[ItendToDisagree]

Agreed they are just people. The difference in this case being that they are being insensitive (even celebrating) about something they did which had negative nation wide (world wide) implications. Which is slightly different than the average person's drunken antics at a party.

For a different (arguably larger) example, if someone is making light of (or celebrating) genocide/slavery/some atrocity (that they or their compatriots caused) and it comes out, that is very different than pictures of Obama/Zuckerberg/Guy down the street being blackout drunk or even doing drugs at a party.

[rayiner]

Most of them don't think "they did [something] which had negative nation wide (world wide) implications." Most of them perceive the financial collapse as a structural event caused by nobody in particular, that they couldn't have personally averted, that they didn't intend to happen, that they are getting blamed for. A very good analogy would be Google-ers and Facebook-ers getting together and drunkenly joking about driving up the rents in San Francisco and pushing out poor people. Possibly in bad taste, but not quite as bad as you're making it out to be.

[dpcheng2003]

I'm a fan of imperfect analogies to prove a point so I can sympathize. However, your analogy really lets off the bad agents in the financial crisis.

Enough people directly committed acts some would deem fraudulent (sell baskets of bad loans to unsuspecting municipalities, approve bogus mortgage loan docs, etc.) that they can't fall on the crutch of systemic breakdown.

It'd be like if these Googlers and Facebook-ers wrote software that inflated real estate prices, driving out the poor and increasing the value of their equity in their homes, before an inevitable collapse in which some government bailout had to occur to prevent urban blight in San Francisco, thereby creating a safety-net for the rich homeowners.

[dhoulb]

To extend and correct your analogy: it'd be like if Googlers and Facebookers, and 20 other companies had to create and continuously improve software that unintentionally drove up real estate prices, in order to engage in a highly competitive market.

Their actions, writing the software, aren't necessarily malicious or risky. To their mind they're just doing what everyone else is doing and trying to create the best system.

Then they have an awards ceremony to celebrate the best software. Maybe in poor taste, but they're not even really considering the real estate market. Their game is software, and the financiers game is profit.

Like we don't generally think about the lives of people who make our clothes or computers, because our game is fashion or programming.

It's groupthink that caused the financial crisis (and most other problems), not necessarily malice.

[Aloha]

You've clearly not spent enough alcohol fueled time debauching yourself.

Ribald, insensitive, bad humor happens when you put booze and a bunch of middle aged men in a room.

[ItendToDisagree]

As pointed out... The difference being that, in the largest majority of cases, said middle aged (any aged) people were not involved in the atrocious act they are lampooning.

As George Carlin said "anything can be funny" (even rape). But its going to be incredibly hard for a convicted rapist to come up with a joke, about the rape he committed, that is funny, doesn't offend basically everyone, or make him come off as a total insensitive twat.

Do you see the difference?

[twoodfin]

Who in this article, specifically, committed which "atrocious act"?

[sarreph]

Seriously?

[twoodfin]

Yes. That's a pretty serious claim, especially paired with a rape analogy. There are plenty of forums on the web where everyone will nod along as "Wall Street 1%'ers" are described as having obviously committed (typically unnamed) atrocities. I don't think HN should be one of them.

[Aloha]

They only committed one sin - Greed.

It's a pretty normal human affliction, and in large I agree with you - while the effects were catastrophic - the actual act is not something that should be demonized, the people are not the problem, the system is - fixing the system is the solution, not blaming the people.

I'd go on even further and argue this kind of behavior is normal, and even healthy, and seen in any 'insider' group - I run SciFi conventions (so do nearly all my friends), and we were building a cards against humanity work-alike, many of the jokes were jibes against the attendees or the community within which we operate, no one thought anything of it, because its a cathartic way of dealing with the stresses of our hobby, in their case, its a cathartic way of dealing with the stresses of a very very stressful industry, and ribald and in poor taste it is - but as often is the case, poor taste can be quite funny.

[czottmann]

That party was not about middle-aged men meeting in private and getting hammered, then telling jokes.

It was obviously not an ad-hoc evening get-together but an event people had prepared for for a while, including likely sober people working on dance routines and skits in bad taste.

[plorg]

This includes new inductees (neophytes) who were ostensibly preparing and performing said skits to prove their worthiness to be inducted into such a fraternal group.