[HN Gopher] The untold impact of cancellation
___________________________________________________________________
The untold impact of cancellation
Author : cbeach
Score : 298 points
Date : 2025-08-01 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pretty.direct)
(TXT) w3m dump (pretty.direct)
| cbeach wrote:
| This is an account of the impact of "mob justice" within the
| Scala community, which Jon Pretty faced in 2021, and devastated
| his career and mental health.
|
| At the time I was taken aback at the lack of due process, and how
| one-sided accounts from ex-girlfriends could be used to destroy a
| man.
|
| Now, years later his story still chills me and makes me sad about
| the divided and sinister state of the Scala programming language
| community.
| jphoward wrote:
| At the bottom it references a GitHub where people have previously
| added signatures against Jon Pretty - and now the maintainer says
| "NOTE: This repo is closed. Do not open issues; they will be
| summarily closed and ignored." - i.e. telling people they
| shouldn't even TRY to amend their signatures.
|
| Regardless of what you think of Jon Pretty, how is this
| justifiable? Telling people they can't unsupport something
| because you're not open to issues, but also not removing it?!
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| It seems pretty justifiable to me so that people can't erase
| their misdeeds.
|
| Good apologies require more than memory-holing an injurious
| attack.
| jphoward wrote:
| Yeah but because it's a GitHub repo is has an inherent audit
| trail for that, so it's not really erasing misdeeds... indeed
| it highlights those people in diffs!
| bsuvc wrote:
| > Telling people they can't unsupport something
|
| Yes.
|
| I have no involvement in this drama (it's the first I've heard
| of it actually), but signing your name to something matters.
|
| Choose carefully what/who you support.
|
| A repo owner is not obligated to accept contributions.
|
| All of those people are free to create their own repo, post on
| social media, or write an article recanting their support if
| they choose to do so.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| He's not "obligated" to do anything but it's still immoral to
| abandon maintenence of something like that. If he can't be
| bothered to maintain it, then he should delete it.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > He's not "obligated" to do anything but it's still
| immoral to abandon maintenence of something like that. If
| he can't be bothered to maintain it, then he should delete
| it.
|
| Morality is subjective (that's why we have courts; which
| don't respect the individual and differing moralities of
| the parties involved, it has its own moral bar, for better
| or worse).
|
| In this case, I feel it is _more_ moral to record all the
| members of the mob. Maybe this would cause them to think
| twice before joining the next mob.
|
| I mean, if we _are_ going to have witch-hunt mobs, then the
| lesser evil is to not allow anonymous mobbers.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > If he can't be bothered to maintain it, then he should
| delete it.
|
| Not necessarily, plenty of projects have been put in an
| archive state because they are 'finished', superseded,
| forked, etc. This isn't code nor a living document, it was
| a one-off operation.
| fmajid wrote:
| I don't know if the allegations against Jon Pretty were
| valid or not, but those who piled on against him can't
| escape accountability for mob behavior (assuming Pretty was
| innocent) if it becomes embarrassing. At most they can say
| "I supported this but no longer do", not expunge all
| traces.
| everfree wrote:
| Git itself is a safeguard against "expunging all traces".
| It preserves history permanently.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| They should smear the OP of the letter for not accepting
| retractions.
| netruk44 wrote:
| FWIW that statement ("do not open issues") was added over one
| year ago, but the owner has also approved pull requests
| removing names as recently as 8 months ago.
|
| So I think pull requests are still accepted, but issues are
| not.
| henryaj wrote:
| It's interesting looking at the messages of recent commits of
| people removing their names:
|
| - Upon reflection, I don't think this letter was the right
| approach for this situation. Although I cannot retract my
| initial decision to sign it, I would appreciate having my
| signature removed from the document.
|
| - We had good intentions and reasons for concern, but there was
| no due process, and the consequences of that can be awful.
| Please accept my withdrawal.
|
| - The goal of providing safe spaces is laudable and necessary,
| but I expected to see further process outcomes from this
| effort. Perhaps some sort of SIP or scalarum iustitiae
| processus.
|
| - I no longer believe the way this letter was the right way of
| dealing with the situation. And while I cannot undo signing it,
| I would like to request removing my signature.
| yawaramin wrote:
| It says don't open issues, not don't send pull requests.
| blueflow wrote:
| To prevent things like these from happen again, you should never
| believe allegations of sexual misconduct. Refuse to bother about
| this, redirect people to the police and courts, let them do the
| job. Don't be like these people who put their signature on those
| letters - be a good person. The justice system exists for a
| reason.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Why are you being downvoted? You're right.
| cedws wrote:
| Leaving justice to the courts is common sense. Innocent until
| proven guilty.
| schnable wrote:
| Unfortunately, it is not common sense. Innocent until proven
| guilty is a very modern concept and still not practiced in
| much of the world. Human nature is tribal, we trust (or don't
| want to contradict) members of our groups, and we get a kind
| of a rush from "othering" people and ostracizing them,
| especially in a mob.
|
| It takes work to protect the integrity of our justice system.
| This applies to the members within it and for those outside
| of it--neither should sacrifice or attack its credibility for
| short term political or personal gain. It also requires
| proper education that focuses on the good, not just the
| failings.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Looking at several DNA cases - guilty, until proven innocent.
| cedws wrote:
| Can you explain?
| msgodel wrote:
| I think the correct thing to do is to punish accusers of
| provably false allegations as harshly as the accused would be.
|
| You might say "this will have a chilling effect on legitimate
| accusations" and you might be right, but the situation is bad
| enough now that it's created a pretty extreme chilling effect
| on socialization in general.
|
| EDIT: I don't normally do this but argue your point. If you
| continue playing games like down voting very reasonable ideas
| that you disagree with eventually all of us are going to come
| together and leave you out of the discussion entirely.
| jimjimwii wrote:
| This is how its done in many non western societies: if you
| allege something, you better have the receipts to back it up
| or face similar consequences.
| runako wrote:
| > punish accusers of provably false allegations as harshly as
| the accused would be.
|
| Are you aware that here you are arguing for criminal
| sanctions on the order of 10 years in prison, for writing a
| letter?
|
| You probably should expand on that.
|
| Edit: some people seem to be okay with this notion! Would
| love to hear thoughts on how stiff criminal penalties for
| what is in the end expressing are at all compatible with
| societies that claim to value free speech.
|
| Note that the author of the post does not present any proof
| that the allegations are false. Similarly, the other side
| likely cannot prove its allegations are true. So we are here
| discussing long prison sentences for unprovable opinions. I
| would love to hear how people justify that.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| Writing a letter for malicious reasons that had a very
| predictable outcome for an apparently innocent man*
|
| You can downplay any action by breaking it down to its
| foundations and stating it that way.
| runako wrote:
| > very predictable outcome for an apparently innocent man
|
| None of this is obviously accurate. More to the point, no
| court can adjudicate the "predictable outcome" of a
| letter or whether the reasons were malicious.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| They actually can, and have.
|
| In fact, that's a fundamental facet of a libel claim.
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| That sounds about right. Playing games with this _needs_ to
| be frightening or you 'll have people abusing it which is
| not only bad for innocent people who are accused but also
| discredits legitimate complaints. It's impractical for
| everyone to "believe all women" if half of them are lying
| for sport.
| purkka wrote:
| > Are you aware that here you are arguing for criminal
| sanctions on the order of 10 years in prison, for writing a
| letter?
|
| It's about writing a letter that can result in someone else
| receiving criminal sanctions on the order of 10 years in
| prison, when that someone might not have even written a
| letter.
|
| _Provably false_ is essential here.
| runako wrote:
| > Provably false
|
| As far as I can tell, nobody has offered (or likely can
| offer) proof of anything on either side and yet people
| are talking about long prison sentences for speech.
| msgodel wrote:
| Yes that is _precisely_ what I meant.
|
| Free speech is not the same as freedom to falsely accuse.
| Libel is absolutely illegal and has been since before the
| US was a country. Allowing things like this to happen means
| men and women formally socializing with eachother except in
| really limited or alternatively psychopathic ways isn't
| practical. It needs to stop and the only possibilities are
|
| a) Just exclude women entirely like we used to.
|
| b) Punish them very harshly for lying.
|
| I think most people would be more upset by a than b. I hope
| the feminists and egalitarians realize that this is the
| _pro_ feminism argument as the only practical alternative
| is to return to a formally patriarchal society. If people
| can 't appreciate the point I'm making then I suppose we'll
| end going with a which is unfortunate. Everyone who doesn't
| will eventually be cancelled by the same group of people
| they're aiming to support.
| runako wrote:
| We already have legal remedies for libel and defamation,
| I am not suggesting we remove those remedies.
|
| What is being discussed here is adding harsh criminal
| liability ultimately for expressing opinions, since we
| know that two people can experience the same event in
| very different ways.
| Peritract wrote:
| What about when the courts don't do the job?
|
| A lot of people are understandably low on trust for a legal
| system that doesn't do anything about multiple highly-public
| sexual offenders.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > What about when the courts don't do the job?
|
| Well, then you'd presumably fall back onto the old witch
| hunt; plenty of puritanical mobs are still around to say
| something like "What about when the courts don't do the job".
|
| Good thing we don't live in those unenlightened days, eh?
| Peritract wrote:
| MLK famously said 'a riot is the language of the unheard';
| if you want people to avoid social pressure (note: not a
| lynch mob -- no physical harm), you have to give them a
| better, fairer alternative.
|
| A functioning justice system for sex crime accusations
| would be amazing; for valid reasons, a lot of people do not
| trust that this exists.
| msgodel wrote:
| Alternatively you could identify the minority of people
| who tend to start riots and exclude them from society
| since they're almost always outsiders who resent being
| outsiders.
| etchalon wrote:
| There are a good number of what many would consider
| heinous behaviors that are not crimes. Even if our
| current system of justice worked perfectly, we would
| still be left with a basket of people who no one wanted
| to be associated with, but whom had, legally at least,
| "done nothing wrong."
| Peritract wrote:
| Do you have a solution to that that doesn't involve
| limiting freedom of association and speech?
| drewbeck wrote:
| "freedom of association" and "freedom of speech" are
| governmental concepts, used to limit the behaviors of
| governments.
|
| They are not some core, universal rights that every
| individual must respect when interacting with other
| individual.
|
| The accused in this case absolutely still has the citizen
| rights of association and speech. He can gather with
| people and he can publish his thoughts. The fact that a
| bunch of individuals have decided they don't want to
| gather with him is in no way a reduction of his rights.
| Peritract wrote:
| To be clear, I agree with you -- that was the point I was
| making.
|
| There's no right to being accepted, and no right to make
| people approve of your actions.
|
| It's not actually a problem in society that needs fixing
| if people decide not to associate with someone on the
| basis of their behaviour.
| lelanthran wrote:
| Doesn't matter how you dress it up, persecuting someone
| on the basis of absolutely no evidence other than victim
| testimony is, for all practical purposes, the modern
| equivalent of pointing at the witch and shrieking.
|
| > A functioning justice system for sex crime accusations
| would be amazing; for valid reasons, a lot of people do
| not trust that this exists.
|
| They have no valid reasons. No system is perfect.
| Claiming that the system getting it wrong 1 out of every
| 1000 times is a valid reason is just stupid; no system is
| perfect.
| Peritract wrote:
| There was a system for the witch trials as well; the
| accusations were just the starting point for the sham
| trials, torture, and executions. Are you okay with that
| because it was a system, even if imperfect?
|
| Our justice system doesn't fail 1 in a 1000 times,
| particularly when talking about sex crimes. It fails far
| more frequently than that, given the prevalence of sexual
| assault and the rarity of convictions [1]. Additionally,
| there's an aspect that justice must be seen to be done:
| high profile repeat offenders walking free damages
| confidence in the system out of proportion to their
| frequency.
|
| As above, if you want people to use a system, the system
| has to work.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/0
| 7/the-s...
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Are you okay with that because it was a system, even if
| imperfect?
|
| What makes you think I'm okay with the current system?
| Upthread I even said "if you are unhappy with the way
| things are, petition to change them instead of mobbing".
|
| Just because I hold the opinion that evidence matters
| does not mean that I am a bad person.
| Peritract wrote:
| I haven't said I think you're a bad person; it's bold to
| accuse someone of a misreading based on your own
| misreading.
|
| People aren't required to only critique a system using
| the tools that system provides; progress is often made
| when people step outside of the system (e.g. Rosa Parks)
| rather than quietly accepting it. There's evidence for
| that in countless civil rights campaigns.
| catapart wrote:
| Truly naive to think that the legal system that is currently
| shielding an offender as nefarious as Epstein is the place to
| turn to for reasonable treatment of sexual abuse victims.
|
| Not saying people should leap to letter signing, but it also
| misses the mark to suggest that the US legal system will
| resolve the issues these kinds of actions cause.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| who said anything about the US? the article isn't even
| talking about the US?
|
| it seems that the author lives in Germany and that he went
| to court in Britain: https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf
| Peritract wrote:
| The UK justice system has its own issues, and its own
| high-profile offenders without consequences. I'm not as
| familiar with Germany, but I imagine it has the same.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| absolutely. I'm just annoyed by the US centricism here.
| courts, lawyers, and the executive branch are all just
| people. it's not a never failing machine and it will
| never be one. just because there are instances of neglect
| doesnt mean the whole system is bogus imho. I'd even
| argue that it's more that the system isn't protected
| enough against people in power misusing it.
| exasperaited wrote:
| And yet it's the same (usually politically-aligned)
| interests who say:
|
| - "the BBC let this person get away with this for years"
| and also "cancel culture has to stop",
|
| - "there's too much filth on the internet" and "don't you
| dare demand I tell you my age",
|
| - or the most complex and culturally nuanced one:
| "children are being groomed" but "she's 18 now, she's an
| adult and she can make up her own mind about posing nude
| in a tabloid".
|
| As difficult as it is, any invitation to treat a subject
| with _less_ nuance is better considered misbegotten until
| scrutinised much, much further.
| catapart wrote:
| I did. In response to the thread starter, who made a
| generalized statement.
|
| If I've missed an implication that limited their
| suggestion to specific regions, them I'm happy to
| retract. But what I'm seeing is a general suggestion, so
| I've extrapolated that out and tried to apply it to a
| hypothetical where the advice might be appropriate.
|
| Feels like maybe you've assumed that the thread starter
| was scoping the suggestion to the regions where this
| offense occurred. Again, I don't see that implication in
| the text, but I feel like it's an entirely reasonable
| assumption. That being the case, I don't fault anyone for
| thinking only in those terms. But I also don't think I
| was out of line to engage with the thread starters points
| in the way that I did.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| sorry, my response was a bit too heated. I toned it down.
| lot's going on. you're right and it is fair to scope it
| further, it's a valid talking point.
| trelane wrote:
| "Do the job" depends a lot on what the facts are.
| Unfortunately, unless you were actually there, you can't know
| perfectly.
|
| It's a matrix: a perfect system would always punish the
| guilty and refuse to punish the innocent.
|
| Without perfect information, you have to choose: will you
| bias the outcome punish the innocent, or to not punish the
| guilty?
| etchalon wrote:
| There is no other crime where we'd "refuse to believe" the
| allegations, at least in a social context.
|
| If someone was accused of murder, or theft, in most cases,
| social stigma would be part of that. An admittedly sometimes
| unfair, but baseline thing we're gonna do as humans to protect
| ourselves.
|
| If your child was at a preschool, and a teacher was accused
| (but not convicted) of molestation, you wouldn't "be a good
| person and wait for the justice system to sort it out". You'd
| either demand the teacher be fired, or you'd take your kid out
| of the school.
| Tade0 wrote:
| But we're not at a preschool.
|
| Main issue with investigating child abuse is that the
| victim's account is unreliable as they might not yet even
| have the language to describe some things, so we err on the
| side of caution.
|
| In an environment where all participants are adults it makes
| sense to at least ask the alleged perpetrator if they're
| guilty and analyse their reaction.
|
| There was a notorious case in my corner of the world where a
| locally famous YouTuber was accused by his ex of sexual
| abuse. He lost a significant number of followers and of
| course revenue so he took her to court and won, as her story
| didn't add up.
|
| Undeterred, she continued, but with increasingly wild
| accusations and even attempting to rope in other people.
|
| I occasionally see a new post about this drama and it serves
| as a remainder that some people are just out to destroy
| others.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| The people who _start_ the cancellation should also face
| punishment imho. I think it 's very weird you can ruin
| someone's life and get away with it. If they had something, go
| to the police. This should be immediately liable.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean it is libel / defamation, but as the author describes,
| getting justice takes a long time and is very expensive, and
| that's assuming you even know who made the claims and they
| live in the same country as you.
|
| Besides, there may not be a criminal case / the police may do
| nothing. One of the accusers only came forward three years
| after the end of the two-year relationship; it's not unheard
| of for someone to realise that what happened was wrong years
| much later, at which point the police is less likely to do
| anything because any physical evidence will be gone by then,
| and it's one person's words against another's.
| throw310822 wrote:
| I know this is an unpopular take, but if it takes you years
| to "understand" that something was wrong, probably it
| wasn't wrong enough for a public accusation.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| It doesn't matter anyway; it's a case for the police.
| Like all the Epstein shit around Stallman/Minsky stuff;
| it's simply not up to the crowds to do this. If there is
| actually something it has to be proven in court and
| otherwise stfu.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| No actually, it would be; I'm going to pull the "think of
| the children" card, most victims of CSA don't fully
| understand what is happening, that it's wrong, and what
| they should do, especially not in a family setting. This
| is why a lot of these cases, including the Epstein case
| or the church cases, take years if not decades to be
| fully understood and action to be taken on it.
|
| The #metoo movement gave victims the push, visibility and
| protections they needed to stop hiding their abuse /
| protecting their abusers, sometimes decades after it
| happens.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > most victims of CSA don't fully understand what is
| happening
|
| Most victims of CSA are minors. No wait: all of them. CSA
| is a crime precisely because the victims are not able to
| understand what happens to them and not able to react
| appropriately. That's the distinction between minors and
| adults.
| squigz wrote:
| So something can be wrong, even if the victims don't
| realize it's wrong until some time later?
| throw310822 wrote:
| Yes, minors are expected to be unable to understand,
| especially in regards to sex.
|
| Adults are considered able to navigate sex &
| relationships and should take responsibility for what
| they do and what they don't do. There might be
| exceptional cases (e.g. cults) but I still think that
| public accusations of abusive behaviour in adult
| relationships, when they come with such delay, should be
| put under the utmost scrutiny.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I am only referring to getting some sort of lynch mob
| together to do this in public should be liable. The rest
| can be investigated etc; if you have two ex's (?) saying
| you are a predator or whatnot, that's fine, but doing so in
| public, contacting people you know, making 'open letters'
| in the background should simply be an immediate police
| visit and investigation possibly resulting in fines or
| jail. As this case is, from that perspective not hard; even
| if the guy turns out to be a serial rapist; that's a
| separate point; you _cannot_ (well should not be able to)
| organise lynch mobs to deal with it.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think some sort of registry is in order. Like sexual
| offenders. One that mandates that anyone on it has to start
| all of their interactions with other people by stating that
| they are registered offender. This then allows taking
| necessary actions to protect from false allegations.
| parliament32 wrote:
| They do, it's libel, and in this case there was a court
| decision against the signatories that were in the target's
| jurisdiction. I have little doubt he'd also win cases if he
| chased any of the others in their local courts but I think he
| just wants all this behind him.
| nyc_data_geek1 wrote:
| Except, in many cases the police and courts shield and enable
| abuse for years or decades, oftentimes at scale. So in reality,
| this approach is effectively one that silences victims and
| enables abusers.
| blueflow wrote:
| ... commenting on a case of abusive allegations.
| delecti wrote:
| The #metoo movement was in response to decades (centuries?
| millennia?) of abuse being basically unaddressable. It's
| totally fair to call it an overcorrection, but a correction
| was still needed. Are abusive accusations okay? Of course
| not, but there are far few stories of abusive accusations
| than accused with many accusers. Reverting to never
| believing accusers is just the status quo throughout human
| history, which is what metoo was an overcorrection to. It's
| just kicking the can.
| exasperaited wrote:
| This is one of those things that is obviously true but
| goes a pale grey and fades away from view because people
| are uncomfortable being confronted with obvious truth.
| Peritract wrote:
| I don't think it is fair to call #metoo an
| overcorrection. An overcorrection would imply the
| pendulum swung too far in the other direction, and it
| just didn't.
|
| There was one high-profile trial, of a man who was
| definitely guilty. A bunch of other accused people faced
| zero consequences. In total, the #metoo movement raised
| awareness and was dwarfed by its own backlash.
|
| An overcorrection would be what people fear-monger about:
| men arrested for innocently holding doors open, etc. None
| of that happened.
| bn-l wrote:
| Right but now you potentially create two victims. One who is
| at the mercy of no system and the other at the mercy of a
| flawed system. At least the flawed system has a process for
| when it gets things wrong.
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| Then the focus should be on reforming the police and courts,
| not on pivoting to vigilante justice.
| drewbeck wrote:
| Following this logic, there would be no remedy for these
| issues at all until the police and courts are successfully
| reformed. Which means much more continued harm done.
| bloak wrote:
| Leaving criminal stuff to the police and courts sounds sensible
| but "misconduct" isn't usually criminal.
|
| EDIT: Though I'm not suggesting people should sign letters
| about people they don't know based on allegations by other
| people they don't know.
| derektank wrote:
| There are many sub-criminal behaviors that should lead you to
| reconsider whether you want to affiliate with someone,
| personally or professionally.
|
| The problem is with people not being willing to decide for
| themselves whether someone's behavior meets this threshold, and
| letting the mob substitute their own judgement.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > The problem is with people not being willing to decide for
| themselves whether someone's behavior meets this threshold,
| and letting the mob substitute their own judgement.
|
| Yes -- additionally there's also the situation where they try
| repeatedly to act collectively on this for themselves but the
| individual in question (or a compromised individual) has
| power over the resulting action, right?
|
| I think it worth considering that many, if not most, of these
| "cancellations" occur long after serious attempts have been
| made to privately act that have been thwarted, often by
| commercial interests.
| derektank wrote:
| Sure. As I thought my first sentence made clear, I fully
| support anyone publicly airing allegations of wrongdoing
| and attempting to sway the opinion of others in doing so.
| It is sometimes the only way to meaningfully change a
| situation that can't be handled by the courts or private
| institutions.
|
| What I object to is the social dynamics of cancellation,
| where people feel compelled to e.g. sign an open letter,
| lest they themselves be viewed as siding with the accused,
| without fully considering the claims and counter-claims for
| themselves. I also object to creating a false sense of
| urgency, in order to to encourage this behavior.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Yes -- I do think there is a lesson about the pile-on.
|
| A few years back I criticised someone (without naming
| them) online (since the egregious, thoughtless conduct
| itself was online) and triggered something of a pile-on
| that I thought was a bit too much.
|
| Subsequently I realised that I had under-read the
| situation myself, and the conduct wasn't simply
| thoughtless at all, it was repeated, self-interested and
| very calculated; people finding that out was actually the
| accelerant of the pile-on.
|
| So I wasn't really so guilty of it after all. But I
| definitely witnessed what you talk about -- the "you're
| with us or with them" of it all, the social compulsion to
| join the pile-on.
|
| I will probably still openly criticise people if I think
| it is very merited, but any criticism needs to be
| tempered with as much of an antidote for a simple pile-on
| as it can.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| So who wants to "affiliate" with people who are prone to
| ruining other people's lives on a whim based on unfounded
| accusations that not rarely turn out to be false?
|
| Maybe there should be a public list of slanderers, defamers,
| mob justice participants and cancellers in general so we can
| all avoid them like the massive liabilities they are.
| drewbeck wrote:
| > unfounded accusations that not rarely turn out to be
| false?
|
| Do you have stats on this?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Varies. English sources generally give figures up to 10%.
| In my country, I've seen legal psychologists throw around
| numbers like 80% in certain contexts such as divorce
| cases involving child custody disputes.
|
| Every law, no matter how well meaning, can and will be
| abused. Women are not saints. Be especially wary when
| lies could provide secondary victories such as favorable
| child custody outcomes.
|
| Feminist discourse is overwhelmingly in favor of
| disregarding false positives: they would rather see
| thousands of innocent men suffer than watch a single
| guilty man go free. They cast a wide net and hope to
| catch the guilty men within it. They care not for the
| suffering they cause to the innocent. Quite the contrary,
| in fact: I've seen them try to justify it as historical
| reparation.
| drewbeck wrote:
| > The problem is with people not being willing to decide for
| themselves whether someone's behavior meets this threshold,
| and letting the mob substitute their own judgement.
|
| I don't think we can say that this is what happened here. The
| allegations were public; some signatories may not have read
| them and just gone along with the "mob", but many would have
| read them and made their judgements based on that. This isn't
| "letting the mob substitute [for] their own judgement."
| xrisk wrote:
| 1) This argument works only if the justice system is effective,
| which is not the case everywhere in the world
|
| 2) A lot of sexual misconduct happens behind closed doors and
| is (I would imagine. IANAL) difficult to prosecute. I'm not
| saying that one should believe everything at face value but if
| multiple people make such allegations it's more likely than not
| that such allegations have weight.
|
| 3) Not all sexual misconduct is "illegal". But it doesn't mean
| that communities should not attempt to censor people who engage
| in problematic behavior.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > 3) Not all sexual misconduct is "illegal". But it doesn't
| mean that communities should not attempt to censor people who
| engage in problematic behavior.
|
| With all respect, that's nonsense. Where do you draw the
| line? Your morals? My morals? The victim's morals?
|
| This is _why_ we have a justice system, so that there is one
| place where you can say "that is wrong" and "that is right".
|
| Forming a mob because "well, that person didn't akshually
| commit a crime, but we don't like the way they think about
| sex" is a primitive and regressive viewpoint.
|
| The correct way would be to petition to _make_ a law against
| whatever act you don 't like. Not to say "let's leave it
| legal and instead simply punish the person".
|
| No one should be facing a societal punishment without due
| process.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > With all respect, that's nonsense.
|
| It's not at all. The law doesn't cover all forms of
| community or personal misconduct, sexual or otherwise.
|
| And everyone -- especially businesses in Silicon Valley --
| understands this.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly. Sexual relations between adults is rarely
| illegal but most people have issues with it between
| subordinates and leaders in a company, etc. Often
| documented in company policy or other things, so it's
| against a rule, but not illegal.
|
| Same with various forms of cheating - adultery is illegal
| in some states; but not all. And even then rarely
| prosecuted.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Often documented in company policy or other things, so
| it's against a rule, but not illegal.
|
| Yes, and those rules are enforceable contracts with
| penalties for breaking clauses in those contracts.
|
| I want to know why, if those penalties are insufficient,
| is it better to join a mob than to petition the parties
| drawing up those contracts for stiffer penalties.
| wulfstan wrote:
| This is exactly right. Criminality is a very high bar!
| There are many behaviours that fall well short of
| criminality that we shouldn't accept in communities.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Like homosexuality, atheism, blasphemy, miscegenation,
| witchcraft, vagrancy, and a whole host of other "anti-
| social" behaviors, right? After all, who polices the
| morality police?
| xrisk wrote:
| It's for (often implicit) communities to decide;
| communities whose members share a certain set of norms.
|
| Further, legality does not imply correctness.
|
| For example, it's probably legal to call somebody a
| transphobic slur in many parts of the world but to suggest
| that trans people shouldn't attempt to avoid or "cancel"
| such people is ridiculous.
|
| And if you sincerely think that the only acceptable action
| to take is make a petition to change the law, I would
| suggest you go out and touch some grass. The law doesn't
| work that way.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > It's for (often implicit) communities to decide;
| communities whose members share a certain set of norms.
|
| This sounds great in theory - where "community" means the
| small town that you live in. In practice, "community"
| often means "terminally online social media users", and
| many of the members of this "community" have little
| interest in looking for context, facts, or the truth and
| are instead invested in pushing their worldview or just
| getting a rage boner.
|
| Edit: A great example of this in action was the "bike
| Karen" incident: https://archive.is/j0Yr8
|
| How much of the online "community" was all-in on the
| narrative that she was trying to take the teens' bike
| until more information came to light?
| xrisk wrote:
| > I'm not saying that one should believe everything at
| face value
| lelanthran wrote:
| > For example, it's probably legal to call somebody a
| transphobic slur in many parts of the world but to
| suggest that trans people shouldn't attempt to avoid or
| "cancel" such people is ridiculous.
|
| That's not what we're talking about here, are we? We're
| talking about a public dogpiling.
|
| And, TBH, your example is a poor one; while it's not
| illegal to slur/slander someone, there _are_ legal
| remedies that _dont '_ involve a global request to
| followers of a specific ideology to pile on.
|
| Avoid people you don't like? Certainly. Join a campaign
| to ostracise someone you never met and never knew existed
| until your ideologues extended an invitation to mob them
| _does not leave you on the right side of history_.
| Pxtl wrote:
| If you really feel that way, you should leave hacker news.
| The moderation here is quite firm. I can't post more than a
| few times a day because of Dang rate-limiting my account
| because of engaging in flamewars. It's not like I broke any
| laws, but it's their site.
|
| Especially in countries where "free speech" means I can
| basically say anything I want short of defamation, no
| matter how hateful, profane, sexually inappropriate, or
| otherwise offensive, it only makes sense that a community
| should go beyond the limits of the law to maintain a non-
| toxic environment.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > If you really feel that way, you should leave hacker
| news. The moderation here is quite firm.
|
| You need to explain what you mean by "that way", because
| I did not express any opinion on speech, free or
| otherwise.
|
| Your comment sounds like a pre-prepared one, for any
| occasion that someone is performing wrongthink.
| contagiousflow wrote:
| I would recommend you asking the women in your life what
| they think.
| satisfice wrote:
| well said!
| titanomachy wrote:
| "Communities", broadly, can do whatever they like. Someone
| who was consistently starting shit stopped getting invited
| to my friend group's rotating Sunday night dinner. They
| certainly didn't break any laws, we just decided we didn't
| want to spend our evenings arguing. I don't even remember
| if there was a discussion. If they make amends they will
| probably get invited back.
|
| "Communities censuring people for problematic behavior" has
| been an important human behavior since way before we had
| states and laws.
| lelanthran wrote:
| I don't see the relevance of your comment.
|
| > "Communities censuring people for problematic behavior"
| has been an important human behavior since way before we
| had states and laws.
|
| That's not what we're talking about here, though. We
| aren't talking about voluntarily ending out association
| with someone, the specific context is about forming a
| group and going after someone.
| polivier wrote:
| > This is why we have a justice system, so that there is
| one place where you can say "that is wrong" and "that is
| right".
|
| In most (all?) Western countries, cheating on your spouse
| is not illegal. But 99% of the people would say that "it is
| wrong".
| eurleif wrote:
| Adultery is a crime in 16 US states:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery_laws#United_States
| polivier wrote:
| These are probably the only exceptions.
| mil22 wrote:
| The logical consequence of this would be that all it takes to
| destroy someone's reputation is collusion between just two
| people who decide to make false allegations against someone.
| That is, frankly, ridiculous. Inadequacy of the justice
| system and the difficulty of prosecuting cases where there is
| a lack of (or in this case, no) evidence, doesn't justify
| abrogating the principle of "innocent until proven guilty."
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| Maybe unmarried people of opposite sexes just need to not be
| alone together and if they violate that rule they give up
| their right to seek any kind of "justice." There might be no
| peaceful alternative to that.
| xienze wrote:
| Does anyone remember how much mocking Mike Pence received
| over his personal rule to never be alone with a woman other
| than his wife? Very wise, as it turns out.
| xienze wrote:
| > A lot of sexual misconduct happens behind closed doors and
| is (I would imagine. IANAL) difficult to prosecute.
|
| Well that's why so many cases are civil and not criminal. The
| bar is much lower ("preponderance of evidence" versus "guilt
| beyond a reasonable doubt"). A man can be accused of some
| sexual act that occurred decades ago without any substantive
| information like what day it happened on, and if a jury says
| "well I believe her", it's a wrap.
| watwut wrote:
| It is important to punish victims of sexual harassments every
| time they talk about what happened to them. /s
|
| And you know full well that the whole range of sexual
| harassments is entirely legal.
| api wrote:
| When the law isn't doing its job, that's when the citizens will
| decide to form a posse and grab pitchforks.
|
| ... and it usually ends badly when this happens. One kind of
| injustice is replaced by another. But this is what people will
| do.
|
| Epstein? Jimmy Savile? The massive and still ongoing sex abuse
| scandals in not just the Catholic Church but many faiths? Those
| are high profile ones but there are so many examples of people
| getting away with sex abuse for years and years with dozens or
| even hundreds of victims. The wealthier, more powerful, or more
| famous and "loved" the abuser, the longer they can get away
| with it.
|
| I remember back in college being personally shocked at how many
| women I dated who had been raped or at least harassed in
| disgusting ways, as children or adults. It was like half. They
| told me the details and I had no reason to disbelieve them.
| I've since heard many similar and worse things from people I
| know.
|
| Part of why lynch mobs are so easy to form around allegations
| of sexual harassment and abuse is that it's so incredibly
| common. The allegations are easily believed.
| exasperaited wrote:
| You're basically saying at least one of these things here and
| you don't seem to know you are saying it:
|
| - If it's not something you can at least sue over or is not
| illegal, it's not misconduct we should care about.
|
| - If no one was at least prepared to sue, we should all just
| let it be.
|
| I think perhaps you don't understand that quite a lot of
| persistent unwanted behaviour never rises to that standard (or
| perhaps no individual victim was willing to put their head
| above the parapet).
|
| Anyone who has worked in education can tell you about someone
| whose unwanted behaviour escaped scrutiny for decades because
| each individual incident had enough deniability. I have never
| worked in education and I can identify at least two such cases
| from my own experiences. (Very likely a third, and there is no
| way that third person would ever have seen any kind of censure
| for what they were doing, because it was so deniable and
| because their victims would not even have classified themselves
| as victims)
|
| There are _plenty_ of occasions where a community quietly
| agreeing that someone 's behaviour is unacceptable has kept
| them from a situation where the harms they cause can escalate.
| blueflow wrote:
| Your argument goes both ways - slander is also misconduct.
| exasperaited wrote:
| It's not really both ways, it's the _same_ way, but yes.
| Usually communities deal with slander by themselves long
| before it becomes necessary for someone to take it to a
| court, and the bar needs to be quite high to take it to
| court (even in the UK where our laws are famously somewhat
| upside down on this topic)
| wulfstan wrote:
| Criminality is a very, very high bar for removing people from a
| community for misbehaviour, and much sexual misconduct isn't
| criminal. I don't think "leaving things to the police" is good
| advice in situations where a vulnerable minority group needs to
| be protected from predatory behaviour.
|
| In this situation you have an accusation of misconduct made by
| 1) young 2) women 3) new to a community 4) who don't speak
| English well. These are all big red vulnerability flags.
|
| I would ensure that every accusation of this nature is treated
| with respect and investigated by a trusted authority figure in
| a given community.
| squigz wrote:
| Believing the justice system is perfect and ignoring the
| countless failures of the justice system to punish sexual
| assault is pretty naive.
| anonymars wrote:
| Sorry this isn't related to the content (because I'm having
| difficulty reading it), but is it just me or is this font
| absolutely atrocious? It's way too thin in the best case, and
| omits the horizontal lines (e, A) in the worst case
|
| Edit: okay, vastly different experience on phone vs desktop.
| Looks normal enough on the monitor except, as someone points out,
| the weird f and j
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| I don't see anything outrageous about it other than the
| lowercase 'f' and 'j', which are quite annoying.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| Lowercase "h" and "s" are also very strange.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| They're a little different, as are some of the numerals,
| but I don't find them nearly as distracting as "f" and "j."
| Hendrikto wrote:
| Absolutely. I normally don't care much about fonts, but this
| one is so weird it is actually hard to read.
| etchalon wrote:
| I'm not seeing anything in the post with any legal resolution or
| "proof" the accusations were false. Whatever case he had was
| settled out-of-court. It doesn't seem like the accusing parties
| were asked or agreed to take any action retracting their claims.
|
| So, as observers, what we're left with is two people accusing
| someone of something and the accused saying they're innocent.
| xyzal wrote:
| https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf
| swiftcoder wrote:
| That doesn't appear to involve the accusers at all - the
| consent order is against 4 signatories of the open letter,
| and merely states that they didn't have proof of the accusers
| claims?
| wulfstan wrote:
| Yes; that is correct. They are admitting they made an
| accusation without evidence or an investigation to support
| the claim. This is a civil matter and says absolutely
| nothing about the truth or otherwise of the claims made.
| maeln wrote:
| Arguably, the open letter was the most damaging (since it
| was the one who ostracize them from the scala community).
| And I guess he sued the signee who were in the same country
| (UK from what I understand). Suing people cross-country is
| a mightmare.
| verelo wrote:
| The closing remarks by the defendants seem to be what the
| parent comment is looking for.
| etchalon wrote:
| It's not.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I'm not seeing anything in the post with any legal resolution
| or "proof" the accusations were false.
|
| You don't need to prove accusations of criminal conduct false.
| The onus is on the accusers to prove the allegations true.
|
| > It doesn't seem like the accusing parties were asked or
| agreed to take any action retracting their claims.
|
| In theory there are punitive measures for false accusations, in
| practice no one ever bothers with them.
| netcan wrote:
| This is not a courtroom. Not even a pseudo-court of public
| opinion.
|
| There's a difference between listening to someone's story and
| assuming truthfulness... and joining a mob going after
| someone.
|
| He's not naming his accusers or asking the reader to go after
| them.
| netcan wrote:
| >as observers, what we're left with is two people accusing
| someone of something and the accused saying they're innocent.
|
| This is the point though, isnt it. He's writing a retrospective
| about the impact of public condemnation and ostracization as a
| result of such proof-less, process-less accusations.
|
| Neither the accusation nor the denial come with proof. This is
| not exactly about what should we do in this circumstance. Its
| about what peiple _did_ fo in these circumstances.
|
| You can doubt his innocence. But... and this is the crucial
| point... this post is not attempting to punish the accusers. So
| to me... normal rules apply. Assumption of good faith and
| honesty, to some extent, apply.
|
| If I read the other side's story, then I'd probably read it
| from the same perspective.
|
| That's ok... because we aren't hanging someone at the end of
| this conversation. If we are, different standards apply.
| exizt88 wrote:
| If the accusers had evidence, they would have surely provided
| it to the defendants in the defamation case.
| etchalon wrote:
| Why would they have?
| luma wrote:
| I hereby accuse you of robbing a bank.
|
| OK, now prove you didn't.
| seebeen wrote:
| I've followed the initial controversy when it began. Changed my
| view on cancellations forever.
|
| A really sad story, but also a cautionary tale.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| What ended up being the reason for the false allegations if I
| can ask?
|
| Like, why did they really get together and do this to this poor
| guy?
|
| Edit: From the downvotes I'm guessing this isn't actually
| resolved? This is the first I'm hearing about this saga.
| piker wrote:
| > a charitable foundation to promote Functional Programming in
| Africa
|
| Niche
| huhkerrf wrote:
| Things seem to have cooled down on the cancellation front since
| the peak fever of 2020 and 2021, so I don't see it as much
| anymore. But for a while, the rejoinder of the cancellers was
| always, "well, he can just find a different job" or "he got a
| different job, cancelled yeah right."
|
| As if the job was all that mattered.
|
| We are social creatures. Shunning and ostracism have a
| significant impact, even when happening by people we don't know,
| especially when it's a pile-on.
|
| I'm not saying there's never a reason to shun someone. If people
| do something terrible, cut ties with them. I don't think that's
| what a lot of this is, though. If it was, it wouldn't happen on
| such flimsy evidence and it wouldn't happen to people others
| don't even know.
|
| Most cancellations are a blood letting, where people are trying
| to feel powerful and the cancelled (or even the wronged) don't
| really matter.
| huhkerrf wrote:
| That's also why, generally, apologies don't matter. Go look at
| an apology of a "cancelled" person.
|
| How many replies are about how the apology sounds hollow, or
| how a PR person must have written it?
| exasperaited wrote:
| It's surely not your contention that said apologies sound
| hollow because there is nothing really to apologise for and
| therefore it is inherently untrue?
|
| There are some challenges with media-based apologies because
| they can only be done at all through media PR systems, of
| course, and there's an impact therefore on the shape and
| style of an apology that Marshall McLuhan might have written
| about if he were still here.
|
| So there's an element of apology fatigue that will prompt
| some of those replies.
|
| But even then, apologies that sound hollow or sound written
| by PR generally _are_ somewhat hollow or written with help
| from, or experience of, PR. Usually the PR of a law firm,
| right?
|
| It is wholly possible to apologise in ways that do not have
| those qualities, and wholly possible for people to recognise
| them.
| huhkerrf wrote:
| >It's surely not your contention that said apologies sound
| hollow because there is nothing really to apologise for and
| therefore it is inherently untrue?
|
| I can not understand at all how you got that from my
| message.
|
| As for the rest of what you're saying. Yes, there's a way
| to apologize in a way that don't have those qualities, and
| it's apologizing directly to the people you've wronged, if
| you have. Apologizing to a faceless group is pointless.
| exasperaited wrote:
| That's why it was a question.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > Apologizing to a faceless group is pointless.
|
| Well... it might be at least pragmatic. Apologising to
| the wider community for wronging a member of the
| community is normal; it's also expected.
|
| And I guess apologising to one's audience for not being
| who they think you are is essentially, the same thing,
| just with a parasocial twist.
|
| Parasocial "communities" exist (fandoms) and they do
| rather complicate things.
| siva7 wrote:
| > Things seem to have cooled down on the cancellation front
| since the peak fever of 2020 and 2021, so I don't see it as
| much anymore. But for a while, the rejoinder of the cancellers
| was always, "well, he can just find a different job" or "he got
| a different job, cancelled yeah right."
|
| Thank god society got more mature since then and didn't
| participate in imagine some kind of doxing app for this purpose
| :)
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I absolutely do not agree with public pile-ons, social media
| hysteria, or understandable mistakes leading to cancellation.
| Everyone should be able to make mistakes and learn from them --
| that is incredibly important.
|
| But shame is _also_ incredibly important in that it causes
| self-policing of social norms. There is no way that society
| would work if everyone just did things that benefited them with
| no regard to others, in ways that weren 't actively harmful but
| just annoying. That's why we have norms and enforce them with
| shame. If this gets broken down because people use shaming
| inappropriately then it will be used as a reason to do away
| with shaming completely. We see this trend happening and its
| continuation can only lead to bad outcomes.
| scrozart wrote:
| Agreed. Additionally, negative sanctions have been part of
| human life since the beginning. Anyone who has raised a child
| or pet understands this.
|
| This discussion of far more nuanced than many of the comments
| in this post address. It's true people are often swiftly
| found guilty in the public eye without due process - see most
| true crime - but it's also true such sanctions have their
| place.
| ElectricSpoon wrote:
| On the flip side of cancellation, I wonder how much people
| cancelling are hurting themselves by sticking to retaliation.
|
| Go read about the psychology of forgiveness. There are some
| pros to "letting it go", when appropriate.
| archagon wrote:
| Well, maybe women who've been sexually harassed for most of
| their lives, and who couldn't even feel safe at their own
| community events, were fed up with "letting it go."
|
| (Caveat: I have no idea what happened with this particular
| person.)
| bobsmooth wrote:
| People making judgements without having all the facts is
| the main issue here.
| archagon wrote:
| I think the main issue is people being fed up with
| society treating them like crap and taking advantage of
| an opportunity to do something about it.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Sure, if you ignore the federal government of the united
| states.
| jimbokun wrote:
| "well, he can just find a different job" they said while trying
| to make it impossible for that person to find another job.
| rikafurude21 wrote:
| > And in that one moment, I lost most of the life I knew. I
| offered my resignation from my developer advocacy job because it
| became untenable and it was damaging my employer, even though we
| both knew there was no cause to terminate my employment.
|
| So he just left his job for no reason? This seems compeletely
| self-inflicted. The following paragraphs are about he "had to"
| drop various projects - Why would you just drop everything?
| zwily wrote:
| The reason is listed in the second half of the block you
| quoted.
| clarionbell wrote:
| I do hope that some members of the mob will reflect and repent.
| That they will be more hesitant next time. But unfortunately, I
| have a feeling that they are mostly going to double down.
|
| Real monsters are walking free of consequence, while innocents
| are ruined. Society is so obsessed with moral puritanism, and
| completely blind to the absurd corruption at the top.
|
| If all that energy expended on cancelling people was instead used
| on genuine political action, we wouldn't be in the trouble we are
| now at. If more people were reasonable at the time and didn't
| jump to conclusions, they would still have the high ground.
| Instead they became the boy who cried wolf.
| y-curious wrote:
| The members of the mob are thus because they seek to avoid
| reflection on their actual lives. I don't think there will be
| much learning; We will see them at the next mass movement.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I dunno if they will; it can be a case where "if you're not for
| us, you're against us", that is, what would the consequence
| have been for people not signing it? Or what if they retract
| their signature? There will be people out there tracking and
| logging all of the signers and their actions.
| zarzavat wrote:
| To paraphrase an Internet aphorism, don't have personal
| relationships with mentally unsound people. There are many ways
| to ruin someone's life, cancellation is but one of them.
|
| If someone really wants to ruin your life, they will find a way.
| The most effective way to avoid that is to screen your partners
| aggressively.
| y-curious wrote:
| The aphorism you're referring to, is it "don't commit your code
| to an unstable repository"?
|
| Yes, being policed by the mob is terrible.
| titanomachy wrote:
| This is great advice, I'll start applying it as soon as I
| figure out a universal test for "mental soundness".
|
| All people are imperfect. Many people act in ways that don't
| make sense to me. But labeling someone "crazy" and refusing to
| associate with them is a big judgment to make.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| This is why I generally try to avoid women.
| king_magic wrote:
| cancellation often doesn't feel that much conceptually different
| from cultural revolution struggle sessions.
| figassis wrote:
| Not excusing anyone who jumps at judgement, but this illustrates
| the importance of protecting the integrity of due process. People
| have over time seem many cases of due process being corrupted by
| money, power or just incompetence. Many times it has happened to
| them. Due process is often opaque, complex and lengthy so they
| decided to bring that in-house and make their own judgements.
|
| I have learned to fight the instinct to judge because many times
| I judged very very sure of my conclusions, only to find put some
| time later how completely wrong I was. It's scary, how a rational
| person can feel so righteous and yet be so wrong. As a rule I try
| never to make a decision on the same day I receive information.
| You'd be surprised how much your opinion can change once you
| digest your info.
| ZpJuUuNaQ5 wrote:
| >People have over time seem many cases of due process being
| corrupted by money, power or just incompetence. Many times it
| has happened to them. Due process is often opaque, complex and
| lengthy so they decided to bring that in-house and make their
| own judgements.
|
| I doubt that's the case here. People just love maltreating
| someone for a "good cause". It's the most delicious of moral
| treats.
| netsharc wrote:
| > People just love maltreating someone for a "good cause".
| It's the most delicious of moral treats.
|
| My theory is that people do it (hey I do it too) to get the
| kick of "look at that piece of shit, I'm glad compared to
| them I'm a better/smarter/etc person.".
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _look at that piece of shit, I 'm glad compared to them I'm
| a better/smarter/etc person_
|
| I mean, that's the entire basis of human ego. That's never
| going away. It's the reason we have in-groups and out-
| groups. Nations and foreigners. We had slaves and free
| people for this very reason.
|
| If the requirement is to get rid of that kind of thinking,
| then get ready to simply deal with this forever. Because
| that type of thinking is human nature, and it's never going
| away.
|
| We need fixes that acknowledge and align with human nature.
| danaris wrote:
| > I mean, that's the entire basis of human ego
|
| ...No, it's not?
|
| Plenty of people make the basis of their ego "look at
| _me_ , at the things _I 'm_ capable of," with no
| reference to anyone else's capability.
|
| If your ego is reliant on not merely being good yourself,
| but on being better than _everyone around you_ , then it
| sounds like you've got some serious insecurities to work
| out...?
| rpdillon wrote:
| > It's scary, how a rational person can feel so righteous and
| yet be so wrong.
|
| This is such an important idea to me. We all really only live
| in our own lives, and even if we read and talk to others
| endlessly, it's very hard to learn the full scope of the world
| and others' struggles. So there's some hubris to thinking that
| you fully understand things and can judge them absolutely.
|
| Not saying there's no right and wrong, just that maybe
| reserving judgment has its place. I mostly think about this to
| coach myself, but I think it has use for others as well.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Something similar to this is my personal stance against the
| death penalty, where I think in the grand scheme of
| uncertainty, we should err on the side of caution by drawing
| the line before taking lives in an institutionalized fashion.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Fighting the instinct to judge is really important.
|
| Both my father and I have excellent "gut feelings" to the point
| that "I hate being right" is the family motto.
|
| It would be so easy to believe I'm always right in my judgement
| of people. But I'm extremely wrong at least 5% of the time.
|
| If nothing else, that 5% helps me learn to read people better.
| If I didn't reserve judgment, that 5% would quickly become 50%.
| Artoooooor wrote:
| I am so enraged when allegations alone cause some people to act
| as if they were conviction. All these people should now restore
| all lost things bit by bit. Lost money, job, experience, health,
| contacts, opinion of all people that they managed to break.
| Acting based solely on accusations is acting in bad, not good
| faith.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| And this is why I always prefer anonymity, whether it's in online
| discussions, contributing code, or even casual dating.
|
| Otherwise one mistake or the malignant intent of another can
| cause irreparable damage to my personal reputation.
| wulfstan wrote:
| I have no idea who is telling the truth in this situation, and
| unless you are the person who has been accused or those who are
| the alleged victims, neither do you. For situations like this
| where the allegations fall short of criminal misconduct, a
| thorough process run by someone independent of the situation
| needs to a) to evaluate the claims made b) determine whether they
| are justified c) issue a clear and open report on what took place
| for the benefit of the community involved. As far as I can tell
| no investigation has been carried out to verify or falsify claims
| made by the individuals concerned.
|
| But - it is worth stating very clearly that history is replete
| with examples of men who have used their senior position in
| communities to take advantage of women, and if what these women
| say is true, it would be utterly unsurprising to me. The High
| Court judgement in this situation is a civil matter; nobody has
| been "cleared" of anything.
|
| In the absence of an investigation, you can read the original
| statements made by the women who made the accusations of
| wrongdoing [here](https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-
| with-sexual-hara...) and
| [here](https://killnicole.github.io/statement/), and you can form
| your own opinion about who is telling the truth based on what
| little there is to go on.
|
| EDIT: s/judgement/opinion/
| netcan wrote:
| Well... unfortunately the world does not come equipped with a
| "figure out the truth and report back" button.
|
| We have some truth-discovering methods... but they are hard,
| expensive, and often return empty handed. Science. Courts. Fact
| finding commitees. Etc.
|
| So... you can't have that. What we have is heresy, and a _" how
| to act_" dilemma in circumstances where truth isn't known and
| will not be known.
|
| Im going to encourage you _not_ to form your own opinion on who
| is lying. Read the accusations of you want.. but don 't pretend
| you are in a position to judge... only to execute.
| postexitus wrote:
| The high court judgement is against part of the lynch mob, not
| the original accusers. Given their original statements are
| still up, I would assume they are still behind their words and
| neither the judgement nor his side of the story invalidates
| their experiences.
| Pxtl wrote:
| What court judgement? In TFA he says they settled.
| postexitus wrote:
| You are right - here is the document:
| https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf
| Pxtl wrote:
| Wait, the people who settled are signatories? Neither are
| the original women who made allegations against him? The
| post said "people in my jurisdiction" but it didn't click
| until now that this meant that he never formally
| challenged the original allegations. I guess that makes
| sense with the difficulty if international lawsuits...
| but still, it means his accusers have never actually been
| challenged in court.
| stickfigure wrote:
| It appears this was filed in Britain. The UK has famously
| expansive libel laws that place the burden of proof on
| the defense.
|
| I wouldn't read much into the settlement.
| cbeach wrote:
| If the women in question had gone to the actual courts, rather
| than the Scala community, they might have had an opportunity to
| see justice (assuming their allegations are true). But because
| they chose to make very public accusations that were widely
| circulated, they have now denied themselves the opportunity to
| use the legal system, because they have prejudiced the process.
|
| I don't know if they'd consider this a problem, though, given
| the life-destroying outcome meted out by the Scala community
| may actually exceed the punishment the legal system would have
| deemed appropriate.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| What specific advice would you give young women in such a
| situation?
|
| >I don't know if they'd consider this a problem, though,
| given the life-destroying outcome meted out by the Scala
| community may actually exceed the punishment the legal system
| would have deemed appropriate.
|
| Are you suggesting that if Pretty were found liable for
| sexual harassment against two different women that he would
| not have also faced similar negative social outcomes?
| cbeach wrote:
| > What specific advice would you give young women in such a
| situation?
|
| If you have been sexually harrassed, don't blog about it,
| report it to the correct authorities.
|
| The Government is literally campaigning against people to
| stop prejudicing the judicial process via social media:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/news/attorney-general-
| launches...
|
| Everyone who hopes to seek justice needs to read this
| advice
|
| > Are you suggesting that if Pretty were found liable for
| sexual harassment against two different women that he would
| not have also faced similar negative social outcomes?
|
| My point is that the legal system might have weighed up the
| evidence and considered this case inadmissable, or ruled in
| Jon's favour. In which case he would have been exonerated
| in public view by the authorities, and he might have been
| able to piece his life back together. As it stands, he is
| in an awful limbo situation where hearsay prevents him
| getting any gainful employment.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| 1. From what I've read, the majority of the alleged
| behaviors happened outside the UK (Germany and USA from a
| quick glance).
|
| 2. It's unclear to me that any of the behavior alleged to
| have happened in the US (where the accusers reside) is
| considered criminal behavior in the US. The usual
| remediation in the US for sexual harassment is civil, so
| there are no authorities to contact.
| praptak wrote:
| Maybe both sides are telling the truth. I mean that this
| fragment:
|
| _" It was like reading a fiction about me concocted from
| benign fragments of reality, transplanted into new context to
| make them sound abominable."_
|
| makes it sound like the accusations weren't based on totally
| made up facts. It was rather a biased (is the author's view)
| interpretation thereof.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Not saying I know the truth here, but you are falling for the
| oldest trick in the book. Effective lies always work in
| little tidbits of truth (as externally known/validated by the
| audience).
| praptak wrote:
| I hadn't even read the original accusations when I wrote
| this, just this fragment, so I don't think I got exposed to
| any tricks by the accusers (except maybe indirectly by the
| author).
|
| I am only saying that even the person being accused does
| not directly confront the accusers about any facts.
| lotyrin wrote:
| What evidence do you have that anyone here is lying? Given
| my priors I am inclined to believe everyone involved here
| is a reliable reporter of their lived experience, just
| their lived experiences of the same events are wildly
| different.
|
| If you are claiming it's more likely that these women are
| lying because they want to punish men for the crime of
| being men than it is likely that everyone here is a victim
| of a culture that encourages men to behave this way and
| pressures women to accept it silently you're delusional or
| acting in bad faith.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >you can form your own judgement about who is telling the truth
| based on what little there is to go on
|
| Therein lies the danger. An outsider with little knowledge
| cannot make a good judgement. Their judgement will be based on
| intangibles, such as "something similar happened to somebody I
| know, so I tend to believe X's account over Y's account".
|
| But that's not proof, or evidence, or anything really. It's
| just naked bias from a different situation applied to an
| unrelated one. Saying "history is replete with examples" is
| exactly that. If that is going to be used as a metric, then it
| is well worth it for men to consider that mentoring women
| carries with it a high degree of risk. No matter how you
| behave, a single accusation from somebody willing to lie or
| exaggerate--for whatever reason--will be supported and
| amplified using this same historical rationale.
| wulfstan wrote:
| I do not accept that this is "naked bias".
|
| If the accusations are true, then this is yet another example
| of a pattern of behaviour played out so regularly, across
| cultures, centuries and communities, that it is boringly
| predictable: "Senior community member, almost always a man,
| sexually exploits vulnerable women seeking acceptance into
| that community."
|
| When a possible situation arises you should investigate it
| and, if there is reasonable evidence that it is true, do what
| you can to stamp it out and ensure it stops happening.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| In Jon Pretty's case, if his account is true, it wasn't
| investigated. It was simply decided in a court of public
| opinion, quite possibly because of the historical metric
| you brought up.
|
| The only way you can _ensure_ that it stops happening is
| strict segregation by sex, but I don 't think that's what
| you'd want.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| If this was done bayesian style we could say the priors are
| man taking advantage of woman. 9 cases out of 10 if there
| is a rape case you can assume the perp is male and if you
| don't you are like a born yesterday idiot. And if you're a
| woman it's super important to keep it in mind, like you
| think of getting into elevator (or airbnb like in this
| case) alone with a random man you should not be like "let's
| not pre judge people".
|
| With wrong cancellation it's different because it's not an
| urgent situation and people should not ruin someone's life
| randomly. It would be stupid to force us to think "really
| there's a 50/50 chance if the rapist is that man or that
| woman" but if you say "there's a 50/50 chance if the guy is
| a creep or that woman is scheming something" then it can be
| not that wrong (depending on country)
|
| But in this case we still don't know who is wrong. This is
| the original letter https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-
| experience-with-sexual-hara... and it was not shown false.
| All that the courts said was "no evidence was provided".
| And the guy didn't clearly deny it in the letter as I
| understand it
| geysersam wrote:
| It's not as easy as some people make it out to be to create a
| believable story about abusive behavior.
|
| > then it is well worth it for men to consider that mentoring
| women
|
| You don't need to worry unless you're having sex with your
| mentees. If you do, then yeah maybe you need to think twice
| about that, and maybe that's not such a bad thing?
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >You don't need to worry unless you're having sex with your
| mentees.
|
| "He exhibited problematic behavior. He touched me
| inappropriately. He cornered me in an elevator. He used
| demeaning language and made me feel unworthy."
|
| Zero sex involved, and these accusations can be completely
| true or untrue, depending on undefinable intangibles and
| individual interpretations.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I know someone who was written up at work for what (after
| the investigation) amounted to "brief, unwanted eye
| contact" with a co-worker. It's kind of a minefield and
| casual, innocent behavior can easily be misinterpreted.
| stickfigure wrote:
| All of those things are far worse than having
| (consensual) sex with your mentees.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| What if "he cornered me in the elevator" was actually "he
| talked to me while we were alone together in the
| elevator, but I have background trauma that made this
| extremely uncomfortable for me".
|
| That's the point I was trying to make. One person's
| interpretation can be wildly different than another's
| interpretation of the same event. If we are going to
| assign preference to the interpretation that is the most
| damaging to both parties involved--she is traumatized, he
| is fired--then perhaps it is better to completely
| separate the sexes.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| But has this ever in the history of time happened? In the
| "elevatorgate" scandal you're referencing here:
|
| * The guy _followed_ her onto the elevator.
|
| * The guy explicitly invited her to his room for a 4 AM
| coffee.
|
| * She didn't identify the guy at all, just mentioned this
| as an offhand example of something it would be nice for
| men to avoid doing.
| sho_hn wrote:
| There's plenty of sex mentioned in
| https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-
| hara...
| geysersam wrote:
| If you read the blog posts of at least one of the women
| it's very clear that in her story sex was involved. And I
| doubt he's contesting that part of the story.
|
| Point I was trying to make is it's not actually _that_
| hard to be outside of the risk zone for being cancelled.
|
| If you're mentoring a young woman, don't suggest to share
| Airbnb together, don't drink alone and then initiate sex.
| Not doing those things makes it extremely unlikely to
| ever be accused of taking advantage of someone.
| ghusto wrote:
| > I have no idea who is telling the truth in this situation,
| and unless you are the person who has been accused or those who
| are the alleged victims, neither do you
|
| Almost sounds like there'd be a long established fair-as-
| possible process for dealing with these situations, doesn't it?
|
| > But - it is worth stating very clearly that history is
| replete with examples of men who have used their senior
| position in communities to take advantage of women
|
| And now history is replete with examples of woman destroying
| the lives of men with no process or consequence.
| maeln wrote:
| > > I have no idea who is telling the truth in this
| situation, and unless you are the person who has been accused
| or those who are the alleged victims, neither do you
|
| > Almost sounds like there'd be a long established fair-as-
| possible process for dealing with these situations, doesn't
| it?
|
| A fair-as-possible process that is only fair if you have
| enough money to afford a lawyer, the time to fight for your
| case, are not part of a community that has been
| systematically discriminated against by the people enforcing
| the process, that the laws are in your favor, that you are
| not victim of a difficult to prove crime, ...
|
| I will never advocate for vigilante justice, but let's not
| kid ourselves, the justice system has many, many flaws and
| bias, and acting as if it should be the only source of truth,
| and that no personal judgment should be made without, is very
| naive.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| The justice system is pretty terrible, but it's still
| better than mob justice.
|
| > and that no personal judgment should be made without
|
| I think it's fine to make personal judgements about things
| that have little impact on other people. For things that
| have a big impact, a more formal approach is called for. I
| think TFA makes a strong case that the impact here is big.
| maeln wrote:
| > The justice system is pretty terrible, but it's still
| better than mob justice.
|
| Absolutely, but there is a space between mob justice and
| the legal system. Most community do self police in some
| form or another. It is also far from perfect, and
| mistakes happen just like in the other system. But it is
| a middle ground between the heavier burden of proof and
| long process used by the legal system, and the lack of
| usually any proof and visceral reaction of mob mentality.
|
| Member of a community usually have more information about
| the other member of the community, which inform their
| judgment. They have also more at stakes.
|
| > I think it's fine to make personal judgements about
| things that have little impact on other people. For
| things that have a big impact, a more formal approach is
| called for. I think TFA makes a strong case that the
| impact here is big.
|
| If we choose to believe him. If we choose to believe the
| accuser, then we could reason that by "exposing" him they
| may have prevented other victim. Something a long and
| legal process might not have prevented. I am not saying
| this is the case. I know personally neither the accuser
| nor the accused, and have no real way to make an informed
| decision in this case.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| > But it is a middle ground between the heavier burden of
| proof and long process used by the legal system, and the
| lack of usually any proof and visceral reaction of mob
| mentality.
|
| Where do you see the line between community self-policing
| and mob justice? I agree that community members often
| have information about each other, but I think it's often
| low-grade and commingled with vague popularity and
| "office politics". I interpreted the situation in TFA to
| be that many people signed the letter who had little
| information either way.
|
| >> I think TFA makes a strong case that the impact here
| is big.
|
| > If we choose to believe him.
|
| Here I was only talking about the impact it had on him,
| not whether or not he was guilty of something. I think we
| can believe that it had a big impact on him. Or do you
| suspect that he is exaggerating for effect?
| ghusto wrote:
| At no point was I insinuating that the justice system isn't
| flawed. It's heavily flawed, for all to see.
|
| The alternative however, is unjustifiable. Mob law is worse
| than no law.
| wulfstan wrote:
| No - and in fact in my view this is the core problem with
| these kinds of situations - there isn't a long established
| process validating a set of accusations, that if true, fall
| short of criminality but should result in your exclusion from
| a community.
|
| Individual communities have to establish ground rules for
| these sorts of things to protect the vulnerable.
|
| > And now history is replete with examples of woman
| destroying the lives of men with no process or consequence.
|
| I do not accept that this happens with nearly the regularity
| that people, usually men, claim it does. To make these kinds
| of accusations as a woman tears your life apart in
| unimaginable ways.
|
| By way of example, 1 in 100 rape accusations MADE TO THE
| POLICE in the UK leads to a charge being made against the
| accused. That is what we as a society are up against, and why
| we have to take creepy, exploitative behaviour that falls
| short of criminality so seriously.
| mattbee wrote:
| > No - and in fact in my view this is the core problem with
| these kinds of situations - there isn't a long established
| process validating a set of accusations, that if true, fall
| short of criminality but should result in your exclusion
| from a community. > Individual communities have to
| establish ground rules for these sorts of things to protect
| the vulnerable.
|
| You can never sue anyone for ostracizing you from an open
| community, or for the consequences of that ostracism.
| There's no limit on who global communities might choose to
| ostracize. It's so fundamental to how we group together;
| you always have to know the norms.
|
| British law is famously friendly to wealthy litigants, and
| the High Court for awarding ruinous damages. The OP took an
| opportunity to sue four signatories who (from my
| understanding of the court order) put their name to harmful
| allegations that they didn't know the truth of. The four
| defendants paid PS20,000 in costs and damages.
|
| Unfortunately for the OP, the ostracism clearly still
| stands, and despite going to the High Court to sue for
| libel, the first-hand reports of his conduct are still
| online.
|
| I don't see this as a lesson in the terrifyingly and
| unpredictable consequences of Cancellation - seems like
| more "don't shit where you eat".
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| You seem to think that the fact that
|
| > 1 in 100 rape accusations MADE TO THE POLICE in the UK
| leads to a charge being made against the accused
|
| backs up your claim that
|
| > To make these kinds of accusations as a woman tears your
| life apart in unimaginable ways
|
| But this is not the case at all, unless you intended "these
| kinds of accusations" to mean _both_ making formal charges
| and writing accusatory blog posts -- but the whole reason
| for this article is to point out the massive amount of
| damage that the _latter_ can do at almost no cost to the
| accuser. Absent further evidence, it 's clear that in this
| particular case, the two accusers' lives were not at all
| "torn apart" by making these life-destroying accusations --
| do you agree?
| wulfstan wrote:
| > But this is not the case at all, unless you intended
| "these kinds of accusations" to mean both making formal
| charges and writing accusatory blog posts -- but the
| whole reason for this article is to point out the massive
| amount of damage that the latter can do at almost no cost
| to the accuser. Absent further evidence, it's clear that
| in this particular case, the two accusers' lives were not
| at all "torn apart" by making these life-destroying
| accusations -- do you agree?
|
| Absolutely not! Assume the alleged victims are telling
| the truth, and read their statements again, carefully. Do
| they sound to you like people whose lives _weren 't_ torn
| apart by the experience? They needed counselling,
| therapy, time off work. These sound to me like
| traumatised people. You can argue that what they had to
| deal with wasn't "as bad" as what the accused had to deal
| with, but I don't accept that women make public
| accusations of sexual exploitation casually without any
| personal consequences, and certainly not in this case.
|
| The "1 in 100" statistic is to remind people of a few
| things: firstly, knowing that you will have to expose
| your sex life to the police and there is only a _very
| small probability that anything will actually be done
| about it_ , some women are still brave enough to try, and
| secondly, that underneath these 1 in 100 accusations are
| many others who just cannot bring themselves to the point
| of talking to the police about what they have
| experienced.
|
| I think we should give women who make these accusations
| the benefit of the doubt while establishing the facts,
| acknowledging that coming forward to raise your voice
| about these things is extremely difficult. If men can by
| and large rape women - commit a crime against them - with
| relatively little risk of successful prosecution, then I
| think it's pretty obvious that _non-criminal_ sexual
| exploitation is even less likely to have any consequences
| for the perpetrator.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| > Do they sound to you like people whose lives weren't
| torn apart by the experience?
|
| I was talking about the experience of making the
| accusation, not the (clearly harrowing if true)
| experiences they had leading up to that.
|
| I remind you that _almost the entire community
| immediately sided with them_ , despite the person they
| accused being prominent in the community.
| wulfstan wrote:
| I'm afraid I don't accept that you can split this into
| "experiencing something traumatic" and "making the
| accusation that you have experienced something
| traumatic".
|
| The claim that "almost the entire community immediately
| sided with them" is accepting the accused's account of
| what happened in favour of the accusers. At least one of
| the victims started to raise concerns in the community
| several years beforehand and their concerns were not
| taken seriously:
|
| _" I have reported all of my experience to the
| ScalaCenter in 2019. I was hoping to see concrete
| actions, such as building a reporting mechanism, to
| protect minorities in the community. Unfortunately, I am
| not aware of such actions taken."_
|
| I'd also be very, very deeply skeptical that two _public_
| claims were the only claims made. We should bear that in
| mind. If the accusations are true, the public ones are
| usually the tip of the metaphorical iceberg.
| jimbokun wrote:
| I doubt the Scala open source community had an HR
| department or lawyers on hand to investigate and take
| action on behalf of the community as a whole.
|
| And I'm not sure some random software engineers
| contributing to open source projects have the proper
| expertise to build a sexual harassment reporting
| mechanism and a mechanism for fairly enforcing
| consequences.
|
| Do we need to make sure there all those kinds of
| structures are in place for every permutation of human
| interaction?
| antisthenes wrote:
| > I do not accept that this happens with nearly the
| regularity that people, usually men, claim it does.
|
| That you chose to ignore inconvenient facts that do not fit
| your narrative is only _your_ problem, no one else's.
|
| Figure out how to remedy this lapse in judgment, then come
| back to the conversation.
| sho_hn wrote:
| > To make these kinds of accusations as a woman tears your
| life apart in unimaginable ways.
|
| Salient. I do not doubt that false accusations happen, but
| the world is generally set up to disincentivize women from
| leveling accusations at anyone. If you're a woman who
| speaks up, you may be perceived as "damaged goods" (by
| others or even just yourself), it turns your identity into
| that of a victim, your successes get attributed to pity, it
| may lead others to believe you're easy to manipulate, etc.
| It's generally very _unlikely_ for women to wield this as
| as a tactic, even if they were Hollywood-style sociopathic
| villains, because there 's almost never anything to gain.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| > now history is replete with examples
|
| Super curious what the stats are that support a statement
| like this. Scale matters with everything.
| arp242 wrote:
| > it is worth stating very clearly that history is replete with
| examples of men who have used their senior position in
| communities to take advantage of women
|
| Which doesn't really say anything about this specific scenario.
| History is also replete with theft, arson, and murder but that
| doesn't mean it's a good argument when accusing a specific
| person of a specific instance of theft.
|
| Two things can be true at the same time:
|
| - many women have been, and continue to be, sexually abused and
| often fail to get justice, and
|
| - sometimes some accusations are made by bad faith actors
| and/or confused people
|
| are not in conflict. They can both be true at the same time.
|
| I also have no idea who is telling the truth here; just saying
| that "these things happen" is not really an argument here.
|
| Actually, because these things actually _do_ happen makes the
| accusations so powerful. History is also replete with false
| accusations; remember the whole "Satanic panic" from the 80s
| and 90s where everyone and their dog was engaging in sexual
| Satanic rituals? Or QAnon today.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| Maybe there's mismatched expectations of a women going alone to
| hotel rooms with the men they later accuse of assault.
|
| The man gets the wrong idea that the woman is interested in
| sleeping with him, whereas the woman just wants to have a nice
| conversation in the enjoyable environment of a hotel room.
| hollerith wrote:
| Most women can tell fairly easily when the man they are
| talking to is sexually attracted to them (and signs of
| attraction is something almost all women watch for whenever
| they talk to a man they don't know very well).
|
| If the man then invites the woman to a _hotel room_ , 99.9%
| of women will strongly assume that the man is trying to
| advance a sexual agenda if the most likely alternative
| motivation for the invitation is that the man "just wants to
| have a nice conversation in the enjoyable environment of a
| hotel room."
| anonymars wrote:
| Is that how you would characterize the situation as
| described by one of the women?
|
| (Yet, perhaps that type of mismatched set of assumptions is
| at the core of this situation in the first place)
|
| > In our conversations, he also mentioned a few times where
| he helped other women to attend conferences that they
| otherwise couldn't have attended by sharing Airbnbs with
| them to reduce their travel costs. He asked if I wanted to
| share an Airbnb on my trip to the Typelevel conference in
| Berlin. He also mentioned that he planned to invite others.
| As a student with limited financial resources, I accepted
| the tempting offer and felt grateful that, once again, he
| helped me. At first, he mentioned that I could invite
| others to join our Airbnb. Having attended only two
| conferences, I did not know many people at the time. When I
| thought of a person to invite, he stopped me and asked if I
| was not feeling comfortable sleeping in the same apartment
| as him, and if I was trying to get a chaperone for us. I
| felt bad that I made him feel untrusted and stopped asking
| others to join.
| hollerith wrote:
| I read the parent of the comment I replied to, but I
| didn't read the OP, and maybe everyone who writes a
| comment _should_ read the OP.
|
| Having not read the OP (still), I believe that most women
| -- most extremely young women even -- would expect a
| sexual advance in the situation described in your quote.
|
| I'm not commenting in any way on whether the man deserves
| any consequences that might have befallen him for any
| sexual advance or sexual behavior after having made the
| invitation described in your quote.
|
| I'm commenting only on, "Maybe there's mismatched
| expectations," which I (still, after reading your quote,
| and not having read the OP) consider quite unlikely.
| anonymars wrote:
| I understand and to an extent agree with what you're
| saying--by the end of that quote, I think that's a
| reasonable expectation.
|
| But we are reading that whole sequence at once, whereas
| in reality a journey elapsed to get there and I think the
| context matters.
|
| If I'm in a hotel bar and I get invited up to a hotel
| room, that's a fairly clear signal (though maybe she's
| Canadian and just being polite [0]).
|
| But if I want to attend a conference recommended by an
| advisor/mentor, and they suggest we share an Airbnb and
| that we can include additional attendees, that framing
| would be very different to me. At that point in the story
| I do not have the same expectation.
|
| So I agree that ending is a red flag, but I think it's
| different when you've built up a context from prior
| information--one that specifically dissuades that
| interpretation--vs. getting it all at once as we do here.
| Now instead of starting at zero, you have to actively
| change your mind and overcome the inertia of that initial
| interpretation.
|
| I'm also going to go out on a limb and suggest that
| participants in a programming conference, in aggregate,
| might not have exceptional emotional development. That
| casually explained is tongue in cheek but, I'm sure it
| resonates with a lot of people.
|
| [0][https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xa-4IAR_9Yw]
|
| I'll also point out that this is written in hindsight,
| when the author clearly _does_ have a different
| understanding now, and is framing it accordingly.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| > When I thought of a person to invite, he stopped me and
| asked if I was not feeling comfortable sleeping in the
| same apartment as him, and if I was trying to get a
| chaperone for us.
|
| I mean I got red flags just from reading this.
| anonymars wrote:
| I agree with you. But it started quite differently,
| didn't it?
| 37824912238 wrote:
| The thing is, /both people are telling the truth!/ If you read
| their accounts, they're not especially contradictory. It's not
| as if she's saying, "he raped me" and he's saying, "no I
| didn't."
|
| It's somewhat subjective, but if you read between the lines,
| it's clear, and sad all around:
|
| pretty.direct is borderline incel, incapable of forming
| meaningful romantic relationships. But he's not being malicious
| -- in his view, he's acting in good faith, trying to at least
| get some consensual action.
|
| yifanxing is young and not yet sure how to exist in the world.
| She believes what people tell her.
|
| They had sex, as humans do. She was friendly with him for a
| time thereafter, but eventually came to regret the act, and
| then came to see herself as a victim.
|
| This was understandably unforseen by him, and the whole
| episode, though unfortunate, is not really worth all the
| anguish it has caused everyone.
| wulfstan wrote:
| If both people are telling the truth, then it sounds like
| you're saying that although very sad, a community
| "gatekeeper" sexually exploiting a vulnerable newcomer is
| just part of life and we should move past it.
|
| I'm not sure I agree with this, and I think we can and should
| do better.
| 37824912238 wrote:
| Where exactly is the "sexual exploitation" part? He didn't
| blackmail her, he didn't force her, he didn't offer her
| favors/status in return for sex. She was not a child, she
| made her decisions, she regretted them. Yes, there's a
| power imbalance, but it's not as if this was some sort of
| Bill Cosby type of situation.
| lotyrin wrote:
| I'm not sure if you can't see the power imbalance posed
| here, or if you just can't see it as a problem, but I
| don't really care. You need to improve.
|
| Too many people (of all genders) see the value that men
| provide to their potential sex partners as being status
| and power, and therefore they believe that men should
| seek to acquire status and power and use these things to
| bargain for sex.
|
| This leads to all kinds of shitty problems like the
| potential (I don't want to assert that the proposed
| situation in this comment thread is the actual ground
| truth) miscommunication we're seeing here where a man has
| done what society expects of him and a woman comes to be
| abused and we can't even agree if that's a bad thing. We
| focus on her "regret" as if consent were ever possible in
| such a lopsided situation and she's retracted it after
| the fact.
|
| When people talk about the rape culture, this is exactly
| what they mean. If you see no problems here, you're lost
| in it.
| 37824912238 wrote:
| > I'm not sure if you can't see the power imbalance
|
| :) Did you read the part of my comment where I said,
| "Yes, there's a power imbalance..." ?
|
| > as if consent were ever possible
|
| To say that she could not consent is to infantilize her.
| At the age of 21, we are responsible for our own
| decisions and their consequences.
| lotyrin wrote:
| I did miss that, I suppose I should have said
| "underestimate the effect of the power imbalance" then.
| But you've made it clear you do understand but don't
| care.
|
| You actually think it's justified for an older man to
| recruit a younger woman, hold his influence in a
| professional community over her head, suggest that they
| share a hotel room (making her feel bad for trying to
| invite a chaperone), suggest that she become intoxicated,
| and suggest that they have sex? Simply because she
| accepts this slow erosion of her boundaries and autonomy?
|
| Anyone who seeks to be accommodating and accepting by
| default, who harbors doubts about the intent of others is
| "responsible for the consequences"? This exact attitude
| is why women are choosing to default to assuming malice
| on the part of men, so they don't fall into traps like
| this. It's extremely ironic when men hold both positions
| of "they went along with it so it's not my fault" and
| "it's not fair that women don't trust men".
|
| What are your boundaries for what constitutes
| inappropriate behavior here? Merely the law? Do you not
| understand that people can decide to create consequences
| in their social communities that go beyond what is
| prescribed by law? Law provides free speech but doesn't
| provide consequence-free speech. That you've chosen a
| throwaway here is telling, knowing your comments here
| would have consequences if you were to associate them
| with your public figure.
|
| Consent _must_ be enthusiastic and sober. I 'm sorry for
| men who've never had a woman be excited to have sex with
| them and who feel that a kind of begrudging intoxicated
| acceptance is the closest they'll ever get to that. If
| you're in that category I suggest sex work is
| significantly more ethical (and less effort).
| 37824912238 wrote:
| > You actually think it's justified...
|
| Well, I agree it's morally questionable, but it's all a
| big spectrum. I'm not really trying to say what is or
| isn't "justified" in the abstract. Both of these people
| made bad decisions in different ways, and both suffered
| mighty consequences.
|
| > Consent must be enthusiastic and sober
|
| If two people each drink a beer and then have sex, did
| they rape each other? It's just not so black and white.
| lotyrin wrote:
| > If two people each drink a beer and then have sex, did
| they rape each other?
|
| That's too concerned with post-facto labels.
|
| Better framing:
|
| If I am sexually interested in someone and value their
| consent, should I ensure that our first sexual encounter
| is negotiated while both of us are entirely sober?
|
| My answer to this question is unequivocally "yes". I
| understand that's not broader culture's answer, I am
| suggesting that this is a problem with the broader
| culture.
|
| And before you deem me prudish, I regularly attend BDSM
| or other kink events where power is exchanged and sex
| occurs, regularly explore altered states of consciousness
| via controlled substances for fun and philosophical
| insights. It is exactly because of this openness to and
| experience with these ideas that I confident that most
| people lack discipline around sexuality, power exchange,
| altered states of consciousness and are unskilled in how
| they combine them.
|
| And it's not a sexism thing either, I'm not misandrist, I
| actually think men suffer from this cultural deficiency
| more than they benefit from it. It might feel unfair but
| the stakes of "I got canceled for not being careful" or
| "everyone assumes I'm being a predator until I prove I'm
| not" or "I don't know how to walk the tightrope of
| expressing interest in women but not also creeping them
| out" which has been ramping up in modern times just
| simply do not register in a context of the consequences
| women experience around it for all of human existence
| that includes everything up to and including being
| murdered.
| msgodel wrote:
| In the limit you'll end up right back around to where we
| were a few centuries ago with sex outside marriage
| effectively being illegal.
|
| You'll just call it something other than marriage.
| lotyrin wrote:
| I don't follow. I don't practice monogamy so I'm really
| unclear how my arguments promote monogamy.
| sixo wrote:
| Based only on this comment thread--because I have no
| interest in adjudicating the actual dispute here--I see
| playing out in your post, for about the 1000th time in my
| life, the motte-and-bailey of "prosecuting rape culture".
|
| The OP, pretty.direct, is almost certainly guilty of SOME
| social "crime"--some kind of a failure to understand and
| adhere to a responsibility, as you are describing; a
| responsibility which derives from the status he held in
| that community, and the power that status grants, whether
| or not he recognized it at the time.
|
| If accused of THAT crime, in an appropriate "court", he
| would almost certainly have been able able to recognize
| the part of the harm that was his responsibility, and
| would hopefully have made appropriate amends, or at least
| would have learned not to repeat the harm.
|
| At the same time: this is not what happened, and it's
| almost never what happens--because the impulse to make
| such harms seen and known and to force the people who
| caused them to take responsibility is not really an
| instinct for justice, and is unable to see with any
| grace, or to distinguish what part of the onus to "learn"
| from the harm falls on each person involved.
|
| Instead the instinct to make things right overreaches,
| attempting to get satisfaction not only for the present
| case but for the whole cumulative history of similar
| cases, leading to a punishment (the complete destruction
| of a life, with no appeal) far exceeding any which a
| clear-eyed judge would deem appropriate to the actual
| crime, that being closer to: learning not to repeat the
| harm, and recognizing his responsibility.
|
| Note that it is an "overreach" in the sense that it
| exceeds what the hurt person actually _wants_ or _needs_
| --usually to be seen, to be feel heard, to feel safe, and
| to feel that others in comparable cases are safe.
| Destroying a life doesn't accomplish this, and also
| produces no learning at all in either the defendant or in
| any other onlookers.
|
| In fact it is counterproductive. What tends to happen is:
|
| - when men within rape culture repeatedly get away with
| things, the prosecutions grow more fervent, to the point
| where they regularly overreach
|
| - when such overreaches get out of control, there's a
| backlash, discrediting such prosecutions in future cases
| of all degrees. (This is where we are now.) But then this
| lets the men get away with all kinds of things, and
| prevents any of them from ever learning from their
| errors.
|
| A feedback loop. The way out is for "justice to be
| served"--for such cases to be resolved _fairly_ , such
| that neither the defense or prosecution is left with the
| feeling they were treated unfairly, which is what drives
| the feedback loop. Historically it has almost always been
| the prosecution (broadly, the women) who were treated
| unfairly, but to treat the defense (the men) unjustly
| also fails, and perpetuates the loop, in the long run,
| serving no one. Apparently that is what has happened in
| this case.
| lotyrin wrote:
| Everyone is part of rape culture, the same way that
| everyone is part of racism. I am not trying to point out
| certain people as criminal but rather certain behaviors
| and ideas as perpetuating the situation and others as
| being disruptive to it.
|
| The antidote to the cycle you describe is to do as I have
| done, to point out people acting in bad faith and for
| people with privilege to hold other people with privilege
| accountable. We must create consequences for bad behavior
| but it's more important that we must create consequences
| for the people that promote or condone the behavior.
|
| I actually dislike when professional circles or other
| social groups "solve" the problem they create by
| permanently exiling individuals in the way of
| "cancellation" because in many ways the cancelled
| individual is also a victim of the culture of the group.
| It's often a performative way to be seen not to have
| whatever problem the individual exemplifies without
| addressing how that person came to be an example. It
| also, from a game-theoretical point of view removes any
| incentive for those individuals to improve. The
| individual may not understand that they've done anything
| wrong, because the culture clearly expects and promotes
| this behavior. I feel neurodivergent people in particular
| are likely to fall into the trap because they'll
| interpret the rules as shown to them by the cultures of
| oppression they exist in and then not read the room that
| while the way people behave suggests the behavior is
| overtly permitted, "everyone knows" it's actually
| horrible and you're supposed to be covert about it to not
| get caught.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Just because of your comment, I choose to become even
| worse.
| jimbokun wrote:
| What does "gatekeeper" even mean in this scenario? There
| was no employment relationship, no ability for either party
| to fire someone or impact pay or job responsibilities.
|
| And is "exploiting" synonymous with "having sex with"?
|
| You seem to be saying two people in the same community can
| never have sex, because one or the other will have more
| power within that community making it exploitative.
|
| If not, are the circumstances where it's not problematic?
| ofjcihen wrote:
| If you're reading this and wondering what the outcome was I
| implore you to go read the authors Twitter about it.
|
| There was in fact a judgement.
| OldfieldFund wrote:
| can you tell us? Twitter is difficult to navigate.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| A Statement I am a Scala developer and speaker who was
| cancelled three years ago. Yesterday I attended the High
| Court in London to hear an apology from several prominent
| members of the Scala community for making untrue claims
| about me on 27 April 2021. I sued them for libel, and they
| admitted fault and settled, paying me costs and damages.
| Their allegations were sensational and squalid, but
| unfounded. Their source was the resentment of one woman
| following a relationship in 2018, which I ended against her
| wishes. She fabricated or was offered an alternative
| narrative, which developed into claims of a pattern of
| behaviour, and culminated in the defendants' publication of
| an open letter, which they now agree is defamatory. In two
| years of legal action, the defendants never presented any
| evidence to support their allegations, and admitted in
| court that they had no proper reason to make them. They
| have given undertakings to the court not to publish further
| or similar defamatory statements, or have anyone else do so
| on their behalf. No signatory contacted me about the
| allegations before publication. I received no warning, and
| had no knowledge of the claims' substance. I only
| discovered what I was accused of at the same time as I
| learned of my indefinite exclusion from the community; at
| the same time everyone else found out. I had no opportunity
| to defend myself. It is no coincidence that the absence of
| due process led tp an abject injustice. The experience of
| cancellation and enduring the online hysteria was
| traumatic, I responded by withdrawing from the life I knew.
| Its consequences hurt me and people close to me, and have
| been immiserating. My employment opportunities were
| obliterated. My charitable and educational projects, and my
| small business, could not continue. Despite my transferable
| skills, the allegations were a transferrable red flag
| recognised across programming communities and industries,
| and I have barely earned a living since. It has taken two
| years of legal action to receive fair scrutiny in a forum
| reliant on facts.
| OldfieldFund wrote:
| Much appreciated!
| stickfigure wrote:
| Thankfully someone posted a link to the document:
| https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf
|
| The apology came from four people who signed the Open
| Letter who live in a special jurisdiction (the UK) where
| the burden of proof for libel is on the defense. The
| costs and damages were PS20,000.
|
| This exposes the narrator as unreliable. When I first
| read his paragraph, I read it as implying that a court
| judged the veracity of the women's claims. The words seem
| deliberately constructed to provide that impression.
|
| In fact the court judgement is merely an acknowledgement
| that the UK defenders can't possibly prove the truth of
| the accusations and therefore they fold. Whether or not
| you prefer the UK system or the US system (which requires
| the plaintiff to prove falsehood), there's no vindication
| here. I feel lied to.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| I can't say I came to the same conclusions as you after
| reading that.
|
| Also, for being an "unreliable" narrator he sure seems
| charitable to the people who ruined his life, no? I would
| expect someone with an axe to grind wouldn't ask that
| they be forgiven.
| jimbokun wrote:
| History is also replete with examples of women who are
| attracted to men in senior positions in their community.
| regularization wrote:
| I can't imagine not just one, but two women coming forward and
| making such accusations against me. People here are acting as
| if he is the victim, not them.
|
| Insofar as the letter signed - UK law has it so the letter
| worded as it was, with the burden of proof on the signers,
| could be held as libel if signed - so the UK signers got caught
| up in their country's law, due to the accused being litigious.
|
| One pleasing thing to me is, however casual some people's
| attitudes to all of this is, out of control behaviors can cause
| legal and PR problems for corporations, and that is a move
| forward that, despite ebbs and flows, will not be moved back in
| any substantial sense. Woe be the CEO or HR director who thinks
| they can ignore bad behavior.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Looks like lady that wrote this brought up actual receipts.
|
| The OP article was so vague i didn't even realize i had already
| read about it.
| verelo wrote:
| Brutal. I'm not sure which way the truth on this lies but the
| reality is this not the way to go about it. Brian Clapper needs
| some accountability in this, I'd like to hear why he isn't
| backing down or removing the repo.
| dsign wrote:
| Oh yes, that most tried and tested way of destroying people by
| accusing them of having improper sex. Remember Julian Assange
| anyone? And what about the Middle Ages and all the burned people?
| Remember that time Philip IV of France accused the Knights
| Templar of having sex with each other, in order to cancel them
| :-) ? That was a good one, though I'm sure Philip had state
| reasons _in addition_ to a drunken stupor.
|
| I can't comment on this particular case, other than by
| acknowledging that, sadly, this won't be the first or last
| mobbing. I hope that Pretty does well and that the people who
| rushed to condemn him never again get laid.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Unfortunately, this kind of thing isn't exactly new. I nearly
| ended up in jail in high school because of an accusation. The
| only thing that stopped the school police officer from dragging
| me out the door in handcuffs was me knowing the principal of the
| school.
|
| He was able to figure out where the rumor came from. I'd bumped
| into a girl during gym class and since I was a sheltered
| Christian kid new to public school, I didn't know "second base"
| had another meaning.
|
| I've also had a friend who struggled with depression kill himself
| after there was an accusation of him having illegal images. I
| don't know if it was true. I just knew I couldn't mourn his death
| while everyone I knew was celebrating it.
|
| I also know a friend who stopped doing foster care after a child
| with a long history of compulsive lying and false accusations
| accused them of sexual abuse and CPS believed the child.
| mzajc wrote:
| > I didn't know "second base" had another meaning.
|
| Out of curiosity, what's the other meaning? I assume the
| primary one has to do with baseball bases.
| sireat wrote:
| First Base - Kissing Second Base - petting above waist Third
| Base - petting below waist Home Run - sex
|
| 2nd,3rd base can vary a bit, but Home Run analogy has been
| around for a long time.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I do not know anything about this author's situation and won't
| pretend to, but I did watch a sexual misconduct accusation play
| out in person once. The speed at which everyone assumed the story
| was true and turned against the accused was basically instant.
|
| However there were some key details about the accusation that
| didn't add up. The accuser tried changing the details of the
| story once they realized others were noticing the problems with
| the claims. It also became clear that the accuser had an ulterior
| motive and stood to benefit from the accused being ostracized.
| The accuser also had developed a habit of lying and manipulation,
| which others slowly began to share as additional information.
|
| This was enough to make the situation fall apart among people who
| knew the details. However, word spread quickly and even years
| later there are countless people who only remember the initial
| accusation. Many avoided the accused just to be safe. The
| strangest part was seeing how some people really didn't care
| about the details of the situation, they viewed it as symbolic of
| something greater and believed everyone was obligated to believe
| the accuser in some abstract moral sense.
|
| It remains one of the weirdest social situations I've seen play
| out. Like watching someone drop a nuclear bomb on another
| person's social life and then seeing how powerless they were to
| defend against it. In this case it didn't extend to jobs or
| career. Their close social circle stuck with them. However I can
| still run into people years later who think the person is a creep
| because they heard something about him from a friend of a friend
| and it stuck with them.
| huhkerrf wrote:
| > The strangest part was seeing how some people really didn't
| care about the details of the situation, they viewed it as
| symbolic of something greater and believed everyone was
| obligated to believe the accuser in some abstract moral sense.
|
| It's what happens when we see people as stand-ins for their
| group, but we can't see the individual behind it.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Reminiscent of https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hunt_2013
| RangerScience wrote:
| I've seen four "in person", one _very_ public (just purely IRL
| public).
|
| I didn't see anyone (with one exception) pick sides
| immediately; although most people's "picked" side was "not
| involved". (The one exception was a community organizer who
| _definitely_ has Been Through This Before).
|
| For three of those, I did my own homework - a lot of asking
| around, and then a lot of conversations with both people. In
| the end, most of that didn't matter: the accused ended up
| damning themselves (or not!) pretty immediately when I talked
| to them about it.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Surprised he cant get a job. Just forget about these idiot
| friends doing the right thing, and cease and desist Github etc.
| get all the shit taken down then get a job cranking out Scala.
| SG- wrote:
| I'm having a hard time focusing on read this article because of
| how the 'f' font looks like.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| It looks bad in the heading, but absolutely terrible in the
| smaller font size of the article itself.
| justinhj wrote:
| I remember following this story, and finding it a remarkable case
| study in mob justice. If you search for Scala on this site you
| will find it is still among the top 5 stories on the topic and
| nearly all the comments assume guilt and berate the author.
|
| Similarly, r/scala condemned Jon and when the defending
| testimonials from his female friends were posted there they were
| removed.
| EdiX wrote:
| 2020 ~ 2021 was a crazy crazy time. I hope we never get back
| there.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Pretty frightening, really. These kinds of experience have
| absolutely though subtly changed how I interact with people.
| Particularly, as a man, with women and children.
|
| Once my parents were visiting me and we took my kids to a
| playground. While there, my dad noticed a girl sitting on the
| ground crying, and seemed to be hurt. He looked for a moment to
| see if anyone was coming, and then went over to her and asked if
| she was alright, if she needed help, and where her parents were.
| He didn't get a clear response from her so he started walking
| around to the various adults around the playground inquiring if
| the hurt girl crying was theirs. Finally he got to one group of
| women and after asking one of them said something along the lines
| of, "yeah, I saw you over there bothering her" in an accusatory
| tone. Seeing where it was going, he put his hands up and just
| walked away without saying another word. The girl remained there
| crying, alone.
|
| It was actually kind of a scary because later that day I realized
| how in that moment that woman, who my dad had never met before,
| could probably have destroyed his life right then and there if
| she wanted to.
|
| These days, in the back of my mind I'm always considering how my
| actions, particularly towards women and children, could be
| misconstrued. When I'm at the playground with my kids, I don't
| talk to kids I don't know, at all, for any reason, even if they
| talk to me. I just smile and make myself busy with my own kids.
| wffurr wrote:
| That is a real shame. I have had almost exclusively positive
| interactions with the other parents and kids at the playground.
| Maybe a different culture where you are.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Honestly it's rare, it's not normal. But it's also so scary I
| just won't risk it, however small the risk. You can't tell
| which strangers are crazy.
|
| My wife, on the other hand, is the parent who will go over
| and play with all the children while the parents are on their
| phones. But she's a woman, so it's different.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I'm honestly not sure I understand what you are afraid of.
| What accusation could she possibly make in the context of a
| playground setting that has such dire consequences,
| especially if you're with your own children? Who would act
| on it?
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a huge
| "pedophile panic" going around these days--much worse
| than the "satanic panic" back in the 80s and the "video
| game panics" in the 90s. I don't think anyone wants to be
| the next viral video star with a caption like "Found a
| pedo at the park--put him on blast!"
| sho_hn wrote:
| Nope, I hadn't, maybe it's not made it to my neck of the
| woods (world; I'm not in the US) yet. Is this extremely
| recently and mediated by the whole Trump-Epstein of it
| all?
| nkrisc wrote:
| Just look at the article linked in this submission. Even
| just a false, unsubstantiated accusation can be
| devastating.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I don't think these are comparable. The accusations in
| this case are about systematically sleazy behavior and
| hint at not-so-consensual sex, which isn't exactly the
| same as "this guy bothered my kid somehow for a minute".
|
| Also, to be clear, the accusations the article is about
| are false and unsubstantiated according to the author.
| It's a "he said, she said".
|
| He's managed to agree with a small number of signatories
| of the Open Letter that they acted on no evidence (in a
| jurisdiction where the burden of proof for libel is on
| the defense, so if they had decided not to agree they'd
| have had to prove this wrong), but not e.g. the original
| accusors. The fact that he wrote an epic blog post
| without being clear on this doesn't really make him look
| great, though I acknowledge he wanted to focus on a
| different aspect.
|
| The court case (ending in a consent order, not a
| judgement) is an interesting story about "as a UK
| citizen, should you be signing an Open Letter if you
| merely _believe_ accusers, but don 't _know_ them to be
| right, and can demonstrate _how_ you know ", but it has
| little to do with the accusations themselves.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I have had almost exclusively positive interactions with
| the other parents and kids at the playground.
|
| These stories were all over Reddit for years. I remember a
| thread asking for examples of things Reddit led them to
| believe that weren't true, and the top voted comment was that
| Reddit made them think that going to the playground as a lone
| dad would cause women to view them as a predator. In reality,
| going to the playground as a dad in most places is a non-
| event. It's common for dads to be there alone with their
| kids. When I go, it's a mix of moms and dads and we all talk
| and interact.
|
| Yet to a non-parent reading Reddit it seemed like going to
| the park as a dad was asking for trouble. The story was
| repeated so often.
|
| I'm sure these events do happen some times. When it does, I
| wouldn't be surprised if the accuser was reading their own
| Reddit equivalent social media website where stories about
| men being creeps at the playground get passed around as fact.
| To them, it's just how they see the world working because
| they've heard it repeated so often.
| true_religion wrote:
| What if people who have children approach them differently
| from those without, and it's noticeable?
|
| Before my male friends had kids, they were tense and
| apprehensive around toddlers. They worried they would hurt
| them, etc.
|
| Now, they act like Dads, even with kids who have nothing to
| do with them.
|
| These guys weren't bad people to begin with. They just
| didn't radiate "dad energy" for lack of a better phrase.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't think we can chalk these up to "it's just Reddit,
| amiright?" I have a daughter, and I've personally had a
| non-zero number of negative interactions with justice-moms
| on the playground / at kid events. Are those interactions
| extremely rare? Yes. Did it freak me out a little? Yes. Are
| these kinds of anecdotes amplified on Reddit? Yes. A dad
| needs to keep in mind that he's likely to encounter it at
| least once in a while, while also not avoiding all life on
| the off chance the it happens.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| The problem is that if anyone at any time feels like they're
| just annoyed with you or don't want you around anymore they
| can make an accusation, completely unfounded, that will
| destroy your life.
|
| The problem is is that a lot of guys walking around that
| haven't had it happen to them assume it hasn't happened to
| them because they've been doing everything right when really
| you've just been lucky so far.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Look, I hope the original author doesn't see this, I don't
| want to kick people when they're down. But the vast, vast
| majority of these controversies involve admitted sexual
| activity which a stereotypical stodgy dad would identify as
| inappropriate, and I would encourage any men who worry
| about being cancelled to consider whether he might have a
| point. While there's no guarantees in life, it's extremely
| unlikely that a story like this could happen to me, because
| I don't sleep with people when the propriety of doing so is
| even remotely in question.
| jibolash wrote:
| The problem here is the asymmetric nature of outcomes. The
| vast majority of these types of interactions will be
| positive, but it only takes 1 to ruin someone's life or
| reputation, that forces over-correction in behavior
| usui wrote:
| Wow, sounds like that person's brain has fried itself if it
| jumps to conclusions like that. Which region or general area do
| you live? What has happened to common sense in the community?
| nkrisc wrote:
| It's just anti-social people being anti-social, but now they
| have the internet to use against you.
|
| Suburban East Coast US.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's not just you. Men in general are realizing the risks and
| are changing their behavior and environment in order to protect
| themselves from accusations. Everything from ensuring witnesses
| are always present to simply not interacting at all.
| sho_hn wrote:
| To be fair, victim-blaming has always been a risk women have
| had to contend with, the novelty is mostly that perhaps men
| are now exposed to it as well.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I grew up in a small village. Such towns place social cohesion
| above all. As a child I thought that as long as I am right, I'd
| be able to reason my way out of everything. But I learned that
| in a crowd shit can go from 0 to 11 very fast, which is why I
| have a deep fear of people, and especially crowds. When you're
| there with one person you might have a slim chance of reasoning
| with them, but crowds behave unpredictably, emotionally, and
| violently. They almost always follow the most charismatic
| leader, not the most logical one. The older I get, the more I
| hate people and the more disgusted I am with them. I understand
| why so many old people are bitter cunts. I want to make it
| until retirement and then move far away from everyone else,
| just me and my internet connection. I want to gain financial
| independence so that I don't need to rely on people's petty
| games to make a living.
|
| I still try to find those few people around me who aren't
| garbage, but it's a tough job.
| dttze wrote:
| If you think everyone around you is garbage, you might want
| to reflect on yourself.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I did. I genuinely did. After a few years of thinking I'm
| at fault, I realized that's not the case.
| RigelKentaurus wrote:
| While my fear of crowds may not be as strong as yours, I see
| your point of view. In most situations, it doesn't take a lot
| for a crowd to become a mob.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > It was actually kind of a scary because later that day I
| realized how in that moment that woman, who my dad had never
| met before, could probably have destroyed his life right then
| and there if she wanted to.
|
| I know what you mean, but he could also have said "fuck off,
| lady; that's a kid crying, so grow up" and thereby have made
| clear he was worried about the kid, not some creeper who she
| hoped to have just told off.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| She has vastly more power than he has. With one sentence she
| could have him arrested or at least temporarily detained for
| nothing.
|
| Just one comment thread up there's a person rushing to
| believe her and distrust the dad:
|
| > "And don't get me wrong, I'm strongly inclined to believe
| women and I generally distrust men."
|
| ^ from the other comment thread above this one
| majormajor wrote:
| Let's be specific about the supposed power in this
| situation.
|
| If he called the cops and said "hey there's a crying kid
| and I can't find the parents" what power does she have over
| him there?
|
| If she called the cops and said "I saw a man bothering this
| girl" what's going to happen in practice for the supposed
| crime of "talking to a kid who was crying at a playground"?
| Any asshole can make any false accusation against anyone at
| any time, here there's not even the slightest evidence of
| any harm, how seriously would it be taken? Cops drive out,
| see no man bothering anyone, drive off?
|
| If she posted a video online of "man talking non-
| aggressively/non-threateningly to girl, then walking around
| talking to other adults" how much outrage is that going to
| generate?
|
| The videos that generate huge amounts of outrage and get
| re-shared have disturbing contents, not just headlines.
|
| I see so many online accounts of these "must walk on
| eggshells" worldview stories. Smells like an echo chamber,
| especially because when people self-report to things like
| "I avoid encounters with women because of this" then I'm
| not sure how much credence to put into the psychology of
| womens' behavior from someone with self-professed much-
| more-limited-interaction-with-them than I have.
| sho_hn wrote:
| This roughly tracks with my own thinking on the scenario.
| I don't understand the perceived danger.
|
| This is a Dad who also frequently goes to playgrounds.
| Tbh, in my experience, most moms are super kind and
| generous to a man who's out alone playing with his kid
| because it's the sort of thing they want to
| encourage/reward.
|
| The only times I've ever felt discriminated against as a
| male parent by female parents is in group play settings
| where the women form a clique and don't really want you
| to talk to them, but even then they're usually mature
| enough not to have the kids feel any of this, and nobody
| owes me letting me socialize with them, so it's whatever.
| nkrisc wrote:
| The danger was perceived precisely _because_ it 's rare
| and uncommon and the whole thing unusual. It's the only
| time I've every personally encountered something like
| this, so it made me believe that this woman knew exactly
| what she was doing and we interpreted her words as an
| insinuated threat. Why else would she say something like
| that about a man who everyone could clearly see was just
| trying to help? No, there was no confusion. Whatever she
| was up to was malicious.
|
| Because it's so uncommon is why my dad was even going
| around trying to help this girl in the first place,
| because he never imagined something like that happening.
| But then we got a hint of it, and decided to just
| disengage and not risk it.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I understand disengaging in the situation, sure.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Would any of those things have happened? Maybe? Maybe
| not? No idea. Wasn't going to find out.
| nkrisc wrote:
| She knew he was just trying to help. I think she didn't
| appreciate having the crying child brought to her attention
| which would have interrupted her conversation she was having
| with her friends.
|
| The insinuation was, "stay out of my business or I'm going to
| tell a lie that could ruin you". He was clearly not bothering
| the child, anyone could see that, she could saw it herself.
| Whatever her game was, it was completely deliberate.
|
| Since the child wasn't actually in any real danger, we chose
| to simply remove ourselves from that situation and not
| involves ourselves with a crazy person. Unfortunately being a
| shitty parent isn't illegal.
| firefax wrote:
| The correct response is to stand your ground and say "No, I'm
| trying to connect a hurt child with their parents. Are you
| their parent? If not, we'll cut this favor short and just call
| child services".
|
| Then do it. Call 911, say there's an injured, unattended child
| at the playground, and you're getting a hostile response from
| folks as you try to locate the guardian so you'd appreciate it
| if a social worker collected the kid until the parents can be
| found.
|
| There is nothing illegal about speaking to a child, and when
| you soft play people like this you empower them. Let them have
| to show a cop a DL to get their kid out a squad car to learn
| their lesson if they can't handle polite help.
|
| (Also, what is this narrative around HN about being accused of
| nefariousness at playgrounds? I used to eat my lunch at one
| near me because it was the only park with a trash can nearby
| and I didn't want to lug my trash back to my apartment before
| going on my way towards the city -- nobody ever said a word to
| me aside from asking for a ball if it rolled over.)
| true_religion wrote:
| I agree with this statement. While it's not 'your job' to
| save the child, if you've already started along the path, you
| might as well see it through to the end.
|
| If you never found the child's parents, you'd have to call
| CPS. Being prevented from finding the child's parents, just
| necessitates you move that step forward.
|
| Of course, it's not 'your job' so technically you could
| abandon the child at any point but it does feel a bit
| heartless to give a kid hope, then say 'meh you're on your
| own, this is too troublesome'. As for just leaving the child
| with others who are complaining, I doubt that's a good idea.
| They were making no move to help, and bystander effect will
| probably keep them from ever doing a thing.
| dingnuts wrote:
| This response may be practical but it's sad and indicative
| of the problem at hand. Society is so distrusting and
| litigative that the sensible way to help a child is to call
| the cops?? those ACAB guys that kill dogs?
|
| I'm not even saying you're wrong necessarily, but the whole
| situation is fucking cooked.
|
| How do we learn to trust each other again?
| winwang wrote:
| I find it ironic that you talk about distrust but then
| use ACAB, which I assume means "all cops are bad"
| (cursory googling).
| nkrisc wrote:
| Involving the police in that situation would be an insane and
| risky escalation. The girl has a cold, anti-social
| caregiver/parent. That's sad, not illegal. There were zero
| reasons to involve the police. What happens when we call the
| police and the woman lies and says one of us was groping the
| child and her friends corroborate her lie? I'm not taking
| that risk.
|
| Don't try to out-crazy a crazy person. That's not a game I'm
| going to play.
| firefax wrote:
| >Involving the police in that situation would be an insane
| and risky escalation. The girl has a cold, anti-social
| caregiver/parent. That's sad, not illegal.
|
| That's factually incorrect.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Sic the cops on the crazy person and let nature happen.
| ploxiln wrote:
| > Are you their parent? If not, we'll cut this favor short
| and just call child services".
|
| > Then do it. Call 911, say there's an injured, unattended
| child at the playground, and you're getting a hostile
| response from folks as you try to locate the guardian
|
| That is the same thing, though! ... very quickly escalating a
| probable mundane situation to very serious accusations!
|
| I'm the father of a 3 year old daughter, who I take to the
| playground multiple times per week. This is in Brooklyn, NYC.
| I haven't had any issues. But I believe the horror stories,
| there are just a sufficient number of crazy people out there,
| overly concerned "karens", or reddit warriors, or whatever.
| People overly confident in their judgement based on a cursory
| one-sided description of events. It seems you want to "fight
| fire with fire" or "play hardball" because that seems fair or
| necessary, but ... jeez. This is why guys are cautious and
| disengage.
| firefax wrote:
| If your daughter is crying, injured, and you are not close
| enough to get to her before OP, you deserve to have a
| social worker speak to her 1:1, full stop.
| jimbokun wrote:
| No.
|
| Absolutely, 100%, no.
|
| A child could be playing out of sight of a parent, maybe
| a block away with friends, and get mildly injured in a
| way that requires minor treatment. Or just crying because
| of a negative interaction with a peer.
|
| This DOES NOT mean children at a certain age and maturity
| level cannot be trusted to gain some independence and
| leave their parents line of sight for short but
| increasingly longer periods of time.
| l33tbro wrote:
| What if the girl above is crying and appears hurt because
| she has been mollycoddled, and this is a strategy to get
| attention?
|
| Perhaps the parents had clocked-on to this, and were just
| letting the girl self-soothe so she could learn
| resillience. Then, on-cue, in steps some member of the
| public with their own opinion on the child they're trying
| to raise. This would be kind of tiring for the fatigued
| parent of a toddler, and the frustration of the parent in
| the above scenario is justifiable, particularly as
| encounters like this could happen multiple times daily
| with a child like that.
|
| Now they could also just be a shitty parent. There's
| plenty of them. But it's difficult for us to judge and
| make hard rules in cases like this.
| mlyle wrote:
| Kids need to be not kept in a tiny parental bubble and do
| some things with (manageable levels) of risk. They need
| to grow into independent people, and to understand their
| limits.
|
| Our society is not as safe as I would like, but it is
| probably safer than ever before, when children roamed,
| played, and did errands over wide ranges.
|
| My world was orders of magnitude smaller than my
| parents'; despite my efforts, my children's world is
| orders of magnitude smaller than mine. In part, this is
| because of attitudes like yours, where a child being
| unwatched is not okay under any circumstance.
| DanielVZ wrote:
| I once had a friend that was cancelled by an ex-girlfriend for
| petty and political reasons. I knew it was false because I had
| been present in most of the situations she described to cancel
| him and her story was full of lies. She was also a distant friend
| and her only comment was "I know why I do what I do", which was
| pretty weird.
|
| My friend was devastated, he had to stop going to his classes and
| feared that nobody would hire him, professors would hate him
| (since students already did), and that his life had ended. I
| spoke with him and assured him that wasn't the case but to be
| honest I wasn't sure either.
|
| I don't know the details but one year later she was suspended for
| a year for falsely accusing him, my friend graduated and promptly
| found a job.
|
| All this to say I'm awfully scared now of the risk of my
| interactions with women being used in the future as a false
| narrative to cancel me. I'm happily married and due to life stuff
| I do have to interact with young girls and women. Because of this
| I try to be as distant as I can and limit any interaction that
| doesn't involve multiple other adults.
|
| I learnt that even if you do nothing wrong you can always be at
| risk, so I just try to minimize that risk as much as I possibly
| can.
| boston_clone wrote:
| How can "political reasons" be false? I can imagine a lot of
| political reasons for a woman to "cancel" a man, especially if
| they're misogynist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, or
| transphobic, but the vagueness of your anecdote is suspect.
|
| > I don't know the details but [...]
|
| > I learnt that even if you do nothing wrong you can always be
| at risk, so I just try to minimize that risk as much as I
| possibly can.
|
| I'm sorry to hear that you've seemingly adapted your life based
| on someone else's "petty" experience with an ex-girlfriend, as
| you put it. Do you feel that this is a healthy and realistic
| way to live, though? Do you drive a car, walk around your
| neighborhood, or eat meat?
|
| Depending on what kind of person you are, there are plenty more
| serious and realistic risks that getting randomly cancelled by
| your social circle.
| DanielVZ wrote:
| > How can "political reasons" be false? I can imagine a lot
| of political reasons for a woman to "cancel" a man,
| especially if they're misogynist, racist, xenophobic,
| homophobic, or transphobic, but the vagueness of your
| anecdote is suspect.
|
| What was false were the claims and I can say that because I
| was involved in the situations she described to cancel him.
|
| I said "petty political reasons" as a summary for conciseness
| sake. But if you want more details:
|
| - after they broke up she joined a certain left wing
| political party (student federation elections are a big deal
| here)
|
| - during the election cycle my friend was part of the
| opposing team and they were doing quite well
|
| - so the girl was approached by her party leadership to
| cancel him. They had this whole "cancel the opposition"
| operation
|
| - Turns out everything was false and was done to benefit the
| left wing candidates and end the candidacy of the opposing
| party. which worked. They had to take down their candidacy to
| deal with all the problems that come from being cancelled.
|
| > Depending on what kind of person you are, there are plenty
| more serious and realistic risks that getting randomly
| cancelled by your social circle.
|
| I'm not so sure about that. Being cancelled is pretty
| serious, and quite risky. I've seen it quite a few times
| (this one being the closest I've been to people involved),
| and it's so easy to avoid that I prefer to just do it. For
| example if I could avoid driving a car I would, but I do it
| because otherwise it is prohibitively expensive time wise.
| Pxtl wrote:
| > My legal action continued for more than a year after this, as I
| looked for opportunities to conclude it without incurring
| unaffordable costs, or revealing to my opponents that I was in
| financial trouble. The risk of default lingered over me. We
| reached a settlement in my favor in early 2024, avoiding an
| expensive court hearing by a few days. However, this compromise
| meant that I missed the chance for my case to be scrutinized in
| court.
|
| So from the outside we have no way of knowing who is telling the
| truth.
| trelane wrote:
| > the outside we have no way of knowing who is telling the
| truth.
|
| Yes, exactly.
|
| His life was upended because he was assumed guilty until proven
| innocent. Even here in the threads.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Cancellation is never about justice. It's always about status.
|
| Many rapists and abusers do not face social ostracism because
| they contribute more than they take away.
|
| Many people are ostracized because they do not contribute
| _enough_ in proportion to accusations.
|
| _Justice_ is the idea we can ignore social status, but this is
| only ensured by _due process_ , because following a consistent
| set of rules removes status from the equation.
| mil22 wrote:
| Ultimately, this reflects just terribly on the Scala community
| and every individual who signed the open letter, including Brian
| Clapper himself and over 300 others. You can read the full list
| of names here: https://scala-open-letter.github.io/
|
| Having been in a similar situation myself as a teenager, it is
| truly abhorrent how quickly people are willing to jump to
| conclusions against someone based on the most limited
| information, and without giving the accused any chance to tell
| their side of the story or defend themselves. Not even a single
| one of my so-called friends asked me what happened, and almost
| all of them disappeared from my life permanently.
|
| What I learned from the experience was that none of the people
| who jumped on the cancel bandwagon had ever been worth even a
| second of my time. It was their loss, and I became much more
| careful about who I choose as friends after that.
|
| I can certainly say that if I encounter any of the 300+
| individuals listed in the letter in my personal or professional
| lives, I will be giving them a very wide berth indeed.
| ryanackley wrote:
| I have mixed feelings. Cancel culture sucks. I think it's root is
| a culture of indulging in righteous indignation based on very
| one-sided information.
|
| Even if the allegations are true, his life should not have been
| ruined over this.
|
| On the other hand, when I read the accusers' accounts someone
| else linked in the comments, they sound credible. It fits
| behavior patterns we've all seen before.
|
| I don't know who to believe.
| mil22 wrote:
| A lot of works of fiction sound credible. Are you going to
| believe those?
|
| You don't have all the information. You weren't there. You
| don't even know the people personally. You are not in a
| position to make any judgement either way.
|
| Something _sounding_ credible doesn 't make it true. It doesn't
| automatically make it false, either. You don't have to believe
| the accuser or the accused. The only thing any of us should do
| is mind our own business.
| ryanackley wrote:
| Thanks for the lecture. How does it relate to the comment I
| made? Sorry, it's not clear to me.
|
| I didn't personally participate in cancelling this person. In
| fact, I agreed with the point he made in the article. I'm
| just not sure he didn't do it.
|
| Are you saying I shouldn't have an opinion on that part?
| mil22 wrote:
| You can have whatever opinion you want, but don't confuse
| "sounds credible" with evidence. From the sidelines, you
| don't know enough to judge either way. Saying "I don't
| know" is the only accurate position. Everything beyond that
| is just speculation - and speculation is exactly what keeps
| cancel culture alive.
| OldfieldFund wrote:
| The same with OP's post.
|
| So far, I see that this post caused quite a few forks,
| the opposite of what the author asked for.
|
| I don't have a solution.
|
| I think as a man who runs conferences you shouldn't sleep
| with people who attend them. Or any other things like
| that, for that matter.
|
| Should you be cancelled for that? No. But humans are
| humans.
|
| There is no solution to this. Courts are also wrong all
| the time (look at OJ) and victims of SA almost never see
| justice.
|
| The answer is: we don't know the truth.
| thelittlenag wrote:
| My comment here is a very narrow one. In general I agree with
| your sentiment and thoughts, so please don't misread me. There
| is one nit I need to pick, however.
|
| There is a subtle, but worthwhile, difference between
| "plausible" and "credible". Lots of stories are plausible. Few
| are credible.
|
| In emotion laden cases like this we tend to want to believe
| stories we already agree with, or have some investment in. I'm
| no exception to that.
|
| We need to not be misled by what is plausible, or confuse that
| with what is credible.
| redeyedtreefrog wrote:
| I don't get why he is so determined to stick with Scala. It's
| just a programming language. The Scala community is forever going
| to hold extremely negative associations for him. For someone with
| his level of experience and motivation it presumably wouldn't be
| too hard to switch to Rust or something. Some people will still
| reject him out of hand due to his googleable name, but I still
| feel like he'd be happier and better off leaving.
| thelittlenag wrote:
| Jon has addressed this elsewhere, but the gist of the argument,
| as I understand it, is that he hasn't worked professionally in
| any other ecosystem or language. So leaving Scala is tantamount
| to abandoning his entirely professional experience (20+
| years!), skill set, and all open source contributions, and then
| restarting from scratch in a new ecosystem. All without any
| guarantee that the allegations around him won't just follow
| him. Its a really tough position to be in.
| justinhj wrote:
| Worth reflecting on how the average opinion on this story
| compares to the collective mobbing that occurred at the time
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961482
| mil22 wrote:
| Oof. So much opportunistic grandstanding and virtue signaling
| in the comments there. I read for 5 minutes and didn't find
| even a single comment that expressed any uncertainty about the
| truth or accuracy of the allegations.
| burkaman wrote:
| Some of the top comments do, these three for example:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961815,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963597,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26962421.
|
| In general I think this was quite a reasonable comment
| section. I see a lot of "damn this sounds awful" (and it
| does), discussion about the general phenomenon of sexual
| harassment (which is obviously real) rather than that
| specific case, and some uncertainty about what actually
| happened. I don't see much "this guy should be jailed
| immediately" in the top comments. I certainly wouldn't call
| it a mob and I don't see anything that deserves to labelled
| as insincere virtue signaling.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| I recently read a helpful Quora post on cancellation
|
| Basically, while it's totally fair to hold people accountable, it
| needs to work both ways.
|
| Additionally, there's a line between boycotting someone (your
| collective actions) vs attacking others for supporting. If you
| didn't like what a musician did, you and others could stop buying
| their albums. That's different than issuing death threats to
| radio stations that play that musicians music.
|
| So in this case, we seem to have -one sided accountability, a
| coordinated effort around one side of facts -a boycott vs attack.
| The open letter makes it clear that only the signatories will be
| engaging in these actions. Others (such as organizations that
| employed him) are requested to cut ties but not threatened
|
| So I would say this is only a partial "cancel". It would have
| been better if he could have "had his day in court" before he was
| thoroughly condemned, though I'm not sure how.
| benterix wrote:
| I remember the story of RMS. In her cancellation piece, Selam
| Gano equalled RMS with Epstein. Many media outlets repeated false
| accusations. Some of them are still online (Gano finally deleted
| her piece). For example, Vice says[0]:
|
| Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'
|
| Which is 100% false. Another false one[1]:
|
| ...Richard Stallman, who defended Jeffrey Epstein...
|
| This is even worse as it is pure fabrication.
|
| Did Gano ever apologized? Did any of these media outlets even
| thought about apologizing and making up for everything RMS had to
| go? It's really, really sad.
|
| [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/famed-computer-scientist-
| ric...
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-
| richard...
| henryaj wrote:
| High Court notice from the mentioned court case:
| https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf
|
| > The Defendants accept that they have never had any evidence to
| support the allegations apart from the two unverified claims
| published in coordination with the Open Letter. They were never
| in a position to make any informed judgement on the truth of the
| allegations, and did not seek clarification on any of the
| allegations from the Claimant.
|
| He won PS5,000 plus costs.
|
| [edit - the defendants here appear to be signatories of the open
| letter]
| augustk wrote:
| If it is all lies, what could be the incentive for the women to
| make up a story like this?
|
| https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara...
| throwaway290 wrote:
| No one said it was all lies actually. Even the guy. He could
| say "I didn't sleep wih a young attendee of a conference I
| helped her get into, after getting her drunk at my airbnb". But
| he just vaguely said "fake evidence" and "short relationship".
| If what she said is true, "short relationship" is hella
| euphemism
| redeyedtreefrog wrote:
| The Scala community soap-opera was a total shit show. Both of
| the women involved later ended up in relationships with Travis
| Brown, another prominent and extremely controversial Scala
| figure. Travis then entered a long running war against John De
| Goes and a bunch of other people in the Scala community before
| rage-quitting.
|
| I don't believe the women entirely made it up, or that Jon
| Pretty is entirely guilt-free. Likely he is a narcissist who
| took advantage of his status to pursue sexual relationships
| where there was a huge imbalance of power. Maybe this strayed
| into manipulative gaslighting, I don't know. But it also seems
| entirely plausible that the women in question desired a
| relationship with a powerful older man and that the
| relationships were essentially consensual. It's a mess of
| power, sex, alcohol, a lack of shared social norms, and
| overlapping social and professional relationships. Quite where
| the truth lies between "totally non-consensual gaslighting" and
| "consensual relationship with large imbalance of power" I don't
| claim to know.
| gwd wrote:
| I remember reading an essay once saying that the _real_ power of
| superheroes -- and the most unrealistic one -- was _certainty_.
| In most of our superhero stories, there 's never any question who
| the bad guy is or what needs to happen to them; there's only a
| question of how to have enough power to defeat them.
|
| But in the real world, life is uncertain. And bad people take
| advantage of that fact: Bad men take advantage of the uncertainty
| to assault women with impunity. And bad women take advantage of
| the uncertainty to make false accusations.
|
| The rest of us are stuck trying to do the best we can. But
| certainly the best we can includes more than what the author
| describes here. There's a reason that in court you have a right
| to give your side of the story, and to confront your accusers:
| the law has thousands of years of experience dealing with this
| sort of thing.
| standardUser wrote:
| I knew nothing of this at the time, but I just read the
| accusatory letter: https://scala-open-letter.github.io/
|
| Reading that letter it seems that Jon was being accused of...
| nothing in particular? I'm not even sure what he could refute.
| There's no accusations of consent violations. There's really only
| the one phrase - "sexually harass and victimize women" - but
| without examples that just sounds like a pot shot. Especially
| given that they identify a "systematic pattern", which is
| apparently a pattern with no specific examples of wrongdoing.
|
| And don't get me wrong, I'm strongly inclined to believe women
| and I generally distrust men. Especially when it comes to their
| interactions with women. And I believe these women probably had
| plenty of valid complaints, in part because I know very well how
| aggressive, oblivious and entitled a lot of men can be, and how
| many "normal" interactions between men and women do involve
| consent violations, if not assault or worse. So given what I know
| about the dangers women face routinely, and the vague and mild
| allegations in this letter, I'd guess like the biggest crime he
| committed was being another guy who's god awful at dealing with
| women, dating and sex.
|
| Unless there is more that I don't know about.
| burkaman wrote:
| The open letter was a response to some specific allegations,
| including https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-
| sexual-hara...
| standardUser wrote:
| Thanks for that. Everything in that letter is, unfortunately,
| upsettingly, fairly common. But I'd want him out of my life
| and professional settings too if that's the way he was
| acting.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Not nothing. The events described by the original letter are
| very something. Something rapey.
| https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara...
|
| And none of that was shown false. It looks like all that the
| court said was "no evidence was provided".
|
| Duh imagine being a victim there and providing "evidence". It
| looks like any text messages would be careful and all the stuff
| would be IRL (if he did it).
|
| He himself could say "I didn't sleep with a young attendee of a
| conference I helped her get into, by getting her drunk in my
| airbnb" on this letter. But he didn't deny it. He just said
| "fake evidence" and "short relationship". C'mon...
|
| It's clear as mud.
| RangerScience wrote:
| > It's clear as mud.
|
| NGL, love this phrase for this situation; I'm reading it as:
| "utterly opaque but also _clearly_ what it is (mud) "
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > And don't get me wrong, I'm strongly inclined to believe
| women and I generally distrust men.
|
| It's amazing this is an acceptable thing to say in polite
| society
| sho_hn wrote:
| > It's amazing this is an acceptable thing to say in polite
| society
|
| I'd say it's an OK stance to take (e.g., based on past
| experience) if one of the conclusions you take from it is
| that it calls for a process that isn't similarly biased. If
| you recognize and acknowledge your own bias, you should be
| able to critically challenge it and/or be interested in
| neutral fact-finding, due process, and so on.
|
| For myself, I'd say it's less general distrust of men and
| more the observation that many situations in society greatly
| favor men in their power dynamics and make it more probable
| for men to misbehave, i.e. given the option.
| xphos wrote:
| Your response and what the above is responding to are
| different things. Being interested in neutral fact finding
| and due process are polar opposites to just believing
| someone because they are a woman and distrusting someone
| because they are a man.
|
| I think the neutral acceptable position, which I
| acknowledge is my opinion, would be to trust the woman
| enough to seriously validate their claims. And to persecute
| the other party proportionate to actual evidence. I think
| that is an extremely difficult line to tow especially to
| make people feel listened to but to just go all in on
| little evidence is bad for society and bad for those people
| who do suffer real trauma
| standardUser wrote:
| I imagine if you'd had the countless conversations I have had
| with women over the years about men and intimacy, you
| wouldn't find this amazing in the least.
| majormajor wrote:
| > It's amazing this is an acceptable thing to say in polite
| society
|
| It's amazing the sorts of things men will say to women
| regularly with frequently no repercussions. Not everyone
| who's creepy or makes threats ends up raping or murdering a
| woman, but of the men who DO murder women, you'll see a ton
| of creepy/threatening past behavior.
|
| It becomes "desperate times, desperate measures."
|
| It's hard, of course, for other men to police other men
| _directly_ because the creeps are usually smart enough to
| _not say it in front of other men_.
|
| So you get to a situation where a lot of us men have:
|
| 1) heard men talk amongst themselves when women aren't around
| after-the-fact about creepy-ass-things they've done
|
| 2) heard women talk about men doing creepy-ass things when
| other men aren't around
|
| so updating your priors to favor "lean towards believing a
| claim by a woman over a denial by a man" is entirely
| reasonable until someone can show that false accusations are
| a big chunk of the accusations. You hear a lot about false
| accusations on certain parts of the internet; I have seen
| _very few_ accusations at all in real life and sadly none of
| them have been false - they 've all been the "creep wasn't
| even smart enough to avoid witnesses" type.
|
| And there's just not a lot of women raping or murdering men
| happening - some significant physical differences, to start
| with - soooooo it doesn't seem like something we can be sex-
| blind about.
| majormajor wrote:
| It's really not. _Many_ people are strongly inclined to
| _believe claimed victims_ and _disbelieve reflexive_ "I
| didn't do it" claims. Accusations have a lot of strength
| generally.
|
| Does "believe victims" avoid triggering your feelings better?
|
| It just happens in this case that the accusations flow
| predominantly one way due to common behavior differences
| between men and women, _and historically it 's been one of
| the areas where the allegations were _least believed by the
| legal system* so "believe women" becomes shorthand for
| "believe claimed victims of sexual harassment or worse."
|
| Consider the stories around Weinstein or R Kelly. "Open
| secret" sorta thing where people in the know avoided the
| guilty party. Yet nobody took it seriously enough to take
| legal action. There are a lot of other crimes you couldn't
| get away with in the open like that for so long.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| It's one of those idiosyncrasies we've fallen into on the way
| to equality.
|
| People haven't trained themselves to do some simple thought
| exercises such as "what if I reversed the
| genders/ethnicities/whatever in this claim."
|
| It'll get better though. People will mature.
| sho_hn wrote:
| If you're interested in a vaguely similar case, I found the
| situation of somewhat-famous video game writer Chris Avellone
| interesting to follow.
|
| He's worked on some games I enjoyed in my youth ( _Planescape:
| Torment_ is probably the most well known, considered a genre
| classic) and my reaction to his cancellation was roughly
| something like "ah crap, another one of my heroes turns out to
| be a bad egg". The narrative of famous men abusing their end of a
| power dynamic is generally easy to believe, etc.
|
| As a result, he lost his employment, contracts and so on as well.
|
| But this one had an aftermath a couple of years later. He wrote
| some elaborate/lengthy pieces defending himself (which struck me
| as plausible and even convincing, but then I had to keep in mind
| he's an expert writer) and initiated legal proceedings -- that he
| eventually won, resulting in a public statement by the accusers
| that the events they accused him of never took place. I think his
| posts make for interesting reading.
|
| His career seems to have resumed recently, five years after the
| accusations were made public.
|
| Even so, if you look at internet comment threads on recent news
| of his new game involvement, there's a persistent meme that he
| paid for this statement in the form of a "seven-figure
| settlement", which is a curious misreading because the seven-
| figure sum was paid to _him_ by the accusers to make up for
| damages.
|
| Sadly, the case of another writer I sometimes liked (Warren
| Ellis; I enjoyed _Transmetropolitan_ back in the day) is rather
| grim in comparison.
| RigelKentaurus wrote:
| Man, this was hard to read. Irrespective of what actually
| happened, this found-guilty-by-popular-opinion mentality is a
| corrosive evil, and it's been worsened by social media. Hard to
| believe that this community just ignored "innocent until proven
| guilty" so casually.
|
| I used to naively believe that people are generally good. I still
| believe that but with a major qualifier. There are some truly
| toxic people out there who are seriously mentally fucked up and
| don't hesitate to screw with others' lives. They seem normal and
| nice at first, but if you look closely enough, you see the trail
| they have left behind.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I think one of the reasons communities like Scala's are
| susceptible to this pattern is that they have some
| characteristics of a movement and compete for attention with
| other movements, so there's a knee-jerk response to protect the
| movement and all the effort put into it from being associated
| with bad stuff. Most signatories to this letter were likely
| erring on the side of protecting their community, at the risk
| of an individuals' fate.
|
| (I'm also discussing this neutral to the actual issue, which I
| don't know much about and haven't made my mind up on.)
| RangerScience wrote:
| It's worth noting, when looking at these kinds of situations,
| that we _do not_ have effective systems of addressing intimate /
| domestic crimes and accusations.
|
| Near as I figure, it comes down to this: Our legal tradition was
| developed to mediate and resolve conflicts _between_ groups;
| _not_ within them, which is where this kind of thing happens.
| shswkna wrote:
| The world is full of very shitty, manipulative people.
|
| These can be predatory men, or scheming women.
|
| For me, the dichotomy is between people that try to act in good
| faith, and those that don't.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I feel like taking risks today, so I'm going to publicly stake
| out a position that I haven't heard yet:
|
| 1. From reading the two women's statements (and between the lines
| of his), I believe the guy probably is a bad person.
|
| 2. Despite this, he shouldn't be cancelled from his profession.
|
| We as a society need to be able to compartmentalize our lives to
| some degree. Unless you work in tiny companies your whole life,
| some of the people you work with will be trumpers, socialists,
| pro-lifers, had 5 abortions, religious fundamentalists, gay,
| anti-vaxers, teetotalers, swingers, or maybe even all of the
| above. Everyone believes something that someone else considers
| cancelworthy. It shouldn't matter; you're at work, not a social
| club.
|
| We should be able to narrow our cancellations somewhat. Tell
| everyone that the OP is a terrible human being, sure! Cancel his
| dating life. If someone is a terrible employee, cancel her work
| life! But leave her family alone. You're welcome to kick me out
| of your religious revival, and you probably don't want me at your
| AA meetings either.
|
| I get it, especially on the conference circuit in a small tight-
| knit professional community, the line between personal and
| professional can get muddy. But this isn't new; something like
| 20% of Americans met their spouse at work. I think we just have
| to navigate it ad hoc. People can and do maintain professional
| relationships while still cutting those people out of their
| social life.
|
| It looks like this guy leveraged his high status in the community
| to sleep with young naive starry-eyed women, plus was a dick
| about it. I guess there are groupies in every scene. Still, these
| weren't employees. They weren't even coworkers. I think it would
| be weird to accuse Gene Simmons of "exploiting his position as a
| rock star to have sex with women". He's said many times that was
| kind of the whole point!
|
| I guess what I'm saying is... probably the two public
| testimonials from women were enough to get the job done.
| Sometimes just word getting around should be enough.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| I agree with your second point but your first point undoes it.
|
| You're an observer on the internet who knows none of these
| people and came to a conclusion based on just their words
| alone. Which is exactly what causes these things to happen.
|
| Let's be real: absolutely nothing about this situation should
| lead you to believe them over him.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Everyone judges, and with incomplete information. I don't
| want to cancel the guy but if my (hypothetical) daughter took
| an interest in him, I'd make sure she read those two public
| letters. It would be irresponsible to say "well it's just
| their words" unless those two women don't exist and it's all
| made up by an LLM.
|
| At any rate, "he didn't do it" is missing the point I'm
| trying to make: We shouldn't professionally cancel him even
| if he's 100% exactly as painted.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| I understand and agree with your wider point but again your
| other point needs to be addressed.
|
| "Well it's just their words" is exactly the right reaction
| to have.
|
| There is no other evidence presented whatsoever. It is
| quite literally just their words.
| CM30 wrote:
| Cancel culture always scared me, and this blog post sums up
| exactly why. It seems like pretty much everyone is willing to
| turn on a 'social pariah' at the drop of a hat, and just about
| every aspect of your existence gets annihilated as a result of
| that.
|
| What's more, it feels completely counter productive anyway since
| the impact of a 'cancellation' on someone is inversely
| proportionate to how powerful/damage their actions are in
| general.
|
| Because the most dangerous folks around can simply ignore any
| efforts at such anyway. Someone like say, Elon Musk doesn't need
| to care how they act or treat others. They're so wealthy and
| well-connected that they can just shrug off any callouts or
| exposes or gossip, and keep causing as much damage as they want.
|
| So the end result is that to a degree, it often feels less like
| 'punishing' bad behaviour and more like sticking the knife in
| deeper into someone who might already have a hard time as it is.
| The billionaire or millionaire ignores the consequences, while
| some random schmuck sees their life torn to shreds.
|
| It also feels like yet another thing that makes life miserable
| for people struggling with anxiety, who are neuro diverse, etc.
| Just takes one person misjudging your intentions/being weirded
| out by your behaviour, and then it seems the internet mob wants
| your blood. So now you've got someone who already likely has few
| friends and supporters and few job prospects getting a scarlet
| letter above their head and their already difficult situation
| made even more difficult...
| squigz wrote:
| A question for those talking about how the law is the only system
| that should be deciding this stuff.
|
| Suppose I run a community online. Suppose several women come to
| me and say they've been sexually harassed by a senior male member
| of the community. Suppose that male denies it. What do you expect
| me to do? Call the cops? That doesn't seem very feasible. Just
| ignore it? Suppose the accusations are true; without the law
| saying they're true, I'm supposed to just let someone who might
| be sexually harassing other community members stick around?
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