Day: December 26, 2013

‘Today, the Process Is Faster. It’s Your Brain, a Button, Then Millions of Reactions.’

4 Easy Ways to Grow Your Twitter Followers. by Mark Saldana

Steve Martin: ‘Today, the Process Is Faster. It’s Your Brain, a Button, Then Millions of Reactions.’ quoted by DF who then writes:

“…after a misquotation of a joke he tweeted was spread by Salon. Winston Churchill once said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” It’s a lot faster now.”

Martin goes on to say in his original post:

Comedy is treacherous. I used to try out jokes in clubs and the audience’s feedback would tell me when I had crossed a line, or how to shape a joke so it is clear. Today, the process is faster. It’s your brain, a button, then millions of reactions. But it’s my job to know.”

[When you edge up against the line, which is an essential job of comedy atmo, the modern social networks raise the cost of being wrong to an incredible level. The part that everyone needs to know is that the world is listening, that you can’t really delete things, and the consequences for making a mistake could well be far in excess of the level of the transgression. Tweets are generally treated as the expression of an individual and so the “blow back” is personal and vindictive.]

Source: Daring Fireball

So why did she get fired?

A Twitter Message About AIDS, Followed by a Firing and an Apology – NYTimes.com:

By Saturday afternoon, Ms. Sacco was no longer an employee at IAC. The company’s statement also said:

There is no excuse for the hateful statements that have been made and we condemn them unequivocally. We hope, however, that time and action, and the forgiving human spirit, will not result in the wholesale condemnation of an individual who we have otherwise known to be a decent person at core.

[Yes, I know why she got fired. But I’m askin’ “why did she get fired”. If they know her to be a “decent person at core” then shouldn’t they have forgiven this misstep? Nah, it’s clearly expedient for the company to remove a social liability… Jobs are complicated things but it always concerned me that most companies have no moral compass of their own. Might there not have been an alternative to “off with her head?”

And BTW, don’t join a mob, you cannot control the outcome and it’ll rarely be what you expect.]