[sorenjan]

I hate how everything has to be public nowadays. If you do something silly or embarrassing you need to take into account that everybody have cameras with them at all times, and enough people have no qualms about posting others private moments online for the world to see. I'm a private person, I don't want videos or pictures of me available for everyone. To be constantly surrounded by internet connected cameras definitely makes me less likely to risk look like an ass, even among friends.

[rdiddly]

What gets me about this is how you can be as scrupulous and disciplined as you please about staying off social media, wiping up your digital footprints, etc., but then as soon as you go out in public, someone can just blithely make the decision for you, to put you on social media.

To say nothing of all the proliferating random stationary surveillance cameras and police bodycams out there. Which if you're "fortunate" enough to live in Orlando FL or Washington County OR, is now connected to a facial recognition ML model.

Where is the backlash, where is the outrage about this? Why do people just stupidly let dumb shit proliferate, and only years later say "Oops we did it again?"

[sp332]

Telling a few friends used to be the default, and telling everybody took more effort. Now the default is for people to share their comments with ~2 billion people. It's actually more work to tell only your friends.

[sorokod]

No need to do silly or embarrassing things - an "amusing" voice over commentary will be enough to bury you.

[ap3]

Just being nice by switching seats sets you up for ridicule and shame

[sorokod]

It's just your standard school yard bullying amplified to web scale

[imh]

>Somehow, after all of this, fans of the thread still remained adamant that no wrong had been committed. “We do it everyday to celebrities. No difference. Outrage culture is so dumb,” wrote one Instagram user below a BuzzFeed News post on the story.

It does seem no different from what society seems to be ok with towards celebrities. I have always been uncomfortable with the idea that because someone is on a TV show, society is ok having photographers follow them around 24/7 and reporting on their personal lives.

We have set a poor precedent.

[untog]

There are a great many celebrities whose lives are still private. They simply don't play the game: don't have social media, don't arrange for paparazzi to "catch" them leaving a nightclub, or invite a magazine through the doors of their house.

So it seems the confusion is two fold. People believing that their access to celebrity lives are anything other than arranged PR opportunities, and then believing everyday people should be subject to that incorrectly interpreted behaviour.

[spinach]

At your first point, this is really only true for celebs like Paris Hilton who make their money through appearances and are famous for being famous, but a lot of celebrities have paparazzis following them around all day, everyday and certainly don't want it. Just google "paparazzi kristen stewart" too see how much she abhors it and how invasive it is in her life.

[projektir]

I can sort of understand politicians (even then...), but definitely not celebrities or otherwise there's this concept of "public person" that seems awfully free form. We also don't really combat paparazzi well at all.

[ghaff]

It gets rather bothersome. My professional life at least is pretty public and it's sort of my job. But I'm pretty happy that there weren't ubiquitous cameras and videos around when I was younger.

In practice, most of us are somewhat protected by sheer numbers and the fact that people move on and a lot of information does effectively rot over time.

Balanced against that though is the increasingly number of cameras and automated recognition and categorization systems. And the whole mob mentality. Obviously in the cases where it has actually led to deaths. But also in the, perhaps rare, but well-documented cases where a stupid off-hand remark or action triggers the social media machine and the path of least resistance is career-ending firings and the like.

[sorenjan]

I somewhat agree to your point that the sheer volume of new stuff makes most things disappear rather fast from the public eye. But what used to be a moment among friends, let's say spontaneous skinny dipping or a badly chosen joke, gets shared with everyone in your extended circles and is easily saved and brought up whenever in the future.

Then there's the mob mentality issue you mention, and perhaps more relevant to this article. Even after it passes the names and images are still around when people search your name. It's on your permanent record.

[ghaff]

>It's on your permanent record.

Absolutely, I have an effectively unique name as far as the Internet is concerned. So, if I were to become "Internet famous" for something problematic, it's pretty much a given that would be near the top of search terms any time someone searched on me whether a recruiter or anyone else.

Worse though is probably if you share a name with someone Internet notorious and plausibly could be confused with that person. A story I like to tell is pre-Web but someone I know in NYC shared a name with someone who got into a very public and polarizing local spat and something. My friend literally got death threats left on his voicemail.

[mc32]

If this only went on on Twitter or whatever, this would have come to pass. The reason it's "blown up" is due to media attention, ironically from the likes of The Atlantic and all the other media channels who decided it was funny and wanted to carry the story because everyone else was.

The Atlantic should be outraged at itself along with all the media family.

Right here The Atlantic is masterfully playing the issue from both sides. It could have addressed the issue genetically, of course.

[wpietri]

Twitter has over 300m active users. It's plenty big enough for something to become real on its own. From two years ago, here's an article listing the top 10 hashtag movements: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/03/21...

Most obviously relevant is Black Lives Matter. Police brutality and other biased policing has been happening in America since the beginning. The media have been generally happy to ignore it. (Even when they cover mob killings, it's often been with a neutral or even approving tone. [1]) BLM happened because of social media, because 300m people are now publishers and editors, not just article subjects.

Since then we've seen plenty more. If you're not on Twitter, you may not hear about these things until you see media coverage. But that doesn't mean they're not significant events, both societally or for the people involved.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D614D80/

[mc32]

I dunno, maybe you’re right, do people really get sucked in to “moments”?

I think one reason things blow up on Twitter has to do with with the magnification and positive feedback loop that goes on between itself and other mediums. If it were self contained the impact and general awareness would be much reduced.

[wpietri]

Sure. But socially mediated positive feedback loops are an important part of human society. That describes basically any social movement.

It's the job of the media to report what's going on, and Twitter is at the size where something happening there is a legitimate news topic. I would agree it's probably overrepresented, as the great bulk of journalists use Twitter, and it makes many of the aspects of content-generation much easier.

At one point there was a clear distinction between "online" and "the real world". But I think that is now misleading. Online is now one important part of the real world. We won. Now we have to figure out what to do about it.

[Erwin]

"Orville", a semi-serious version of Star Trek by Seth MacFarlane has one amusing "Black Mirror"-ultra-lite episode about this: "Majority Rule". In this world, law has been replaced by a simple upvote/downvote system and pictures of people doing stupid things can go viral on a "global feed".