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Justine Sacco, Internet Justice, and the Dangers of a Righteous Mob
An anonymous reader writes "So what exactly was the injustice that everyone was fighting against here? There were no pro-Sacco factions, nobody thought her comment was funny, and it became clear early on that her employers were not going to put up with this. It was quite easy for groups to unite against her precisely because it was such an obviously idiotic comment to make. By the time Valleywag had posted her tweet, the damage to her career was already done; there wasn't any 'need' for further action by anyone. The answer is a bit darker – this wasn't really about fairness, it was about entertainment."
Wow, I feel like I understand the issue so well now! Thanks, samzenpus!
Was anyone actually offended by her remark?
Or do people just like being outraged?
Was there ever some kind of doubt that this was about watching somebody fuck up and then get hounded mercilessly? Anybody?
People get off on blood sports and mob violence, this is the mostly-legal and really easy flavor.
Is it really too much to ask for the "summary" to actually provide even the tiniest morsel of context?
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Companies need to stop coddling rich morons from overpriced schools and instead hire talented working class people who can actually get the job done.
People called foxes vermin and hunted them with a pack of dogs.
Now people call other people names and hunt them with a pack of other humans.
Aside from that, the basic drive is the same. It's a relic from our caveman days, so far as I'm concerned.
John_Chalisque
It's something anyone who grew up in a small town understands: when you do something stupid in public, everybody will know about it. In a big city, if you make a fool of yourself at a bar, you'll be the laughingstock of the patrons for a couple weeks until someone else comes along. You'll be the butt of jokes from your friends for a while. But the world at large will be pretty much oblivious. In a small town it's different. Everyone in town will know someone who was there, and what would've been a miniscule fraction of the big city will be 90% of the small town. But it'll still mostly be shrugged off, because again everyone in town's been there. Anyone who rags on you too badly will have their own foray into foolishness brought up and bandied about again, and they'll shut up and let it drop. And individually you learn early on what kinds of things will merely make you look foolish vs. what things will cause serious town-wide outrage, and you avoid doing the latter kind.
The Internet is more the small town than the big city. People assume that nobody will find out what they said or did in public, but the anonymity of the big city just isn't there. And the person in question is what makes a lot of these things such a big deal. We don't see a big flap over the thousands of stupid, racist, bigoted comments ordinary people make every day. In this case though, as with the "Duck Dynasty" case, it's not an ordinary person. It's someone who ought to know that their comments are being broadcast to a much larger audience, and who ought to know how those comments are going to be taken. And they go ahead and make them anyway. That's what makes these things go viral like they do.
Ms. Sacco deserved everything she got. Nothing more, nothing less. If you do something so overwhelmingly and obviously stupid as what she did, and then compounded that stupidity by getting on a plane and going offline for several hours, what do you expect is going to happen? The author of the article is just trying to twist this sordid tale into some kind of cautionary example of the excesses of "internet justice." Meanwhile, kids are killing themselves because they're being bullied for doing nothing other than being themselves. Where's the author's outrage over that? Ms. Sacco neither has the excuse of being a child, nor the defense of having done nothing to offend. If you do something so stupid that NOBODY is willing to defend it, then why should she not suffer the consequences? One should also consider that the kind of people who would even entertain making such offensive remarks in a public forum are not the kind of people who are so easily shamed. They tend to be sociopaths who end up hardening their self-image in response to the outrage. Don't weep for the likes of her.
The point of her being fired has nothing to do with public outrage, hysteria, infotainment.
This person is a highly paid corporate PR professional and her tweet showed that she is not that good at her job after all, thus being fired. My wife is a PR professional who would never make such as stupid mistake, because she's a professional to the core at all times.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
You are reading way too much intelligence into her tweet ....
While that case could be made, after looking at some of her other tweets, that are just as offensive, I am not so sure if her works meant anything other than what was intended.
Yeah, I read them, and I didn't get that impression from them. In one she talks about a big stinky german guy sitting near her on an airplane. Some people have taken that as being anti-german. I took it as the guy probably talking loudly with a german accent so it was an obviously identifiable characteristic. The brevity of tweets makes it deceptively easy to assume the worst intent on the part of the writer.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Anonymous nobodies can say dumb thing all day long with lesser consequences because they have less to lose. If you are making your money in the public eye, you also suffer from its displeasure. There is no way around it. Also, everyone is a hypocrite when it comes to this stuff, people turn from supposed supporters of free speech, as if that should protect your job, to demanding resignations for saying the wrong thing all the time.
PR person makes racist joke on social media? That isn't job job ending. That is a career ending move.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Why should I care or even know about this ?
The brevity of tweets makes it deceptively easy to assume the worst intent on the part of the writer.
... and puts additional responsibility on the author to choose their words carefully.
Considering that majority of the people who have read or re-tweeted the post are from Europe or North America it would follow that the majority of outrage would also come from Europe or North America.
Unless of course you want to work for a company that agrees with whatever you said. Even if they are not openly racist, after the initial drama dies down there are plenty of companies that have management who buy into the idea that such things are liberal-pc-whatever in nature and thus hiring such a person is a quiet 'screw you' to a culture they don't approve of.
Sounds like the 1% has their own kind of epidemic going around
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