How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

[PoliticAverse]

Last edited Fri Feb 13, 2015, 01:18 PM - Edit history (2)

As she made the long journey from New York to South Africa, to visit family during the holidays in 2013, Justine Sacco, 30 years old and the senior director of corporate communications at IAC, began tweeting acerbic little jokes about the indignities of travel. There was one about a fellow passenger on the flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport:

“?‘Weird German Dude: You’re in First Class. It’s 2014. Get some deodorant.’ — Inner monologue as I inhale BO. Thank God for pharmaceuticals.”

...

And on Dec. 20, before the final leg of her trip to Cape Town:

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

She chuckled to herself as she pressed send on this last one, then wandered around Heathrow’s international terminal for half an hour, sporadically checking her phone. No one replied, which didn’t surprise her. She had only 170 Twitter followers.

Read the while article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html

Related article:
Justine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came To Peace With Her
http://gawker.com/justine-sacco-is-good-at-her-job-and-how-i-came-to-pea-1653022326

Also related:
Life after a viral nightmare: from Ecce Homo to revenge porn
http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/jan/07/life-after-a-viral-nightmare-ecce-homo-to-revenge-porn

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Using "Weird German Dude" and "I'm not white" reveal attitudes. (Can't get past the pay wall.)

Perhaps there is something in the article that makes her look less racist.

From the evidence, tweets did not blow up her life. Her attitudes towards race expressed in tweets revealed her character and that her sense of humor and judgment are very poor.

I don't get why so many people assume that what they put on line is somehow private.

In my opinion, privacy of any kind is a obsolete concept in this age. Either be honest about who and what you are and live with the consequences, or devise a cleaver body mask to hide the real you forever.

[PoliticAverse]

2. You should be able to get by the paywall by clicking on this google link...

https://www.google.com/#q=How+One+Stupid+Tweet+Blew+Up+Justine+Sacco%E2%80%99s+Life

and then clicking on the first search result.

If you believe privacy is really obsolete why do you post under a pseudonym?

[Agnosticsherbet]

4. Pseudonyms aren't about privacy. Anyone who cares can discover where I post form and my name.

It also dates back to a point when I thought privacy was still possible.

I am not saying we should not have right to privacy, just that it doesn't exist in any real way anymore. But that is off the topic, and thanks for the link.

[Agnosticsherbet]

5. I see that the article is more about the process of public shaming than about what brought it on.

My feelings about privacy remain. Social media, if we use it, makes privacy obsolete.
Had she been sitting with a friend who knew her and made those comments, they would have laughed knowing it was a joke.

(The two friends who made a running gag of disobeying signs suffered from a lack of context and were punished by people who did not know what was going on.)

A good chunk of communications is about body language, nonvocal cues, and context. On twitter, here, Facebook, or any other social media outlet, no one can read my body language, friends I've known for years but never met don't really know me, the only context is the image and the words, and the moment it is published all control of it is lost.

My own comments about Ms. Socco express that perfectly. All I have to go on is the words she tweeted. What she thought was a joke wasn't funny. It is actually pretty harsh unless it is spoken in confidence to someone who knew her.

Did she deserve public shaming or to be fried? Absolutely not. I think that what people say on line should not lead to being fired. I think that the feeding frenzy on Twitter was wrong.

But everyone that publishes anything in the social media should be aware that the slightest transgression is tantamount to jumping into a pool of hungry sharks.

How is it possible to change that?

[YarnAddict]

6. Did you read the article?

Social media, if we use it, makes privacy obsolete.
Had she been sitting with a friend who knew her and made those comments, they would have laughed knowing it was a joke.

The article includes something that happened to someone exactly as you stated. But his stupid double entendre was overheard by someone who took his picture and tweeted his comment. He was fired over a private comment to a friend who understood the context.

[Agnosticsherbet]

8. As I said, privacy is obsolete. Even when we think we occupy a private space, it is not private.

I am not saying its right, but that is the way it is. There is no privacy anymore.

When I spoke of sitting with a friend, I was referencing body language and nonverbal ques that are critical in comunication. If she made a joke to a friend sittig beside her, that friend would have recognized a joke. Someone with a camera, not so much.

She texted it, so all the people had to go on were her words. Her joke to slightly over 100 friends turned out to be monstrously miunderstood, and there are a lot of people who mercilessly shamed her.

[trotsky]

3. An article that definitely lives up to the name of this group.

There are so many things about us as humans that make us suck. A murderer deserves to have their life destroyed. A person who tweets a lame attempt at a joke does not.

[Dr. Xavier]

7. On one hand, no one deserves to have their life ruined...

on the other hand, welcome to the age of Big Brother. People forget that Orwell's point was that we brought it on ourselves. We are Big Brother, before the Inter-Toob, polite society dictated what was right and what was wrong. If you didn't conform, you were ostracized. Justine Sacco was just another victim of Big Brother, although in all fairness, she also has to learn that there are just some things you don't joke about.