True Left

https://reason.com/2022/06/30/criticizing-lack-of-grocery-stores-in-the-south-bronx-means-twitter-mob-will-request-your-firing/

"I've literally been to like five of those now, and I don't know what the **** I'm about to do for dinner," said NYC newcomer Griffin Green in a TikTok video posted this past week, referring to the bodegas of the South Bronx. "Like, where are the Krogers and the Whole Foods at? I'm about to eat fuckin' cereal and ramen for dinner," Green continued.

This, and other TikTok videos in the style of day-in-the-life vlogs (that have since been roasted and riffed on), seem to have gotten him fired from software company Outreach, which had hired him as an entry-level sales development representative. "I'm in the Bronx for a few weeks so I'm like the only white dude in this whole gym, so I got this NAACP shirt so these people vibe with me more," said Green in one video. He talked about how many gay people there are in NYC (during Pride celebrations) in another, innocuously displaying dude-from-Michigan-lands-in-the-big-city culture shock.

Thank you, Outreach!

Are software companies in the business of moral adjudication? What types of moral indicators are they looking for, per whose standards?

But companies fear being the mob's target of the week more than they fear hastily punishing innocent people. Consider the case of Emma Sarley, who in fall 2021 was fired from her job at tech company Bevy after allegedly telling a black couple "stay in your hood" after an altercation in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn, dog park.

I fail to see a problem. Thank you, Bevy!

Sarley's case took Bevy CEO Derek Andersen less than 48 hours to rule on. She was quickly fired, just as Green was quickly fired from Outreach. Perhaps this indicates appropriate risk calculation from management. Or perhaps it indicates something more insidious: that our poorly worded jokes or clumsy invectives in moments of frustration can be found by bad actors on the internet, trotted out for all to mock, and assumed to be representative of our character. No mercy, no weighing of our own account of what happened, and certainly no job at the end of the public cross-examination.

How is it not representative of your character?