[swang]

There has always been repercussions for socially unacceptable speech. What the internet has affected is who can hear or read your speech.

If I go into a supermarket and shout, "I hate black people and they shouldn't even be in America!" I am going to suffer the consequences, but probably only from the people who heard me. Everyone else will have heard it second-hand and may due to social circle pressure decide to sever ties with me. The only way I'll actually suffer long-term (other than being beat up by a mob) is if I was famous since people like it when famous people do things.

The problem is, people continue to think that "The Internet" is just some kind of throwaway void where they can spout whatever they want. Justine Sacco probably isn't a racist, and was probably making a joke about "white privilege" or "white bubble". But she showed poor judgement in assuming that writing that in a public space would be benign. Even with her lack of followers. Text is not a good way to facilitate a joke that requires context. Her joke about AIDS and Africa and white people not being affected is based on some context no one but herself had.

If _I_ am at the supermarket and I hear some old cranky dude yell that out. It's a story I'll probably tell my friends about. They in turn may decide to use that as an inside joke/catchphrase of our circle of friends. But there is no way I'll repeat that to someone else outside of the group of friends that know what the context is. I definitely won't post it on Twitter, not without at least having posted the story about the crazy old man in the supermarket.

So I kinda laugh when people say they can't say anything that's not "PC" anymore. That to me just means they want to really spout some really offensive opinions to a public audience without paying the consequences of doing so. Then of course when there is kickback, they blame it on people being too "PC"

[A_COMPUTER]

You're acting like the networks we use are just neutral conduits through which we engage conversationally exactly how we do in person, and that's just not true. They change how we interact. For one thing, these networks make it so that you can reach out and help mob somebody from the safety of your home, which is completely asymmetric compared to how such interactions would work in person.

[SFLemonade]

Part of the problem that I see, is that in modern America, everyone is a victim. Anything can be considered offensive. And when that happens, we find it acceptable to utterly destroy people's lives over 140 characters...in the name of "social justice". It's ok to call Justine Sacco a fucking bitch and wish brutal rape upon her, so long as you do so in defense of social justice, right? It's ok to shame her, cause her to lose her job and go into hiding, so long as you're part of the "progressive" and "forward thinking" mob, right? In fact, one may even consider it comedic, right?

That is what you call justice?

We have effectively returned to the days of witch hunting and public hangings, but this time our medium isn't the town square. It's the Internet.

Justine Sacco's tweet was a joke. And she even subscribed to the very "liberal" thought that was shaming her. Her joke was tongue-in-cheek. But her shamers weren't liberals. They didn't care about actual reason and discourse and open-mindedness. They weren't the liberals that we think of today; the ones that were always on the right side of history. The ones that marched alongside MLK. The ones that stood up for women's rights. No, they were "progressives". Pseudo-liberals that fight for the oppressed by oppressing others. The open-minded, forward thinking, altruistic group that wants everyone to be heard...until they disagree with their views. Then they must return to the mob-mentality of the stone ages, in the name of "progress".

These people don't care about progress. They don't care about social justice. They care about the entertainment of destroying someone's life, the feeling of dehumanizing another human being, and the gratifying thought that in doing so, they were being a model human...an enlightened individual...better than the rest. But they aren't. They are the most simple, selfish, uncompassionate, and closed-minded beings of our generation.

And we support them. We encourage them.

We have no idea how stressful and oppressive of a world we are creating for ourselves. And all in the name of pseudo "anti-oppression". We must remember the importance of true freedom of speech. The importance of unpopular thoughts and discussions. The importance of open discourse without the threat of condemnation. Where everyone can be heard and we can build a better world together. Where the enlightened truly care about helping the unenlightened to see things differently. Where true progress is bred.

[swang]

I agree there is a lot of mob mentality going on. But I feel like you are only viewing this when you perceive it to be started by the "left". Mob mentality is not a left or right problem. "Progressives" are not the one's doing this. Mob mentality is a human thing.

Is your reasoning that only people attacking Justine Sacco were "progressives" and "liberals?" Does that mean everybody, to put for a lack of a better term, "on the right" understood the context of Justine Sacco's tweet and did not join in and pile on?

I mean in the context of just those tweets, what she said was pretty racist and offensive. So the implication that only liberals attacked her means that either conservatives didn't attack her because they already understood what she meant by those tweets (hard to imagine anyone could in that moment since one of the biggest things about it was that she was on a plane and couldn't defend herself) or they didn't believe those tweets were racist (which they were when taken without context).

Dividing people by framing this as a left/right issue is not the way to go if you really want to stop the internet mob.