The Mob vs. Your Job
Firing Sarah Jeong would feed the outrage cycle
IF you’re not living in fear of being torn apart on social media, last week brought another reminder of why you should. On Wednesday, Sarah Jeong, hired the day before as the newest member of The New York Times editorial board, was lambasted after tweets of hers were excavated from 2014-15 — a year Jeong spent tweeting things like““white men are bulls - - t,” “#CancelWhitePeople” and “it’s kind of sick how much joy I get from being cruel to old white men.”
Calls for Jeong’s firing on Twitter quickly followed. By Thursday, she had said she regretted the tweets, and the Times released a statement saying it didn’t condone them but was keeping her on.
Even those who were rightly offended by Jeong should be cheering the Times’ decision. Because every time someone is fired for old tweets or jokes they made years ago, the increasingly unhinged online mob gains a little more authority.
Jeong is just the latest target in a long string of people digging up controversial tweets for the sake of getting someone fired or ostracized.
One of the earliest and most notorious cases was that of Justine Sacco, a PR woman from New York who tweeted, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” Online furor ensued.
Tens of thousands of people angrily shared or responded to her tweet. The hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet began trending. By the time she reached her destina- tion, she’d lost her job.
Five years later, it’s only gotten worse. Recently, Disney announced that James Gunn won’t direct Guardians of the Galaxy 3 after 10-year-old tweets resurfaced of him joking about pedophilia. He’d apologized years ago but the Internet doesn’t allow for growth or grace. It never forgives or forgets.
In a twist of irony, a few people pointed out that Jeong herself had a history of cheering the social-media mobbing of others for tweets or comments, including saying that what happened to Sacco “wasn’t that bad” and mock- ing British biochemist Tim Hunt after he was widely berated online for a joke about women in labs.
In one of the more relevant instances, Jeong gloated after the left-leaning think tank Demos fired writer Matt Breunig over tweets, lamenting that people were “making him out to be a martyr” and dismissing concerns over his potential loss of income.
Being a part of a mob that calls for someone else’s firing over old comments is sort of like throwing gasoline on your neighbor’s house while it burns and expecting the fire not to reach your door.
We are all vulnerable to this mob fury. Twitter has 336 million active users, but it’s not just tweets that can get you fired. Ev- eryone who has shared an opinion online — on a podcast, a blog or anywhere that can be screenshotted, copied or recorded — is a potential target. If you think you’re safe, think again. Sacco had just 170 followers; the tweet still ruined her life. No one is too anonymous. No tweet is too old.
The more we make businesses pay attention to an online reaction, by directly calling for a firing or cheering on those who do, the easier it’ll be to get someone fired in the future. If a bunch of keyboard warriors out for blood can influence companies to ax employees over old jokes, then we’re all in jeopardy.
If you’ve been online for any significant period of time, you’ve probably either said or will say something that, in or out of context, could be used to embarrass you in front of a potential employer. No one who helps build a guillotine imagines that one day their head will be on that chopping block.
The only chance we have to take back power from the mob is to stop contributing to it. Criticize speech you disagree with, while actively discouraging the firing of others for that speech. See other people as complex beings — more than the sum of a handful of old comments.
It’s easy to be offended by a screenshotted collection of tasteless jokes or over-the-top rhetoric, but we have to start considering the price of our outrage. Because one day, it could be any of us picking up the tab.