[etjossem]

Nobody "tried start a witch hunt"; Richards never even accused them of being sexist, let alone tried to get them fired. And they were - exactly as you say - minding their own business.

Absent any 4chan backlash or overreaction by the companies in question, it would have been two dudes cracking tasteless jokes and someone pointing out how she didn't think it was cool. You probably see that on Facebook every day.

The fact that anyone got fired over this is what made this moment infamous.

[forgottenpass]

Nobody "tried start a witch hunt"

Publicly shaming someone on twitter isn't trying to start a witch hunt? Maybe it wasn't her intention, but sending that tweet is a knew-or-should-have-known type of situation. I have 6 tweets to my name in 7 years, and even I know how these things go down. Someone innocently or "innocently" mugs for the camera about something they like/don't like and their followers overreact.

[thesteamboat]

> Publicly shaming someone on twitter isn't trying to start a witch hunt?

Publicly shaming someone on twitter isn't necessarily trying to start a witch hunt. Most tweets do not start a witch hunt and it can be quite difficult to predict in advance the size of the reaction to any particular set of comments. Furthermore someone who is regular tweeting and used to sharing inconsequential thoughts has been lulled into a sense of banality since they have many many tweets that don't provoke an over reaction.

[jgeorge]

> Publicly shaming someone on twitter isn't necessarily trying to start a witch hunt.

"Trying", no. But Twitter is (and has been for a while) The Great Internet Outrage Machine, so I think someone with any level of Twitter chops at all would realize that any public shaming (especially on a hot button topic) would likely result in someone kicking off a witch hunt just because.

I don't think she was trying to start the fire, but she /did/ bring the matches.

edit: and just for clarification, I don't necessarily think her public shaming was wrong, but I do thing the resultant witch hunt was.

[lotharbot]

My approach to conflict resolution: if you have a problem with someone, you should first approach them privately. If that doesn't work, then bring in someone who is mutually trusted by both parties. If that fails, take the problem to the broader community.

The wider you spread an issue, the less it remains under your control. Turning around and saying semi-privately "could you guys tone it down" means the issue can potentially be resolved immediately, with no fallout, and with nobody knowing beyond those who could already hear the initial comment. Bringing in a couple of conference officials means the issue can potentially be resolved after a short investigation, and that any issues that arise at that time can be de-escalated. Posting to your 9,000 twitter followers means there are 9,000 people all passing judgment in their own way, 9,000 people who have the opportunity to escalate the issue or spread it even wider. It's very hard, once you've put someone's photo and "this person is behaving badly" in front of an audience of thousands, to completely resolve the issue in everyones' minds. It may not have been intended to be a witch hunt, but it had all of the right elements to become one, and it didn't need to.

[chasing]

If I remember the story correctly, part of the backlash was that she didn't point out to them how what they were saying wasn't cool. She went straight to the conference heads, presumably to get the dongle jokers kicked out or reprimanded in some way. And then she further escalated the situation by tweeting and blogging about it.

Now, maybe that was the right way to do it. Maybe it wasn't. And I don't know if she "tried to start a witch hunt." But she did put it into the public sphere. And people reacted.