If you were, accidentally but definitively, “responsible” for denying a person an income for many years, would you actually be “responsible” and donate your income to them?
There has to be more to the story. How many people out there are named Adam Mark Smith? Was someone out there finding out where he was applying for jobs, and then sending them this video?
It reminds me, in its own way, of the long-standing urban legend about a girl who was caught masturbating with a frozen hot dog, and her family had to move out of town because of the harassment - and the moving truck was greeted at the new location by townspeople who heard the story long before they ever met the family.
That was a TV advert in the UK for the Guardian </pedanticfootnote>
It must truly be the apocalypse - I find myself agreeing with octopus.
Lynching is a tool too. What about those cattle rustlers out at Ox-Bow? Some of them might have been guilty.
Repeated for emphasis, and agreement.
So being a bigot is the kiss of death, is it? The line which no-one shall cross? Beyond the pale and beyond redemption? Whatever happens to them, they deserve it? We’re willing to rehabilitate murderers, but if you express bigotry, then god will have to forgive you because I sure won’t?
What is that term I hate? Oh yeah, virtue signaling.
Grow up.
In all the examples you named? Damn straight. Sunlight *is *the best disinfectant.
The problem there isn’t the publicizing, it’s the violent idiots responding.
The koala remembers…
The same reason teenagers can’t legally drive, buy booze or have sex, would be my guess.
I don’t think these things are comparable. Publicly criticizing someone is not killing them. Further, in very rare circumstances (not any from actual historical lynchings that I’m aware of), killing someone might be the morally just thing to do.
I don’t think it’s relevant whether the perpetrator deserved it or not.
The question for me is whether it’s a fair process that isn’t prone to abuse and can reliably deliver justice. I don’t think it can given the nature of the internet so I’m not a fan.
Yeaaaahhhhhh… So she lied about whether or not she called the cops, because she thought that lying about calling the cops in order to scare someone was, somehow, better. And in fact she did actually call the cops on a little girl selling lemonade. That’s pretty shitty.
Worth ruining her life over? Well, I can’t really stop people from doing that. And if the police had responded, what do you reckon the odds are that this would ruin the little girl’s life? Or end it? Having the cops called on you is a pretty substantial threat.
My concern is that prior to these sorts of videos, white people didn’t believe PoC when they related stories about encounters with racists. “You must have misunderstood” or “I’m sure they didnt really mean it that way” or “you read things into it” or “there are two sides to every story” or whatever. If, as a society, we are going to insist people provide video proof before they are believed, we can’t then say providing video proof is just too cruel.
I do have real concerns about how a moment taken out of context can be misconstrued, or even just a joke can fall flat. But I think it’s also true that the targets of abuse are otherwise ignored
That’s a great point. With video, it’s harder to deny instances of racism that were previously almost universally dismissed as either misunderstood or trivial.
It’s not the public critique that is the issue in theory. It’s the fact that the reach and magnitude of the criticism and the reluctance of others to ignore it and let it blow over which leads to financial ruin that is the problem. The punishment is far greater than the crime and any one who is encouraging mob justice or violence in a society where we have to user if imperfect courts for words a person uses is engaging in far more shameful and dangerous behavior than the desired targets of vigilantism.
You were a naval officer. Did you wink and nod at unofficial punishments to keep people in line or did you believe in due process with evidence and an impartial hearing?
I understand what you are saying, but that’s a bit of a false dichotomy. If I have a co-worker or person in my social circle who engages in appalling behavior, I don’t need to observe due process before I cut him out of my life, or promote others at work over him, or lay him off first when there’s a RIF. If I am hiring someone and I know one of their references–it’s a person I worked with myself once upon a time-- and that reference says “we had to let him go because we had credible reports that he called a black customer the n-word and suggested she couldn’t be trusted to pay on time”, I feel like I’m justified in not hiring that person.
The issue here isn’t the lack of due process. It’s the scale–how widespread and inescapable the consequences are.
This.
A mob has no self-control, no logic, and cannot be apologized to or reasoned with.
I was forced to resign from a job because of toxic gossip. It wasn’t even true, but someone somehow got it into her head that I said something awful, and told everyone else in the community. I had only been there about 2 months, I had no defenders, and was told to resign or be fired. I wasn’t even told what the gossip was until months later, so I had no way to refute it at the time.
For someone who thinks there’s no long-term damage, every time I fill out a job application, I have to explain it again.
Who is encouraging mob justice or violence? That’s bad. But online criticism isn’t that. Getting fired isn’t that. Due process is for criminal behavior, not public criticism. If someone gets fired or even shuts down their business because they were getting so much criticism, that sucks for them, but that’s not mob justice or violence, that’s individuals speaking out and shopping where they choose. That’s a free society with free communications.
So what am I doing wrong? What am I supposed to change in my behavior? I plan to continue to criticize those I think have done something bad, and shop where I want, including considering the behavior of the business owner. What’s wrong with any of that?
And therefore a very good one.
Suppose someone being caught on tape acting like an asshole leads to their business getting boycotted into bankruptcy? Is that mob justice too?
Be mindful of how you behave in public if you don’t want to suffer the consequences of social ostracism. It’s ridiculous to think that you should be entitled to such a level of privacy in public that you think people ought to look the other way and pretend they don’t see anything when you’re engaging in flagrantly anti-social behaviour.
Obviously death threats, doxxing and other extreme forms of harassment should under no circumstances be tolerated.
People decrying “mob justice”…do you also decry the unfairness of mug shots being aired on the six o’clock news? Names of criminal suspect being published in the local rag?
Also, if public shaming is bad because of the unintended consequences, what about public praise? The same outcome applies, right? If you publicly praise someone for doing a good deed that can be spun in a political way (for instance, helping an immigrant family fill out paperwork), then that person may now be a target of hate. To prevent anything bad from happening to people, should we should not share any news?
I think people need to stop acting like being an ass in the public sphere is sacrosanct. There have ALWAYS been social consequences to being an ass. It’s just that the internet allows those consequences to extend past one’s neighborhood. People who play stupid game have ALWAYS won stupid prizes. It’s just now the “stupid prizes” have been stepped up a notch. Now, you don’t just risk getting punched. You might also lose your job. Big whoop. I’ve been told by conservatives that it isn’t that hard to get another one if you work hard enough. If people don’t want to lose their employment based on “shame”, all they have to do is avoid shameful behavior. It really isn’t that hard to avoid being the villain in someone’s “viral video”.