What I find really amusing is that Gawker hosts upskirt photos and is currently being sued by Hulk Hogan for publishing a private sex tape.
Indeed. That was the position of the person I was discussing it with. I lean more to the side that the absolutely worst thing to do is to harm an innocent (beyond the one that suffered originally), but I understand the other position.
Remember Christopher Jeffries?
…
Here’s how I see it: my swinger friends should be able to go do their consent-laden adult activities until their hearts explode from happiness, but that’s not how the real world works. Heck, those swinger places are HUGE on privacy and security, too, but the risk is still there-- no privacy, perceived or otherwise, is ever absolute. At any time, we can be held accountable for all of our actions, online or in person, so the risk is something we all need to weigh.
This perceived veil of privacy on the internet is as easily penetrable as all “real life” privacy acts. Thinking there’s some special privacy on the internet is misguided at best.
There is behavior so repugnant, so disgusting - and yet completely legal - that the majority of people will declare it abhorrent and respond appropriately.
Violentacrez isn’t being persecuted. He isn’t even being punished. He’s being ostracized.
This is, after all, a man who presided over fora titled “Chokeabitch”, “Niggerjailbait”, “Rapebait”, “Hitler”, “Jewmerica”, “Misogyny and Incest”, and “Picsofdeadjailbait”. If your only defense of this is “well, it’s legal” or “he didn’t actually hurt anyone”, you’re missing the point.
Brutsch went dancing outside the allowable bounds of social discourse. Not just dancing, but stripping, mocking, teabagging, trolling, mooning, and pissing on the boundaries of what the majority of us find acceptable. He bragged about it. He preened himself over it. He didn’t give a damn if he upset anyone. If he had done this in person as consistently as he did it online, he would have found himself friendless, jobless, and homeless. The only reason he did this at an anonymous online site was because it was the only place he could get away with it.
This is not a hard working husband and father who occasionally did nasty things online. This is a reckless, vicious, pandering, exploitative, sociopathic asshole who happens to be married and have children, and it is mete and right that he now has his face and name attached to his actions.
If what he’d been doing was so defensible or acceptable, he should have given his name. God knows Rush Limbaugh, the creators of South Park, Nancy Grace, and Sacha Cohen have no problem doing that. If it was necessary but dangerous enough to require a level of anonymity, he should have stood up for why he was doing it and done his best to encourage others to join him. If, on being exposed, his need for anonymity was superior to his victims, he should have made a cogent argument why, and he should have stuck by it. He should have showed the courage of his so-called convictions.
This? This is a puling, whining sack of shit saying the rules shouldn’t apply to him, because it hurts, and his pain is more important than other people’s.
I don’t give a damn who exposed this feculent tumor. They did so using legal means, means that Brutsch went around slapping others with.
It’s supremely different from trying to shame people with pictures taken of them at a gay bar or an abortion clinic. Why? Because individuals were doing nothing to others. Those individuals have stood up to those attempts, have shown the courage of their convictions, have petitioned to be recognized by society as legitimate, and their motivations were never about tormenting innocents or bystanders, doing their best to manufacture outrage, or indulging in acts the rest of us would never tolerate in personal discourse.
But internet privacy is not as easily penetrable as “real life” private acts are. It’s far far easier. That’s the issue. If I want to expose someone in real life, I might have to follow them around for months in order to catch them doing something. Not only that but I would have to spend time and money to ensure accuracy. That alone dissuades most people.
On the internet, all you need to do it trick somebody into installing software, or hack into someone’s system in order to have a precise account of everyplace they have been, their searches, etc. If I wanted to steal someone’s bank account PIN, I wouldn’t follow them around hoping to peek over their shoulder while they use the ATM, I would track them online. If I wanted to see Scarlett Johansson naked, I wouldn’t sit outside her house hoping to peer though the window, I would just hack her phone. The ease with you can invade someone’s privacy online is not comparable to what is necessary in the real world. That’s what makes it so pervasive, insidious, and problematic. Given that that will always be the case, we need to have an informal understanding that violating people’s privacy on the internet is generally not admirable.
I think most reasonable people would agree with you, but there is a minority of people who would argue you don’t deserve privacy because you you are trying to kill an unborn child, or that you are ruining the fabric of society by living in sin and that you caused 9/11. I would trust that you have better judgement that Jerry Falwell, but I don’t think there is one moral code that we can all agree to.
I don’t get where this right of internet anonymity comes from. When you post something on the internet you’re speaking to people in the most public way imaginable. Your audience is everyone on earth who can read English and access the internet. There’s no inherent right to speak to people from behind a mask. If a person walks around the street calling black people “niggers” and talking about having sex with minors, they should expect to be shunned and fired. Why should they expect different treatment because they do it on the internet, disguising themselves behind a pseudonym?
Also, I think the kind of person who would out someone for being gay or having an abortion isn’t going to be deterred because someone refrained from outing a particularly obnoxious troll.
I’m kind of curious if those who defend this man would be appalled if he ran, say, a local cafe on his off hours and the walls of the cafe were plastered with the sorts of photos he put on his subreddit and his employer found out about it and fired him.
Is the objection how they found out? Is the objection that they fired him? Is the objection that he is being judged for things he did online the same as he would be judged for things in physical space and time?
Do we expect employers to employ us no matter what we do? How much must an employer tolerate? May an employer fire someone who is blatantly and provocatively racist in public?
Is there an actual difference from being racist in public and being racist on the internet? How are publicly-accessed websites not “public”?
Someone upthread mentioned how Monopoly isn’t real life. But you know, how someone plays a game is real life. If someone plays Monopoly and cheats, or smashes the board when they don’t get their way, or mocked and pointed at others, I would judge them for that.
I find it baffling and confusing how many people think the internet isn’t real. The internet is just as real as you are. It’s not secret, it’s not special, and the rules are the same. The ability to get around the rules can be different, but the rules are the same as they are in person.
But no one did any of that here. This douche from Reddit made no secret about who he was-- he went to Reddit events and identified himself IRL. There was no big secret that had to be hacked out— all Gawker had to do was ask.
(Bolding mine)
An informal understanding is worse than useless. It gives an illusion of protection where there is none.
Here’s the thing about this guy…he wasn’t just some nondescript poster on some tiny message board. He was a Big Presence on a giant social networking site, and like it or not, being a Big Presence on the web makes you interesting to people in real life. Essentially, he sought fame on the internet, and achieved it, and now is surprised that people are treating him like he’s someone famous. I don’t have a lot of sympathy.
But his employer didn’t “find out”. There was nothing passive about it. The guy basically got tattled on. If he operated a subversive cafe under a pseudonym, and someone went and told his boss, and then he got fired for it, that would begin to be a comparable situation.
It’s one thing when your own actions lead you to your demise. If his boss stumbled upon his reddit groups, realized it was him, and fired him, then fine, just desserts. My biggest beef with this whole thing is the celebration of the tattle. It’s just not right to fuck with people, even jerky assholes. I love how we still value the idea of eye for an eye, even though we supposedly live in a civilized society. Everyone would be blind. You would all be blind.
But I’m asking about the employer. The employer did “find out.” If they employer didn’t find out, the employer wouldn’t have fired him. So, was it okay for the employer to fire him?
Yes. Asshole is not a protected class. Unless one is the boss, it is often a firable offense. If I’m training the new Hitler Youth or if I’m just advocating for them online, it doesn’t matter how my boss finds out. If it is something the boss does not want to be associated with his company, I’m gone.
For the “the internet isn’t real life” crowd:
What do you think about Adam Smith, the guy who recorded himself chewing out a Chick-Fil-A employee and posted it on Youtube?
It’s pretty much the exact same thing: the guy acts in an unprofessional manner in real life, posts evidence online and brags about it, his company finds out and fires him for unprofessionalism.
Now, granted, there were plenty of people opposing his firing too, but that was on the grounds that what he did had nothing to do with his job, not that the Youtube video was online and therefore somehow not real.
This times approx. 1 million. The internet is no different to a telephone or walkie-talkie or whatever, it’s just a bog-standard everyday-life communication medium and the same rules apply.
Indeed. There have been so many examples of email forwards going wrong, facebook-sharing catastrophes and so on that everyone really should have twigged by now.
Possibly, but it’s America. Being able to pretty much fire anyone at any time just because you feel like is all part of Miracle Capitalism 
(R) that keeps everyone in the US healthy, wealthy & wise.
Besides, if I suddenly gained world-wide fame associated in the context of trolling, jailbait, upskirts, racism, incest and generally asshole-like behaviour then it’s (1) reasonably foreseeable that my employer (and colleagues) would draw the conclusion that my continuing employment would lead to the formation of (2) an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.
2=instant unemployment
1=your own damn fault if you didn’t see it coming
As far as the employer finding out, it was the troll himself who told him.
Sure, it was pre-emptive, as the cat was already out the bag, but HOW the employer found out doesn’t matter. The troll knew it was bad, knew the employer would think it was bad, and was right.
Thanks for the interview link.
BTW…F^ck Reddit for encouraging this shit. Apparantly every forum taken down is back up again under different names.
Never been to Reddit, as it just seemed too much like a bastard child of Myspace and…well, Myspace, I guess…but I definitely will never go now. I’ll read ABOUT them…and same for Gawker, which also posts some nasty stuff…but neither site will get my pageviews, ever.
Hell, I even like parts of the Chive, but am seriously considering just dropping them as well. Just too much gratuitous T+A for me. But I’m a hetero female, not their target audience. But it’s still creepy.That’s just my opinion, though.
Also…listening to this guy in the interview <can’t stand to look at him>, he’s such a shit, liar, and just all around full of it. He’s trying to blame Reddit and society for enabling him. FFS his online handle wasn’t even original, he took it from some other troll he admired in the past.
What a fcking loser. When you pander to the absolutely lowest common denominator and brag about it, you can’t just deny it later and look like anything but the ass you are.
It’s more like Digg or Fark.
There are actually a ton of great subreddits, for just about any interest you can think of. But there’s also the dark and seedy side, as this whole episode shines a big bright light on.
Reddit is an interesting place in that all subreddits (think subtopics) are user driven. I would suggest you at least take a look at Reddit - The heart of the internet which is female oriented and does not tolerate misogynistic bullshit. It’s kinda like dismissing the SDMB out of hand because you think games are stupid and thus dislike the Game Room forum.