Time for a new video in which CNN body slams itself.
True, but I wasn’t so much thinking of her being in the news (which is as it should be), as what happened after that (which was wildly out of proportion).
I was typing on the phone when I wrote that post, and didn’t really complete the thought. There’s an intersection here between Mr Shitlord of the CNN meme, Kathy Griffin,Thomas Frank, Eric Lichtblau, Lex Haris, and drumpf. They’ve all done broadly similar things on the public stage, and yet the outcomes have varied wildly.
@Mankoi ; would it assuage your bruised sensibilities if CNN had simply publically named Mr Shitlord at the first opportunity? I mean, at least then they wouldn’t have been in the position of hypothetically blackmailing him into good behaviour.
How does using his identity as a bond for good behaviour show that?
It doesn’t. You are (deliberately?) using CNN showing display of humanity with the idea that they somehow can’t do their job.
Hypothesis: Trump trawls white supremacist boards for memes
Evidence: well, d’uh. The evidence is everywhere
Proof: here is a specific example, that was dredged from a white supremacist board, and the author of it has a history of such behaviour.
Sidebar: the story is about Trump, so therefore the specific identity of the meme author is not germane to this story.
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If by bruised sensibilities you mean mild disagreement, then yes. As others have pointed out, that’s standard operating procedure for news agencies. Maybe a bit harsh, but acceptable conduct for a news agency. Not publicly identifying him would also be fine. It is very specifically the bit where they say they won’t publicly identify him as long as he maintains good behavior that I have a problem with.
I’m not sure what “display of humanity” you’re talking about, and I haven’t accused CNN of not being able to their job at all.
I know that it doesn’t, that was my point in my original post. Humbabella had responded in disagreement, so I was asking for them to elaborate on that.
But he is the leader with the most ludicrously oversized military in history. And appears likely to be the leader with the most destructive climate impact in history.
Both of which present urgent, global, existential threats to all people everywhere.
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I’m surprised nobody has commented that the guy’s final apology makes him sound exactly Kyle’s dad (skankhunt42) in the 20th and most recent season of South Park - a middle-aged white guy secretly addicted to trolling for the lulz whose shitpostings gets him caught up in circumstances far beyond his control with people a lot worse than him.
Personally, I’ve stopped excepting “The Purge” as a viable excuse for the behavior. Being a troll online, as in being a shotposting assholesolo on purpose, is not something that you just get out of your system and reserve only for ironic (self-professed) /pol/ posting. Especially when you enjoy the community of “fake” racists because it is titilating or whatever, and that fuels a desire to explore more and more racist content to scratch whatever itch you claim you don’t actually have.
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I agree. If you are doing it regularly then you like it. However, I suspect that whatever mechanism(s) are at work are complex and non-obvious because people. I’d like to see some real psychological/sociological research on these types and their cesspool communities.
Also, maybe the guy was lying and using south park as a model for his lies.
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Didn’t Sourhpark also predict Trump, like the Simpsons did? And wasn’t there an interviewer where the makers said something something regret something something?
I think it’s pretty clear that doing proper journalism does nothing to Trump, lots of other places ARE doing it.
That sounds a bit disingenuous coming from someone apparently legally named “anotherone.” Even though I use my actual real name online, it doesn’t require very much of my imagination to understand why the vast majority of, say, commenters here on the BBS use pseudonyms. I’m sure most of them don’t actually say anything under those names that they wouldn’t publicly stand by, but I would bet every dollar I’ve ever touched that vanishingly few of them would smile if, overnight, the BB mods replaced everyone’s BBS username with that user’s actual name, right here next to every last comment on the board.
Gee. How could that possibly be damaging? Why would anyone ever get bent outta shape about that? Are shitposters the only ones who could legitimately value anonymity? How about whistleblowers? How about people with important access to not-very-well-known information, with readily identifiable names that might get them fired if they blab the wrong thing? Or people with shaky, possibly dangerous relationships who can’t confidently discuss such matters under their own name for fear of being identified by somebody with an axe to grind?
Hey, maybe the CNN shitposter in question happens to be named Donald Petersen? Hell of a coincidence, but there it is: maybe HanAssholeSolo just happens to bear a name enough like mine that people in my circles begin to think he might actually might be me? Maybe that costs me a job opportunity or two. Maybe that gets my house toilet-papered, since I don’t really hide where I live. Stranger things have happened when it comes to identifying (or misidentifying) online miscreants.
Whatever. @Mankoi is correct in their interpretation of CNN’s warning as a not-particularly-veiled threat, even if CNN didn’t mean to sound threatening. Will Oremus at Slate doesn’t think it rises to the level of blackmail, but:
It may be true, as Kaczynski asserts, that the network didn’t intend to threaten an anonymous Reddit user. Regardless, the threat was implied, making this at best a case of poor wording and sloppy editorial oversight. That’s the type of unforced error that CNN can ill afford when it’s going toe-to-toe with Trump and his supporters, who will seize on the slightest excuse to paint the network as dishonest and out-of-touch.
But the deeper problem here was a lack of perspective on CNN’s part.
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It’d be pretty stale by re-election time. Maybe wait a bit? Or make it a fruit cake (seems oddly appropriate) and just keep feeding it?
I can see your point re the explicitness pushing it more towards a threat.
I would say that “We won’t release your information right now, but we may or may not have to later” is just as capable of being a threat. It is just more vague.
As in, “We won’t release your information right now, but we may or may not have to later and we’re not going to tell you what might make us release the information”.
I’m not sure that’s any better.
They could certainly have worded it better and avoided 90% of the criticism.
Corporate lawyers above a certain level do not seem to ever have to interact with real people. It’s still surprising that an organisation which is supposedly all about presenting information to the public was that bad at it.
Which I suppose takes it back round to, was it deliberate?
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And why would you think that? In any case, if I did something an investigative news agency deemed newsworthy using an internet handle and they decided to report on it using my real name, any consequences which may result from that reporting would be entirely the result of my own actions. I accept that my actions may have consequences even if those actions took place on the internet.
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From an anecdotal point of view, that’s true. There are obsessive and attention-seeking components I’ve observed in any trolley who’s driven to spend time in forums where his views are considered repugnant and/or which he views as beneath him. Think of the kind of adult with a day job and family who’s up Tweeting at 3AM. For all the problems they cause, ultimately they’re pathetic and damaged characters without the self-awareness to recognise it.
And everyone also disagrees about what the social consequences should be.
Mocking, blocking, and doxxing are three very different consequences. The first (hopefully) teaches one to think before shitposting, the second is a function of personal responsibility- if you don’t want to hear/see it, turn it off!, and the third is a horrible and illegal practice guaranteed to fuck up a life.
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That guy could be making himself a public figure right now. He’d could be doing the rounds of right wing talk shows wearing his fight with CNN as a badge of honor and maybe getting some speaking engagements out of it.
He’s not doing that because he doesn’t want to be in the public. He was living in a bubble of imagined anonymity. CNN popped the bubble, he’s not going to keep doing what he was doing (at least not in the short term). Any threat CNN leveled against him was leveled during a phone call with him. CNN isn’t holding his name as a bond because any other news organization (or just a group of people who care) could follow the same trail of evidence CNN did, get his name, and blast it from the rooftops. CNN has pointed out the danger he has exposed himself to, but they are not in control of that danger. To say it’s blackmail is ridiculous - imagine someone was trying to blackmail you with a publicly viewable youtube video.
The fact that they’ve made it public is to scare others who are also living in those bubbles of anonymity. A public execution is done to scare everyone else into obedience - the target is just as dead whether it’s done in public or private.
The newsworthy story is that Trump trawls racist reddit threads for memes. The guy who made this meme does not want to be part of that story, and many others don’t as well. CNN has sent a clear message that they should stop making themselves part of the story if they don’t want to be part of it. There are plenty of assholes who don’t mind being part of the story out there to keep making racist memes for Trump to retweet.
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Broadly similar things often result in widely varied consequences, though. It makes me think of the thin skull rule*. You can’t predict the outcome of your actions but you are still responsible for them.
But obviously the point (if it is your point) is that people are held to different standards for some pretty bullshit reasons. If you asked people a few years ago in the abstract whether more ought to be expected of the president of the united states than of a service station attendant or a convenience store clerk, everyone would have said yes. These days if you asked that question on Twitter you’d get flamed for being a partisan hack by Trump supporters.
* Named for a legal thought experiment. If two guys in a bar get into a fist fight then neither of them is normally guilty of assault (you can consent to a fist fight). But if one of the guys has an unusually thin skull and a punch fractures it, killing him, the other guy is still guilty of manslaughter.
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