Think before you tweet
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This one really made me think. It's easy to immediately condemn someone for a moment of thoughtlessness, but public internet shaming has far greater consequences to other people's lives than I had ever considered.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0
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A stupid and racist tweet? Sure, but whatever happened to just ignoring things that ignorant people say or people that just say something stupid? That seems to be a new trend, not only make people remember every stupid thing they say forever, but also make them publicly apologise for it and attempt to atone. I've seen people on Twitter get more outrage than people like Radovan Karadžić ever got, and he still hasn't made a public apology yet.
It's even with things such as calling things like cricket "gay" as Jason Alexander did or a billion other examples, even things like apologising to the public for cheating on your spouse, which makes really no sense at all. Or even letting a nipple slip or a photograph of a penis escape, suddenly it's on par with slowly destroying the entire fabric of society. I don't think I'm being melodramatic here when I say that either, because there's no reason for, such as in this article, a nobody to become a huge problem for the Internet.
And if she said something like "I'm going to Israel, I hope those kikes don't steal my money" as a Jewish person I wouldn't attempt anymore than I already have, I'd ignore her. That seems to be something we're now incapable of doing as a society, ignoring things we don't like, instead thinking we have a right to change everything and everyone like the entire world is a call-in-vote TV show.
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@tonyshowoff Exactly! The public that demands that these unfortunate people be fired and shunned by society are bullies, plain and simple. Sure stupid, insensitive things were said, but is one out of context and misunderstood joke really a reason to ruin someone's life? When I think about all the stupid things I've said in my life, I shudder to think that they could follow me around forever.
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@Dominica said:
@tonyshowoff Exactly! The public that demands that these unfortunate people be fired and shunned by society are bullies, plain and simple. Sure stupid, insensitive things were said, but is one out of context and misunderstood joke really a reason to ruin someone's life? When I think about all the stupid things I've said in my life, I shudder to think that they could follow me around forever.
Yeah when I read through the first part of the article with the tweets, I realised they were jokes, and the last one I thought "oh man, pretty racist" but I knew it was a bad joke, a failure at being humourous, I didn't suspect she had a swastika for her avatar and listed her location as "White Pride World Wide," but that's how people responded to it. And even if she did, she's literally a nobody, she only got famous, ironically, because she made a stupid joke.
Then again, people giving TJ Miller a bunch of guff for doing the same thing, so it's to the point where even comedians, who are known for pushing the limits of what is socially acceptable to say, must now fit in this tiny box and any mention of anything outside of it, it's essentially tar and feather time, and then write long letters about how they're sorry on their blogs, go on talk shows and give tear felt apologies, for saying words that are offensive.
Again, yeah, what happened to ignoring people who you disagreed with? I do it every single day just fine. Every time I see Nancy Grace on TV I can't get the remote fast enough, I don't sit there on the Internet, watching her show, steaming about how she should be fired for being an all around piece of garbage and terrible yellow journalist... maybe create a Facebook group trying to get her fired, get a tag started on Twitter, etc.
"The world must yield to my beliefs and what I think is right and wrong to say."
Which reminds me of another thing I read the other day on a similar subject that freedom of speech isn't absolute, because it does not apply when " insulting a socially unprivileged party. No, Free Speech isn’t a value added priority, especially if it comes at the expense of silencing an unprivileged party for sake of a privileged one." In other words "it's only freedom of speech if we agree with it."
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There was a sign in the on-air studio of the radio station that I worked at that said "Engage brain before engaging mouth"
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twitter seems to be even more dangerous than facebook
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She was a PR person with no filter. With that said, this is the world we live in now, where people aren't socializing face to face anymore and are doing so behind an emotionless screen. She may have been joking, or was she? Apparently, a lot of people didn't take it as jokes.
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@Bill-Kindle There are no jokes anymore, the media (social and popular) have pretty much made that clear now.
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@tonyshowoff said:
@Bill-Kindle There are no jokes anymore, the media (social and popular) have pretty much made that clear now.
It's the PC culture now. Technology has brought us together but it's also driven us farther apart at the same time when it comes to basic human emotions.
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I think it was pretty obviously meant as a joke, albeit one in questionable taste, and if the only audience was people who actually knew Sacco, there would have been no problem. The issue is that she tweeted it, complete strangers chose to take offense, and because she was disconnected for 11 hours, things escalated beyond the point of her being able to control the damage. Without realizing it, she threw a match over her shoulder and set her life on fire, and by the time she realized what had happened, it was far too late to salvage anything. You can make off-color or satirical jokes to people that know you, but it's certainly risky to do so in a public forum, where there is no context, and strangers won't bother, or won't be able to determine what you meant, but instead take everything at face value.
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This is one of the main reasons I rarely post on FB or any other social media - Posting here sometimes makes me nervous!
