Inside the Business of Online Reputation Spin

The Guardian has a long, thought-provoking piece (it's an excerpt from an upcoming book) on the way that online PR works, when individuals or organizations pay online spin doctors to change the way they're perceived online. Embarrassing photos, ill-considered social media posts, even quips that have ended up geting the speaker into hot water, can all be crowded out, even if not actually expunged, by injecting lots of innocuous information, photos, and other bits of information. That crowding out seems to be the reputation managers' prime tactic. Besides a brush of his own with identity theft (or at least unwanted borrowing), the author spoke at length with both Adria Richards and "Hank"; both of whom ended up losing their jobs in the aftermath of what became known as Donglegate, after Richards tweeted about jokes that she overheard Hank and another developer share at PyCon 2013.

Comments

Re: Feminism HURTS families

[drinkypoo]

Feminism has destroyed the family unit.

Really? It wasn't the men beating their wives, raping them and so on? The people, usually men, abusing their children or stepchildren? I mean, I despise the "everything is the men's fault" rhetoric enough to have arguments about why I don't want to be called a feminist, but seriously, you're being a loony here. What feminists are guilty of is not causing the failure of the system, but of a boringly typical overcorrection to attempt to solve real social problems, because most humans have a "with us or against us" attitude. Like Dennis Miller said way back before he went completely batshit crazy and started pandering to denialists, "...finally there is only one guy left and no doubt that crazy motherfucker will attack the mirror."

Feminism is an inherently exclusive "solution" to the problem of not enough cooperation, and thus will always miss the mark of solving the problem that it's trying to solve. But that doesn't mean it's not a stage of social progress. Society typically misses the mark, for instance carrying the royals to the guillotine but not scooping up the bankers as well. As long as the appeal to emotion continues to be what moves people, that's how the world is gong to work.