Slashdot Mirror
Are We Too Quick To Act On Social Media Outrage?
RedK writes: Connie St-Louis, on June 8th, reported on apparently sexist remarks made by Sir Tim Hunt, a Nobel prize winning scientist, during an event organised for women in sciences. This led to the man's dismissal from his stations, all in such urgency that he did not even have time to present his side, nor was his side ever offered any weight. A leaked report a few days later suggests that the remarks were taken out of context. Further digging shows that the accuser has distorted the truth in many cases it seems. This is not the first time that people may have jumped the gun too soon on petty issues and ruined great events or careers.
It's called wrongful termination and the civil lawsuit consequences are harsh enough that any employer worth their salt would do some investigative work of their own before jumping on the dumbass bandwagon.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Yes.
90% of "outrage" is virtue signalling and peer pressure.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with "social media".
It is the Progressive thought that prevails the Western Culture.
Political Correctness places style over substance. Or, speech over actions.
Pulling words out of context and the twisting of meaning to suit one's purpose is a long and effective tactic.
People are "convicted" for "crimes" they did not commit while people who have actually committed the same "crimes" are never bothered because they are Progressives and Politically Correct actors.
If this is the rules that get you to jail if broken, you can as well break them.
You are already in a jail.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Internet veterans know to laugh at most of the outrage. You can't take it seriously. I think a lot of the problems come from old media trying to be hip and cool so they get on social media but they don't know how crazy people can be on the internet so they take people too seriously. And then crazy people get treated as anything but crazy people.
All this hyperventilating about various moron outrages. Just do what the internet does with these people. Give them a an "oh really nick cage"... or a "sarcastic wonka"... and move on.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
That's why you must never use pronouns on the internet.
Tim Hunt was attacked and dismissed from UCL, the Royal Society and other bodies, based on nothing more than lies. Anybody can, with enough manipulation, be ostracized for comments taken out of context. Anybody.
If Tim Hunt is not reinstated, and the liar(s) that caused his reputation to be tarnished, will not bear the consequences of their dishonest behavior, our society is going towards a very scary future. We have not learned anything from the lessons of the past, and any Goebbels wannabe is going to fuck us up.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
So entitled to being an insufferable twat twice for the price of one?
So please listen, lady. You're not entitled to anything. And neither is anyone else due to the color of their face, their sexual orientation, their gender, their upbringing, their place of birth or ANYTHING else. The only thing you are entitled to is the SAME treatment that anyone else gets who isn't part of $minority_group (albeit I fail to see how "female" is a minority in any kind of context except maybe when it comes to who pisses standing up).
You can complain if you suffer from having other/fewer/inferior rights and treatment due to your $minority_group. You will see me in the first row center in a march for equality, be it equal pay for women and men or equal marriage rights for gays and heterosexuals. But THAT IS IT!
You are NOT entitled to be except from being made fun of because of your $minority_group. You are NOT entitled to not being the butt of jokes because you are $minority_group. You are NOT entitled of better or preferred treatment because of belonging to your fucking minority group!
Equality, yes. And I will gladly fight for it, even if I don't belong to your minority group because I do think people have the right, the absolute and unalienable right, to be treated the SAME way as everyone else independent of anything you could think of.
Entitlement, no. Not now, not ever.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Rather than the low road reponse taken in previous shootings, their's was exemplary in that they clearly identified themselves as better people.
Tolerance, and yes, even the defense of that which you find most disgusting, is the hallmark of personal freedom.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
That is all.
People didn't make fun of him, they got him fired. I am in favor of shaming people for incorrect behavior that is still legal behavior. But I don't think we should limit ourselves to socially unacceptable views on women and ethical or sexual minorities. We need to shame politicians and business people that give the appearance of impropriety in their dealings too. And we should be proportional in our response. If someone makes a bad joke, and then softens it when they realize it was a bad joke, we shouldn't get them fired, we should humiliate them for "acting like an ass in public" and watch them more closely to see if they are acting like an ass consistently towards people they work with. The latter is grounds for firing someone, but not a different sense of humor. Even if he was a misogynist, racist, homophobe, it wouldn't really matter as long as he treated all his coworkers with respect and based all decisions on merit. People are allowed to be stupid, and we are allowed (and encouraged) to laugh at them, but not fire them.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Oooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllllllllllllllll Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssssss!!!
People need to grow the fuck up and grow some slightly thicker skin.
People still have a lot of rights. Thankfully.
But the "right to never be offended" has NEVER been among them.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Outrage is almost always a sign that someone is trying to manipulate you (either for page views, or something else).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The catch is whether to trust Daily Mail's supposed digging. It doesn't exactly have the most stellar reputation for accuracy.
I think what he did was endearing. The talk about women in the lab was a reference to his wife whom he met while she worked in a lab.
Sometimes, taking a step back, letting the dust settle, and making sure to have all relevant information can lead to proper actions being taken. Time (if you use it to better understand a situation), can lead to better Accuracy.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
The catch is whether to trust anything at face value. Don't take the Daily Mail article at face value, just like you don't take Ms. St-Louis' comments at face value.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Rarely do people do fact checking. Propaganda is really easy to push on social media if you know how to do it right, causing people to stand up for causes, buy products or to make someone public enemy #1. This is the downside of popular opinion social media sites, if its wrong, yet a popular opinion, everyone gets a wrong popular opinion. Fortunately not all astroturfers understand how to pull on heart strings yet.
God spoke to me
Sexism/racism/homophobia are the new witchcraft.
Accusation is enough to justify burning someone at the stake.
Progressives are essentially puritans, only without explicit mention of a god.
They do have a "god": themselves. It's whatever that they deem "politically incorrect" or "intolerant" that automatically becomes wrong, even if it's something that they're directly engaging in (like harassment), except in that case it doesn't count because it's them doing it and they can do no wrong.
And calling for segregation in the labs based on gender is also sexist.
This story is not people fighting sexism. It's people reaching for the low-hanging fruit of using twitter and facebook to swarm a semi-famous person for a mildly insensitive joke he made.
Where are you, twitter vigilantes, when women are sold as sex slaves in the ISIS kingdom? When Latino girls are shipped by containers to a life of abuse in the Middle East? When Indian women are raped because they are walking on the street without a husband after sundown? When a large number of native prostitutes in America disappear?
You know where you are. You are in line at Starbucks, giving 20 seconds of attention to the latest scandal on your twitter feed while someone is preparing the skinny vanilla latte. So of course you can't find a solution to real problems, but you find it rewarding to join your "voice" to a crow of other misinformed idiots attacking someone who can possibly be shamed.
Why don't you all install a Sudoku or latest Angry bird game instead and give the world a break with your twitter garbage. Keep your shallow opinions to your close circle of friends instead of broadcasting your ignorance and everyone will win.
lucm, indeed.