18 ms·

He’s fired. Who’s next?

49 points by jhack 11y ago

fennecfoxen 11y ago
Engaging the Internet for the two minutes' hate will solve everything.
comrade1 11y ago
The tagline for the article is ridiculous. "Sexist buffoonery cost Shawn Simoes his job. But you could lose yours for a lot less. Welcome to the creeping corporate takeover of our private lives." It's not corporate takeover of our private lives. It's people choosing to make public what should never be public. That woman, Justine Saccos, said something stupid that might have been considered funny amongst a small group of friends. But to the whole world it made her look like a buffoon. (subsequent interviews she comes across as a reasonable person) (the article is all over the place) When I've tried to hire people I've been given summaries of their social media and I think it's a completely valid part of the hiring process. In my experience using things like facebook, twitter, (g+, orkut, friendster, etc), has more potential negatives than positives. People are always looking for negative things about other people on social media, whether it's stalking, hiring, or dating. That said, I have used Facebook in the past as a corporate promotional tool, having interns take care of my personal Facebook page and the company's. I've never actually used Facebook myself though.
- dozzie 11y ago
  > That woman, Shawn Simoes, said something stupid [...] it made her look like a buffoon "That man" and "him".
  - comrade1 11y ago
    Fixed it - I actually meant Justine Sacco. The AIDS woman.
- onion2k 11y ago
  People are always looking for negative things about other people on social media, whether it's stalking, hiring, or dating. That statement would be just as true without the "on social media" reference. People are no different on Facebook as they are in real life. They're worse on the likes of Twitter because they can hide behind a veil of anonymity, but the overwhelming majority of people are still pretty decent. Don't ignore the fact that hundreds of millions of social media posts are posted daily, and on a typical day none of them make headlines.
dozzie 11y ago
I have little against wicked humour, but the audience should be carefully chosen. If some people are stupid enough to make it public on social media -- well, they deserve their fates.
- JTon 11y ago
  > I have little against wicked humour, but the audience should be carefully chosen. Agreed entirely > If some people are stupid enough to make it public on social media -- well, they deserve their fates. I disagree. I think we'd save a lot of collective energy if we stepped back for a second and asked if the stupidity displayed contained any actual hate. If the answer is "no" it's time slap a wrist, and move along.
tomp 11y ago
> But critics accused the company of abandoning an employee who had stood for what’s right, and the case has come to symbolize the conu That is some disingenuous and biased reporting. Many would say that Adria Richards wasn't fired because she stood up for what's right, but rather because she was defending what was wrong - her interpretation of the guys' joke, that is. (Not to mention the creepshot she took of the developers behind her and the public shaming she engaged in.)
- lotharbot 11y ago
  Here's the HN thread on the subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667 I think the thing that made people side with mr-hank over Adria Richards was that he came across as someone who would have responded well if she'd turned around and said "hey, can you guys tone down the innuendo?" whereas she came across as defending a mentality of rapid escalation. As one comment said, "It really is unfortunate that Adria didn't just reach out to you... you didn't intend harm; alas, it seems she did" (marden928) There were also minor things -- Adria Richards had previously made a twitter joke about freaking out TSA agents by stuffing socks down one's pants, her playing Cards Against Humanity at the same event, her defending her decision [0] "based on the PyCon code of conduct" when PyCon's code of conduct would have had her privately approach PyCon officials and let them try to resolve the issue, and not publicly post a picture of the individuals in question. [EDIT] Not to mention her trying to use back channels to remove mr-hank's comment that he'd been fired. [/EDIT] mr-hank being fired for being overheard saying something privately would be a great example for this article. Adria Richards' firing is an anti-example [1]. She sought the attention and continued to defend her overreactions, including a non-apology-apology -- and, furthermore, she was in a very public-facing position ("developer evangelist"). mr-hank was a run-of-the-mill employee saying something off the record that got back to the employer; Adria Richards was the opposite. [0] subthread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 [1] SendGrid's explanation: http://sendgrid.com/blog/a-difficult-situation/ http://sendgrid.com/blog/a-difficult-situation/
  - pyre 11y ago
    Adria Richards as a character seems like she had a rough past and that has painted the adult she has become[1]: > Have you ever had an altercation at school and you could feel the hairs rise > up on your back?” she asked me. > “You felt fear?” I asked. > “Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’” > Which was why, she said, she “slowly stood up, rotated from my hips, and took > three photos.” She tweeted one, “with a very brief summary of what they said. > Then I sent another tweet describing my location. Right? And then the third > tweet was the [conference's] code of conduct.” > “You talked about danger," I said. "What were you imagining might...?" > “Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them > and women are afraid that men will kill them?” she said. > I told Adria that people might consider that an overblown thing to say. She > had, after all, been in the middle of a tech conference with 800 bystanders. > “Sure,” Adria replied. “And those people would probably be white and they > would probably be male.” While she might think that it's reasonable to feel that her life is in danger because she overheard a crass/sexist joke (not directed at her) in a room filled with 800 people that happened to mostly be white/male, I think that most people don't feel that way. [1] http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/books/7933/exclusive-extract-from-jon-ronson-book-so-youve-been-publicly-shamed/ http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/books/7933/exclusive-extrac...
kohanz 11y ago
The lesson: don't be an idiot.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  No, the lesson is to never say anything on the Internet. Justine Sacco wrote a remark criticizing racism, and got fired for appearing to be a racist. As Cardinal Richelieu said: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
  - kohanz 11y ago
    The majority of the cases cited in the article are not possibly intelligent thoughts being misinterpreted, they're mostly just bad attempts to be funny that end up being offensive and dumb. I don't think Justine Sacco would appreciate being grouped with these people.
- josefresco 11y ago
  The lesson is more "watch who are you are being an idiot around" or "don't be an idiot in public". The content of the messages were not wrong so much as they were taken out of context. What one hears during a comedy show, or during a conversation among friends does not translate well to a public venue/audience.
  - kohanz 11y ago
    Agreed, but we're splitting hairs, IMHO. Being an idiot in public == being an idiot. If it's not in public, the situation changes completely. If you're making an off-color joke to a tight-knit group of friends, you're not being an idiot (unless you're being recorded and are a high-profile public figure cough Rob Ford cough).
mc32 11y ago
This is sad in many ways. It's sad that people think being vulgar is funny. It's sad that people get carried away with what's funny and feel they need to be cool. It's sad that people are rearing to jump on anyone who is but a symbol of something the masses disprove of, again, mainly not out of being a good citizen, but out of trying to be cool. The defender of the faith. It's sad that people's alcohol fueled idiocy -not crime,but idiocy, becomes public and has repercussions in real life. It's sad these vigilantes one day will also make fools of themselves, this is inevitable, one can hope the pitchforks will not come out for them, but they probably will. It's sad people and companies don't have the wherewithal to separate private from public lives. If I were to become an employer one day, what you say on your time is your province, not mine. When you're representing the company, that's different.
- kohanz 11y ago
  > It's sad that people's alcohol fueled idiocy -not crime,but idiocy, becomes public and has repercussions in real life. Maybe not a "crime" by the definition of the law, but a lot of things that aren't crimes, such as sexual harassment, are grounds for losing your job. If you display such behavior in public, you should be willing to face the consequences, especially if you work as a government (publicly-funded) employee. > It's sad these vigilantes one day will also make fools of themselves, this is inevitable, one can hope the pitchforks will not come out for them, but they probably will. I've heard this argument before. Despite what some people think, not everyone harbors racist, sexist, or otherwise wholly objectionable thoughts in the recesses of their mind and of those who do, certainly most of them know better than to spout such things to a public audience.
  - mc32 11y ago
    What you mention are but a few of the socially unacceptable things in "liberal" environs, others will have locally unacceptable behaviors. There are regional and industry differences. I recall an attorney who prosecuted domestic violence got in trouble when it was found out he engaged in violent sex; consensual, but brutal non the less. In other places people get accused of burning religious books. It's all puerile revenge, not really much to do with social justice. Sometimes social justice is a nice cover, when it coincides.
jessaustin 11y ago
ISTM Shauna Hunt, the reporter, handled the situation very well. Unlike other aggrieved parties who have responded to perceived insult with innuendo, passive aggression, etc., she just asked the dude what was up, and let him hang himself. Had she done otherwise, the story we'd be hearing would be about the "backlash" against her, but even internet morons can't fault her behavior here. Friends don't let friends drink and talk to reporters.
ExpiredLink 11y ago
I'm not on Facebook and Twitter. Privacy is a precious property I don't want to sell off.
petea 11y ago
> But critics accused the company of abandoning an employee who had stood for what’s right, Adria Richards was the one who tried to start a witch hunt by talking photos of the two individuals who were just minding their own business joking around. Just imagine this. Think of all the jokes you share with your close ones in your private time, off the record. Say one day, a random person suddenly takes photo of you and declare you a racist, sexist, rapist etc for overhearing what's supposed offensive to them. No matter how harmless the joke is, the damage is done. You'll be branded as whatever the person says you are. Is this the type of behavior we want to promote by saying this is just action? Think really carefully before you defend such action. It can really ruin lives.
- kefka 11y ago
  So, how do you challenge this shame attack? Do you shame them back? Like, "EXCUSE ME, I WILL NOT SLEEP WITH YOU" Do you ignore them? Perhaps, do you challenge them in court with a slander/libel charge? What is the appropriate response in dealing with people (well, mainly feminists) who do these attacks?
  - etjossem 11y ago
    I can't downvote, but I know when a comment deserves it.
    - kefka 11y ago
      So, instead of modding on the cuff, tell me an appropriate response to an accusation of this manner. There's something to be said to not post things on Social Media. Unfortunately for the 2 guys at PyCon, even that would not have helped them, as it was posted on someone else's social media account. So, how does one challenge a he-said/she-said in the time of Youtube/Twitter judgements?
    - rblatz 11y ago
      You comment deserves a down vote. Apparently you believe in mob rule, and that the first person to publicly state something is correct. There are bullies on both sides of every issue, and recognizing that is the first step towards progress.
jgmmo 11y ago
Seriously what kind of place do people work at that you can't have jokes about fork'ing and dongles?
BrainInAJar 11y ago
Maybe just don't be a sexist asshole and catcall women at all, and there's no problem
- mbrameld 11y ago
  There's always one who doesn't read the article.
protomyth 11y ago
"To short-circuit those scenarios, she notes, many major institutions and companies have introduced annual code-of-conduct courses—mandatory refreshers that include explicit warnings that employees represent the company at all times, and that failure to abide could result in dismissal. A few firms try to head off trouble by performing social media background checks on prospective employees." This is the scary part. Basically Big Brother is your source of income. Most employees are not compensated to be on-guard 24x7 and video edits, twitter size limits, and misreporting make matters worse. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." - source disputed but very true these days.
- groby_b 11y ago
  Or maybe the scary part is that so many people lack even the most basic ideas of civility, creating the need for those classes.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    and I'm sure if someone monitored you 24x7 they could find a clip or snippet of your life to turn into the next "that person" moment.
    - kefka 11y ago
      And with some of the dynamic entry of 3d pictures, I could add you in to an arbitrary scene with your voice saying vulgar things. Is the Twitter hate army going to fact check it? Hardly! So again, I ask, how do you defend against these kinds of attacks?
      - protomyth 11y ago
        You don't. Its pretty much that simple. Even if you have the best defense in the world, no one will hear the follow-up because people have moved on and google will always stain your name. Hell, people don't even wait to hear your side these days. Its all "getting my comment in while the plane lands on the Hudson River" time scales. Its not confined to the internet either. Look at all the stories that aren't true and had to be "clarified" on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NYT, etc. Didn't fix some of them before the riots broke out. Its all reality tv and your pain is worth a couple of bucks in soda ads.
Canada 11y ago
Could Gillis, the author of the article, be afraid of the outrage mob himself? Simoes was fired for acting rudely on his personal time in a venue where such behavior is common. Richards was fired for launching an unprovoked public attack against software developers. SendGrid was paying her to be there representing the company. Both of the did act like assholes. He apologized, she refuses to do so. Yet Gillis makes Richards out to be the victim.
FlannelPancake 11y ago
In many cases, it's not even about the content of their messages. It's about a total lack of awareness, especially concerning their medium of speech. To me that's far more damning than an off-kilter joke or a moment of drunken stupidity. Why would you say something really stupid like "FHRITP" to a reporter with a microphone? Or defend someone else saying that? Especially to a NEWS reporter? Sure, blah blah blah, alcohol. If you're out of college and can't be drunk without saying some really monumentally stupid shit in a very public manner, that's worrisome. Are you going to act that way in front of a client or business partner if you go out drinking with them one night? Are you also going to say stupid shit like that at the company holiday party? Admittedly some of these are out-of-context tweets or photos. That sucks to have your inside jokes taken out of context, for sure. At first, I think many of us internalize things like Twitter as "public-but-not-really", until things like this happen that remind us: If you don't intentionally make it private, social media like Twitter is VERY public. You probably wouldn't make that joke while giving a public speech - probably shouldn't make it on Twitter, unless you're extremely careful about the context.
- forgottenpass 11y ago
  Why would you say something really stupid like "FHRITP" to a reporter with a microphone? Or defend someone else saying that? Especially to a NEWS reporter? For the same reason people yell or minimize the yelling of "baba booey baba booey howard stern's penis." It injects vulgar childish nonsense into a framework that presents itself as straitlaced uptight and self-serious. The primary offense dealt is not sexist, it's narcissistic injury.
  - FlannelPancake 11y ago
    Idk, that seems kinda specious to me (though I realize you're not necessarily defending the reasoning). If I yelled something racist into the microphone instead of "baba booey", very few people would shrug it off as "oh hah hah he's just being fun with the uptight reporter." Which I guess proves my point even further - if you can't see the difference between the two and then decide to go on and vocalize this ignorance in front of a television reporter (rather than just keeping it contained to your social circle), maybe you shouldn't be in charge of anything important.
shalmanese 11y ago
Incidentally, whoever is doing PR for Jon Ronson's book is a fucking wizard at their job. I don't think I've ever seen a book promoted so ubiquitously, through so many different channels, hitting so many different audiences over such a sustained period of time. Reading all the different articles, it's possible to see hints of how orchestrated the entire process was and how the same stories get pushed into different contexts to provide relevancy to different audiences. Execution wise, all this took a fuckton of work by absolute professionals and I'd love to read a behind the scenes post-mortem of the work once it's completed. There's sure to be lessons from this campaign that would be valuable to anyone working in or needing PR. PS: Please don't post a link to Paul Graham's submarine piece yet again. It's not a bad piece of writing but it's become the de facto piece on understanding PR which is all kinds of tragic. If the submarine piece is the best piece of writing you know of on PR, then it's likely you know almost nothing about the field and should refrain from commenting as if you do.

49 points by jhack 11y ago

Engaging the Internet for the two minutes' hate will solve everything.

The tagline for the article is ridiculous. "Sexist buffoonery cost Shawn Simoes his job. But you could lose yours for a lot less. Welcome to the creeping corporate takeover of our private lives." It's not corporate takeover of our private lives. It's people choosing to make public what should never be public. That woman, Justine Saccos, said something stupid that might have been considered funny amongst a small group of friends. But to the whole world it made her look like a buffoon. (subsequent interviews she comes across as a reasonable person) (the article is all over the place) When I've tried to hire people I've been given summaries of their social media and I think it's a completely valid part of the hiring process. In my experience using things like facebook, twitter, (g+, orkut, friendster, etc), has more potential negatives than positives. People are always looking for negative things about other people on social media, whether it's stalking, hiring, or dating. That said, I have used Facebook in the past as a corporate promotional tool, having interns take care of my personal Facebook page and the company's. I've never actually used Facebook myself though.

dozzie 11y ago
> That woman, Shawn Simoes, said something stupid [...] it made her look like a buffoon "That man" and "him".
- comrade1 11y ago
  Fixed it - I actually meant Justine Sacco. The AIDS woman.
onion2k 11y ago
People are always looking for negative things about other people on social media, whether it's stalking, hiring, or dating. That statement would be just as true without the "on social media" reference. People are no different on Facebook as they are in real life. They're worse on the likes of Twitter because they can hide behind a veil of anonymity, but the overwhelming majority of people are still pretty decent. Don't ignore the fact that hundreds of millions of social media posts are posted daily, and on a typical day none of them make headlines.

dozzie 11y ago

I have little against wicked humour, but the audience should be carefully chosen. If some people are stupid enough to make it public on social media -- well, they deserve their fates.

JTon 11y ago
> I have little against wicked humour, but the audience should be carefully chosen. Agreed entirely > If some people are stupid enough to make it public on social media -- well, they deserve their fates. I disagree. I think we'd save a lot of collective energy if we stepped back for a second and asked if the stupidity displayed contained any actual hate. If the answer is "no" it's time slap a wrist, and move along.

tomp 11y ago

> But critics accused the company of abandoning an employee who had stood for what’s right, and the case has come to symbolize the conu That is some disingenuous and biased reporting. Many would say that Adria Richards wasn't fired because she stood up for what's right, but rather because she was defending what was wrong - her interpretation of the guys' joke, that is. (Not to mention the creepshot she took of the developers behind her and the public shaming she engaged in.)

lotharbot 11y ago
Here's the HN thread on the subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667 I think the thing that made people side with mr-hank over Adria Richards was that he came across as someone who would have responded well if she'd turned around and said "hey, can you guys tone down the innuendo?" whereas she came across as defending a mentality of rapid escalation. As one comment said, "It really is unfortunate that Adria didn't just reach out to you... you didn't intend harm; alas, it seems she did" (marden928) There were also minor things -- Adria Richards had previously made a twitter joke about freaking out TSA agents by stuffing socks down one's pants, her playing Cards Against Humanity at the same event, her defending her decision [0] "based on the PyCon code of conduct" when PyCon's code of conduct would have had her privately approach PyCon officials and let them try to resolve the issue, and not publicly post a picture of the individuals in question. [EDIT] Not to mention her trying to use back channels to remove mr-hank's comment that he'd been fired. [/EDIT] mr-hank being fired for being overheard saying something privately would be a great example for this article. Adria Richards' firing is an anti-example [1]. She sought the attention and continued to defend her overreactions, including a non-apology-apology -- and, furthermore, she was in a very public-facing position ("developer evangelist"). mr-hank was a run-of-the-mill employee saying something off the record that got back to the employer; Adria Richards was the opposite. [0] subthread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 [1] SendGrid's explanation: http://sendgrid.com/blog/a-difficult-situation/ http://sendgrid.com/blog/a-difficult-situation/
- pyre 11y ago
  Adria Richards as a character seems like she had a rough past and that has painted the adult she has become[1]: > Have you ever had an altercation at school and you could feel the hairs rise > up on your back?” she asked me. > “You felt fear?” I asked. > “Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’” > Which was why, she said, she “slowly stood up, rotated from my hips, and took > three photos.” She tweeted one, “with a very brief summary of what they said. > Then I sent another tweet describing my location. Right? And then the third > tweet was the [conference's] code of conduct.” > “You talked about danger," I said. "What were you imagining might...?" > “Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them > and women are afraid that men will kill them?” she said. > I told Adria that people might consider that an overblown thing to say. She > had, after all, been in the middle of a tech conference with 800 bystanders. > “Sure,” Adria replied. “And those people would probably be white and they > would probably be male.” While she might think that it's reasonable to feel that her life is in danger because she overheard a crass/sexist joke (not directed at her) in a room filled with 800 people that happened to mostly be white/male, I think that most people don't feel that way. [1] http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/books/7933/exclusive-extract-from-jon-ronson-book-so-youve-been-publicly-shamed/ http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/books/7933/exclusive-extrac...

kohanz 11y ago

The lesson: don't be an idiot.

bryanlarsen 11y ago
No, the lesson is to never say anything on the Internet. Justine Sacco wrote a remark criticizing racism, and got fired for appearing to be a racist. As Cardinal Richelieu said: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
- kohanz 11y ago
  The majority of the cases cited in the article are not possibly intelligent thoughts being misinterpreted, they're mostly just bad attempts to be funny that end up being offensive and dumb. I don't think Justine Sacco would appreciate being grouped with these people.
josefresco 11y ago
The lesson is more "watch who are you are being an idiot around" or "don't be an idiot in public". The content of the messages were not wrong so much as they were taken out of context. What one hears during a comedy show, or during a conversation among friends does not translate well to a public venue/audience.
- kohanz 11y ago
  Agreed, but we're splitting hairs, IMHO. Being an idiot in public == being an idiot. If it's not in public, the situation changes completely. If you're making an off-color joke to a tight-knit group of friends, you're not being an idiot (unless you're being recorded and are a high-profile public figure cough Rob Ford cough).

mc32 11y ago

This is sad in many ways. It's sad that people think being vulgar is funny. It's sad that people get carried away with what's funny and feel they need to be cool. It's sad that people are rearing to jump on anyone who is but a symbol of something the masses disprove of, again, mainly not out of being a good citizen, but out of trying to be cool. The defender of the faith. It's sad that people's alcohol fueled idiocy -not crime,but idiocy, becomes public and has repercussions in real life. It's sad these vigilantes one day will also make fools of themselves, this is inevitable, one can hope the pitchforks will not come out for them, but they probably will. It's sad people and companies don't have the wherewithal to separate private from public lives. If I were to become an employer one day, what you say on your time is your province, not mine. When you're representing the company, that's different.

kohanz 11y ago
> It's sad that people's alcohol fueled idiocy -not crime,but idiocy, becomes public and has repercussions in real life. Maybe not a "crime" by the definition of the law, but a lot of things that aren't crimes, such as sexual harassment, are grounds for losing your job. If you display such behavior in public, you should be willing to face the consequences, especially if you work as a government (publicly-funded) employee. > It's sad these vigilantes one day will also make fools of themselves, this is inevitable, one can hope the pitchforks will not come out for them, but they probably will. I've heard this argument before. Despite what some people think, not everyone harbors racist, sexist, or otherwise wholly objectionable thoughts in the recesses of their mind and of those who do, certainly most of them know better than to spout such things to a public audience.
- mc32 11y ago
  What you mention are but a few of the socially unacceptable things in "liberal" environs, others will have locally unacceptable behaviors. There are regional and industry differences. I recall an attorney who prosecuted domestic violence got in trouble when it was found out he engaged in violent sex; consensual, but brutal non the less. In other places people get accused of burning religious books. It's all puerile revenge, not really much to do with social justice. Sometimes social justice is a nice cover, when it coincides.

jessaustin 11y ago

ISTM Shauna Hunt, the reporter, handled the situation very well. Unlike other aggrieved parties who have responded to perceived insult with innuendo, passive aggression, etc., she just asked the dude what was up, and let him hang himself. Had she done otherwise, the story we'd be hearing would be about the "backlash" against her, but even internet morons can't fault her behavior here. Friends don't let friends drink and talk to reporters.

ExpiredLink 11y ago

I'm not on Facebook and Twitter. Privacy is a precious property I don't want to sell off.

petea 11y ago

> But critics accused the company of abandoning an employee who had stood for what’s right, Adria Richards was the one who tried to start a witch hunt by talking photos of the two individuals who were just minding their own business joking around. Just imagine this. Think of all the jokes you share with your close ones in your private time, off the record. Say one day, a random person suddenly takes photo of you and declare you a racist, sexist, rapist etc for overhearing what's supposed offensive to them. No matter how harmless the joke is, the damage is done. You'll be branded as whatever the person says you are. Is this the type of behavior we want to promote by saying this is just action? Think really carefully before you defend such action. It can really ruin lives.

kefka 11y ago
So, how do you challenge this shame attack? Do you shame them back? Like, "EXCUSE ME, I WILL NOT SLEEP WITH YOU" Do you ignore them? Perhaps, do you challenge them in court with a slander/libel charge? What is the appropriate response in dealing with people (well, mainly feminists) who do these attacks?
- etjossem 11y ago
  I can't downvote, but I know when a comment deserves it.
  - kefka 11y ago
    So, instead of modding on the cuff, tell me an appropriate response to an accusation of this manner. There's something to be said to not post things on Social Media. Unfortunately for the 2 guys at PyCon, even that would not have helped them, as it was posted on someone else's social media account. So, how does one challenge a he-said/she-said in the time of Youtube/Twitter judgements?
  - rblatz 11y ago
    You comment deserves a down vote. Apparently you believe in mob rule, and that the first person to publicly state something is correct. There are bullies on both sides of every issue, and recognizing that is the first step towards progress.

jgmmo 11y ago

Seriously what kind of place do people work at that you can't have jokes about fork'ing and dongles?

BrainInAJar 11y ago

Maybe just don't be a sexist asshole and catcall women at all, and there's no problem

mbrameld 11y ago
There's always one who doesn't read the article.

protomyth 11y ago

"To short-circuit those scenarios, she notes, many major institutions and companies have introduced annual code-of-conduct courses—mandatory refreshers that include explicit warnings that employees represent the company at all times, and that failure to abide could result in dismissal. A few firms try to head off trouble by performing social media background checks on prospective employees." This is the scary part. Basically Big Brother is your source of income. Most employees are not compensated to be on-guard 24x7 and video edits, twitter size limits, and misreporting make matters worse. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." - source disputed but very true these days.

groby_b 11y ago
Or maybe the scary part is that so many people lack even the most basic ideas of civility, creating the need for those classes.
- protomyth 11y ago
  and I'm sure if someone monitored you 24x7 they could find a clip or snippet of your life to turn into the next "that person" moment.
  - kefka 11y ago
    And with some of the dynamic entry of 3d pictures, I could add you in to an arbitrary scene with your voice saying vulgar things. Is the Twitter hate army going to fact check it? Hardly! So again, I ask, how do you defend against these kinds of attacks?
    - protomyth 11y ago
      You don't. Its pretty much that simple. Even if you have the best defense in the world, no one will hear the follow-up because people have moved on and google will always stain your name. Hell, people don't even wait to hear your side these days. Its all "getting my comment in while the plane lands on the Hudson River" time scales. Its not confined to the internet either. Look at all the stories that aren't true and had to be "clarified" on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NYT, etc. Didn't fix some of them before the riots broke out. Its all reality tv and your pain is worth a couple of bucks in soda ads.

Canada 11y ago

Could Gillis, the author of the article, be afraid of the outrage mob himself? Simoes was fired for acting rudely on his personal time in a venue where such behavior is common. Richards was fired for launching an unprovoked public attack against software developers. SendGrid was paying her to be there representing the company. Both of the did act like assholes. He apologized, she refuses to do so. Yet Gillis makes Richards out to be the victim.

FlannelPancake 11y ago

In many cases, it's not even about the content of their messages. It's about a total lack of awareness, especially concerning their medium of speech. To me that's far more damning than an off-kilter joke or a moment of drunken stupidity. Why would you say something really stupid like "FHRITP" to a reporter with a microphone? Or defend someone else saying that? Especially to a NEWS reporter? Sure, blah blah blah, alcohol. If you're out of college and can't be drunk without saying some really monumentally stupid shit in a very public manner, that's worrisome. Are you going to act that way in front of a client or business partner if you go out drinking with them one night? Are you also going to say stupid shit like that at the company holiday party? Admittedly some of these are out-of-context tweets or photos. That sucks to have your inside jokes taken out of context, for sure. At first, I think many of us internalize things like Twitter as "public-but-not-really", until things like this happen that remind us: If you don't intentionally make it private, social media like Twitter is VERY public. You probably wouldn't make that joke while giving a public speech - probably shouldn't make it on Twitter, unless you're extremely careful about the context.

forgottenpass 11y ago
Why would you say something really stupid like "FHRITP" to a reporter with a microphone? Or defend someone else saying that? Especially to a NEWS reporter? For the same reason people yell or minimize the yelling of "baba booey baba booey howard stern's penis." It injects vulgar childish nonsense into a framework that presents itself as straitlaced uptight and self-serious. The primary offense dealt is not sexist, it's narcissistic injury.
- FlannelPancake 11y ago
  Idk, that seems kinda specious to me (though I realize you're not necessarily defending the reasoning). If I yelled something racist into the microphone instead of "baba booey", very few people would shrug it off as "oh hah hah he's just being fun with the uptight reporter." Which I guess proves my point even further - if you can't see the difference between the two and then decide to go on and vocalize this ignorance in front of a television reporter (rather than just keeping it contained to your social circle), maybe you shouldn't be in charge of anything important.

shalmanese 11y ago

Incidentally, whoever is doing PR for Jon Ronson's book is a fucking wizard at their job. I don't think I've ever seen a book promoted so ubiquitously, through so many different channels, hitting so many different audiences over such a sustained period of time. Reading all the different articles, it's possible to see hints of how orchestrated the entire process was and how the same stories get pushed into different contexts to provide relevancy to different audiences. Execution wise, all this took a fuckton of work by absolute professionals and I'd love to read a behind the scenes post-mortem of the work once it's completed. There's sure to be lessons from this campaign that would be valuable to anyone working in or needing PR. PS: Please don't post a link to Paul Graham's submarine piece yet again. It's not a bad piece of writing but it's become the de facto piece on understanding PR which is all kinds of tragic. If the submarine piece is the best piece of writing you know of on PR, then it's likely you know almost nothing about the field and should refrain from commenting as if you do.