4 ms·

The obvious attention of her photo is the guy who is smiling at the camera; most of the Internet thinks that he was the perp that got fired. Turns out that it's

The obvious attention of her photo is the guy who is smiling at the camera; most of the Internet thinks that he was the perp that got fired. Turns out that it's the guy in the grey shirt on the left side of the photo. She publicly shamed the wrong guy! How is what she did ok?

niggler 14y ago
I personally don't think public shaming is the right answer to this in the first place, regardless of whether the right person was shamed (makes it worse that the wrong guy was shamed), and please don't construe this as defense of the practice, but news organizations (in particular, Fox News) engage in the same practice with much more vitriol. She apologized and expressed remorse for the fact that he was fired. That's why I concluded that she wasn't trying to screw the guy over but rather wanted to draw attention to the general practice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 "I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively."
dalke 14y ago
I have been trying, and failing, to understand the moral justification to prohibit all forms of "public shaming." Could you help me understand your viewpoint? It seems to me that public shaming can be used for good. If a speaker at a conference says something racist, and from the audience you immediately call it out, causing that speaker to feel shameful, apologize, and carry on, then that seems like a good use of shaming. If a speaker should make overt and blatant lies in order to use the public stage in order to defame someone else's character, then surely a massive outcry of booing is morally justifiable, and the speaker should not be able to use "I was shamed" as a justifiable way to retaliate against those who booed. The PyCon procedures even say that the organizers may cut a presentation short and throw the speaker out, should that person's presentation be against the Code of Conduct. If public shaming is prohibited, and if the speaker feels shamed by the staff response, then can't the speaker rightly exclaim "you are shaming me in public and you must stop!"? Why should the staff be allowed to shame someone in public? However, you seem to think that any form of public shaming should be prohibited. What are your opinions about the scenarios I listed above? Can you describe the moral reasoning you used to help decide which forms of public shaming are appropriate and which are inappropriate? Otherwise, I don't see how saying that "She publicly shamed the wrong guy!" is, by itself, enough information to tell if what she did was okay or not. Also, under the US law that applies to workplaces (PyCon is not a workplace), all honestly made statements concerning possible civil rights violations are given protected status. If PyCon were a workplace, then this public complaint would be completely okay, and both legally and morally justifiable. Because I cannot come up with a good moral reasoning ("don't do things that cause others to feel bad" is not a good moral reasoning) for saying that this is anything other than ok, I conclude that it was ok.
- YuriNiyazov 14y ago
  WTF? Do you have any context as to what is going on here? The guy in the middle of the picture that's smiling at the camera is not the perp. Most people who just saw the picture, without reading everything that everyone else wrote, think that he is the perp. Where did I write that I disagree with all forms of public shaming, and that they all need to be prohibited? However, posting up pictures of many men, with one of them clearly staring at the camera, and saying "he jokes about dongles" is wrong when the guy that is at the center of the photo and is staring at the camera is not the guy that joked about dongles. That's defamation. Case closed.
  - subsystem 14y ago
    "However, posting up pictures of many men, with one of them clearly staring at the camera, and saying "he jokes about dongles" is wrong when the guy that is at the center of the photo and is staring at the camera is not the guy that joked about dongles." The tweet said "right behind me", which is the right guy according to you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434005 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464 Edit: I added "according to you" and link to comment since it was pointed out below that this might also be the wrong guy, which would make the comment even worse of course.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - YuriNiyazov 14y ago
      My statement came from this source: http://glpiggy.net/2013/03/20/identity-of-dongle-micro-aggressor-revealed http://glpiggy.net/2013/03/20/identity-of-dongle-micro-aggre... This source, much like the rest of the Internet, initially blamed Alex Reid, the man in the middle of the picture. Then this source decided that the guy to be blamed is the guy in the grey shirt. I made my comment following this source. Then someone else, somewhere (no clue what the original source of that statement is anymore, but you are right, there are certainly comments to that extent floating around, and your post had that comment as well until it was deleted), stated that the reason why the guy at fault was fired from PlayHaven was because he was wearing his company's t-shirt, and thus was publicly representing the company, which in some way makes sense. The only guy in that shirt that was wearing a PlayHaven t-shirt and not the guy in the middle is sitting way far out, and not "right behind her" by any definition of that phrase. My point is that someone who just saw that photo, without reading the extensive commentary around it, still thinks it's the man grinning at the camera - "right behind me" or not. Who is the right guy? I really thought it was the guy in the grey shirt, but even that is now under doubt.

niggler 14y ago

I personally don't think public shaming is the right answer to this in the first place, regardless of whether the right person was shamed (makes it worse that the wrong guy was shamed), and please don't construe this as defense of the practice, but news organizations (in particular, Fox News) engage in the same practice with much more vitriol. She apologized and expressed remorse for the fact that he was fired. That's why I concluded that she wasn't trying to screw the guy over but rather wanted to draw attention to the general practice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 "I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively."

dalke 14y ago

I have been trying, and failing, to understand the moral justification to prohibit all forms of "public shaming." Could you help me understand your viewpoint? It seems to me that public shaming can be used for good. If a speaker at a conference says something racist, and from the audience you immediately call it out, causing that speaker to feel shameful, apologize, and carry on, then that seems like a good use of shaming. If a speaker should make overt and blatant lies in order to use the public stage in order to defame someone else's character, then surely a massive outcry of booing is morally justifiable, and the speaker should not be able to use "I was shamed" as a justifiable way to retaliate against those who booed. The PyCon procedures even say that the organizers may cut a presentation short and throw the speaker out, should that person's presentation be against the Code of Conduct. If public shaming is prohibited, and if the speaker feels shamed by the staff response, then can't the speaker rightly exclaim "you are shaming me in public and you must stop!"? Why should the staff be allowed to shame someone in public? However, you seem to think that any form of public shaming should be prohibited. What are your opinions about the scenarios I listed above? Can you describe the moral reasoning you used to help decide which forms of public shaming are appropriate and which are inappropriate? Otherwise, I don't see how saying that "She publicly shamed the wrong guy!" is, by itself, enough information to tell if what she did was okay or not. Also, under the US law that applies to workplaces (PyCon is not a workplace), all honestly made statements concerning possible civil rights violations are given protected status. If PyCon were a workplace, then this public complaint would be completely okay, and both legally and morally justifiable. Because I cannot come up with a good moral reasoning ("don't do things that cause others to feel bad" is not a good moral reasoning) for saying that this is anything other than ok, I conclude that it was ok.

YuriNiyazov 14y ago
WTF? Do you have any context as to what is going on here? The guy in the middle of the picture that's smiling at the camera is not the perp. Most people who just saw the picture, without reading everything that everyone else wrote, think that he is the perp. Where did I write that I disagree with all forms of public shaming, and that they all need to be prohibited? However, posting up pictures of many men, with one of them clearly staring at the camera, and saying "he jokes about dongles" is wrong when the guy that is at the center of the photo and is staring at the camera is not the guy that joked about dongles. That's defamation. Case closed.
- subsystem 14y ago
  "However, posting up pictures of many men, with one of them clearly staring at the camera, and saying "he jokes about dongles" is wrong when the guy that is at the center of the photo and is staring at the camera is not the guy that joked about dongles." The tweet said "right behind me", which is the right guy according to you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434005 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464 Edit: I added "according to you" and link to comment since it was pointed out below that this might also be the wrong guy, which would make the comment even worse of course.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - YuriNiyazov 14y ago
    My statement came from this source: http://glpiggy.net/2013/03/20/identity-of-dongle-micro-aggressor-revealed http://glpiggy.net/2013/03/20/identity-of-dongle-micro-aggre... This source, much like the rest of the Internet, initially blamed Alex Reid, the man in the middle of the picture. Then this source decided that the guy to be blamed is the guy in the grey shirt. I made my comment following this source. Then someone else, somewhere (no clue what the original source of that statement is anymore, but you are right, there are certainly comments to that extent floating around, and your post had that comment as well until it was deleted), stated that the reason why the guy at fault was fired from PlayHaven was because he was wearing his company's t-shirt, and thus was publicly representing the company, which in some way makes sense. The only guy in that shirt that was wearing a PlayHaven t-shirt and not the guy in the middle is sitting way far out, and not "right behind her" by any definition of that phrase. My point is that someone who just saw that photo, without reading the extensive commentary around it, still thinks it's the man grinning at the camera - "right behind me" or not. Who is the right guy? I really thought it was the guy in the grey shirt, but even that is now under doubt.