My experience with Sarah Jeong, Jason Koebler, and Vice Magazine
medium.com
medium.com
She really does make stuff. After the publisher of Make magazine claimed she was a fake, she started posting long, detailed videos of her builds. He backed down.
Her writing and videos about Shenzhen are valuable. She's a native of the city, which is rare; Shenzhen has grown rapidly to 18 million in three decades, mostly people from elsewhere in China. There are thousands of English-language videos about what Tokyo is like at ground level. Not many from Shenzhen, which is a larger city than Tokyo. She sounds proud of her city, and likes how easy it is to get parts to make things. She's probably Shenzhen's most visible booster to the outside world.
Some people are really upset by her.
When she fist followed me on Twitter, I dismissed her as yet another fake porn account. Then I saw her builds.
She looks like a hooker and she is a terrific hacker. I _knew_ not judge people by their covers _in theory_ - she actually proved it to me in reality, and that was a real experience. She had a direct impact on how my brain forms opinions.
And that's with me not even following her stuff (I don't follow people on YouTube, I just watch the video with the info I seek right now. I also still can't fully handle her display, which makes me constantly question myself. Can I not take women seriously when they dress like that? Why?)
Sounds like you take her plenty seriously. However, she _does_ sexualize her appearance, and the majority of men are either conditioned or born to have a significant response to that. She's aware of that fact. I think you'd struggle as much as a gay man with the cast of the Chippendales running the same videos naked.
Personally I find that aspect to be a minor part of her videos and more of a "hook" than the meat, so it doesn't take anything away from it.
Could it be that this is actually about nudity that you find problematic as a theme for youtube videos. What would your reaction be to a male DIY maker that also happened to be a nudist and had that as his youtube theme?
I think I've got two main issues with these comments.
The first is: Why do you think you can speak for her? Why do you think you get it?
The second is: Why do you think she can speak for you? Why do you assume she knows how she is affecting people by her dress?
The second is the same as the first, you can't assume her mind, she can't assume the viewer's mind.
Knowing the mind of the other / empathy is a good thing, but when you assume it to fit a particular narrative or impose a particular limiting idea, as I see the case is here, I think that's not a good thing.
Another way to say all this is, people are free to dress in whatever individuated ways they want, for whatever individuated reasons/feelings they have for that, and viewers are free to respond/feel whatever individuated responses they have for that.
The narrative where we assume the intent of the viewed and the viewer, and use that assumption we impose, to then fill in / construct a negative / discriminatory / fake narrative of the viewer or the viewed is not only flat out morally wrong, it's also logically incorrect I think.
For the record, I think the "sexualization" is imposed by the interpretation of the commenters, not by the choice of dress. Also I don't find the dress looks "like a hooker". I think it's more nuanced than that, if you pay more attention to the details, her choice of shots, her expression. I understand people might differ in their conclusion / label of the dress, but realize that, probably, if you reach a superficial conclusion such as this, you are likely only limiting yourself and possibly limiting the discourse / way you can think about someone else. It doesn't matter what the effect intended by her is, it matters what your response is. That's one way I think about this.
I think people need to upgrade / nuance-out their discourse about these sorts of topics.
I don't speak for Wu. I'm merely talking about how her art affected my thinking.
> Also want to say, as preface, that of course hookers can be hackers, and one reason I'm taking the following slant on it is the surprise expressed in this comment, I take to indicate the (limited) assumption that they cannot coexist.
I quite literally said that her work helped me overcome this prejudice, so I'm not sure what you are getting at.
Nope. I was criticizing these interpretations, even as I recognize they are valid for you (from some point of view) and saying they can be improved. If you want to take that as "don't speak at all", that's your choice, and not what I'm saying.
> The first is: Why do you think you can speak for her? Why do you think you get it?
> The second is: Why do you think she can speak for you? Why do you assume she knows how she is affecting people by her dress?
To criticize an interpretation, you would point out a specific statement that someone has said about the meaning of something, and why you think that isn't true. You're literally just repeating that no one knows anything and shouldn't assert things because things may or may not be true, just verbosely.
Because I'm ok with it. I disagree with the narratives that are linking people to an assumed sexual intention (either as viewer or viewed, you don't get to speak about that for anyone else, unless you're protecting against badness), but I am okay with narratives like the one I advanced that are talking about political intentions / nation states. I just don't feel okay with the former, but feel okay with the latter. Former feels rude / inappropriate to me. Because it's too personal I think, not other people's business. It seems Wu feels the same way from what the whole issue of this topic is (VICE going off bounds into personal/ sexual) so please don't do it. But latter, commenting on her politically? I have zero issue with that. And I don't care if she's ok with political commentary or not because from my perspective, her actions make her fair political game. Some things are off limits. And I don't think people, through their language and behaviour, have a good enough understanding of that. Hope you got a better understanding now. Despite your attempt at a pithy equivalence, it's not the same. Hope you see that now. That's all.
You somehow managed to claim my words, words that she uses herself, to be disrespectful, while your accusations of a sinister political motive are not even to be questioned.
Just remember it's because sex life is personal, while other stuff (like the political action here) is probably not. You have things you'd not like some people to know, nor to discuss, nor to speak for you for, perhaps especially in an open forum, unless you consented / opted in / chose to, right? So that's the same thing as sex intent being personal.
If then you are pondering the next question, but isn't she politicizing her appearance or, alternately, sexuality? And wondering why that should give her body image / identity / or sex persona some protection when she has chosen to publicise and politicise it, and use it as a vector / central column / medium for her political expression, then I think that's a great question.
Personally, right now, I still come down on the side of, it is still off limits, I think (without pondering it too much myself) because:
- it's still personal
- she's specifically said it's off limits
- and her reaction (whether concocted for politics or not) is very disparaging of their violation of this boundary she set
Now if you're wondering, still, yes, but she did politicise this personal thing, how then does it remain off limits?
Maybe it is a nuanced distinction, but personally I think it's good to have the option to afford people some amount of power in a discourse like this. Yes she is pot-stirring behind something which the US zeitgeist moral rules say make her unimpeachable / irreproachable. Whether we want to let this "protective shield" be valid or not I think comes down to how important we judge what her message is. Personally, I think you should respect it as a personal boundary, even in the same discourse as she is using it as a political vector and political shield because in this case I just think we should see what she has to say with it given that she has this shield active, before and rather than saying we will take this shield from her and then having done so being able to discuss that part of her expression / self as if it were not a personal /off-limits category.
And isn't she sort of setting a trap for VICE, by telling them they are not allowed to talk about, the very thing, that she chooses to use as one main medium for her own expression, and which as a news outlet they will be very eager to talk about? Isn't she just setting this boundary, knowing they will violate it so she can capitalize on that politically, by showing, among other things, that they violate their own supposed morality?
Well, I think these are all very good questions too. Maybe she is making a grand comment on an aspect of US zeitgiest discourse, subtly undermining its purported moral supremacism by highlighting where it is selectively applied / relative / hypocritical, and prodding the US-led zeitgeist discourse to ask itself if what it really considers to be off-limits-for-discussion topics, really are? Are these politicized-identities really beyond criticism? Maybe she is criticizing the way personal is used as political shield to perpetrate harm, or hate or vitriol / impose standards, by perhaps satirically and exaggeratedly doing the same thing. I think she is exploiting the US zeitgeist discourse's structural vulnerabilities as I said.
And, but isn't she basically trying to get away with doing anything, and shielding herself from any criticism because she's packaging her politics in her identity/ sexual expression which, by holding the US media to its own rules, ought to be beyond reproach?
I think these are fascinating questions. Maybe she is "holding them to their own rules" as an offensive tactic, just like Alinksky's Rules for Radicals instructs activists to do.
I think the exact circumstances under which we afford people this special type of narrative protection, which she is claiming here, and which I am still granting her here, is definitely something we need to investigate and consider thoroughly as a society. I definitely think that "umbrella narrative protection" is a powerful ability that will be abused to perpetrate attempted harm on people under the color of something that "cannot be questioned" because it's "off-limits/ sexual / identity/ personal." I think this dynamic (the delusion of irreproachable righteousness / moral invincibility), owing to using these personal topics as political shields, certainly drives a lot of the hate and vitriol, because people feel entitled/ privileged to act with impunity because they consider their position to be unassailable because it's based in a purportedly "off-limits" topic, which they are politicizing / using as a shield in their attacks.
And So I think your confusion / inability to follow or see the distinction is perfectly rational and normal. And even adaptive. And I think we definitely need to selectively investigate and grant this narrative protection and not just assume nor apply it in every case, since it clearly is being abused for badness and harm. And the temptation to do whatever you want behind an "invincibility shield" is clearly there, so that's probably too much power for people, so that's probably why you see things going crazy online, so we should probably, as a society, tone that power back some.
I also believe that if you listen to what I say here and try a bit, I think you can see the nuanced side. But to the extent that you can't, I think you yourself are well-shielded from being disturbed by the sometimes fraudulent / abusive / harmful moral arbitrage going on in the discourse these days, so maybe you want to hold onto that ability of yours, even if you choose to see these other sides too.
1. Koebler begins a correspondence with Wu and interviews her in person for an article he's writing. Wu makes it clear that one condition for her cooperation is not to talk about her relationship status or sexual orientation.
2. After interviewing her, but before publishing the article, Koebler sends Wu an email asking whether she'd like to comment on a a very public and ugly Reddit/4chan conspiracy theory that she was getting help from her husband? and that not all of her work was her own. Wu becomes fearful that this means the article will touch on the restricted topics that she specifically requested that Vice would not report on. Wu and Koebler have a back and forth where Wu tries to impress upon Vice just how damaging these topics can be to her in the PRC, especially given that Vice articles are often translated, where the government could severely damage her, causing both physical and non-physical harm. Wu asks to see the article before it is published. Koebler refuses, stating it is SOP not to share articles before publication.
3. Wu threatens to use her Twitter followers to cause Vice reputational harm and force Koebler out of his job. Koebler stops responding to Wu's emails.
4. Before the article is published, Wu decides to take action. She takes to Twitter to call out Vice and Koebler. Separately she doxes Koebler in a video shared with her Patreon followers. Vice's lawyers have YouTube remove the video and Patreon close Wu's account. Patreon is a large source of revenue for Wu which forces Wu to search for alternative sources of income within China, which force her into additional compromises without fully recovering her previous already modest level of income.
5. The Vice article is published. Although most of it focuses on Wu as a Maker, Koebler includes a couple of paragraphs outlining his interpretation of what happened with the post-interview situation. This presumably touches on the things Wu did not want talked about in the article. This is the only mention in a fairly long article about anything to do with Wu's relationship status. It is unclear whether the original draft of the article was like this or whether the scope of how much mention of relationship stuff was changed in as a result of the back and forth.
6. Wu responds with this Medium article, which she feels only reveals a fraction of what has happened because she cannot talk about the rest due to the PRC government.
One aspect, which also needs to be considered, is the motive to write this now, i.e. the timing is clearly to take revenge on Sarah Jeong. Naomi would be very right in feeling wronged. But there is also an element of the politics which is being played with this article, in the context of getting back at Jeong, by her detractors.
Also, after reading the vice article[1] in question, I felt its largely supportive of Naomi. Minus the mention of 4chan harrassment, it may have sounded like a one sided puff piece. Rather they've made efforts to cover a lot about Shenzen, and the article is very educative about the Maker culture happening there.
[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kjqdb/naomi-wu-s...
This explains the timing and perhaps the purpose of the Medium article. Wu is trying to warn anyone in the People's Republic of China about what might happen if they talk with Jeong and/or the New York Times.
I also agree that Wu's reaction was far from appropriate or foresighted, but threatining with doxxing and then actually doing it just shows how desperate she must have been. She is targeting a western audience and her income depended on that. You don't put all that at risk if you don't seriously believe that even the slightest mention of that could harm you.
VICE's approval is irrelevant, and not a gift. You would hope, as journalists, that they would give an honest evaluation of her as they see her.
They're not obligated to like her, if the piece were negative it wouldn't reflect on their integrity. What reflects on their integrity is their defiant endangering of her after having been warned about the conditions under which she would do an interview. She didn't want to respond to gamergate-reddit's allegations about her, because they included personal information that she felt endangered her, completely consist of an allegation that would make her look like a danger to the PRC, and were totally irrelevant to her work unless you assumed them to be true.
It's like saying that I can't complain about an article profiling the work I've done dedicating a paragraph or two to a subreddit that accuses me of child molestation, as long as the article maintains that there's no evidence that I've molested a child, and that the people posting about it on reddit are terrible people.
Or imagine that some health care or second amendment activist were married to a Russian national (but didn't spread that information around), and there was a subreddit that trafficked in rumors that her husband was her KGB handler.
Maybe he knew who the registered sex offenders were?
Sometimes people cannot hide that stuff no matter how hard they try...Probably for the best. Truth will out.
> Yeah but if you look at my track record, no one that did it to me is going to dare do it to the next girl...that's what counts. That's why you do it, I "lose" every time- reputation takes a real hit. Important to be likable and sweet as a vlogger. But they think twice next time
https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/102622332283131494...
She knows she's not going to come out of this ahead. She's doing this on principle to protect the next person they try to bully. Respect.
Is it normal or even possible for western journalists to let a source/interviewer dictate the final content of an article?
I always assume that journalists can, and should, have freedom to write what they want as long as it’s true and accurate. If I say to a journalist something is “off-limits” I assume it means I’ll end the interview and not engage with them if they cover that topic. Not that I have a right to dictate what’s written in the free press.
I’m honestly asking, I may just be misinformed. Can a source generally put limits on a journalist like this?
And talking about things that are conspiracy things on reddit.. yea not very uh.. high integrity? Not to mention they said that it was fine that these things would be off topic.
In my view it’s unreasonable to expect them not to mention them. Unless you have an agreement that they will not be included in the final article. Not just vague wording about them being “off-limits” which I would assume would mean that we wouldn’t discuss them.
Let's restate what the allegations were here.. for others who might not know. Essentially the allegations were that someone like Naomi couldn't possibly be a skilled maker and that she must have someone else making her creations. Nothing more than internet hearsay. Especially when she's willing to do maker stuff in front of anyone who's willing to show up.
I don't think I've ever seen someone say "That guy surely didn't make that, his wife must have"
While I completely agree with the context of your remark, there have been people who suggested that the original author of theory of relativity was in fact Einstein's wife Mileva Maric.
However, if reporters want continued access to interesting sources then they should respect their wishes - particularly when it's for safety reasons. Anything less is scummy
> I’m honestly asking, I may just be misinformed. Can a source generally put limits on a journalist like this?
Your impression of the relevant journalistic standard is accurate, but this case has some unusual features that mean evaluation has to go beyond what you point out.
A subject can dictate the terms of an interview, but they don't have say over what the final piece looks like. If journalists made that concession to people they interviewed it would significantly erode the informational value of what they write, so this is a bright line according to journalistic professional ethics (at least in the Anglophone world, which is what I'm familiar with). And this is part of Jeong's defense of Koebler: He wasn't under any obligation to publish an article that Wu would have liked. But.
In this case, the controversial claims about Wu were nonsense motivated by some pretty rank misogyny. In addition, Wu is working in a cultural context where such claims, when publicized, can materially affect her livelihood; worse, the politics of mainland China are such that they can put her in actual danger. (Another part of Jeong's defense of Koebler is that the harm Wu alleges isn't real; there Jeong seems on much weaker ground.)
So it was a terrible judgment call on Vice's part to publish the piece that they did. I actually doubt they had any awareness of the consequences publishing that article could have, but their lack of consideration of that is itself a professional lapse when reporting cross-culturally.
The bottom line is that Vice deserves opprobrium here, but not because they violated an agreement with Wu.
Claims that her husband did her work for her could put her in danger from the Chinese government? I doubt it.
Her livelihood is at more risk from becoming unpopular than being jailed.
I can understand these rumors are embarrassing and she wants to push back against them. Perhaps she feels saying "the government may jail me" as a defense is an effective way to dictate what a journalist writes. It certainly works for China on its population.
But, she's not a dissident discussing Tiananmen Square, and she's not sharing Winnie the Pooh cartoons. She's a highly followed online persona, a 21st century Hollywood star, and is sensitive to anything that could make her look bad. That's much easier to understand than the Chinese government being worried about her marriage or spouse's work.
And I'm sure you're ready to document your years and years of experience with the Chinese government.
And I'm also sure you're ready to document that it's a HUSBAND that Naomi Wu is concerned with.
But ... I won't be holding my breath.
(For reference: her story has already hit Weibo with people calling for her to be arrested. Thought I'd mention that.)
> She's a highly followed online persona...
Highly-followed on WESTERN (and BANNED IN CHINA!) social media you utter berk! That ALONE is grounds for her to be nervous of being noticed.
Not possible, but when journalists court the source, they often make promises they know they'd never deliver on (not that they are unique in this, aren't they?) They may promise to leave certain things off-the-record, or omit certain parts, and then decide - or have higher-ups decide, or make it look like higher-ups decided, whatever - that this is too juicy and click-worthy material to hide it, and violate all promises. It is very rare for any negative consequences besides source being pissed off to come from it, and the source is already used up, so who cares?
> Can a source generally put limits on a journalist like this?
Essentially, no, but journalists often make it look like they can.
I didn't catch any of this controversy as it was apparently happening back in April. Reading this article and VICE's, and the scattered tweets at the time, I'm still a little confused about the timeline. But in any case, it seems like there are 2 discrete conflicts: VICE vs. Wu, and Wu vs. Jeong. And the former conflict seems to be what caused Wu material injury (such as the Patreon ban), whereas Jeong's part feels more tangential, e.g. the insult on top of injury.
That is not to say I think Wu is right or wrong to be angry at Jeong and angry at the NYT for hiring her. But some people tweeting on this seem to believe Jeong had a much more direct role in the troubles Wu had after the VICE story, other than being someone who -- as Wu sees it -- piled on Wu in a misguided defense of VICE.
[0] https://twitter.com/jackiehluo/status/982087205907607552
This, after Naomi had explicitly advised Vice that discussion of her sexuality and relationship status were absolutely out of bounds.
Vice does not comment on the sexuality or relationship status of male makers they interview.
Sarah states in a tweet that she worked for Motherboard/Vice "before" that all happened: https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/981558916382273542
I think she had no direct hand in the article, but she certainly picked a public fight shortly after the controversy started: https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/981575986322989056
And Naomi seems to believe that this wasn't an independent tweet, but working in concert with the Vice editor she accuses of breaking an agreement.
It's impossible to judge from the outside, but if you believe only someone who directly worked on the words of the article is "guilty", you probably come out with "Naomi' s accusations towards Sarah are unfounded".
If you take a broader view, that someone tightly related to the people of the story who is injecting herself into the controvers by her own free will shares responsibility, you could reach the opposite result.
For example, Wu tweeted about being kicked from Patreon on April 2: https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg/status/980838253665271808
The earliest tweet in the Jeong thread is from April 4: https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/981558161566920704
Seen it happen before with a popular web series depicting gay love:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addicted_(web_series)
http://time.com/4236864/china-gay-drama-homosexuality/
that got two actors banned from appearing on screen.
Scandalous Chinese rappers have also been censored in media and caused a varying degree of hip hop culture to be banned on Chinese media (although still alive and well on the web):
https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2142444/chinas-hi...
Basically if Naomi Wu is seen depicting values that the Chinese govt. doesn't like (like criminality, sexuality, traitorous behaviour, drugs, discrimination, democratic/human rights, etc.), they will censor her and tell the web to shut her down. And then companies won't work with her and every message she posted will be taken down in seconds and she will stay home all day scared and frustrated.
This is what I'm interested in -- what she imagined a positive puff-piece (which this VICE article basically is) to look like that wouldn't draw unwanted attention from Chinese authorities. Isn't it more or less standard practice for authorities to be suspicious of Chinese non-mainstream citizens who get positive press in American media, nevermind from an outlet that is literally named "VICE"?
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-tang-we...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lust,_Caution
> The version released in the People's Republic of China was cut by about seven minutes (by the director himself) to make it suitable for younger audiences, since China has no rating system.
I think many people who enjoy reading vice would be very upset that they both ignored an agreed no go area, and albiet marginally, put a PRC contributor into moral hazard.
Sorry vice, but I think you let yourself down here.
Reporter: it is great that some students won this competition (only) thanks to the university education. How has the degree you are studying helped you?
Me: it didn't so much, we even started a community [1] to learn what they don't teach and that was key for winning [...]
Reporter: but the education has improved greatly recently
Me: with the new plan professors get pressure to make the classes and exams easier and we are treated like children who have to be monitored and [...]
And on and on
The author suggests that Vice misled her in early talks, gathered information about her that should've been off limits for the story but shared it anyway despite her pleas for them not to. My first read of this was that she's gay and was concerned how that would look to a Chinese audience and Vice exploited that for attention.
I skimmed the Vice article too - https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kjqdb/naomi-wu-s... and that didn't really seem to be it. I have to confess I couldn't understand what she objected to in the Vice article. However, as the author writes about the Vice editors, I'm not in any position to understand what is or isn't concerning to share for a Chinese woman with a large social media following living in China.
Without really understanding what the disagreement is I have to withhold my judgment. However, if I'm ever in a position where Vice would want to interview me I'd probably turn them down after reading this purely out of caution.
The complaint about Sarah Jeong seems a bit more clear - Jeong dismissed the author's concerns claiming to be able to evaluate them fairly because they were both Asian women. Jeong's perspective though is as an ethnic Korean who has lived in the US pretty much her entire life (moved to the US at age 3) which is clearly a very different perspective than the author who is a Chinese citizen.
Given what else we know about Jeong I don't think it's that surprising that she's insensitive about race.
Wu told VICE that for the interview, all questions regarding relationship, etc. are off limits.
VICE went ahead and made it a topic. Wu refused to answer. In the article, VICE retold the 4chan claims, making Wu's refusal to answer a new nugget for the 4chaners to claim her guilty.
Jeong offhandedly dismissed Wu's troubles and acted as expert on the issue purely on being of Asian descent, which has nothing to do with living in PRC.
Jeong, who is unjustly the target of another ridiculous and purely vile 4chan harassment campaign, decided to not stand up for Wu, when she was the target. Instead she dismissed her struggle and sided with the white male VICE editor.
Not quite, she wrote that she asked a woman from the PRC (but I think now living in America).
Still, not much better.
I'm assuming this is about more than them claiming her boyfriend builds her projects, any insight you can shed ?
The campaign against Jeong is some bs about old tweets where she mimicked the racism she gets back, recast as racism against white people.
Wu and all her followers would happily stand with Jeong against this bs (the same racist and sexist garbage Wu has to fight) - if she wouldn't have sided with the attackers when the same thing happened to Wu.
Having read all of Sarah Jeong’s tweets as they pertain to this controversy, I find it hard to believe that many were intended as satire. She has a clear pattern of unprompted tweets that make sweeping negative generalizations about white people, particularly old white men. I’m white, and I don’t like being singled out and put down on the basis of my skin color. It is alienating, it is dehumanizing, and it provokes an immediate instinctual (and generally unproductive) defensive emotional reaction.
I don’t buy the excuse of, “they started it.” Sarah’s obviously faced tons of online harassment, but since when have two wrongs ever made a right? The Golden Rule doesn’t say, “Treat others as you would like to be treated, except white people.” I would expect better from someone in Sarah’s position.
Having said that, a few racially-bigoted tweets don’t justify a 4chan harassment campaign. I also understand how it becomes difficult to discuss such an issue when an online hate mob is so clearly invested in one side of it.
Spot on. Once you start excusing things with "they started it", you're no longer on a slippery slope, you're in free fall (and her tweets make is seem like she's enjoying the ride).
This I saw just recently, my opinon here differ from yours though, had these been direct responses to racist comments then I would have found the explanation plausible, but they're not, and coupled with the sheer volume of them I can't see them as anything but her racist opinions.
As for 4chan 'campaigns', does this site has any sway whatsoever ? Back when I went there ages ago it seemed like anonymous people was just trying to be edgy and do 'shitposting'. I thought reddit was 'the place' these days ?
I just learned that VICE had her patron taken down and her Youtube channel demonetized due to her doxxing someone at VICE as a direct result of this article (which is not an excuse for doxxing, but something that would not have happened had not VICE ignored their agreement).
VOX does a better job at summarising than I could: https://www.vox.com/2018/8/3/17644704/sarah-jeong-new-york-t...
I am not part of any 'online mob', nor am I misogynist or alt-right.
...but the linked article, and the NYT's statement, already said as much in rather easy-to-understand terms. Which makes me suspect that their further explanation of "bad faith" might also be relevant here.
This argument makes no sense, I have not written misogynist statements at all, let alone a whole twitter feed full of them.
>but the linked article, and the NYT's statement, already said as much in rather easy-to-understand terms.
I found the excuse in the statement unplausible, these were not responses to any hostile tweets, at best they were racist comments made for shits and giggles rather than being her actual views.
The alt-right was on the verge of defusing the "racist" accusation as an effective weapon in the culture wars.
The NYT's Sarah Jeong stunt effortlessly made alt-right types literally crawl over each other to be first to accuse the NYT of "racism", in the process affirming the supreme moral severity of the accusation to themselves.
Very smart play on the part of the NYT.
I dont think anyone would care had she been transparent.
If someone says that X is important and to please not do it, and you do X anyway, that's crappy behavior.
edit: found a Twitter thread on Chinese political dynamics. It looks like you can be arrested for simply being a vocal feminist: https://twitter.com/jackiehluo/status/982087205907607552
Yikes.
"so now we're back at the vice article. apart from the sexism/racism, what would have been so bad about rebutting the conspiracy theory that she's the "face" of a white man who's really responsible for everything she does?"
"i can think of a few potential issues that could tip the scales when it comes to safety concerns. for one, rebutting the conspiracy theory and framing it as a feminist issue may require or imply a more overtly political stance on feminism, which we've seen can be dangerous."
I was confused by the timeline. My impression is that Vice emailed her wanting to ask about the personal accusations. Wu saw this as breaking the agreement and went public before the article was published. The mention of her relationship in the subsequently published article refers only to this dispute between Wu and Vice, and AFAIK it’s not mentioned elsewhere in the article.
It still seems like she said, I don't want to discuss X, Vice said, let's discuss X anyway. Even though that happened prior to publishing the piece, the meta-discussion of X shouldn't have made it into the final piece. If someone says a topic is off-limits, and you continue bring it up anyway, that's kinda douchey. I'm not going to defend attacking Vice on Twitter before the article got published, but the final product is definitely still douchey.
I don't quite buy that. The subject of an article can dictate the terms of an interview (in this case, what subjects they're willing to discuss), but it's not part of journalistic practice to allow a subject to dictate what goes into the article itself. A journalist who allows themselves to bound that way isn't doing something in principle different than PR for their subjects.
And Koebler never agreed to keep the 4chan/reddit rumors out of the piece. He agreed not to ask Wu about it in their interview, and he broke the spirit of that agreement if not its letter by only bringing the topic up in a subsequent email exchange instead of the interview itself, so he doesn't come out of this looking great. But he wasn't under an obligation to avoid writing about the controversy (which I think is pretty clearly ginned up nonsense) in the final article.
It should be when such information can have serious repercussions for the subject of the article, and these facts are mentioned and agreed upon before the interview takes place. It's ridiculous to hide behind journalistic standards to justify unethical behavior.
[1] https://twitter.com/jackiehluo/status/982087205907607552
The CCP will act, like the recent temp SSH ban, when it feels it has to/has gone out of control.
She asked them not to mention it, and they still did. Putting her at risk for no good reasons.
Motherboard and Vice as a whole have in the past published stories that I'm directly or tangentially involved in and gotten the facts completely backwards on multiple occasions. Always in a way that tells a more sensational story.
I wouldn't be involved with that publication -- full stop.
They've even doubled down on the Sugar Weasel story 5 years later, after it being pointed out to them repeatedly that it was factually incorrect.
Firstly, Naomi is a person with a certain style - in both a personal and physical sense. She is not one to back down from a fight, but she clearly lost this one and still feels the loss pretty strongly.
Secondly, it's interesting because, when you strip it down a bit, it does appear to be a case of an Asian-American woman coming to the defence of an American company and white male writer/editor, unsolicited, in a dispute with a Chinese woman. It doesn't seem to mesh all that well with the other narrative of Sarah as an anti-white racist...
People's motivations are rarely one-dimensional.
I don't know Sarah Jeong, but she could easily hate white people on one hand, and have that overridden by a feud with a non-white person.
I've read a few articles now, and I still have no idea what to think of this all.
I've been thinking a lot about this point lately. This argument and its variations are ones I've heard a lot from activists and other Angry Internet People, but it's taken a long time to really understand where they're coming from. Actually, the main help was a Slate Star Codex article called Conflict vs Mistake[0].
In that article, Scott Alexander argues for two modes of thinking about disagreement: mistake theory says that people disagree because they misunderstand, and conflict theory says that people disagree because they want to win. Mistake theorists, such as Scott, myself, and most people who consider themselves rationalists, occasionally find themselves in totally baffling conversations with marxists, social justice diablo_class_name_here, and other genres of conflict theorist. Not feigned-ignorant "please explain your curious argument" baffling, but genuine I-feel-like-one-of-us-is-speaking-Norse all-consuming confusion.
An example that is so hot right now: content providers censoring bad speech on their platforms. Cloudflare terminated the account of the Daily Stormer[1], a toxic white nationalist forum; Reddit continues to host /r/The_Donald, a toxic white nationalist subreddit[2][3]. In both cases, the argument for mistake theorists comes down to this: the problem with white nationalists is that they're wrong. If the positions were reversed, and I was wrong about something, the right approach wouldn't be to censor or punish me, but to educate me.
The conflict-theorist counterargument is simple: the positions wouldn't be reversed, and that symmetry is a disingenuous illusion. These people are not suffering from a lack of knowledge, but engaging in a deliberate and malicious course of action that your both-sides symmetrical systematising does nothing to prevent. They want to win and they want you to lose, don't you get it? Are you trying to lose?
Consider this (admittedly cheap, but I'm going for pathos here) analogy: in World War 2, our ancestors killed Nazis by the (literal) millions. How could they do this, when killing people is bad - or, worse, rude? Haven't they heard of Rawls' veil of ignorance? If you had to decide whether killing Nazis is okay before you get to find out whether you're a Nazi, surely you would suggest a more moderate response. This is what a mistake theorist sounds like to a conflict theorist.
If someone wants to win, systematic rulemaking will not help. If you say white supremacy is banned, they will become white nationalists. If you say white nationalism is banned, they will become independent researchers of human biodiversity. No complex formal system, however sophisticated, can fully define statements about itself[4]. You cannot build a system that determines when people are using the system in bad faith.
And so this, finally, is the reason for the epistemic gulf between conflict and mistake theorists: one saying "your individual behaviour is wrong because it does not generalise into a coherent universal system of behaviour", and the other saying "your universal system of behaviour is wrong because it does not recognise the wrongness in this individual situation".
Mistake theorists on conflict theorists: "No bad tactics, only bad targets"
Conflict theorists on mistake theorists: "Would you mind showing me evidence of any negative thing any sea lion has ever done to you?"[5]
The issue with mistake vs conflict theory is that it is a prisoner's dilemma. If everyone acts in good faith, everyone comes away more enlightened and understanding. If one party is acting in bad faith, you better hope it's you. This is why conflict theorists are so baffled that mistake theorists keep offering new sets of good-faith rules to people who have no intention of playing by them[6]. Don't worry, Charlie Brown, I'm sure she'll let you kick the football this time.
Lest this comes off as a diatribe against mistake theorists, I should clarify that, being one, I have absolutely no idea how else you can build a stable society, and I stopped following Naomi Wu after she posted Jason Koebler's address on the internet. That's doxxing, and doxxing is wrong.
But there is this slow, creeping dissonance I have begun to feel. Is justice the guiding light of objective morality shining down from the platonic realm of universal rationality? Or is it the olive branch we extend to the Martin Luther Kings of this world so they can hold back the Malcom X right behind them[7], and to the Naomi Wus so they don't dox us? No justice, no peace, as they say.
Returning to the quote from the article, you at least have to observe that she has a solid strategic argument. Within her situation, with her resources, what recourse did she have for her grievances? If the best advice you have is "you lost and you have no power in this situation, so lose quietly and be a good sport about it", it's no surprise she didn't listen. Would you, if you genuinely believed you were wronged?
So she broke the rules, did wrong, and now pays the price. But she also threw an elbow, and the elbow caught some attention, without which her fight with Vice would be over. My inner mistake theorist asks: what kind of world do we have if everyone starts throwing elbows? My inner conflict theorist asks: who should win here? Are they?
Deep down, I really just wish all the conflict theorists would go jump in a lake so we could get back to building our positive-sum utopia. But life's not that easy. I bet they wish we'd all jump in a lake so they could just win without all this concern over whether they're winning the right way.
[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/
[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
[2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dissecting-trumps-most-...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/851018/fif...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theo...
[5] http://wondermark.com/1k62/
[6] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre#Anti-Semite_a...
I would ask whether you extend the same policy towards VICE and stop following them entirely after they knowingly put a source at risk? It seems to me that she faces far more danger than Koebler does as a result of that exchange.
"My inner conflict theorist asks: who should win here? Are they?"
Well you have people using MASSIVE capital and national resources to obliterate the safety of an almost entirely powerless person who they use for clicks on their website. And then you have that person responding in literally the only way they can.
So yeah, I feel like it's pretty clear who should win here. One party exploited the other first. One party is operating with massively more power. One party is not vulnerable to personal information posting (doxxing doesn't just include addresses and names!) from a harassment campaign. One party kept on working like normal, while the other suffered blacklisting.
People can make this a grand debate ideals from their ascetic judgment of the situation, but all they're doing is supporting the powerful corporation who exploited, endangered, doxxed, and blacklisted a vulnerable person in a foreign country who has no recourse.
I'm sorry what? What is happening here?
Vice thought this agreement was worth the paper they didn't print it on. Things escalated from there, but I can't really summarise the following parts, dirty tactics from those in a position of power IMO.
The article was very clearly a hit piece intended to portray Naomi as a fraud because as far as Vice, Motherboard or Koebler are concerned pretty women can’t be makers.
-Sarah Jeong is as bad of a person as her tweets suggest
If there are tweets like that, I'd genuinely love to see them - I'd rather have my knowledge updated than continue being wrong.
Racism is not just a matter of politeness. It is not arbitrary rules of decorum that you have to follow. It is not a semantic property of a sentence in isolation. Racism is a systemic problem that threatens people and limits their opportunities.
When Sarah Jeong snarks at Andrew Sullivan for being an old white man, old white men are not actually threatened.
Yes, this means you can switch races in a comment and it will change from racist to not racist, or not racist to racist, and that's because there's context, it's not just arbitrary rules about words.
Do you want it to be symmetric? Then it would not be the thing we know as racism.
Again, this isn't an abstract rule of a game, it does not get its validity from applying the same way to everyone. Racism in our society doesn't apply the same way to everyone, that's the whole point.
'prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.'
It seems to me that there's an attempt to shift the definition of racism towards something different from above in order to facilitate the spread of consequence free hate speech.
Based on my direct experiences with racism and discrimination due to my skin tone and national origin, I'd find it fairly insulting for you or any other poster here to lecture me on what racism is and how it affects people. I like to think I have a pretty good understanding of it, and not just from academic studies, but from my own experiences. For the record the tweets I've read from Sarah Jeong seem wholly unacceptable to me, and quite racist.
If you think that Jeong's
tweets are equivalent to
actual racism, you don't
understand what racism is
and how it affects people.
limits their opportunities.
old white men are not
actually threatened.
Different ethnic groups always fought each other (contemporary examples: shiites vs sunnis, jews vs palestinians, croats vs serbs, muslims vs US (Iraq, 9/11), buddhists vs muslims, hindus vs muslims ), but in the past US whites had numeric superiority over other races (and -- arguably -- other advantages like better education), which gave security, but with demographic changes, this security is withering away, which makes it more likely that the annihilatory phantasies ethnic groups have of each other (but usually don't express too publicly, or only obliquely ... have a look at Rastafarianism ...) will be acted out.
just arbitrary rules about words.
That's a good rule to follow in life.
It's pretty clear that Jeong understands this. The reason she made these sexist, racist, and agist tweets are also very clear: being controversial on Twitter brings attention. Indeed nothing but extremes bring attention on social media. Sufficient attention on social media brings money. Jeong monetises sexism, racism and agism to get a cushy job at the NYT, because the NYT know very well -- like any journalist -- that racism brings outrage, brings clicks, brings money.
https://twitter.com/jackiehluo/status/982087205907607552
> vice asked her to do a story
> she agreed under the condition that they avoid discussing certain personal topics for her safety
> vice asked her to discuss them anyway
> she attempted to resolve the issue via email
> the story got published
> she doxxed a reporter
> vice reported her on patreon
> she got banned from patreon