'Overnight, everything I loved was gone': the Internet shaming of Lindsey Stone | Hacker News Reader

'Overnight, everything I loved was gone': the Internet shaming of Lindsey Stone

theguardian.com

41 pointsprostoalex11 comments

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085680

Jon Ronson must have a really good PR team, or Hacker News really loves him. This is, what, the 5th time he's had an extract from his new book on the front page of HN in the last 2-3 weeks?

At least some of the people he interviews were involved in controversial events that were discussed on HN for days on end so it’s not surprising (to me at least) that these excerpts are also getting a lot of attention here.

Yeah, it's not really a problem. I just thought it's funny that this author got so many articles out, and that we've already re-hashed and re-re-hashed Adria Richards a few times lately.

Every time I read a story about a “scandal”, I wonder why the subject didn’t do this or that, which seems armchair-obvious.

It seems trivial, from the outside: you explain the context, apologise for doing something offensive, and ignore further comments from the fools who will never listen to or forgive you, because they aren’t worth a shred of your time.

But I have never experienced this situation, so I’m wondering what it is about this kind of public ridicule and vitriolic reaction that makes otherwise rational people fail to do appropriate damage control. What am I missing?

Has anyone undergone anything of the sort who is willing to explain the experience?

Because the speed of rage is faster than any damage control, people have an agenda and your a talking point not a person, people don't care about the whole story because they heard a sound bite, or your apology will never be good enough because you committed a taboo thought, or retractions and misinterpretations don't get as widely distributed because they aren't clickbait and don't appear first in Google's search results.

Given how many times I've watched a political speech only to be told the speaker said X when they said no such thing, I doubt any damage control will work.

> apologise for doing something offensive, and ignore further comments from the fools who will never listen to or forgive you, because they aren’t worth a shred of your time.

Wasn't that exactly what "Hank" did?

And it didn't 100% worked for him either, even though he managed to keep his name private.

The best he got was internet revenge on person who caused his trouble. And he probably wouldn't get event that if Adria wasn't so incomprehensible in her motives.

When you're potentially screwed for life, there's no obvious solution because you're probably panicking

Of course, all the work the "Reputation Management" company performed for Lindsey was just pretty much undone by a Guardian Article, and it's huge Page Rank mojo.

If there's a huge article about her situation, it doesn't matter so much - only the densest of people would still be offended (and are peobably not the kind of person any sane person would want to work for anyway), while now there won't be the same number of people who were innocently misled into believing she was trying to be offensive.

Is there any way to benefit from this sort of negative attention?

I mean, it's still fame... Maybe she could get paid to not endorse a product, or she could start a blog and get ad revenue from the rage viewers?

Do what I do to stay safe: don't goto cons

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