Earlier this March, the annual PyCon event took place in the US. The big annual conference for Python developers was completely overshadowed by an unfortunate incident, which started during a presentation, and promptly snowballed into a disaster of soap-opera proportions.
In short: Adria Richards, a minor Internet celebrity with a good-sized social network, overhead two developers making risqu'e jokes. She took their photo and posted it to Twitter with a complaint. The event organisers took action to remove the offenders - one of them then lost his job, and so did Richards.
To go from lame joker to unemployed father of three is quite an escalation, no matter where you stand on the issue. Almost everyone, at every step, handled this in the worst way possible. Some of them may learn from those mistakes, but even if they don't, we outsiders certainly can.
The facts are well enough known, but are actually a distraction from the lessons to be learned. First, that the Internet really is public and you never know who's listening. That unintended, even innocent, remarks can have consequences absurdly out of proportion. And that social media really is out of control.
First, let's clear up some background. Richards has a reputation for being obnoxious, outspoken, and inflammatory. It's part of why she is (was) a technology evangelist - she speaks her mind without fear of consequence, and uses social media to do so effectively. She takes a stand against sexism and misogyny in the IT industry, and she is widely applauded for doing so.
In this case, she overheard two remarks, one a juvenile "dongle" joke, and the other a comment about "forking a repo" (in the open source community, this means cloning a project's source code). Richards assumed both were jokes in bad taste; allegedly the second was actually a serious remark she simply misconstrued (the luckless unemployed dev making that claim had nothing to lose by the time he cleared that up, so one may be inclined to believe him).
The mistakes are pretty obvious, and if you're thinking "oh, I'd never do that", think again: we see similar patterns playing out on local networks all the time. The sparks just haven't reached the powder keg yet, but that's thanks to luck, not intent.
The first mistake was the original thoughtless joker. If you really have to make risqu'e comments in public, do it sotto voce. You never know who might overhear, and you never know who you might offend - a future employer, a possible friend, an activist with hacker connections, or an angry feminist with a platform.
It's worth remembering, though, that Richards apparently misheard one of the remarks. Even if the culprit had kept his jokes to himself, that repo-forking comment might have set her off anyway. His mistake, if mistake it was, is actually irrelevant in context.
The second and third mistakes were Richards's. If you're offended at something someone says, just tell them. "Hey guys, would you mind keeping it down? That's a bit offensive," might be a better response than firing a full public broadside immediately.
Give them the chance to explain or mend their ways - if they get snotty in response, sure, go ahead and escalate it if it's still justified. Richards overreacted, and she did so by taking their picture under pretence of photographing the crowd, then posted it to a well-established, easily riled and receptive audience on Twitter.
We are living in a time when communication tools are at a massive tipping point, with huge reach and impact, but without the social mores to limit behaviour and response.
PyCon's organisers, to their credit, responded swiftly and tried to pour oil on troubled waters. The conference circuit has been rocked with other allegations of sexist behaviour, some bordering on outright assault, so organisers are highly sensitive to possible flashpoints. PyCon people identified the "culprits", took them aside, and tried to smooth things over. But the twittersphere was already on fire, and they had no chance. Luckily for them, the rage was focused elsewhere.
SendGrid and PlayHaven, the employers of Richards and the developer in question, respectively, then both made the same mistake, for much the same ultimate reason. They each pulled the same trigger almost instantly, firing both parties and making "we don't like that around here" sort of remarks. The developer, going by the handle mr-hank, later posted an apology and explanation. Richards, for her part, appears to be unapologetic - she makes the point that although she didn't mean to get anyone fired (one wonders how far she did hope the damage would go and whether she really expected restraint from her Twitter fans), misogyny in the tech industry is so rife that she considers a zero-tolerance response justified.
The employers fired their staff to distance themselves from the firestorm, and did it so clumsily that they might as well have just made dongle jokes of their own. (SendGrid, of the two, may have had some justification - it fired Richards because she was employed as an evangelist, and as such needed a polished reputation. With that reputation tarnished, her role could be viewed as untenable. Could they have done better, maybe worked with Richards to find a positive spin on things? Did they offer her that route only to be rebuffed? We'll probably never know. But if you think SA's labour law will save you from a similar incident, take a closer look at the misconduct clauses.)
Both employers did what they did because they panicked. They knew that once bad news goes viral on social media, it can do serious damage to a brand. Active players, like Richards, know this and have no excuse, but many casual users don't understand or care how a chance remark can spiral out of control, bouncing between networks and fuelling self-righteous rage until Anonymous gets involved or some script kiddie fires up a botnet, Google search results are poisoned, violence is threatened (the public response to Richards was truly despicable, with threats of rape and murder among the choicest) or, yes, people lose their jobs.
So the firms attempted damage control, and in doing so made the classic blunder of drawing attention to themselves; increasing their own exposure and fuelling another wave of enraged commentary and response. They should instead have issued effectively null statements distancing themselves from involvement, and then worked hard with the parties involved to issue apologies and then shut the hell up until it all died down.
What can we learn from this? First, we are living in a time when communication tools are at a massive tipping point, with huge reach and impact, but without the social mores to limit behaviour and response - people say and do things online that they would never consider face-to-face, and anonymity is no longer needed as a shield (quite the contrary, Richards's well-known identity was a key factor in this incident). Tread carefully, sure, but know that may not save you - even an innocent comment about duplicating code could go viral among the pitchfork-wielding mob. And be aware that, at a conference, wearing your company's brand, such an incident may have risks for the business. It's a tired trope that everyone is an ambassador for their employer, but it is true, and doubly true when everyone else has a cellphone camera and instant access to millions of viewers.
More important, there are social media lessons here for individuals and businesses. For individuals, be more aware of the power lurking one angry click away. You may be annoyed, but your off-the-cuff complaint can go viral and cost someone their livelihood, or expose them to serious threats of personal violence. Is that really justified? By all means, take legitimate complaints to Twitter, but try to keep your personal grudges, well, personal - at least as a first step.
Businesses, meanwhile, need to learn a deeper understanding of the Streisand Effect. Bad news can go viral, but it generally has quite a short shelf life, and you almost never see a comment thread starting with "hey, whatever happened to so-and-so from last week?" Learn the value of banal, cautious holding strategies, and make sure that everyone with a public face, no matter how badly they messed up the first time, works within those strategies. You're facing a bear, so don't make sudden moves. It's astonishing how bad some companies are at damage control. Online brands are managed by marketers, not crisis consultants, and the need for the latter is consistently recognised far too late.
Lastly, brand damage is big and messy, but blows over - as a consumer you can use that phenomenon to leverage concession from a supplier, Hello Peter style. Personal effects can be lasting and tragic - as fellow netizens, it behooves us to keep this in mind. PlayHaven, even if it had been somehow to blame and had borne the brunt of the PR damage, would have bounced back. For mr-hanks and the rest of us, there's never a good time to be summarily dismissed.
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