Monday, September 27, 2021

When A Twitter Jury Hangs

Peak? Quintessential? Bizarre and idiotic excess? The blazing speed with which it all happened was shocking in itself, but even as lines are drawn, sides are picked, tempers flare, the questions raised are already ripe for consideration. It began with one guy, a black author with a significant following on social media, putting his indictment, with fuzzy video, on twitter to evoke a reaction.

What happened here? Some conveniently fill in the gaps in the narrative with what they want to see. Others are not so sure. No matter, the friends of the aggrieved have identified the perpetrator of whatever it is happened.

Unsurprisingly, she had a job and her employer is the next “call.”

And her employer acts swiftly.

Emma has been terminated. I do hope people learn that there are consequences for their behavior, and take the chance to be better.

Whereupon, the post-mortem kicked into high gear. Was it wrong to take this to social media for the deliberate purpose of destroying this girl or was this fair game given what she supposedly said? Did she tell him to stay in his own ‘hood? She may have. Unlike the mythologized Karens, she didn’t call the cops and thus invoke the mythologized cops kill all black guys, but if she did say “hood,” was that racist, and racist enough, to put her in the pantheon of Karens?

He has a bit of a history on social media of being a persistent victim of racism and making sure everybody knows about it. Was this playing the race card, the victim card, for social status? Who had the privilege here?

And then there is the reaction by her employer, Bevy, via its CEO, which immediately terminated her rather than face the potential shirtstorm of social media condemnation, immediately followed by the disingenuous offer to help the two work it out, after he first his employee. Was she fired for what she said, unrelated to her job and without further investigation, or because of his physical challenge of spinelessness?

But then, this happened, at least to the extent reflected in the initial video, and whatever his motivations, is she entitled to not be condemned? Is he wrong to have used what was available to him to vindicate his grievance? Were others wrong to agree with him, to join in the “mob” in support of his cause and to destroy this woman?

There was a backlash against him, that his putting this on social media was a deliberate effort to promote his own perpetual racial victimhood and create outrage and destroy her over this incident, and it was so grossly excessive as to reflect the worst of what can happen when the mob demands blood.

But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen and he was wrong to make his grievance public. There is no duty to “suck it up,” even if you do enjoy the social status you gain from destroying others. And it is possible that she earned it, even if it remains extremely unclear what exactly happened and why.

This is the extralegal process of accusation, conviction and punishment that has now been embraced in the quest to achieve Utopia. And, indeed, the conflicting views, and actions taken as a result of those views, may well have some merit, even if they are so extreme and absolute in their righteousness as to make one cringe. Where is the right? Where is the wrong? Where is the proportionality? Where is the evidence that clarifies what actually happened? Most importantly, where is the concern that the speed, and shocking lack of information and context, with which this happened precluded a thoughtful consideration of these questions before the defendant was executed.

This scenario happened. Is this what we want to happen? Is this progress? The unduly passionate can press their rhetorical excesses as hard as they want, but there is a bottom line question in what happened here. Is this your idea of Utopia?

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