
'Overnight, everything I loved was gone': the Internet shaming of Lindsey Stone - prostoalex
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-shaming-lindsey-stone-jon-ronson?curator=MediaREDEF
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scintill76
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085680)

Jon Ronson must have a really good PR team, or Hacker News really loves him.
This is, what, the 5th time he's had an extract from his new book on the front
page of HN in the last 2-3 weeks?

~~~
pja
At least some of the people he interviews were involved in controversial
events that were discussed on HN for days on end so it’s not surprising (to me
at least) that these excerpts are also getting a lot of attention here.

~~~
scintill76
Yeah, it's not really a problem. I just thought it's funny that this author
got so many articles out, and that we've already re-hashed and re-re-hashed
Adria Richards a few times lately.

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evincarofautumn
Every time I read a story about a “scandal”, I wonder why the subject didn’t
do this or that, which seems armchair-obvious.

It seems trivial, from the outside: you explain the context, apologise for
doing something offensive, and ignore further comments from the fools who will
never listen to or forgive you, because they aren’t worth a shred of your
time.

But I have never experienced this situation, so I’m wondering what it is about
this kind of public ridicule and vitriolic reaction that makes otherwise
rational people fail to do appropriate damage control. What am I missing?

Has anyone undergone anything of the sort who is willing to explain the
experience?

~~~
protomyth
Because the speed of rage is faster than any damage control, people have an
agenda and your a talking point not a person, people don't care about the
whole story because they heard a sound bite, or your apology will never be
good enough because you committed a taboo thought, or retractions and
misinterpretations don't get as widely distributed because they aren't
clickbait and don't appear first in Google's search results.

Given how many times I've watched a political speech only to be told the
speaker said X when they said no such thing, I doubt any damage control will
work.

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ghshephard
Of course, all the work the "Reputation Management" company performed for
Lindsey was just pretty much undone by a Guardian Article, and it's huge Page
Rank mojo.

~~~
blueskin_
If there's a huge article about her situation, it doesn't matter so much -
only the densest of people would still be offended (and are peobably not the
kind of person any sane person would want to work for anyway), while now there
won't be the same number of people who were innocently misled into believing
she was trying to be offensive.

------
xkcd-sucks
Is there any way to benefit from this sort of negative attention?

I mean, it's still fame... Maybe she could get paid to _not_ endorse a
product, or she could start a blog and get ad revenue from the rage viewers?

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mgarfias
Do what I do to stay safe: don't goto cons

