Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to think that as the world gets more saturated in constant social media and sharing, that we'd have a higher tolerance for things...in this case, a joke that if a person told it to you, with the right tone of voice, it'd be funny...imagine Louis CK making that quip. But no, I doubt it...I think it's more a physical limitation of our brains...we just don't have the brain system designed to adequately consider all the context of all the messages we might consume in day...It's just easier to assume that a 140-character message really is an adequate reflection of someone who we have never met, and who we would have never been exposed to before the Internet. And it feels good to pat yourself on the back as you think, "Jeez, I can't believe such racist people still exist"

To paraphrase the famous comic from the New Yorker, "On the Internet, no one knows that you have nuance"

View on HN

The problem is compounded in that not only are people easily offended, savvy organizations (cough Gawker) have monetized being offended. So not only are our limited monkey brains quick to be insulted, there are now people whose job it is to find the Maximally Offensive Tweets of the day, which only compounds the problem.

Plus, for some reasonably large percentage of the populace, being righteously outraged is a pleasurable experience. In 1984, the inhabitants of Airstrip One needed nagging from the telescreen to do their morning calisthenics, but even Winston could get worked up for the Two Minute Hate.

I think it is a mistake to think that most people were actually offended and didn't get the joke. There are definitely much more offensive things out on the internet than the examples in the article.

I think it's much more likely that people revel in seeing someone go down; the article clearly alluded to this sadistic aspect I think. As soon as there is enough critical mass for a public shaming, people will jump on the bandwagon.

What needs to change is that this kind of public shaming on the internet should be looked down upon in the future, just at is now in real life. The first step is for employers not to be so spineless to immediately fire an employee that is talked about.

I think it's much more likely that people revel in seeing someone go down; the article clearly alluded to this sadistic aspect I think.

This is possible. But I think it's less about this and more about status marking. Joining the pile on is often a quick, cheap way to demonstrate that you care about the right things.

I wonder if there's a distinction that needs to be made between offending people and hurting people.

From my self-confessed but unavoidable smug vantage point of white privilege I wonder if being offended is something that needs to be disregarded. I'm trying to remember how it felt to be 'offended' myself and whether anyone other than me should have cared. Is it actually a form of power when one can choose to be offended and know that you can affect the actions of others by doing so?

Genuinely hurting people (emotionally) on the other hand is something different and I'd need to think a lot more deeply about that.

It merely illustrates the absolutely craven nature of companies. Her employer is basically a coward.

I have some sympathy for a company whose Senior Director of Corporate Communications instigates a massive PR disaster by joking about Africans having AIDS on Twitter.

This makes me wonder if PR is actually effective, and not a massive money sink. Would that company really lose any noticeable amount of customers over that Twitter shitstorm? If so, how come that no one apparently got hurt over ACTA/SOPA and Snowdengate? I don't see companies losing significant business over trying to destroy the Internet itself.

Because they have good PR departments. A good PR department makes you forget that there ever was an issue, or if you remember the issue, you forget that the company was ever involved.

PR is an interesting job function in that if they do their job correctly, you forget that they exist. It's much like security in that regard. If you have a bad PR department, you'll know, because you'll be constantly under-siege in the media. (Uber comes to mind.)

"[she] instigates" is the rub.

Poe's Law: Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.

I feel like most people realized the tweet was a joke. But a "HAHA isn't racism funny?" joke by a white person just isn't socially acceptable anymore. Personally, I'm in the camp where I believe that you should be able to joke about anything, but I know I'm in the minority. As a society, we have judged that certain things can't be joked about. This list includes "racist jokes made by white people".

Personally, this just shows that maybe people shouldn't be broadcasting their every thought out to the entire world. If you're not comfortable with it being on the front page of the New York Times, don't tweet it.

it's hard to read the joke as having any purpose other than the same one as the famous-ish political cartoon about coverage of ebola victims: http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/Faye%20on%20media%20respon...

Is being cynical and self-deprecating really such an unacceptable packaging of the message that someone should be fired over it?

>imagine Louis CK making that quip.

Here's Louis CK doing a bit about being so disgusted by a gay guy rollerblading that proclaims "go skate into an AIDS tree, you motherfucker."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q--gp6YpOpQ

> But no, I doubt it...I think it's more a physical limitation of our brains...we just don't have the brain system designed to adequately consider all the context of all the messages we might consume in day

There's an easy solution to this (if one isn't an idiot). If there's a reasonable explanation that doesn't imply bad intentions, just err on the side of that one. The "principle of charity" honestly has pretty much no downside, and pretty huge upside. One of the real shocks I got coming into adulthood was finding out that more people don't act this way. Somewhat tangentially, it also removes a lot of stress from your life: when a service worker fucks up badly, people I'm with are often pretty pissed at them (whether or not they express that directly) while my reaction is "eh shit happens, people make mistakes, why get worked up".

It may take more than saturation in social media. I think it will take time. Eventually everyone's Bacon distance to someone who got shamed or similarly mistreated will be small enough that maybe there'll be enough awareness to prevent most occurrences.

I could be self-deluded, but I feel like to some extent my ability to imagine the missing context, or even just a possible context for these things has increased in the age of social media, and online gaming, and soundbytes. I'm still aware that in many cases there's a high percentage chance a person is just a jerk.

Maybe it's a situation where working on the 8th floor makes most people more likely to take an elevator than if you worked on the 2nd floor, but if you do keep taking the stairs you quickly become very good at it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com