hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

lolll I mean...that's gotta be true in at least some cases, how can you miss with a generalizing machine-gun-spray comment like that

but, y'know, maybe save it for when the gawkerati are going after someone who /actually/ doesn't deserve it, guy.

oh kinja commenters, what a glorious font of absurdity thou art

save it for when the gawkerati are going after someone who /actually/ doesn't deserve it, guy.

Like a kid singing along at a concert?

idk I don't really think this qualifies as "going after," and there are varying degrees of deserve, this is prob on the low end of that spectrum - and as far as gawker-driven public embarrassments go, this is a p soft toss

Dedicated piece basically throwing a random kid up as a racist with no further commentary or insight feels pretty fucked up to me.

yeah, by that standard we were all Klansmen in the '70s

Wait'll they hear about Patti Smith

no ones deserves to have their shameful mistakes featured on gawker but he hit the publish button himself so I don't have a ton of sympathy

Genuine LOL

(The structure of your joke reminds me of that Onion joke about Jim McGreevey (featured at great length, funnily enough, in Jon Ronson's "So You've Been Publicly Shamed," which ought to have a thread of its own, probably)...
"Homosexual tearfully admits to being Governor of New Jersey")

i don't really see the value in blurring the line between "the spirit of a Southern frat party" -- implicitly the pro-lynching statements of University of Oklahoma's SAE chapter -- and a drake fan committing a faux pas at a concert because he got lost in the music and forgot the #checkhisprivilege

and by "don't really see the value" i mean i think it's really damaging and stupid

is the new ronson good? i liked the psychopath test.

New Ronson is great - you can read the whole thing in a day or two, probably. It's been pushing buttons for some people (there have already been a couple of external mini-scandals with one of the subjects objecting to how she was portrayed, and a pre-publication, very on-the-edge deleted line about rape that has stirred up some anger on Twitter). But like all his best stuff it's a great balance of humanism and neurotic gags. He really landed on a topic that nobody had really gone deep with, I think.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CCgFLkmWAAAT6z_.jpg

feel like ronson applying his goofy willfully naive schtick to issues of actual importance was prob a mistake

http://tktk.gawker.com/i-actually-want-to-live-in-a-world-where-jonah-lehrer-1693842356

that's a bad sentence but i am still interested in the book. i know public shaming is everyone's favorite hobby now, but it's disturbing how much more prevalent it seems these days

that rape line is.... jesus christ, I just kind of stared at the screen and I still can't figure out to respond to how incredibly bad it is

imo he should be publicly shamed for writing something that bad

this is a good idea

that's a bad sentence but i am still interested in the book. i know public shaming is everyone's favorite hobby now, but it's disturbing how much more prevalent it seems these days

― Treeship, Tuesday, April 14, 2015 10:16 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its an interesting topic but judging from what ive read about the book ronson does not really approach it from a very enlightening pov, speaking as someone who has enjoyed his work in the past

Really? To me, that line is so clearly meant as a self-critical comment. I haven't read the whole thing in context, but it sure seems to me like he's talking about "privilege" (excuse the buzzword) and pointing out that men and women live in very different and unfair realities when getting fired is the worst we can imagine happening. He's saying men, like myself, can't really grasp what it means like to deal with what women go through. I don't know, maybe I just trust him not to be so stupid as to mean anything else than that.

I think you're reading a viewpoint into it that is not implicit in what he actually wrote

it also kind of implies he doesn't understand that he could be raped, it'd just be unlikely. or if he doesn't acknowledge it, it's nbd compared to getting fired

yeah the preceding paragraph fragment certainly points that way but the "i certainly cant think of anything worse" is such ronson schtick and really not serious xp

xp
I haven't read it in context, so I think we're all guessing at his explicit viewppoint. but yes, but I think "i don't live with the fear of rape, I don't even comprehend it" is his point, and it's meant critically.

otm

he seems to be responding to a proposition someone else put forward.

i believe he deleted it from the book before publication anyway.

just his whole oh no this scares me jon ronson who is flamboyantly scared of everything is not a good approach for this complex topic

http://tktk.gawker.com/i-actually-want-to-live-in-a-world-where-jonah-lehrer-1693842356

― lag∞n, Tuesday, April 14, 2015 10:06 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean jonah lehrer did not make mistakes he was a compulsive self promoter borderline conman, and ronson really thought this guy was not gonna get a second chance, this might not be the social commentator we need

not to mention the information that he was getting a second chance was already available!

it just didnt fit his narrative of all powerful mobs taking mostly innocent ppl down

capt save-a-lehrer rushing in when the house is not even on fire

if public shaming continues to take down amoral careerist dbags im all for it

in the end tho public shaming only works on ppl who can be shamed

well its prob a misnomer in that case

I think the main point is to be reasonable and separate the people who are just looking for recognition of fault or an apology with the rest who just want blood? I mean, if someone has no real history of problematic shit, says something stupid on twitter, and acknowledges it was a bad idea, let em go imo.

the people who really deserve it are the ones who repeatedly offer non-apologies (if I ever have to read "I am sorry you were offended" again, blargh) and people with long-term patterns of shitty behavior

yeah how common is the one bad tweet phenomenon, like theres the girl on the flight to south africa and, feel like his approach in this case is mostly a clever attempt to get the reader to identify as an innocent victim, like weve all said things that were bad and got negative feedback but those were just mistakes certainly not indications of unacknowledged personally convenient malignant beliefs that we shd like consider addressing

that whole thing was a clusterfuck, I feel like those cases are pretty much outliers, though

if anything it's more a testament to the power of people with tons of twitter followers and their ability to abuse than shining a light on malicious behavior

the getting fired piece is such a hook for the whole argument otherwise its just like oh no a million ppl are yelling at me on twitter! turn off notifications bro

btw i heard a radio ad for online reputation management in the barber shop the other day lol

That's been around for a long time, though.

idk i dont listen to the radio

it was all you cant do this yourself

wld be a good protection racket

imo the right thing to do is create a public persona that is completely ridiculous, then people have trouble trying to pin malicious thoughts on you

operate celebrity parody accounts exclusively

you're defending gawker because they're taking down "amoral careerist dbags". that gets about an 8 in the mental gymnastics competition.

is 8 a good score in mental gymnastics im unfamiliar with the competition rules tbh

who is attacking gawker itself? I thought we were talking about a point made on the site right now

Definitely think you guys should read the book first - covers lots of these points; many of these things are way more complicated (like the Adria Richards thing) than 'turning off notifications'

afaict the conversation went something like 'gawker going after this coachella kid is ridiculous' and then 'but jon ronson sorta defended jonah lehrer' which idk i think i'm maybe missing a step in the middle