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0 pointstelotortium4y ago0 comments

David Shor - he was impulsively fired by his firm last June for just a tweet linking to academic research (I think by a black academic) that argued that violent protests following the MLK assassination reduced the share of Democratic support in the following presidential election, while non-violent protests increase Democratic support: https://www.vox.com/2020/7/29/21340308/david-shor-omar-wasow.... David Shor is a committed socialist and Democratic data scientist, but that was not enough to protect him from accusations of racism in the post-George-Floyd period.

I think he's done okay for himself after his firing, but being summarily fired for supposed racism always poses a high risk of long-term negative career impact, no matter how trivial the supposed deed was that precipitated the firing - David Shor wasn't even making an edgy joke, or implying anything negative about minorities.

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skinnymuch4y ago

I do agree your example appears wild. Any sort of repercussions no less losing your job is crazy for that. However, that isn’t life ruining if he’s fine after the firing. The OP and others before were talking about life ruining.

I’d consider something like this life ruining:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/03/29/adam-smith-c...

A mean spirited yet relatively insignificant video berating a low level employee for the company/owners bigoted views. The guy ends up losing his job and allegedly can’t get another job for years.

px434y ago

Chik-Filla or whatever is a shit company, but a well paid CFO filming themselves being a shithead to some minimum wage employee is pretty god damn horrific.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-jzlWcc0E

Dude outed himself as a massive shitbag, so I'm going to lean on the side of "he deserved it". What has he done to redeem himself since then? The name makes it pretty hard to search for updates.

skinnymuch4y ago

Don’t know. The point of bringing that up is that his life got ruined or close to it. Not the examples being brought up where “cancelling” was a minor life event.

px434y ago

In the responses I read through on twitter, no one accused him of racism. People were upset that in the wake of a tragedy he seemed to only care about getting blue votes, which is pretty insensitive. Also, just like you said, he's doing fine now.

The claim that tweets are ruining lives gets repeated over and over again, but it's a complete myth. It's a conflation of actual actual racists and nazis getting outed and ostracized, and people getting mildly called out for doing something dumb, but those are never the same people.

salt-thrower4y ago

Perhaps "life ruining" is an exaggeration but losing your job for discussing the effectiveness of different protest tactics is an insane knee-jerk reaction made by the people who fired him. He clearly agreed with the movement and ostensibly wanted to help it be as effective as possible.

> in the wake of a tragedy he seemed to only care about getting blue votes

That's a baseless statement. I would argue that caring about getting votes means he cared about trying to actually help the movement capitalize on its energy at a critical moment. Right or wrong, if people can't even discuss data-driven strategies for your movement without being shamed and ostracized, your movement is dead in the water.

telotortiumOP4y ago

I would never consider getting fired over a tweet as a trivial matter, but he is fortunate to be doing well.

Who do you think was properly fired/ostracized for tweets?

px434y ago

The Rosanne thing was pretty great.

https://time.com/5294313/roseanne-cancelled-abc/

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

skinnymuch4y ago

I’d consider something like this life ruining:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/03/29/adam-smith-c...

A mean spirited yet relatively insignificant video berating a low level employee for the company/owners bigoted views. The guy ends up losing his job and allegedly can’t get another job for years.

px434y ago

Chik-Filla or whatever is a shit company, but a well paid CFO filming themselves being a shithead to some minimum wage employee is pretty god damn horrific.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-jzlWcc0E

Dude outed himself as a massive shitbag, so I'm going to lean on the side of "he deserved it". What has he done to redeem himself since then? The name makes it pretty hard to search for updates.

skinnymuch4y ago

Don’t know. The point of bringing that up is that his life got ruined or close to it. Not the examples being brought up where “cancelling” was a minor life event.

px434y ago

salt-thrower4y ago

> in the wake of a tragedy he seemed to only care about getting blue votes

telotortiumOP4y ago

I would never consider getting fired over a tweet as a trivial matter, but he is fortunate to be doing well.

Who do you think was properly fired/ostracized for tweets?

px434y ago

The Rosanne thing was pretty great.

https://time.com/5294313/roseanne-cancelled-abc/

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse