Just forget about these idiot friends doing the right thing, and cease and desist Github etc. get all the shit taken down then get a job cranking out Scala.
• SG- 1y ago
  I'm having a hard time focusing on read this article because of how the 'f' font looks like.
  • badc0ffee 1y ago
    It looks bad in the heading, but absolutely terrible in the smaller font size of the article itself.
• justinhj 1y ago
  I remember following this story, and finding it a remarkable case study in mob justice. If you search for Scala on this site you will find it is still among the top 5 stories on the topic and nearly all the comments assume guilt and berate the author. Similarly, r/scala condemned Jon and when the defending testimonials from his female friends were posted there they were removed.
  • EdiX 1y ago
    2020 ~ 2021 was a crazy crazy time. I hope we never get back there.
• nkrisc 1y ago
  Pretty frightening, really. These kinds of experience have absolutely though subtly changed how I interact with people. Particularly, as a man, with women and children. Once my parents were visiting me and we took my kids to a playground. While there, my dad noticed a girl sitting on the ground crying, and seemed to be hurt. He looked for a moment to see if anyone was coming, and then went over to her and asked if she was alright, if she needed help, and where her parents were. He didn't get a clear response from her so he started walking around to the various adults around the playground inquiring if the hurt girl crying was theirs. Finally he got to one group of women and after asking one of them said something along the lines of, "yeah, I saw you over there bothering her" in an accusatory tone. Seeing where it was going, he put his hands up and just walked away without saying another word. The girl remained there crying, alone. It was actually kind of a scary because later that day I realized how in that moment that woman, who my dad had never met before, could probably have destroyed his life right then and there if she wanted to. These days, in the back of my mind I'm always considering how my actions, particularly towards women and children, could be misconstrued. When I'm at the playground with my kids, I don't talk to kids I don't know, at all, for any reason, even if they talk to me. I just smile and make myself busy with my own kids.
  • wffurr 1y ago
    That is a real shame. I have had almost exclusively positive interactions with the other parents and kids at the playground. Maybe a different culture where you are.
    • nkrisc 1y ago
      Honestly it’s rare, it’s not normal. But it’s also so scary I just won’t risk it, however small the risk. You can’t tell which strangers are crazy. My wife, on the other hand, is the parent who will go over and play with all the children while the parents are on their phones. But she’s a woman, so it’s different.
      • sho_hn 1y ago
        I'm honestly not sure I understand what you are afraid of. What accusation could she possibly make in the context of a playground setting that has such dire consequences, especially if you're with your own children? Who would act on it?
• DanielVZ 1y ago
  I once had a friend that was cancelled by an ex-girlfriend for petty and political reasons. I knew it was false because I had been present in most of the situations she described to cancel him and her story was full of lies. She was also a distant friend and her only comment was “I know why I do what I do”, which was pretty weird. My friend was devastated, he had to stop going to his classes and feared that nobody would hire him, professors would hate him (since students already did), and that his life had ended. I spoke with him and assured him that wasn’t the case but to be honest I wasn’t sure either. I don’t know the details but one year later she was suspended for a year for falsely accusing him, my friend graduated and promptly found a job. All this to say I’m awfully scared now of the risk of my interactions with women being used in the future as a false narrative to cancel me. I’m happily married and due to life stuff I do have to interact with young girls and women. Because of this I try to be as distant as I can and limit any interaction that doesn’t involve multiple other adults. I learnt that even if you do nothing wrong you can always be at risk, so I just try to minimize that risk as much as I possibly can.
  • boston_clone 1y ago
    How can "political reasons" be false? I can imagine a lot of political reasons for a woman to "cancel" a man, especially if they're misogynist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, or transphobic, but the vagueness of your anecdote is suspect. > I don’t know the details but [...] > I learnt that even if you do nothing wrong you can always be at risk, so I just try to minimize that risk as much as I possibly can. I'm sorry to hear that you've seemingly adapted your life based on someone else's "petty" experience with an ex-girlfriend, as you put it. Do you feel that this is a healthy and realistic way to live, though? Do you drive a car, walk around your neighborhood, or eat meat? Depending on what kind of person you are, there are plenty more serious and realistic risks that getting randomly cancelled by your social circle.
    • DanielVZ 1y ago
      > How can "political reasons" be false? I can imagine a lot of political reasons for a woman to "cancel" a man, especially if they're misogynist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, or transphobic, but the vagueness of your anecdote is suspect. What was false were the claims and I can say that because I was involved in the situations she described to cancel him. I said “petty political reasons” as a summary for conciseness sake. But if you want more details: - after they broke up she joined a certain left wing political party (student federation elections are a big deal here) - during the election cycle my friend was part of the opposing team and they were doing quite well - so the girl was approached by her party leadership to cancel him. They had this whole “cancel the opposition” operation - Turns out everything was false and was done to benefit the left wing candidates and end the candidacy of the opposing party. which worked. They had to take down their candidacy to deal with all the problems that come from being cancelled. > Depending on what kind of person you are, there are plenty more serious and realistic risks that getting randomly cancelled by your social circle. I’m not so sure about that. Being cancelled is pretty serious, and quite risky. I’ve seen it quite a few times (this one being the closest I’ve been to people involved), and it’s so easy to avoid that I prefer to just do it. For example if I could avoid driving a car I would, but I do it because otherwise it is prohibitively expensive time wise.
• Pxtl 1y ago
  > My legal action continued for more than a year after this, as I looked for opportunities to conclude it without incurring unaffordable costs, or revealing to my opponents that I was in financial trouble. The risk of default lingered over me. We reached a settlement in my favor in early 2024, avoiding an expensive court hearing by a few days. However, this compromise meant that I missed the chance for my case to be scrutinized in court. So from the outside we have no way of knowing who is telling the truth.
  • trelane 1y ago
    > the outside we have no way of knowing who is telling the truth. Yes, exactly. His life was upended because he was assumed guilty until proven innocent. Even here in the threads.
• jjmarr 1y ago
  Cancellation is never about justice. It's always about status. Many rapists and abusers do not face social ostracism because they contribute more than they take away. Many people are ostracized because they do not contribute enough in proportion to accusations. Justice is the idea we can ignore social status, but this is only ensured by due process, because following a consistent set of rules removes status from the equation.
• mil22 1y ago
  Ultimately, this reflects just terribly on the Scala community and every individual who signed the open letter, including Brian Clapper himself and over 300 others. You can read the full list of names here: https://scala-open-letter.github.io/ https://scala-open-letter.github.io/ Having been in a similar situation myself as a teenager, it is truly abhorrent how quickly people are willing to jump to conclusions against someone based on the most limited information, and without giving the accused any chance to tell their side of the story or defend themselves. Not even a single one of my so-called friends asked me what happened, and almost all of them disappeared from my life permanently. What I learned from the experience was that none of the people who jumped on the cancel bandwagon had ever been worth even a second of my time. It was their loss, and I became much more careful about who I choose as friends after that. I can certainly say that if I encounter any of the 300+ individuals listed in the letter in my personal or professional lives, I will be giving them a very wide berth indeed.
  • burnt-resistor 1y ago
    That's just how people are. Most people are weak sheep and lack integrity. Milgram experiments proved it.
  • graemep 1y ago
    > Ultimately, this reflects just terribly on the Scala community Maybe the lesson of this is that people should be cautious about getting involved in communities like this to the extent that being cancelled by the community does you this much damage.
    • mil22 1y ago
      Absolutely, and to be clear, "this much damage" could have happened to anyone.
• ryaniscool 1y ago
  I have mixed feelings. Cancel culture sucks. I think it's root is a culture of indulging in righteous indignation based on very one-sided information. Even if the allegations are true, his life should not have been ruined over this. On the other hand, when I read the accusers' accounts someone else linked in the comments, they sound credible. It fits behavior patterns we've all seen before. I don't know who to believe.
  • mil22 1y ago
    A lot of works of fiction sound credible. Are you going to believe those? You don't have all the information. You weren't there. You don't even know the people personally. You are not in a position to make any judgement either way. Something sounding credible doesn't make it true. It doesn't automatically make it false, either. You don't have to believe the accuser or the accused. The only thing any of us should do is mind our own business.
    • ryaniscool 1y ago
      Thanks for the lecture. How does it relate to the comment I made? Sorry, it's not clear to me. I didn't personally participate in cancelling this person. In fact, I agreed with the point he made in the article. I'm just not sure he didn't do it. Are you saying I shouldn't have an opinion on that part?
      • mil22 1y ago
        You can have whatever opinion you want, but don't confuse "sounds credible" with evidence. From the sidelines, you don't know enough to judge either way. Saying "I don't know" is the only accurate position. Everything beyond that is just speculation - and speculation is exactly what keeps cancel culture alive.
        • OldfieldFund 1y ago
          The same with OP's post. So far, I see that this post caused quite a few forks, the opposite of what the author asked for. I don't have a solution. I think as a man who runs conferences you shouldn't sleep with people who attend them. Or any other things like that, for that matter. Should you be cancelled for that? No. But humans are humans. There is no solution to this. Courts are also wrong all the time (look at OJ) and victims of SA almost never see justice. The answer is: we don't know the truth.
• deleted 1y ago
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• redeyedtreefrog 1y ago
  I don't get why he is so determined to stick with Scala. It's just a programming language. The Scala community is forever going to hold extremely negative associations for him. For someone with his level of experience and motivation it presumably wouldn't be too hard to switch to Rust or something. Some people will still reject him out of hand due to his googleable name, but I still feel like he'd be happier and better off leaving.
  • thelittlenag 1y ago
    Jon has addressed this elsewhere, but the gist of the argument, as I understand it, is that he hasn't worked professionally in any other ecosystem or language. So leaving Scala is tantamount to abandoning his entirely professional experience (20+ years!), skill set, and all open source contributions, and then restarting from scratch in a new ecosystem. All without any guarantee that the allegations around him won't just follow him. Its a really tough position to be in.
    • winwang 1y ago
      I believe there is at least one other thing I got from the post: that he shouldn't have to abandon Scala, perhaps because doing so is to give in to a sort of injustice (in his mind)?
• deleted 1y ago
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• justinhj 1y ago
  Worth reflecting on how the average opinion on this story compares to the collective mobbing that occurred at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961482
  • mil22 1y ago
    Oof. So much opportunistic grandstanding and virtue signaling in the comments there. I read for 5 minutes and didn't find even a single comment that expressed any uncertainty about the truth or accuracy of the allegations.
    • burkaman 1y ago
      Some of the top comments do, these three for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961815, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963597, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26962421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26962421. In general I think this was quite a reasonable comment section. I see a lot of "damn this sounds awful" (and it does), discussion about the general phenomenon of sexual harassment (which is obviously real) rather than that specific case, and some uncertainty about what actually happened. I don't see much "this guy should be jailed immediately" in the top comments. I certainly wouldn't call it a mob and I don't see anything that deserves to labelled as insincere virtue signaling.
• xivzgrev 1y ago
  I recently read a helpful Quora post on cancellation Basically, while it's totally fair to hold people accountable, it needs to work both ways. Additionally, there's a line between boycotting someone (your collective actions) vs attacking others for supporting. If you didn't like what a musician did, you and others could stop buying their albums. That's different than issuing death threats to radio stations that play that musicians music. So in this case, we seem to have -one sided accountability, a coordinated effort around one side of facts -a boycott vs attack. The open letter makes it clear that only the signatories will be engaging in these actions. Others (such as organizations that employed him) are requested to cut ties but not threatened So I would say this is only a partial "cancel". It would have been better if he could have "had his day in court" before he was thoroughly condemned, though I'm not sure how.
• benterix 1y ago
  I remember the story of RMS. In her cancellation piece, Selam Gano equalled RMS with Epstein. Many media outlets repeated false accusations. Some of them are still online (Gano finally deleted her piece). For example, Vice says[0]: Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As ‘Entirely Willing’ Which is 100% false. Another false one[1]: ...Richard Stallman, who defended Jeffrey Epstein... This is even worse as it is pure fabrication. Did Gano ever apologized? Did any of these media outlets even thought about apologizing and making up for everything RMS had to go? It's really, really sad. [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/famed-computer-scientist-ric... [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-who-defended-jeffrey-epstein-resigns-from-mit-csail-and-the-free-software-foundation/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard...
• henryaj 1y ago
  High Court notice from the mentioned court case: https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf > The Defendants accept that they have never had any evidence to support the allegations apart from the two unverified claims published in coordination with the Open Letter. They were never in a position to make any informed judgement on the truth of the allegations, and did not seek clarification on any of the allegations from the Claimant. He won £5,000 plus costs. [edit - the defendants here appear to be signatories of the open letter]
• augustk 1y ago
  If it is all lies, what could be the incentive for the women to make up a story like this? https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-harassment-in-the-scala-community-9245b4a139de https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara...
  • throwaway290 1y ago
    No one said it was all lies actually. Even the guy. He could say "I didn't sleep wih a young attendee of a conference I helped her get into, after getting her drunk at my airbnb". But he just vaguely said "fake evidence" and "short relationship". If what she said is true, "short relationship" is hella euphemism
  • redeyedtreefrog 1y ago
    The Scala community soap-opera was a total shit show. Both of the women involved later ended up in relationships with Travis Brown, another prominent and extremely controversial Scala figure. Travis then entered a long running war against John De Goes and a bunch of other people in the Scala community before rage-quitting. I don't believe the women entirely made it up, or that Jon Pretty is entirely guilt-free. Likely he is a narcissist who took advantage of his status to pursue sexual relationships where there was a huge imbalance of power. Maybe this strayed into manipulative gaslighting, I don't know. But it also seems entirely plausible that the women in question desired a relationship with a powerful older man and that the relationships were essentially consensual. It's a mess of power, sex, alcohol, a lack of shared social norms, and overlapping social and professional relationships. Quite where the truth lies between "totally non-consensual gaslighting" and "consensual relationship with large imbalance of power" I don't claim to know.
• deleted 1y ago
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• dovadonn 1y ago
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• gwd 1y ago
  I remember reading an essay once saying that the real power of superheroes -- and the most unrealistic one -- was certainty. In most of our superhero stories, there's never any question who the bad guy is or what needs to happen to them; there's only a question of how to have enough power to defeat them. But in the real world, life is uncertain. And bad people take advantage of that fact: Bad men take advantage of the uncertainty to assault women with impunity. And bad women take advantage of the uncertainty to make false accusations. The rest of us are stuck trying to do the best we can. But certainly the best we can includes more than what the author describes here. There's a reason that in court you have a right to give your side of the story, and to confront your accusers: the law has thousands of years of experience dealing with this sort of thing.
  • gwd 1y ago
    So now having read one of the original reports [1], and not being able to see the response he claimed he and other women had written (they're mentioned in the post but not linked to), it's hard not to think that there was potentially problematic behavior which was done somewhat in ignorance. In this situation, I think Jesus' advice actually makes a lot of sense: > “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector." [2] So according to Yifan's blog, she did step 1 -- she directly confronted Jon, and he refused to consider his behavior as problematic. Imagine what would happen if she'd told her story to some of the Scala leadership; and instead of having a coordinated blog post, three of them went and had a conversation with Jon together. That would have been a much stronger signal to potentially change his tune -- whether or not he thought he'd done something wrong, he might well have decided not to do that in the future, for fear of consequences: Which, would really be the main point. If after that he continued the behavior described in the blog post, they could have gone public, and demanded specific changes in behavior. If he apologizes and changes, fair enough, move forward. If he doubles down, then cancel him. As it stands, Jon seems to be "back", still doesn't think what he did was wrong. Maybe he'll be more careful this time, or maybe he'll be emboldened. [1] https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-harassment-in-the-scala-community-9245b4a139de https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara... [2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2018%3A15-17&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2018%3A...
• standardUser 1y ago
  I knew nothing of this at the time, but I just read the accusatory letter: https://scala-open-letter.github.io/ https://scala-open-letter.github.io/ Reading that letter it seems that Jon was being accused of... nothing in particular? I'm not even sure what he could refute. There's no accusations of consent violations. There's really only the one phrase - "sexually harass and victimize women" - but without examples that just sounds like a pot shot. Especially given that they identify a "systematic pattern", which is apparently a pattern with no specific examples of wrongdoing. And don't get me wrong, I'm strongly inclined to believe women and I generally distrust men. Especially when it comes to their interactions with women. And I believe these women probably had plenty of valid complaints, in part because I know very well how aggressive, oblivious and entitled a lot of men can be, and how many "normal" interactions between men and women do involve consent violations, if not assault or worse. So given what I know about the dangers women face routinely, and the vague and mild allegations in this letter, I'd guess like the biggest crime he committed was being another guy who's god awful at dealing with women, dating and sex. Unless there is more that I don't know about.
  • burkaman 1y ago
    The open letter was a response to some specific allegations, including https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-harassment-in-the-scala-community-9245b4a139de https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara...
    • standardUser 1y ago
      Thanks for that. Everything in that letter is, unfortunately, upsettingly, fairly common. But I'd want him out of my life and professional settings too if that's the way he was acting.
      • HDThoreaun 1y ago
        Yea it seems to me that jon is just an incel who was unable to tell that his actions made others uncomfortable. Not malicious or criminal but I totally understand not wanting someone like that in the community.
• sho_hn 1y ago
  If you're interested in a vaguely similar case, I found the situation of somewhat-famous video game writer Chris Avellone interesting to follow. He's worked on some games I enjoyed in my youth (Planescape: Torment is probably the most well known, considered a genre classic) and my reaction to his cancellation was roughly something like "ah crap, another one of my heroes turns out to be a bad egg". The narrative of famous men abusing their end of a power dynamic is generally easy to believe, etc. As a result, he lost his employment, contracts and so on as well. But this one had an aftermath a couple of years later. He wrote some elaborate/lengthy pieces defending himself (which struck me as plausible and even convincing, but then I had to keep in mind he's an expert writer) and initiated legal proceedings -- that he eventually won, resulting in a public statement by the accusers that the events they accused him of never took place. I think his posts make for interesting reading. His career seems to have resumed recently, five years after the accusations were made public. Even so, if you look at internet comment threads on recent news of his new game involvement, there's a persistent meme that he paid for this statement in the form of a "seven-figure settlement", which is a curious misreading because the seven-figure sum was paid to him by the accusers to make up for damages. Sadly, the case of another writer I sometimes liked (Warren Ellis; I enjoyed Transmetropolitan back in the day) is rather grim in comparison.
• RigelKentaurus 1y ago
  Man, this was hard to read. Irrespective of what actually happened, this found-guilty-by-popular-opinion mentality is a corrosive evil, and it's been worsened by social media. Hard to believe that this community just ignored "innocent until proven guilty" so casually. I used to naively believe that people are generally good. I still believe that but with a major qualifier. There are some truly toxic people out there who are seriously mentally fucked up and don't hesitate to screw with others' lives. They seem normal and nice at first, but if you look closely enough, you see the trail they have left behind.
  • sho_hn 1y ago
    I think one of the reasons communities like Scala's are susceptible to this pattern is that they have some characteristics of a movement and compete for attention with other movements, so there's a knee-jerk response to protect the movement and all the effort put into it from being associated with bad stuff. Most signatories to this letter were likely erring on the side of protecting their community, at the risk of an individuals' fate. (I'm also discussing this neutral to the actual issue, which I don't know much about and haven't made my mind up on.)
  • HDThoreaun 1y ago
    Jon didn’t actually deny the claims though. The accusation is that someone had sex with him and then regretted it and tried to end the relationship but he creeped on her. He said he didn’t think his actions were creepy but that doesn’t mean they weren’t and it certainly doesn’t mean they didn’t make the accusers uncomfortable. Losing his job over this is a bit much but after reading all the evidence I would not invite him to conferences either. He clearly has awful social skills and habitually makes people uncomfortable. The lack of anyone standing up for him points in that direction as well although there are many other possible explanations so I won’t hold that against him.
    • myko 1y ago
      Jon comes off pretty skeezy in the entire situation. I'm shocked to see such full throated defense of his actions here. I think his posts are written to confuse people into thinking he won some settlement with his accusers, which is not the case, he reached an agreement with folks who amplified his accusers claims. He did not refute the claims by the women at all.
• RangerScience 1y ago
  It's worth noting, when looking at these kinds of situations, that we do not have effective systems of addressing intimate / domestic crimes and accusations. Near as I figure, it comes down to this: Our legal tradition was developed to mediate and resolve conflicts between groups; not within them, which is where this kind of thing happens.
• shswkna 1y ago
  The world is full of very shitty, manipulative people. These can be predatory men, or scheming women. For me, the dichotomy is between people that try to act in good faith, and those that don’t.
• stickfigure 1y ago
  I feel like taking risks today, so I'm going to publicly stake out a position that I haven't heard yet: 1. From reading the two women's statements (and between the lines of his), I believe the guy probably is a bad person. 2. Despite this, he shouldn't be cancelled from his profession. We as a society need to be able to compartmentalize our lives to some degree. Unless you work in tiny companies your whole life, some of the people you work with will be trumpers, socialists, pro-lifers, had 5 abortions, religious fundamentalists, gay, anti-vaxers, teetotalers, swingers, or maybe even all of the above. Everyone believes something that someone else considers cancelworthy. It shouldn't matter; you're at work, not a social club. We should be able to narrow our cancellations somewhat. Tell everyone that the OP is a terrible human being, sure! Cancel his dating life. If someone is a terrible employee, cancel her work life! But leave her family alone. You're welcome to kick me out of your religious revival, and you probably don't want me at your AA meetings either. I get it, especially on the conference circuit in a small tight-knit professional community, the line between personal and professional can get muddy. But this isn't new; something like 20% of Americans met their spouse at work. I think we just have to navigate it ad hoc. People can and do maintain professional relationships while still cutting those people out of their social life. It looks like this guy leveraged his high status in the community to sleep with young naive starry-eyed women, plus was a dick about it. I guess there are groupies in every scene. Still, these weren't employees. They weren't even coworkers. I think it would be weird to accuse Gene Simmons of "exploiting his position as a rock star to have sex with women". He's said many times that was kind of the whole point! I guess what I'm saying is... probably the two public testimonials from women were enough to get the job done. Sometimes just word getting around should be enough.
  • ofjcihen 1y ago
    I agree with your second point but your first point undoes it. You’re an observer on the internet who knows none of these people and came to a conclusion based on just their words alone. Which is exactly what causes these things to happen. Let’s be real: absolutely nothing about this situation should lead you to believe them over him.
    • stickfigure 1y ago
• CM30 1y ago
  Cancel culture always scared me, and this blog post sums up exactly why. It seems like pretty much everyone is willing to turn on a 'social pariah' at the drop of a hat, and just about every aspect of your existence gets annihilated as a result of that. What's more, it feels completely counter productive anyway since the impact of a 'cancellation' on someone is inversely proportionate to how powerful/damage their actions are in general. Because the most dangerous folks around can simply ignore any efforts at such anyway. Someone like say, Elon Musk doesn't need to care how they act or treat others. They're so wealthy and well-connected that they can just shrug off any callouts or exposes or gossip, and keep causing as much damage as they want. So the end result is that to a degree, it often feels less like 'punishing' bad behaviour and more like sticking the knife in deeper into someone who might already have a hard time as it is. The billionaire or millionaire ignores the consequences, while some random schmuck sees their life torn to shreds. It also feels like yet another thing that makes life miserable for people struggling with anxiety, who are neuro diverse, etc. Just takes one person misjudging your intentions/being weirded out by your behaviour, and then it seems the internet mob wants your blood. So now you've got someone who already likely has few friends and supporters and few job prospects getting a scarlet letter above their head and their already difficult situation made even more difficult...
• squigz 1y ago
  A question for those talking about how the law is the only system that should be deciding this stuff. Suppose I run a community online. Suppose several women come to me and say they've been sexually harassed by a senior male member of the community. Suppose that male denies it. What do you expect me to do? Call the cops? That doesn't seem very feasible. Just ignore it? Suppose the accusations are true; without the law saying they're true, I'm supposed to just let someone who might be sexually harassing other community members stick around?
  • Grimeton 1y ago
    Ignore it.
  • bluefirebrand 1y ago
    Surely there are actions you can take between "call the cops" and "ignore it"? Maybe talk to the guy? Hear his side, maybe give him a warning?
• bravesoul2 1y ago
  BTW love the clever domain name. It's "pretty direct" as in honest, frank, candid, and "Pretty direct" as in "directly from John Pretty"
• tsoukase 1y ago
  Classic case of abuse from a higher rank male of a female. Jon thought 'Oh, let's have some sex for a weekend after all that bla bla events'. The girl was in a vulnerable position (far from home, first time attending, relatively poor) and coming from a different culture, young-a-inexperienced. The whole case lies in the spectrum between 'man abuses woman' to 'possible rape' depending on personal beliefs. My opinion: Jon had to receive a good lesson of how to behave correctly to women (esp. ensure a 'balance of power and position') but not such a hard one that destroyed his life.
  • like_any_other 1y ago
    > The girl was in a vulnerable position (far from home, first time attending, relatively poor) and coming from a different culture I'll grant you young (although as far as I can gather that was 21 years, so 5 years older than mature and sensible enough to vote in the UK), but how do any of the others contribute to this vague "vulnerability"? How does not knowing the geography, or being at a conference the first time (a tech conference is not like a jungle expedition where experience is key...), or being of modest means, make it harder to discriminate sexual partners? This "vulnerable" only applies to someone like a spy that has to deftly navigate the city and social interactions to complete a mission, not a regular attendee. > from a higher rank male of a female You know this wasn't the army, right? He wasn't even her employer.
    • tsoukase 1y ago
      Definitely agree with you. It might be my wording due to being a foreigner. In the distant past and in a different situation I almost abused a girl with the same 'vibe' as Jon. Definitely it's not a crime. But it opens the can of worms if the other party does not like it and it might escalate. It should have stopped for him at the stage of public berating (again the wording)
    • cbeach 1y ago
      I wouldn't say she was in a vulnerable position at all. Like Jon, she was already a conference speaker and a Scala group organiser. Really, she wasn't below Jon in any hierarchy. In her blog post she makes out as if she was naive and fresh to the Scala ecosystem, as a non-native English speaker. I don't buy it at all, given this is her in 2018 giving a confident Scala talk in perfect English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq9YbTeOkjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq9YbTeOkjA
• mvdtnz 1y ago
  One of the oddest things about cancel culture to me was the absolute insistence from one side of the political spectrum that this thing we can all see in plain sight just doesn't exist. Just bizarre.
• _zagj 1y ago
  Reminds me of this Redbar clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0uZCDlS_YM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0uZCDlS_YM tl;dw: you getting accused of rape or sexual misconduct isn't "cancellation." And I say this as someone who posts primarily on 4chan, because I hate the downvotes, flagging, shadawbanning and other groupthink-enforcement cudgels reddit and orange reddit employ, so it's not as though I'm sympathetic to "cancel culture." This is what cancellation looks like: https://drewdevault.com/2023/09/17/Hyprland-toxicity.html https://drewdevault.com/2023/09/17/Hyprland-toxicity.html https://linuxiac.com/xlibre-xserver-project-plans-revival-of-x11/ https://linuxiac.com/xlibre-xserver-project-plans-revival-of... Maybe the OP is completely innocent, but it's much easier to side with the "she" in a "he said, she said" dispute when there's more than one "she."
• matrix87 1y ago
  I'm convinced there's no way around this mob-like behavior. So much of our standing in society depends on things where there is no due process The only way around this is to just keep stuff compartmentalized (work vs non-work, social group x vs social group y, relationships vs family, etc) Or else certain kinds of people will form these "bullshit networks" that are sort of like mafias. Then they use the leverage that comes from it to bully other people around. It's the same network that amplifies a cancellation attempt I've seen this play out in offices, friend groups, over extended family, etc. The best way to address it is to spot this kind of person, keep them compartmentalized, and give yourself the ability to walk away at any time as a check on their behavior. Or else there's no real bound on how awful they can be
  • profstasiak 1y ago
    stay anonymous in your work / social life. don't become influencer, don't become household name. Slowly work on getting rich without getting on anyones radar. if at your company someone accuses you of ill behaviour - you can just move on and find another job. As you are nobody, nooone will write online about you with your name (unless they are 100% crazy or you are really a scum). Seems to me cancellation is most dangerous for "famous" people. Conference speakers / influencers / people that appear on TV
• theLegionWithin 1y ago
  larping
• Pfhortune 1y ago
  I read this post, the letter, and the accusations. I have an easy guide for avoiding an avenue for cancellation: if you find yourself influential in a community, and find yourself rooming with someone junior in the community (probably do not do this), treat the shared quarters like a professional work environment, and behave accordingly.
• OldfieldFund 1y ago
  This reads like a post-mortem Predator's Playbook. It's a manual of deflection and self-pity. Of course he wants to settle it all in the courts of law. Because the social court of reputation would crucify him. There are no people who will say good things about him or defend him. Because we know the guy.