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.
I don't use either Twitter or Facebook so would not be worried if eithere or both of them went down
I love the idea that in an article about media outrage the author uses a Daily Mail article as evidence for why someone else's media outrage was wrong.
This behavior is inherent to being a libtard SJW, I'm not sure how this is news or a groundbreaking theory on human intelligence. Libtard SJWs inherently tend to over react and rage over anything that conflicts with their world view of "this is equality. and equality! BECAUSE I SAID SO" mentality. Cognitive malfunctioning is one of the very essential prides of a libtard SJW.
We see this kind of outcome all over the place nowadays. It's mostly because those in positions of power are far too worried about public perception. (Of course, their almost complete lack of any firmly held moral principles leaves them adrift, and very much at the mercy of popular sentiment). Obviously Sir Tim Hunt is of infinitely more value to society than Connie St Louis - a glance at the Daily Mail story referred to in the summary makes that clear. So why was he forced to resign as a kneejerk reaction to a wave of ephemeral indignation, which will be forgotten by next week (and it's Saturday as I write)?
Recently I have been glued to a box set of the complete "Hill Street Blues" - yes, I know that telegraphs my age and unadventurous taste in TV. It was only the other night that I got quite angry at the spectacle of the police chief twisting Captain Furillo's arm to get him to abandon his defence of an apparently "bad cop". This guy, a narcotics agent, had shot and killed a young black man while interrupting some suspicious activity in the small hours. The cop claimed that he had given due warning, and fired only after being fired on - all of which was true. Also, the group he tried to apprehend were in fact committing crimes. Nevertheless, the police chief tells Furillo that it's vital for the department to be seen to throw this "bad cop" to the wolves. It's all about perception, he explains. The facts don't matter at all; all that counts is that this is a good time to throw someone to the wolves.
University College London (UCL) has indeed stained its reputation. Its refusal even to consider reinstating Professor Hunt makes matters worse. And Britain, which seems to prefer Ms St Louis to Professor Hunt, will get what it has chosen. Not to its advantage.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Whether the reaction is "too quick" or not is the wrong question to ask. It is wrong to prosecute thoughtcrimes at all. Whether or not he is "sexist", he is still a brilliant scientist and a credit to whatever stations he was fired from.
Such prosecutions are not only unfair — and offensive to everyone, who values the First Amendment — they are also ineffective and counter-productive: people will not change their minds this way, they'll just learn to keep their mouths shut.
And, of course, it also exposes the preachers of tolerance and crusaders against bigotry as intolerant bigots. Some silver lining, I suppose...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Asking "should they be acting slower?" is missing the point.
The problem isn't how quickly they acted, it's how stupidly they acted.
Last week in my country, a new political party overrun the previous party in charge of the municipality for about 30 years (yes, those thing happen in Europe sometimes).
The day the new government took charge, the displaced party dug out some four-year-old tweets containing a silly joke about nazis (the kind that would gather a +5 funny and some grammar nazi "corrected for you" replies around here) when the man had not even a politician. The same day, all the traditional media were reporting on their front pages as if it was the man's true opinion instead of a joke, reaching international press and forcing the councillor to resign (you may have heard about it as the "communist politician supporting the holocaust").
As long as the public falls for such obvious tactics, and until politicians learn to trim their twitter and facebook timelines when they run for office, this is bound to happen again and again.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Maybe, that's because none of the earlier dead have, actually, been innocent. Michael Brown in particular deserved to die (even if Eric Garner didn't).
Or, maybe, because these are a church-going folk — you know, the stupid, illogical, bigoted and parochial believers in a sky-god...
I don't know — but you are right in that their tolerance is sincere, and not a result of some "grass-roots" organisation making emphasis on tolerance one of the bullet points on a strategy memo. To be discarded and replaced with the opposite, when the situation changes.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
In this time and age, with terrorism and an economy in the dump...
I really don't think that, in the US at least, there's a terrorism problem. We've had 2 problems in ~14 years, even less if you go farther back in history. I think to be a relevant charge terrorism would have to be more frequent. Car accidents kill around 32k people a year, so . For the couple trillion piddled away in Iraq / Afghanistan you could have given away self driving cars and saved ~450k people in addition to not having lots of vets with PTSD. So with the facts in mind, please don't list terrorism as a top 5 concern. On the economy you are correct. A real recovery, one for more than just the 1%, would be greatly appreciated.
Jo Brand and Roseanne Barr got applause when they "joked" about wanting to stab men through the heart. Isn't that far worse than calling someone thin-skinned?
More here.
Thought experiment for you. It's really important to enable women to participate in traditionally male-dominated areas involving leadership in society, right? I'm going to hazard a guess that you agree with that. So a question: is that just so the ladies aren't left out, or can an argument also be made the actual quality of these areas of society will be improved in the big picture by the participation of women? It's not unreasonable to argue the latter, and many reasonable people make such arguments.
So just take the above and apply it to child rearing, and I've successfully made my case that it's at least an issue worth considering/discussing. Diversity minus women equals "???". I suggest that the trolls in this conversation are those who say there's nothing to talk about, and everybody who disagrees with them is an idiot. I believe that would be you?
Outrage is almost always a sign that someone is trying to manipulate you (either for page views, or something else).
An angry outburst is temporary insanity. You are not rational while you are angry, and anything you are thinking of saying or doing is going to be irrational and stands a high degree of making your problem worse. If you will train yourself to relax as your default habit whenever something frustrates you, and adopt the rule that you won't say or do anything until you have calmed down, you will actually train the neurons in your brain to focus on rational problem solving instead of producing an angry outburst, and you will be able to come up with much better solutions to your problems.
A debt collector knows that if you are thinking rationally when they call, you will not pay them, so they seek to get you upset so you will do something irrational. Politicians exploit the exact same thing.
As a parent I know the most important thing I need to do in raising my children is to keep my head and stay calm and relaxed so that the solutions I come up with to parenting difficulties will be rational solutions, the best solutions possible so I can do a good job of raising my kids.
This works for nearly any problem in life.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Amusing Ourselves to Death
It's amazing how well you know me. Or, well, rather how well you know your prejudices towards people who aren't willing to bend over and hand out trinkets and freebies to anyone crying for them because they're part of $minority_group.
It may amaze you that yes, indeed, I not only support equality but am actually part of a minority. And frankly, it sucks. Not because of the prejudice against my "type" of people. That sucks too. But what's worse is the "look at me, I'm $minority, gimme handouts! Gimme jobs! And if you don't, you're a $minority hater and should be in jail!" assholes.
Because they breed even more contempt. I have to work twice if not thrice as hard to accomplish anything. You don't have ANY kind of idea what uphill battle I was fighting to get where I am now. No, not because of people being prejudiced. Because they see me, look at my job and AUTOMATICALLY assume that I got it because I'm $minority. Not because I am good at what I do, not because I FUCKING deserve having that job, not because I worked my ass off to get there. No, that can't be. It just has to be because of this AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BULLSHIT.
Doesn't anyone get a FUCKING clue that this shit hurts people who are "disadvantaged" because they belong to $minority more than it does for them? It breeds even more contempt and prejudice. Anything you do, anything you accomplish, anywhere you get, it's not because you're good at what you're doing, it's not because you proved that you're not only on par but actually BETTER than any of the self proclaimed "better people", oh no. They can always point at that affirmative crap and claim that this is the only reason for your accomplishments.
Do you have a FUCKING idea how much that hurts?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.