There I go again…
I prefer to let arguments over what I write, mean and imply in the posts here resolve themselves in the comments; after all that’s the point of my writing them. I don’t like to write clarifications and re-considerations, and have posted very few. That is not to say that every post is a polished gem and perfectly articulates the often complex and contentious observations I’m attempting to make…far from it. Virtually everything I write would benefit greatly from being able to take the time to review it, think about it, run it by a few trusted colleagues, re-write it a few times, and post it a day or two later. I know that. I write quickly, often in one draft, trying to keep up with a dynamic and diverse topic with a balance of quantity and quality I have time to deliver. It’s a trade off, and one that, fortunately, a passionate and articulate group of readers help make work.
For several reasons, the post “Audrie Pott, Web-Shaming And Moral Luck” has sparked confusion and discord, and I will accept the responsibility for that. Not every post works. Often, regular readers will note, I will choose a current event to use to highlight an ethics issue that is not the one most people are focusing on—sometimes this has yielded a very good post, and other times, I don’t quite pull it off. The danger is always that by not focusing on the primary issue, I will unintentionally send the message (to some) that I don’t think it still is an important issue, or that what I have chosen to write about instead is more important. That happened with this post.
I admit to being prickly about this, because the complaint goes to the heart of what Ethics Alarms is designed to do. It is not, and never has been, intended to be a catalogue of every example of unethical conduct that comes over the internet or the news wires. The posts here are designed to sharpen awareness of ethics and their application to just about everything, past, present and future; to encourage ethics awareness, sensitivity and analysis, and to counter, to some small extent, the culture’s (and media’s) reluctance to frame events in ethical terms. I am trying to circulate useful tools, method and concepts, and to encourage everyone to be proactive in making ethical judgments, which naturally leads to more ethical personal choices too. When I don’t write about a topic, it is not because I don’t think the topic is objectively important, but that I feel I either have nothing uniquely different or valuable to contribute to what others are saying, or that it doesn’t advance these goals.
In the Audrie Pott post, I was initially inspired by how the young woman’s suicide dominated the commentary, making it seem, in some articles, as if what happened to Pott was equal to or worse than what happened to the Steubenville victim. It wasn’t as bad—Potts wasn’t raped, nor was her ordeal as long, nor was it as widely disseminated to observers, nor were her attackers so widely defended or assisted afterward. The reason the Potts’ abuse is perceived as being especially heinous is how Potts reacted to it after the fact. This is moral luck. The media in particular is a sucker for moral luck, and the legal system bases punishment, not unreasonably, on moral luck—you are responsible for paying for the damage your actions cause, whether they were intended and predictable or not. Logically and fairly, stating this does not indicate that I think what the boys did to Potts was anything other than terrible, or that it suggests I want to minimize how wrong it was. Yet several readers took it that way. I should have been clearer.
The next controversy occurred as a result of my pursuing the second objective of the post, which was to expound on my (previously stated) position that using private or narrow audience conduct to humiliate another for any reason should be rejected by society as wrong. I compared the Pott incident to another contentious Ethics Alarms topic, the vigilante Applebee’s waitress. Admittedly, this was leading with my chin in many ways, and in retrospect, it was probably an ethical juggling act I should have attempted. The idea was that the while one case involved humiliation of an innocent for “fun,’ and the other case involved vigilante humiliation of a wrongdoer for vengeance, the method was unethical in both. Thus I wrote,
“In both cases, individuals rationalized violating another individual’s expectation of privacy to humiliate her in a moment of vulnerability, without her consent, without sufficient justification, in utter disregard for the Golden Rule.”
I still think this statement accurately describes both cases. It is not meant to suggest that the two cases are equivalent or even comparable, except that these factors were present in both:
- “violating another individual’s expectation of privacy…” The pastor thought she was communicating only with the cashier and a waiter; Audrie thought she was at a private party. Both had reasonable expectations that their words/appearance would not be made public.
- “to humiliate her…” This was at least part of the goal in both cases. The fact that many seem to think that the pastor deserved humiliation and obviously Audrie was a pure victim who did nothing to warrant her mistreatment, is irrelevant to my point.
- “in a moment of vulnerability…” Potts: drunk and unconscious. The pastor: Momentary attack of bad judgment, cheapness, arrogance and nastiness especially obnoxious in a pastor.
- “without her consent…” Check and double-check.
- “without sufficient justification…” This apparently lit some fuses, but it’s accurate. There was some justification for the exposure of the pastor, none for Audrie. None is also not “sufficient.” I was not suggesting that there was any justification for what was done to Audrie Potts—there was none.
- “in utter disregard for the Golden Rule….” Utter. Having anyone post or publicize anything uncomplimentary, revealing, or embarrassing—anything one believes might be misunderstood or cause one to be regarded in an uncomplimentary light by strangers—is among all of our worst nightmares.
Was I suggesting, or do I believe, or did I think for a nanosecond, that the pastor and the girl had been similarly abused? No. That they were equally harmed? No. That they deserved equal sympathy? No. In fact, the two incidents roughly define a spectrum, with the pastor’s web-shaming being near the far end of most justifiable, and Pott being 100 miles away on the tippity end of no justification at all—and my point was or is, whether you like it or not, we shouldn’t do this or any version of it to anyone–this being defined as embarrassing or shaming non-public figures in front of large numbers of strangers and the public, perhaps in perpetuity.
It was the next paragraph where I really blew it by careless phrasing, which is strange, because I worded it carefully, or thought so at the time: I wrote…
“In the Pott incident, it was the result of the drunken incapacity of a young woman who should not have been drunk or incapacitated that was revealed to others to her embarrassment. At Applebee’s, it was an isolated incident of arrogance and lack of generosity by a pastor who is supposed to embody better values as part of her calling. You may argue that the pastor “deserved” her humiliation more than Potts, but in fact neither deserved public humiliation. Using an individual’s bad judgment, mistakes, impulsive acts or vulnerability before a limited group of people to denigrate that individual’s character and dignity to others, perhaps thousands of others, is unethical—cruel, unfair, vicious, and irresponsible…and sometimes, it may get someone killed.”
Ugh. In the first sentence, I was attempting to avoid suggesting that Audrie should have been ashamed of her sexual abuse–exactly that accusation, ironically, that got a commenter banned in the discussion, because whatever I said, I never said that—so I mentioned everything but her sexual abuse, which had, I see now, the completely perverse effect of making it appear as if she was at fault. She was not at fault. She was not to blame. She did engage in irresponsible conduct—nobody can seriously argue that an underage teen drinking until she passes out at a party isn’t irresponsible—and that irresponsible conduct created the opportunity for there assailants to abuse her. I refuse to accept the argument that to mention that fact is “blaming the victim.” In criminal defense, “blaming the victim” is a despicable tactic that suggests that the prior conduct of a victim encouraged an assault. Ethically, it is ridiculous. Nobody earns or asks for sexual battery. Audrie Potts didn’t. She did make a mistake, and it seems inarguable to me that she was embarrassed by that mistake. Assume we all would be. Being photographed naked with obscenities written on our unconscious body would also be embarrassing to all of us, not because it was our fault, but because nobody wants to have people looking at their nude body under those circumstances, if at all.
Then I compounded my error by writing, “You may argue that the pastor “deserved” her humiliation more than Potts…,” which was just plain stupid. What I should have written was, “You may argue that the pastor “deserved” her humiliation while Potts did not…”, which is what I meant to convey. It’s the same confusion I engendered earlier with “sufficient justification.” A person who deserves something more than some one who doesn’t deserve it at all can still be said to deserve it “more than” the other, but it’s an ambiguous phrasing.
Here, as elsewhere, I should have been clearer.
Ethics Alarms 
Bravo, Jack. I think I was trying to say a little of this in a comment following your posting about the hammer thrower and was called irrational for saying it. Again, I just think that taking a terrible set of facts involving a victim and then using those facts, sometimes in a manner seemingly unflattering to the victim, to make a hypothetical point is just an unnecessarily risky template. I suspect non-professionals (such as myself) can’t effortlessly make the jump from a tragedy, small or sometimes large, to a tangential ethical analysis. Again, I think It just makes you appear inhumane.
ps. I hope I am correct in thinking this is a point your making. I apologize if I’m wrong, er, being irrational. In any event, thanks for your continued efforts. Your posts and your readers’ comments are very engaging. Such posts are too rare on the internet and such comments are absolutely non-existent anywhere else.
No, Bill—that was the point, and you have a goo and wise persepctive. I can’t swear off this technique, but I have to be sure that I do a better job with t.
The media in particular is a sucker for moral luck, and the legal system basis punishment, not unreasonably, on moral luck—you are responsible for paying for the damage your actions cause, whether they were intended and predictable or not. Logically and fairly, stating this does not indicate that I think what the boys did to Potts was anything other than terrible, or that it suggests I want to minimize how wrong it was. Yet several readers took it that way. I should have been clearer.
I don’t see any comments that did what you’re suggesting. The complaints I saw toward this conclusion were over your use of language that implied (and flat out said) that Potts was partially responsible for what was done to her, not your discussion of moral luck.
In fact, the two incidents roughly define a spectrum, with the pastor’s web-shaming being near the far end of most justifiable, and Potts being 100 miles away on the tippity end of no justification at all—and my point was or is, whether you like it or not, we shouldn’t do this or any version of it to anyone–this being defined as embarrassing or shaming non-public figures in front of large numbers of strangers and the public, perhaps in perpetuity.
The issue is that you set up a very weird spectrum. Yes there’s a spectrum of behaviors that can be shamed, but Potts’ behavior isn’t on the spectrum at all. She didn’t do anything to feel guilty about. (More explanation of this farther down). What she was being “shamed” for was being abused. It’s a different quality of argument. They never should have been combined.
The Potts “shaming” is on one far end of a spectrum that ends with a web campaign against someone who was the victim of tresspassing, or wasn’t called after a date. It’s all about attacking someone because bad things happened to them. It’s a different world from the spectrum of criticism of behavior, which goes from criticism of someone who didn’t say “bless you” after a sneeze to criticism of someone who went on a mass murdering spree.
We can all agree behavior in the first spectrum is wrong. The second spectrum is where we have different cut off lines of where a particular amount of shaming is appropriate. (If the badness of the act is the X-axis, and the amount of shaming is the Y-axis. We all draw an increasing line for the appropriateness of the shaming, we just don’t all draw the same line. I draw a continuously increasing line; you draw a stepped line at different milestones.
She did make a mistake, and it seems inarguable to me that she was embarrassed by that mistake. Assume we all would be. Being photographed naked with obscenities written on our unconscious body would also be embarrassing to all of us, not because it was our fault, but because nobody wants to have people looking at their nude body under those circumstances, if at all.
I don’t think you can assume her mistake itself (passing out) led to any embarrassment. Passing out is even a badge of honor for some youth. It was her naked body being spread around that was embarrassing, and her nude body wasn’t part of her mistake.
——
I think this was generally an excellent post, my complaints notwithstanding.
Thanks. But
1. Alexander Cheezem, in particular, complained that I did not specifically call out the abuse while mentioning the other issues.
2. It is a pretty strange claim to say that Potts’ attackers were “shaming” her because of their own abuse, and since I don’t believe that’s what they did, I don’t believe that’s what the shaming was about. They were embarrassing her by showing her passed out, naked with things written all over her. They weren’t shaming her for the fact that she had those things done to her. Why would you even think that?
3.”I don’t think you can assume her mistake itself (passing out) led to any embarrassment. Passing out is even a badge of honor for some youth. It was her naked body being spread around that was embarrassing, and her nude body wasn’t part of her mistake.”
Boy, I sure do. And if passing out was a badge of honor, I don’t think these guys would have passed around the photo. No, her nudity wasn’t part of her mistake, but it wasn’t the abuse that made her nude, but the nudity itself, that would naturally embarrass her. Being ashamed of the results of abuse is not the same as being ashamed of the fact that one was abused, and that’s the dividing line that you don’t seem to want to concede.
1. Point taken.
2. Have you not been introduced to the wide world of “slut shaming?” Making women fell bad for being abused is, while horrible, common.
Look at some of the mobs enforcing sharia law on raped women. Being raped brings dishonor on the family that will only be cleansed by a marriage (to the rapist) or a killing (of the women, not the rapist).
3. And if passing out was a badge of honor, I don’t think these guys would have passed around the photo
This is circular logic. They passed the photo around as slut shaming after their abuse. If she’d been conscious, they very well may have done the same thing.
Being ashamed of the results of abuse is not the same as being ashamed of the fact that one was abused, and that’s the dividing line that you don’t seem to want to concede.
I think that dividing line is horrible. If I’m raped, I’m supposed to not be ashamed of the rape, but ashamed that I ended up naked? I’m supposed to be ashamed if I contracted any venereal diseases from the rape? This distinction you make doesn’t exist.
“The issue is that you set up a very weird spectrum. Yes there’s a spectrum of behaviors that can be shamed, but Potts’ behavior isn’t on the spectrum at all.”
You are still missing the point.
Yes, Pott’s behavior is on the tippity end of the spectrum, at the number 0, meaning NO justification whatsoever for shaming. You even quoted him saying that.
The point that you are missing is, is whether or not an individual’s private interactions with others is in no way fair game to be blasted on the internet against that individual’s wishes.
Then Jack moved on to explain that one reason the Pott’s issue is universally condemned as wrong is because Pott’s killed herself over it. Had Pott’s NOT killed herself over it, do we think this would have even been a newsworthy item? No.
That is the distinction Jack is making when he used the Pott’s example in counterposition to the Applebee’s example.
If Jack was doing an exposition on both scenarios in terms of who initiated unethical behavior, then certainly, the behavior of the Pastor from the Applebee’s episode and the behavior of the teenage boys from the Pott’s episode would be tossed on a spectrum with each other.
But that’s not what he’s highlighting, is it? He’s not trying to compare who was initially wronged (Applebee’s waiter to Potts). He’s comparing the wrong that occurred afterwards: the publicizing of the Applebee’s Pastor to the publicizing of Pott’s). He’s discussing that no amount of non-permitted publicity is right to give private (non-criminal) affairs.
“We can all agree behavior in the first spectrum is wrong. The second spectrum is where we have different cut off lines of where a particular amount of shaming is appropriate.”
Obviously not, as Jack asserted the first spectrum, and wholly condemns the second (as per his exposition which you apparently didn’t comprehend).
This was meant to be a reply to TGT. I must have accidentally clicked the wrong reply link.
”I don’t think you can assume her mistake itself (passing out) led to any embarrassment. Passing out is even a badge of honor for some youth. It was her naked body being spread around that was embarrassing, and her nude body wasn’t part of her mistake.”
This poor kid’s mistake wasn’t passing out. She had no control over that. Her mistake was drinking to the point of passing out. “Actions have consequences” and her choice of drinking to that degree, which could have killed her at that point, allowed a situation to occur that ultimately did. As for the boys, that’s another story, and so is the apparent lack of parenting all the way around. May the memory of Audrie Potts haunt them all of their days.
Is everyone’s reply link messing up this evening? or was that for me?
Yes, she made a mistake in drinking too much. Again, though, drinking too much is a badge of honor for lots of kids, so that’s unlikely to be used as a shaming tool. It was the abuse that made it stand out.
Even if your assumption that drinking too much is a virtue amongst this group, it is no basis to excuse her for drinking to much.
By that notion then we shouldn’t have any problem with cultures that develop blood feuds based on their own ideas of revenge killing justice, because “hey, it’s just a badge of honor amongst them”
I never said it was. Eesh.
Then you have no reason using that point as a rebuttal to Jack asserting that the girl did make a mistake that evening.
Ugh. I didn’t claim the girl didn’t make a mistake that night. (“I don’t think you can assume her mistake itself (passing out) led to any embarrassment.” — “Yes, she made a mistake in drinking too much.”)
I clearly agree that her actions were a mistake, but her actions were unlikely to be embarrassing to her.
Jack claimed the embarrassment was due to being photographed passed out. He tried to remove the sexual assault as the reason for the shaming. I pointed out that when you remove the sexual assault, you’re not left with something that Potts was likely to be ashamed about.
That is ducking the issue par excellance. I know: kids these days aren’t ashamed to be photographed drunk and passed out. That is an unwarranted presumption—and since it is guaranteed that no one, anywhere, will be embarrassed NOT to be so photographed, and the woman did not, as far as we know, tell someone to make sure she was photographed drunk and passed out if that occurred, and it is undeniable that SOME people her age—perhaps even her!—are and will be embarrassed by such exposure, and because it strains credulity that those who assaulted her were so exposing her to do her a favor, it is completely reasonable for us to surmise that her conduct and state was part of her underlying embarrassment, and it was certainly a contributing factor to the existence of the photos and her vulnerability to being molested.
But I did NOT “try to remove the sexual assault as the reason for the shaming.” Why would I do that? The sexual assault aspect was surely what contributed most to inspiring her to commit suicide. I wrote: “They violated her (though there may have been no actual rape), wrote crude things on her naked body and breasts, and took photographs. After the party, when Pott realized that the photographs, text-messages and e-mails describing her assault were circulating among her friends and others, she took to her Facebook page to write, “worst day ever….The whole school knows…My life is like ruined now.” That seems pretty clear to me, and the sexual assault is certainly not partitioned from the shaming. I then described what occurred to Pott via the photograph, as “violating another individual’s expectation of privacy to humiliate her in a moment of vulnerability, without her consent, without sufficient justification, in utter disregard for the Golden Rule. In the Pott incident, it was the results of the drunken incapacity of a young woman who should not have been drunk or incapacitated that was revealed to others to her embarrassment.”
All this nonsensical parsing is over whether the assault qualifies as one of the “results” of Pott being incapacitated. But even here, I did not “try to remove the sexual assault as the reason for the shaming.”
This is just an effort, and I have no idea what I did to justify or warrant it, to represent what I actually wrote and obviously meant as something insensitive, sexist and sinister, which it was not, and obviously was not.
Jack,
Your logic in the first paragraph doesn’t hold water. Here’s your issue: “and because it strains credulity that those who assaulted her were so exposing her to do her a favor, it is completely reasonable for us to surmise that her conduct and state was part of her underlying embarrassment”
You beg the question right there. You assume the pictures were only exposing that she was passed out, when they were also representative of the sexual assault. Showing her passed out, on it’s own, may have been a positive or a neutral. Showing her naked, abused body (something that she did not cause) is a clear negative. I think it’s strong enough to supercede any positives or neutrals of just being passed out.
But I did NOT “try to remove the sexual assault as the reason for the shaming.” Why would I do that?
Because you were trying to rationalize an indefensible position? I don’t know. You’re the one who was doing it: It is a pretty strange claim to say that Potts’ attackers were “shaming” her because of their own abuse, and since I don’t believe that’s what they did, I don’t believe that’s what the shaming was about. It wasn’t about the abuse. It was about Potts’ actions.
Hell, your first paragraph in this comment was all about defending the separation. You’re arguing that Potts must have been embarrassed by her being passed out. Moreover you quoted yourself doing it in your defense that you didn’t do it: I then described what occurred to Pott via the photograph, as ”[very, very bad stuff omitted for brevity]. In the Pott incident, it was the results of the drunken incapacity of a young woman who should not have been drunk or incapacitated that was revealed to others to her embarrassment.”
You claimed the shaming was do to her being drunk and incapacitated. That’s what the “who should not have been drunk or incapacitated” clause implies.There’s no other purpose to that clause.
This is just an effort, and I have no idea what I did to justify or warrant it, to represent what I actually wrote and obviously meant as something insensitive, sexist and sinister, which it was not, and obviously was not.
What you actually wrote has been insensitive and sexist, but not sinister. We’re telling you this because we know you don’t want to be insensitive and sexist. Why do you warrant this criticism? Because we know you don’t mean to do what you’ve done.
1. “and because it strains credulity that those who assaulted her were so exposing her to do her a favor, it is completely reasonable for us to surmise that her conduct and state was part of her underlying embarrassment”
How do you manage to ignore that aspect of the sentence? I said “part.” That obviously means that I was explicitly NOT assuming “the pictures were only exposing that she was passed out.”
2, et al. All the rest is more deceitful word parsing, with you ignoring or distorting distinctions I just have to believe you really comprehend. Conduct can lead to results without the actor being the one to blame for the results. One can legitimately be ashamed of conduct, even though the worst consequences of that conduct were not the individual’s doing. Irresponsible conduct that leads to one’s victimization does not make the victim accountable for that victimization. Someone can be expected to feel legitimate shame for being photographed in the wake of sexual abuse, without being in any way culpable for that abuse or without one’s victimization being a rational cause for shame. Shame is an emotion, not a rational decision. Nobody should be ashamed of how they look naked, but virtually everyone is. By the logic you have demonstrating in this absurd exchange, if I were to say, “he was ashamed because he was nude,” you would argue that was suggesting that he had something to be ashamed of.
1. I may have ignored the “part”, as that would be moving the goalposts. You said being passed out was worth embarrassment. I said no. Saying it was “part of the embarrassment” wouldn’t defend your point.
Anyway, your complaint doesn’t touch the error in your logic:
* She was passed out in the picture. (True)
* They weren’t trying to do her any favors. (True)
* Therefore, her being passed out must have been the negative impetus for passing around the photographs. (False)
or the reason:
* There were other clearly negative things in the pictures. Since there were clear negatives, those are sufficient to meet the clause of not doing any favors.
2. You’re the one misrepresenting.
Saying “conduct can lead to results” is fine, but that’s not simple what you did. You chided her conduct when talking about the lead to result. That changed the meaning of your statement about the conduct from precursor to responsibility.
ARRRGH. I chided foolish, risky, irresponsible conduct directly involved in leading to her attack. You can’t deny that it was that (“a mistake” is a euphemism), but still evoke political correctness by saying that it is insensitive to acknowledge tha FACT. This is the weakest of your complaints, and I’m not crazy about most of the others, so that’s saying something.
I chided foolish, risky, irresponsible conduct directly involved in leading to her attack.
This is your defense? Did you just restate my complaint, but try to downplay the part where the chiding was in context of discussing the result? I just said you were ignoring the context, and showed you the 2 pieces of context that you left out. In response, you still leave out one of those pieces of context.
You can’t deny that it was that (“a mistake” is a euphemism), but still evoke political correctness by saying that it is insensitive to acknowledge tha FACT.
I haven’t suggested it’s insensitive to note that she made a mistake. I’ve blatantly said that how you mentioned it mattered and the language of how you mentioned it suggested she was to blame.
T. This is the weakest of your complaints, and I’m not crazy about most of the others, so that’s saying something.
The issue might be that you keep misrepresenting my argument. Strawmen due tend to be pretty damn weak.
Missing points
You dropped off my pointing out that your supposed refutation of my complaint with your logic failed.
You also dropped off something in your previous comment that I failed to call out:
You: This is just an effort, and I have no idea what I did to justify or warrant it, to represent what I actually wrote and obviously meant as something insensitive, sexist and sinister, which it was not, and obviously was not.
Me: What you actually wrote has been insensitive and sexist, but not sinister. We’re telling you this because we know you don’t want to be insensitive and sexist. Why do you warrant this criticism? Because we know you don’t mean to do what you’ve done.
Can you admit that your intent hasn’t been attacked? It’s your execution that we find at issue in your language.
1. I can admit that you aren’t attacking my intent, yes. Kassiane was, beyond any question.
2. I have explained that I did not suggest she was to blame for her attacker’s actions. You don’t accept the explanation. OK.
3. Again, “mistake” is a politically correct euphemism. Yes, it was a mistake. It was also a particularly humiliating mistake, which is germane. Not all mistakes are humiliating.
1. You’re right, but based on the content in that post ONLY, I think an attack on your intent wasn’t unreasonable.
2. You explained that you did not intend to suggest bad things very well. Your explanation that you did not accidentally suggest bad things is still very lacking.
3. “It was also a particularly humiliating mistake.” That’s begging the question. We’d been discussing whether drinking to unconsciousness (on it’s own) would have been embarrassing for Potts. It was last left at me pointing out a flaw in your defense of your position.
“Ugh. I didn’t claim the girl didn’t make a mistake that night.”
There’s another point, I didn’t assert that you did say she didn’t make a mistake. But you still rebutted Jack’s assertion that she did, and your reasoning is flawed as demonstrated.
There’s another point, I didn’t assert that you did say she didn’t make a mistake.
Yes, you did. Your comment I was replying to started: “Even if your assumption that drinking too much is a virtue amongst this group, it is no basis to excuse her for drinking to much. ”
If I was supposedly excusing her drinking too much, than I was suggesting she didn’t make a a mistake.
But you still rebutted Jack’s assertion that she did, and your reasoning is flawed as demonstrated.
I still haven’t suggested it wasn’t a mistake to drink too much. Can you point to where you think I did that?
Your whole wordsmithed attempt to skew what I said is laughable.
The phrase, “even if your assumption that drinking too much is a virtue amongst this group…”, in no way claims that you suggest she didn’t make a mistake. It merely points that you are using moral relativism to excuse her mistake.
I like how you finished up that strawman with another strawman – “I still haven’t suggested it wasn’t a mistake to drink too much. Can you point to where you think I did that?”
To repeat myself: I never said you claimed she didn’t make a mistake.
tex,
I assumed that your “Even if your assumption” statement meant to say I claimed she didn’t make a mistake because your follow up post was: “Then you have no reason using that point as a rebuttal to Jack asserting that the girl did make a mistake that evening.”
That statement says in black and white that I was arguing against Jack’s position that the girl made a mistake. If I was arguing against that position, this suggests I was trying to argue that she didn’t make a mistake.
I misunderstood your earlier statement in light of your later statement. My mistake. I pointed back to the wrong statement as the genesis of the specific claim. That’s my error. That you made the claim, though, is still true.
As for my corrected understanding of your prior statement, I never argued that Potts should be excused for drinking too much.
“That statement says in black and white that I was arguing against Jack’s position that the girl made a mistake. If I was arguing against that position, this suggests I was trying to argue that she didn’t make a mistake.”
No, the statement you are referring to — “Then you have no reason using that point as a rebuttal to Jack asserting that the girl did make a mistake that evening” — does not assert in ‘black and white’ that I claim you said she didn’t make a mistake. It leaves open the possibility that you don’t consider her mistake to be relevant to the specific focus of the ethical discussion, and therefore would want to rebut it. You’ve created a false dichotomy to try and undermine my line of attack. It has failed.
Not only that, you weren’t confident in your own false dichotomy, when in one sentence you assert that I was unquestionable with my comment’s intent (in your mind), while following with another sentence that my comment merely ‘suggested’ my intent (in your mind).
He’s comparing the wrong that occurred afterwards: the publicizing of the Applebee’s Pastor to the publicizing of Pott’s.
And there is no comparison. One is proper social responses that may have gone to far (going on the internet instead of small community), and the other is hounding and abusing a girl that was abused that would never possibly okay, no matter how small the community was.
As I said, putting them on the same spectrum is insane.
“We can all agree behavior in the first spectrum is wrong. The second spectrum is where we have different cut off lines of where a particular amount of shaming is appropriate.”
Obviously not, as Jack asserted the first spectrum, and wholly condemns the second (as per his exposition which you apparently didn’t comprehend).
Uh, what? The second spectrum includes murder, which Jack is cool about widely publicizing, even if it’s between two private individuals. I think I understood Jack’s comments. I don’t think you understood mine.
“Uh, what? The second spectrum includes murder, which Jack is cool about widely publicizing, even if it’s between two private individuals. I think I understood Jack’s comments. I don’t think you understood mine.”
Uh, no. Jack clearly indicated crime as being an exception. Rightly so, and also removing it from the spectrum due to exceptionalism.
“And there is no comparison. One is proper social responses that may have gone to far (going on the internet instead of small community), and the other is hounding and abusing a girl that was abused that would never possibly okay, no matter how small the community was.”
Both are private issues in no way proper to display in the internet and therefore are comparable in that regard. Which is how Jack compared them. So, not ‘insane’.
Uh, no. Jack clearly indicated crime as being an exception. Rightly so, and also removing it from the spectrum due to exceptionalism.
Jack taking murder off his 1 spectrum is irrelevant to the spectrums I created.
I also have pointed out that crimes range from loitering to murder. I don’t think greatly publicizing most loitering charges is appropriate. Making crime an exception is stupid.
Both are private issues in no way proper to display in the internet and therefore are comparable in that regard. Which is how Jack compared them. So, not ‘insane’.
You switched from my use of “comparison” (which implies something like equivalence) to “comparable” (which suggests that we can determine how they are similar and different). In that sense, everything is comparable. I’m assuming that was an unintentional hiccup.
As to the content of your argument, you just repeated an argument that I had shown a problem with. That’s a no no. Do you think the issue I raised is invalid? Was my framing inappropriate?
“Jack taking murder off his 1 spectrum is irrelevant to the spectrums I created.”
If that’s how you wish to go about this: the spectrums ‘you created’ are irrelevant to the points Jack was making.
Crack open a dictionary on ‘comparison’ and ‘comparable’. You are wrong and I’m not sure why you are going down that rat-hole to divert this.
I didn’t ‘repeat’ an argument until after I showed what was wrong with your rebuttal. Since your rebuttal was flawed, my original argument (which I ‘repeated’) still stood. Nice try from that angle as well.
Different spectrums
I think the spectrums I created are better than the ones Jack did. I gave reasons for my use of those spectrums and how they apply better than his. That’s clearly relevant to the topic.
comparison vs comparable
I still think the use of comparable opened up other avenues that were not there originally. It has to do with word usage, not simply dictionary definitions. I think, though, that not interpretting comparable the same way is also valid. I was just worried about possible equivocation.
diversion
While the comparison/comparable paragraph was technically a diversion, I still responded to your actual point. I didn’t try to divert the discussion. I continued on as if the language was fine.
repetition and rebuttal
You didn’t show what was wrong with my argument. Your attempted rebuttal to my comments about crime did not rebut my spectrum’s generally. Even if your rebuttal had been valid, it would have just corrected a statement I made about the lines drawn on the second spectrum. It would not have rebutted my complaints about Jack’s spectrums in the slightest.
What you still aren’t getting is that Jack wasn’t comparing the initial wrongs that launched these episodes – the assault and recording of the nude Pott’s and the un-tipped waiter.
Jack was comparing the Internet publicizing of the nude Pott’s and the internet publicizing of the non-tipping Pastor.
Therefore your spectrum still are irrelevant to the points Jack was making.
He’s wasn’t out to discuss the OBVIOUS wrong of the Pott’s assault and recording of her nudity or the OBVIOUS wrong of not tipping the waiter, in which case your spectrum might be of use. His discussion is about what nobody seems to grasp these days, that private interactions have no right to be displayed for all the world to see without permission from both parties involved. Shameful and embarrassing situations being a subset of those interactions are likewise safeguarded, with the exception of crime as noted.
I’m not failing to get anything. I understood what Jack was doing, and I was explaining why it wasn’t valid. My spectrum’s are an explanation for my thoughts on the matter.
No matter how many times it’s done, repeating a point is not a counterargument to a complaint about that point.
—–
Aside I just realized:
(1) Jack has said that publicizing pictures wasn’t about publicizing the sexual assault,
(2) what’s left in the pictures is illegal underage drinking, and
(3) Jack’s okay with web shaming of illegal conduct.
By Jack’s rules, the Potts pictures were fine.
Your complaint about my point is invalid since it doesn’t address my point to begin with. Your spectrums designed to expound on your flawed notions are still invalid, regardless of whether or not you think you rebutted them (which you haven’t).
I have no need to rebut your flawed defense of an originally flawed argument with a new line of attack. The flaws in your original argument are still flaws.
Your whole argument and your explanatory ‘spectrums’ do not address the points Jack was making, and they still don’t address those points.
Also, you forgot Jack’s 4th rule:
That publicization of illegal conduct must be appropriate; that is:
after other avenues of addressing crime are attempted and that the conduct is brought to the attention of those who need to know.
Also, that the boys didn’t publicize the pictures with the intent to shame criminal behavior negates your reasoning.
Your complaint about my point is invalid since it doesn’t address my point to begin with.
That’s silly. Your statement was structurally invalid. Forcing me to deal with the content doesn’t make sense.
Your spectrums designed to expound on your flawed notions are still invalid, regardless of whether or not you think you rebutted them (which you haven’t).
You may find my spectrums flawed. Your argument, though, was that my spectrums were irrelevant. I have successfully rebutted that position.
I have no need to rebut your flawed defense of an originally flawed argument with a new line of attack. The flaws in your original argument are still flaws.
This is just a combination of the problems in the first 2 sentences.
Your whole argument and your explanatory ‘spectrums’ do not address the points Jack was making, and they still don’t address those points.
Saying the premise is flawed, definitely addresses the points. This doesn’t make sense.
Also, you forgot Jack’s 4th rule:
Actually, I never saw it. Apparently I failed to subscribe to that post. I think that’s pure rationalization, but I’ll deal with it over there. It’s not necessary here because:
Also, that the boys didn’t publicize the pictures with the intent to shame criminal behavior negates your reasoning.
Valid. I left out the “intent” issue unintentionally. With it, my little argument fails.
You are still wrong
Your entire initial rebuttal was against Jack’s methodology of explaining the topic he wanted to expound upon (the wrongness of publicizing anything private and non-criminal without both parties consent regardless of how worthy of shame behavior is). You then presented what you thought would have been a better method of explaining the topic. Only it turns out after reading your defense of that better method you would rather him have expounded on a different topic (whether or not certain behavior was more worthy of shaming than other behavior). So, yes, your initial rebuttal was irrelevant as I showed.
So, again, the flaws of your original argument are still flaws.
Knowingly false arguing
“Actually, I never saw it. Apparently I failed to subscribe to that post. I think that’s pure rationalization, but I’ll deal with it over there. It’s not necessary here because:”
Of course it’s necessary as well as applicable. Do you think people’s ideas change on related topics just because they are in separate discourses? No one with consistency or reason does that.
“I left out the “intent” issue unintentionally. With it, my little argument fails.”
You are ridiculous.
I put my comment in the “Leave a Reply” block. ??
Im gonna call it an ethos bomb. I read the original post about Potts and much of the above clarifications seemed redundant; but reading through the comments I felt like people were letting the emotional gravitas of the story pull them from objective analysis. If you dont recognize the emotional reality of the other person they pitch a fit about it.
Which is precisely why Jack needed to make the original post focus on why her suicide had to be divorced from the original ethical infraction to begin with.
That was a minor detail in the original post. If he’d stopped there, there wouldn’t have been a giant comment thread.
Hardly minor. Quite necessary to even continue to the meat and potatoes of the post. Try re-reading it.
The meat and potatoes of the post was about web shaming, and was agnostic to whether Potts killed herself. Jack did NOT focus on the fact that Potts’ suicide had to be divorced from the ethical infractions.
I didn’t read your original post, but I would find it easier to read this one if you spelled her name correctly. It’s Audrie Pott (no “s”). If you’re going to use her story to make some point about ethics, and use her photo in your website’s banner, it would be nice if you could show her and her family that basic minimum of respect.
You’re right, of course—I intentionally misspelled her name to show disrespect to her memory and her family. I was considering drawing a mustache on her photo, too, but decided that would be too much.
The appropriate and ethical way to flag an unintentional mistake would be to simply note it, like every other polite and mature commenter here. Being a friend of the family doesn’t excuse you for being a gratuitous jerk. I’m sure the family has more reasonable friends…at least I hope so.
Perhaps you could specify just what it was about my comment that was inappropriate or unethical? Or expand on what is polite and mature about name-calling? Not that I’ll read it, because you’ve lost me, but it might be a useful exercise for someone who seems to think that writing a blog excuses him for being a gratuitous jerk.
My response was clear, and yes, insinuating that an innocent typo, especially of a name that has a much more common avatar, bespeaks of any lack of success is obnoxious, unfair, and the conduct characteristic of jerks. Indeed, using typos as anything other than an indication of momentary (or in my case, habitually) poor proofing skills is a cheap shot, which is also jerkish. Sorry you don’t like my diagnosis, but it was dead on accurate.