Comment by erikpukinskis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by erikpukinskis | Hacker News Reader

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> By the time you get off the plane in Africa you’re on the international pariah list and your @replies are full of people accusing you of throwing puppies out of moving cars for profit.

Ok, Joel obviously isn’t talking about puppies. What is he actually referring to? Anti-immigration comments? Casual suggestions the wage gap is a myth?

The overt message he’s giving is “I am scared I might say the wrong thing and get hurt.” But the subtext is: “I think the people currently being removed from their jobs deserve to stay in them.”

But he doesn’t have the guts to say which people deserve their jobs.

The result of that is he signals support for all of them, from Eich to Weinstein.

I feel like we need to be more surgical than that in 2018. Not just throw our voices in with movements that are too big to be bound by any kind of principle.

>What is he actually referring to?

I'm guessing this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...

Dabya posted to the article telling the story of the lady who was fired for an insensitive tweet about hiv in Africa.

Although Spolsky didn’t call it out, I agree with you that his sentiment is likely that she shouldn’t have been fired. And that’s almost my opinion too.

However, to conflate that to meaning support for Weinstein is a rather large leap and one that I don’t think is constructive to the discussion unless there is more evidence. As not it’s largely speculation, so it’s impossible to resolve if we go down that path.

This goes toward Spolsky’s point that social media (partially HN as well) leads to more shrill discussion. Perhaps ubconsciously so, I see things commonly conflated with their most extreme possibilities and then arguing against this extreme straw man. For example, “you don’t think the hiv comment lady should have been fired? How can you support Weinstein? How can you think nazism isn’t bad for America. Your silence is part of the problem.” And then tens of thousands of characters pro and against. While most sites then rake in ad revenue from the rage.

It’s hard to think of ways to change your own behavior. For me, it’s avoiding commercial social media sites and favoring simpler sites like HN.

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