Social Media Mob Justice

[YellowKing]

Even if the guy was autistic, you can educate someone without publicly shaming them. No one individual is ever going to be as "woke" as the entire collective hive mind of the internet. Always assume best intentions, until the person gives you a reason not to.

[hepcat]

Well said.

[Unagi]

Even if the guy was autistic, you can educate someone without publicly shaming them. No one individual is ever going to be as "woke" as the entire collective hive mind of the internet. Always assume best intentions, until the person gives you a reason not to.

If it wasn't clear, I agree, YK.

(2) she appears to have been genuinely skeptical and surprised that people thought that was the issue with her date;

That's the most redeeming part of this story. I give a huge (HUGE) amount of credit to anyone that is just caught off-guard by this 'topic', that isn't a part of the whole world. And in the end, honestly, this is the main thing that I feel earns this person a total and complete pass on all of this...

[malchior]

Even if the guy was autistic, you can educate someone without publicly shaming them. No one individual is ever going to be as "woke" as the entire collective hive mind of the internet. Always assume best intentions, until the person gives you a reason not to.

That last bit is the crux of it. It comes down to trust. The United States is on the edge of precipitous decline because people don't trust each other and assume the worst intentions. This is the outcome of it. I'd have way less issue with it if it was part of a rebuilding cycle to build a new order. Instead, it is mean and ugly. It is the finger pointing at someone to destroy them utterly without compassion or understand. It isn't like a forest fire burning out the undergrowth and renewing itself. It is like the forest fire that burns out of control and leaves scars across the land.

[YellowKing]

We had a health equity speaker come speak to our department one time which is where I first heard that "assume best intentions" line. I've mentioned it on these forums before because it was such a powerful talk. It really opened my eyes to a lot of viewpoints I had not considered before, and has stuck with me for months afterwards.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Even if the guy was autistic, you can educate someone without publicly shaming them. No one individual is ever going to be as "woke" as the entire collective hive mind of the internet. Always assume best intentions, until the person gives you a reason not to.

Indeed, too often we judge others by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions. This is only exacerbated by social media, much of which is fuelled by those addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high. Being self-righteous and morally superior feels good. But as Nick Cave aptly observed, "moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption" embodies all of the worst aspects religion has to offer with none of its positive values. And because human nature means people tend to imitate one another in order to belong, social media discussions inevitably devolve into a constant exercise of swarm and shame, a pack of hyenas screaming for a scalp.

[gbasden]

So, we have the anti-mask Karen case. A woman intentionally followed a family around a grocery store heckling them for wearing masks and coughing on them repeatedly. This went viral on social media, and her employer, German software maker SAP, fired her. People are complaining about her being cancelled. To me, this is her reaping what she sowed. Why shouldn't there be consequences when you go out of your way to be an asshole and potentially endanger others? Am I wrong?

[Carpet_pissr]

So, we have the anti-mask Karen case. A woman intentionally followed a family around a grocery store heckling them for wearing masks and coughing on them repeatedly. This went viral on social media, and her employer, German software maker SAP, fired her. People are complaining about her being cancelled. To me, this is her reaping what she sowed. Why shouldn't there be consequences when you go out of your way to be an asshole and potentially endanger others? Am I wrong?

It's the out-of-control entitlement you see in so many MAGA types. I would say it's their (and definitely Trump's) guiding ethos, if they have one. And it's very ugly.
"The world" thought Americans were 'ugly' before? Post-modern MAGAmuricans say "hold our beers!" To me, they really do represent the worst of our country. It's the stereotypical things that the RoW doesn't like about us, rolled up into one...movement.

[malchior]

So, we have the anti-mask Karen case. A woman intentionally followed a family around a grocery store heckling them for wearing masks and coughing on them repeatedly. This went viral on social media, and her employer, German software maker SAP, fired her. People are complaining about her being cancelled. To me, this is her reaping what she sowed. Why shouldn't there be consequences when you go out of your way to be an asshole and potentially endanger others? Am I wrong?

This is a case where the activity is borderline criminal if not reckless. I'm still not too psyched about the 'speed of internet' firing but this a bit of an edge case really.

[Carpet_pissr]

Didn't watch the video (I already see too much ugliness in my fellow Americans, I don't need to see it all), but I understand the lady coughed on a mom and her kid?

I probably would not react physically if it were my older, vaccinated kids, but any asshat, man or woman that fucking CHASES after me to cough on me and my 10 year old unvaccinated son? I would gladly take the chance of being arrested for assault after I punched her.

[Blackhawk]

I would start recording and hand the phone to my son. Then I would tell her, very clearly, that I considered her and her activities a threat, and that I was leaving, and that should she continue to threaten my family I would react defensively. I would then walk away.

At that point, if she continued to pursue me and cough (which is potentially deadly), I would stop her I wouldn't punch her (too much risk of catastrophic injury or death), but I would make sure that it stopped.

[Kasey Chang]

She's already fired by her employer, SAP, according to Newsweek

This is a "vigilante Karen"... She's not satisfied that she's breaking the law (mask mandate in Lincoln Nebraska), she wants to share her "moral superiority" with others by mocking those who *are* following the law. Since her beliefs trumps all laws and she is so self-righteous because she's right!

[malchior]

This worked btw. The mob crowd sourced identifying her, figured out her employer, and then hounded them on social media until she was fired. There is only anecdotal evidence of the firing action at this point but it seems plausible. Do I think her conduct was good at that moment? No. Do I think that feeding meat to these people is going anywhere good? Hell no.

[Kasey Chang]

OTOH, in the news article, the police warned that "human flesh search engine" is subject to error, and actually ID'ed the wrong person at the beginning.

Didn't someone also ID'ed the wrong guy as the Boston bomber at the beginning?

[malchior]

Michelle Goldberg at the NY Times responds to the Applebaum piece in The Atlantic to say it is just middle aged people feeling anxious about change.

A few weeks ago Anne Applebaum published a piece in The Atlantic titled “The New Puritans,” about people who have “lost everything” after breaking, or being accused of breaking “social codes having to do with race, sex, personal behavior or even acceptable humor, which may not have existed five years ago or maybe five months ago.” Around the same time, The Economist published a cover package about the illiberal left, warning that as graduates of elite American universities have moved into the workplace, they have “brought along tactics to enforce ideological purity, by no-platforming their enemies and canceling allies who have transgressed.”

I agreed with parts of Applebaum’s argument, particularly about how political attacks can be a cover for petty power struggles. But it is bizarre to bring earnest talk of Mao and Stalin into a discussion of the travails of figures like Ian Buruma, who lost his job as editor in chief of The New York Review of Books after publishing a misleading and self-justifying essay by a man accused of serial sexual assault.

In a sharp essay in Liberal Currents, Adam Gurri looked at empirical evidence that might tell us how big a crisis academic cancellations really are, and he came away nonplussed. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, for example, documents 426 cases of scholars “targeted for sanction by ideological adversaries” since 2015, a relatively small number given the size of American higher education. “If any other problem in social life was occurring at this frequency and at this scale, we would consider it effectively solved,” writes Gurri.

426 *public* cases since 2015 is about one a week. I went to the source she was enamored with (Gurri's piece here) to see if he mentioned what it was before 2015. He unsurprisingly doesn't explicitly address it but hints it was less. The references he uses essentially have a handful prior to 2015, one or two every five to ten *years* and since then...again one a *week*. And that's not something we should be worrying about.

The comments on this OpEd are pretty illuminating with dozens of people saying they are academics, saying she is navel gazing, and not listening to them as they feel muzzled and unable to speak freely. Totally not a problem, right?

[malchior]

FWIW Applebaum has been pushing back on the card carrying liberals saying this isn't a 'real problem'. And the comments and harassment she has been getting since that piece are pretty harrowing. We have big, big problems with the right but the left has a kernel of real ugliness brewing in it too.

[Little Raven]

The Middle-Aged Sadness Behind the Cancel Culture Panic

Michelle Goldberg argues that Cancel Culture is an illusion - a persecution complex among comfortable old liberals who are scared things might change.

Rarely have I seen a comment section on the Times disagree more with an author.

[Blackhawk]

Second post up, and straight on 'til morning.