
Moral Panics and the Death of Fun - lexcorvus
http://paxdickinson.wordpress.com/2014/10/22/moral-panics-and-the-death-of-fun/
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scrame
Moral Panic? Fun?

This guy was a C-level exec for a financial journal making rape jokes and
using racial slurs without even the pretense of "my opinions do not represent
my employer".

Sorry, to ruin your "fun", bro. The "misfits and troublemakers" quote you're
building this on refers to people innovating and working against the system to
make something new, not insulated fratboys making rape jokes on twitter.

You can have your free speech, but no one has to pay you to keep a prominent
position while making it clear that you are espousing illegal hiring practices
and being an otherwise narrow-minded dipshit. You are not a rabble-rouser or
mischief maker, just a retrenchment of the same bullshit most everyone else in
the world is sick of.

You drew the target on your back and are whining that people pulled the
trigger.

Thanks for playing, though!

~~~
pkinsky
As far as I know there are no actual instances of sexist behavior attributed
to Pax Dickinson outside of shitty jokes on Twitter. He might be an ass, but
I'm deeply uncomfortable with de-facto blacklisting purely as a response to
offensive speech.

(And since this is deep in identity politics territory I'm saying that as a
gay man of middle eastern ancestry.)

~~~
alxjrvs
I think it has a great deal of worth, especially considering how much people
in his (and most) industries operate with twitter as a public-facing
manifestation of yourself.

Secondly, not wanting to do business with someone because they are an
ass...sounds pretty reasonable to me.

~~~
pkinsky
It's reasonable in the individual case, but the effect is still forcing
someone out of the industry for making blasphemous, err, offensive jokes.
(not, as far as we know, being an ass at work) This seems uncomfortably
similar to blacklisting someone for being a Communist, even if it's an
emergent blacklisting and not a top-down edict.

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cognivore
I find it curious that people seem to think "freedom of speech" somehow
equates to "freedom from consequences." You can say what you want, but if you
tweet racist, homophobic, and sexist remarks, or say them out loud for that
matter, don't be surprised if your employer, friends, and family decide you're
a jerk and unceremoniously dump you.

It's not a "liberal elite" enforcing their will. It's that you're offensive
and people don't like you.

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rosser
This numbers among the worst cases of self-righteous apologia I've ever
encountered.

Face it, Pax: This isn't about having your career "irretrievably damaged" for
"having fun". This is about getting caught and called out for having been an
asshole. Full stop. Those two categories don't have to overlap, and I'm
perfectly within my rights not to want to work with, or be around, people who
think they do.

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chunkstuntman
> Death of Fun

When your fun is directly at the expense of people who don't share your
gender, skin color, class, or orientation, maybe it should die.

> this was speech on the internet. No one was physically harmed by my tweets.
> Relief was never more than a Block button away.

When you are a public figure of any kind, your personal values will either be
exposed as soon as you are given a microphone or they will be unearthed later.
The fact that he crafted these unfunny and tasteless jokes and is now pulling
the "free speech" card while blaming others for not blocking his account
sooner.

~~~
aqme28
Also I don't think he was fired for his tweets, but for his opinions.

Put another way, he wasn't fired for tweeting hateful things, but for having
those opinions. All his tweets did was show the world that he was this hateful
person, one who shouldn't be in a position of power.

~~~
intortus
Nothing happened merely because he held opinions. It was when he began
expressing them in a harmful and embarrassing manner that it became a problem
for him.

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javajosh
So I started reading with an open mind, but then made the mistake of clicking
on a link to his tweets[1].

At that point I stopped reading because I really don't care what he has to say
unless it's remorse and repentance. Those aren't off-color jokes, those are
hateful screeds that reflect a real lack of character. I not only would have
fired you, I would have reviewed our hiring process to make sure we didn't get
anyone like that again.

Pax, if you can't own your mistakes and recognize that _hateful awfulness isn
't funny_ then I don't think you should be writing stuff on the internet.

[1] [http://unvis.it/valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-
ctos-i...](http://unvis.it/valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-
new-tech-bro-nightmare-1280336916)

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intortus
I've had a lot of dealings with the "I'm just expressing my opinions" crowd. I
think it's a disingenuous claim. You're not being shunned merely for opinions,
you're being shunned because your application of those opinions is actively
harmful.

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dang
Somebody emailed us who was worried that letting this post be killed by user
flags was unfair to other users who were carrying on a legit discussion. They
asked if we were meaning to suppress the defense of an unpopular point of
view. The answer is no, and we've unkilled this thread accordingly, although
it's so late that doing so is mostly symbolic.

We often unkill flag-killed threads precisely so discussion can continue. Had
we been more aware of this post at the time, we probably would have done that.
There's too much material on the site for us to be aware of it all. That's why
you should email hn@ycombinator.com if you see something amiss—that's
guaranteed to bring it to our attention.

~~~
tptacek
Maybe kill the link to the story next time, though? Let the thread live, but
not the promotion of bad content or (more importantly) the framing that
content provides for the thread.

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mturmon
"I have a long, long record of successfully working with women, working for
women, and having women working for me."

This is the "some of my best friends are X" defense, for X = women.

Given that women make up 50% of humans, this is somewhat less convincing than
when X = gay or X = black. And it's been shown to be totally unconvincing even
then.

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gegtik
I'm guessing this is being upvoted to give everyone a voyeuristic glimpse to a
slow train wreck

