Fuck Twitter, Gawker, and Sam Biddle

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > Fuck Twitter, Gawker, and Sam Biddle

BottledBodhisvata: Jul 26, 2013; by Lowtax

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html

quote:

Sacco�s Twitter feed had become a horror show. �In light of @Justine-Sacco disgusting racist tweet, I�m donating to @care today� and �How did @JustineSacco get a PR job?! Her level of racist ignorance belongs on Fox News. #AIDS can affect anyone!� and �I�m an IAC employee and I don�t want @JustineSacco doing any communications on our behalf ever again. Ever.� And then one from her employer, IAC, the corporate owner of The Daily Beast, OKCupid and Vimeo: �This is an outrageous, offensive comment. Employee in question currently unreachable on an intl flight.� The anger soon turned to excitement: �All I want for Christmas is to see @JustineSacco�s face when her plane lands and she checks her inbox/voicemail� and �Oh man, @JustineSacco is going to have the most painful phone-turning-on moment ever when her plane lands� and �We are about to watch this @JustineSacco bitch get fired. In REAL time. Before she even KNOWS she�s getting fired.�
...

It�s possible that Sacco�s fate would have been different had an anonymous tip not led a writer named Sam Biddle to the offending tweet. Biddle was then the editor of Valleywag, Gawker Media�s tech-industry blog. He retweeted it to his 15,000 followers and eventually posted it on Valleywag, accompanied by the headline, �And Now, a Funny Holiday Joke From IAC�s P.R. Boss.�

In January 2014, I received an email from Biddle, explaining his reasoning. �The fact that she was a P.R. chief made it delicious,� he wrote. �It�s satisfying to be able to say, �O.K., let�s make a racist tweet by a senior IAC employee count this time.� And it did. I�d do it again.� Biddle said he was surprised to see how quickly her life was upended, however. �I never wake up and hope I [get someone fired] that day � and certainly never hope to ruin anyone�s life.� Still, he ended his email by saying that he had a feeling she�d be �fine eventually, if not already.�
...
But despite her near invisibility on social media, she was still ridiculed and demonized across the Internet. Biddle wrote a Valleywag post after she returned to the work force: �Sacco, who apparently spent the last month hiding in Ethiopia after infuriating our species with an idiotic AIDS joke, is now a �marketing and promotion� director at Hot or Not.�
�How perfect!� he wrote. �Two lousy has-beens, gunning for a comeback together.�

Sacco felt this couldn�t go on, so six weeks after our lunch, she invited Biddle out for a dinner and drinks. Afterward, she sent me an email. �I think he has some real guilt about the issue,� she wrote. �Not that he�s retracted anything.� (Months later, Biddle would find himself at the wrong end of the Internet shame machine for tweeting a joke of his own: �Bring Back Bullying.� On the one-year anniversary of the Sacco episode, he published a public apology to her on Gawker.)

gently caress all of it, and gently caress you if you disagree. I had thought this was kind of ludicrous before, but actually getting the full story makes this worse. The author is perfectly correct to compare this poo poo to the pillory and public floggings from the 18th century.

BottledBodhisvata fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Feb 12, 2015

# ? Feb 12, 2015 18:53

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 09:58

Robo Reagan: Feb 12, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

summarize it

# ? Feb 12, 2015 18:56

hemale in pain: Jun 5, 2010

Robo Reagan posted:

summarize it

people shouldnt be responsible for doing monumentally retarded poo poo

# ? Feb 12, 2015 18:58

hemale in pain: Jun 5, 2010

i posted "nigga aids" fifty times to facebook and i lost my job? wtf

# ? Feb 12, 2015 18:58

CharlestonJew: Jul 7, 2011; Illegal Hen

why would you use twitter. for anything.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 18:58

Lunchmeat Larry: Nov 3, 2012

Looks like that whore got tw*ttered.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:01

pathetic little tramp: Dec 12, 2005; by Hillary Clinton's assassins; Fallen Rib

I read a few words and I get the feeling some racist lost her job for being a racist?

I am cool with this OP.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:02

BottledBodhisvata: Jul 26, 2013; by Lowtax

hemale in pain posted:

people shouldnt be responsible for doing monumentally retarded poo poo

You are actually garbage

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:02

Dr. Video Games 0112: Jan 7, 2004; serious business

She should go back to South Afrika.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:03

Your Rain: Nov 29, 2006; All those born beneath an angry star.

This scandal reminds me of Gamersgate

In the sense I have no idea what's going on with both :confused:

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:03

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

CharlestonJew posted:

why would you use twitter. for anything.

This is the real moral. Sometimes I really think the option to use social media is an intelligence test.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:04

BottledBodhisvata: Jul 26, 2013; by Lowtax

Your Rain posted:

This scandal reminds me of Gamersgate

In the sense I have no idea what's going on with both

A joke ruined a woman's life because we live in a Digital Puritan Hellscape where parasites like Sam Biddle can destroy people's lives for the lulz. This is the same guy who said that we need to bring back bullying to destroy nerds.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:05

a pipe smoking dog: Jan 25, 2010; "haha, dogs can't smoke!"

I agree OP, if I was the management of a large company I also feel my PR head should be free to tweet racist AIDS jokse

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:08

Nooner: Mar 26, 2011; AN A+ OPSTER (:

what the gently caress is this and why do I care?

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:08

hemale in pain: Jun 5, 2010

BottledBodhisvata posted:

You are actually garbage

my feels

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:08

Quixotic: Sep 2, 2004

BottledBodhisvata posted:

A joke ruined a woman's life because we live in a Digital Puritan Hellscape where parasites like Sam Biddle can destroy people's lives for the lulz. This is the same guy who said that we need to bring back bullying to destroy nerds.

Oh no, not the nerds!

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:09

Dr. Video Games 0112: Jan 7, 2004; serious business

Your Rain posted:

This scandal reminds me of Gamersgate

In the sense I have no idea what's going on with both

I'm with you. It's like I live on a different planet than these people.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:09

a pipe smoking dog: Jan 25, 2010; "haha, dogs can't smoke!"

I am so angry about this year old story of wealthy new yorkers getting fired for being racist

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:09

redshirt: Aug 11, 2007; Reporting for shovel mission Sir.

Hashtag retard.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:09

a pipe smoking dog: Jan 25, 2010; "haha, dogs can't smoke!"

its about ethics in racist AIDS jokes

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:10

Mr. Pumroy: May 20, 2001

cry more, nerd

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:11

BottledBodhisvata: Jul 26, 2013; by Lowtax

a pipe smoking dog posted:

I agree OP, if I was the management of a large company I also feel my PR head should be free to tweet racist AIDS jokse

How dare joke how dare

let's destroy a person for telling jokes yeah I guess that's fine because people would really stop using OKCupid

no everyone's right this isn't at all worth being upset about

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:11

a messed up horse: Mar 11, 2014; by Nyc_Tattoo

BottledBodhisvata posted:

A joke ruined a woman's life because we live in a Digital Puritan Hellscape where parasites like Sam Biddle can destroy people's lives for the lulz. This is the same guy who said that we need to bring back bullying to destroy nerds.

he's right

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:11

Mr. Pumroy: May 20, 2001

BottledBodhisvata posted:

This is the same guy who said that we need to bring back bullying to destroy nerds.

if true, he's right

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:11

FogHelmut: Dec 18, 2003

the problem I have with gawker sites in general is that they suck Steve Jobs' cock out his rear end, and they think new york is the only city in the world

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:12

BottledBodhisvata: Jul 26, 2013; by Lowtax

a messed up horse posted:

he's right

Yes but he did it while also condemning bullying by people whom he didn't like, so it's just hypocrisy

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:12

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Robo Reagan posted:

summarize it

A PR rep tweeted a racist joke about aids shortly before a flight to Africa. A concerned citizen alerted some of the bigger social media people about the tweet that maybe 10 people would have seen had everyone simply ignored it, and it blew up on twitter during her flight. She got fired and then harassed on the internet for some time afterwards.

Not quite as dumb as the IT guys who got in trouble for making dongle jokes among themselves though because she did say something flagrantly offensive and her job was PR related.

#progress

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:12

Chill la Chill: Jul 2, 2007; Don't lose your gay

What's wrong with the pillory?

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:13

ANIME IS BLOOD: Sep 4, 2008; by zen death robot

lol at shithead goons crowing about her getting hosed over as if the poo poo they post here couldn't get them hauled before the Twitter Tribunal on Thoughtcrime and Microaggressions

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:13

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Actually the article was more interesting than I expected. Here is some historical perspective the author wrote after visiting a museum.

quote:

A few days after meeting Sacco, I took a trip up to the Massachusetts Archives in Boston. I wanted to learn about the last era of American history when public shaming was a common form of punishment, so I was seeking out court transcripts from the 18th and early 19th centuries. I had assumed that the demise of public punishments was caused by the migration from villages to cities. Shame became ineffectual, I thought, because a person in the stocks could just lose himself or herself in the anonymous crowd as soon as the chastisement was over. Modernity had diminished shame�s power to shame � or so I assumed.

I took my seat at a microfilm reader and began to scroll slowly through the archives. For the first hundred years, as far as I could tell, all that happened in America was that various people named Nathaniel had purchased land near rivers. I scrolled faster, finally reaching an account of an early Colonial-era shaming.

On July 15, 1742, a woman named Abigail Gilpin, her husband at sea, had been found �naked in bed with one John Russell.� They were both to be �whipped at the public whipping post 20 stripes each.� Abigail was appealing the ruling, but it wasn�t the whipping itself she wished to avoid. She was begging the judge to let her be whipped early, before the town awoke. �If your honor pleases,� she wrote, �take some pity on me for my dear children who cannot help their unfortunate mother�s failings.�

There was no record as to whether the judge consented to her plea, but I found a number of clips that offered clues as to why she might have requested private punishment. In a sermon, the Rev. Nathan Strong, of Hartford, Conn., entreated his flock to be less exuberant at executions. �Go not to that place of horror with elevated spirits and gay hearts, for death is there! Justice and judgment are there!� Some papers published scathing reviews when public punishments were deemed too lenient by the crowd: �Suppressed remarks . . . were expressed by large numbers,� reported Delaware�s Wilmington Daily Commercial of a disappointing 1873 whipping. �Many were heard to say that the punishment was a farce. . . . Drunken fights and rows followed in rapid succession.�

The movement against public shaming had gained momentum in 1787, when Benjamin Rush, a physician in Philadelphia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote a paper calling for its demise � the stocks, the pillory, the whipping post, the lot. �Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death,� he wrote. �It would seem strange that ignominy should ever have been adopted as a milder punishment than death, did we not know that the human mind seldom arrives at truth upon any subject till it has first reached the extremity of error.�

The pillory and whippings were abolished at the federal level in 1839, although Delaware kept the pillory until 1905 and whippings until 1972. An 1867 editorial in The Times excoriated the state for its obstinacy. �If [the convicted person] had previously existing in his bosom a spark of self-respect this exposure to public shame utterly extinguishes it. . . . The boy of 18 who is whipped at New Castle for larceny is in nine cases out of 10 ruined. With his self-respect destroyed and the taunt and sneer of public disgrace branded upon his forehead, he feels himself lost and abandoned by his fellows.�

At the archives, I found no evidence that punitive shaming fell out of fashion as a result of newfound anonymity. But I did find plenty of people from centuries past bemoaning the outsize cruelty of the practice, warning that well-meaning people, in a crowd, often take punishment too far.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:13

pathetic little tramp: Dec 12, 2005; by Hillary Clinton's assassins; Fallen Rib

�Going to Africa. Hope I don�t get AIDS. Just kidding. I�m white!�

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:13

redshirt: Aug 11, 2007; Reporting for shovel mission Sir.

gently caress Sam Goody too.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:14

hemale in pain: Jun 5, 2010

op probably laughs at racist jokes

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:14

BottledBodhisvata: Jul 26, 2013; by Lowtax

Sam Biddle literally had to find this woman's tweet (she had 171 followers) and decide that she was his victim for the day. I mean jesus, does nobody else find it absolutely horrifying that there's some guy whose job it is to troll twitter, find a tweet that you or somebody else has made, publicize it to a larger audience who are ready to quite literally mob you until you lose your job, liveliehood, reputation, and everything over a goddamn tweet.

Why is nobody loving else even remotely bothered by this? We are not a society of goddamn sociopaths!

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:14

BigBoss: Jan 26, 2012; by Lowtax

What kind of retard uses their real name for anything ever?

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:14

CHEF!!!: Feb 22, 2001

I wish I had the time and energy to get offended about stuff morons post on Twitter.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:14

Dr. Video Games 0112: Jan 7, 2004; serious business

BottledBodhisvata posted:

Yes but he did it while also condemning bullying by people whom he didn't like, so it's just hypocrisy

Ok I get the joke great

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:14

pathetic little tramp: Dec 12, 2005; by Hillary Clinton's assassins; Fallen Rib

pathetic little tramp posted:

�Going to Africa. Hope I don�t get AIDS. Just kidding. I�m white!�

I'd fire this idiot for not having better joke writers, what is this offal

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:14

a pipe smoking dog: Jan 25, 2010; "haha, dogs can't smoke!"

BottledBodhisvata posted:

How dare joke how dare

let's destroy a person for telling jokes yeah I guess that's fine because people would really stop using OKCupid

no everyone's right this isn't at all worth being upset about

our new clients from a major south african mining concern are here, let me introduce to our head of PR. you may know her from her public statements about all your compatriots having AIDS

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:15

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 09:58

Quixotic: Sep 2, 2004

BottledBodhisvata posted:

Yes but he did it while also condemning bullying by people whom he didn't like, so it's just hypocrisy

Actually it was irony intentionally targeting GamerGate "people" like you and your extremely high salt levels tells me it wooooooorrkkkkeed.

# ? Feb 12, 2015 19:15

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > Fuck Twitter, Gawker, and Sam Biddle

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