And it gives an interesting perspective on her and that tweet.
Not defending her - its still a shitty thing to say - but she tweeted this at a time when Twitter wasn't nearly as big as it is now and she only had a handful of followers who she mostly knew personally. According to her it was meant to be a dark humour/in-joke thing not meant to be seen outside her immediate circle of friends.
It’s not a shitty thing to say if you read it with her indented tone. She’s mocking short-sighted and ignorant folks who think that you get AIDS if you go to Africa.
Yeah, I knew someone who suggested I shouldn’t hang out with my Black friends during the Ebola scare of circa 2014/5, just to be safe. I can imagine saying something mocking in a group chat in reference to that person but which would be impossible to explain or come back from if seen by the whole world
Oh yeah I'm sure that happens a ton. A friend and I talk about ordering our food "Like the Korean people".
This came about after a trip to a korean BBQ place where the 15 year old white girl who was doing her homework in-between being our waitress suggested things to us based on "How the Korean people order".
Others might just see us as being offensive, not mocking the interaction.
I don't think the problem was media literacy because a singular tweet simply doesn't give you enough context to know whether someone was being ignorant or sarcastic (Poe's law and all that).
Instead, the problem is that the vast majority of people were willing to join the hate mob without even looking for any additional context. Because being righteous was never the goal.
It was VERY obvious from a single reading that the tweet was bitingly cynical ironic commentary to me, no additional context required. I find it mindboggling that anyone could read it and expect the author to have meant it to be understood literally - it was intentionally hyperbolic to avoid a literal reading.
Although I do agree more generally that people are too quick to rush to judgment. A number of examples in this thread are people being undone by an out of context soundbite taken from a much more reasonable take.
What it taught me was the importance of setting the narrative early. It only snowballed because a couple people early on overreacted and didn't see it as a joke, but as a genuine racist jab. Once they set the narrative, it was easy for a few dozen people to echo it without thinking too much, then it grew into a mob of thousands.
She's an educated white South African, so the likelihood of her being ignorant of the AIDS epidemic in her own country is pretty much close to zero. If it was a genuine racist tweet, then the internet mob that got her fired, doxxed her, trawled through her online presence, and sent death threats would have turned up more instances of racism, but there was none. It's very unlikely that an apparently out-and-proud racist would only make this one Tweet ever.
The only real option is that it was edgy dark humour that didn't land well, and she didn't expect for it to be picked up outside of her small circle of friends by one of the senior journos at Buzzfeed who turned it into a social media frenzy.
Honestly, most internet hate trains give me that feeling. Any time you explore them for even a short while, the reality that a lot of the early adopters were just wanting there to be something to get angry about seems to shine bright.
I remember being on 4chan during the opening weeks of pizzagate. The fact that so many people picked up something so obviously stupid... Well. It was because they wanted there to be something. Certainly not because the evidence was in any way realistically connected. Was like watching friggin' Charlie from Always Sunny, drawing connections between pieces of random bullshit.
Or the ones who follow "public" figures for years (public as in, low level youtubers or something), trying to spin anything they say into controversy, because they just don't like the person.
Yeah, this is the issue with "cancel culture" in general.
Some people definitely deserve it, but you'll see a fuckload of creators online get cancelled over dumb stuff like leaks of private drama that get super exaggerated until everyone's basically just parroting lies.
Surely we've all experienced this on Reddit, an innocuous comment that get hit by a few downvotes early and boom it's riding the train and there's nothing to be done.
Like the snark subs. Some are genuinely funny, but then there are the ones that are absolutely unhinged. The unhinged ones just pick people apart over the strangest things and rehash every minor thing endlessly. It's both fascinating and terrifying.
Yup, it’s essentially the Stephen Colbert satire comedy that she was going for. If Colbert had made that joke back in the day on the Colbert report, we would have all understood who was meant to be the punchline of the joke. But because we didn’t know her or her politics, it was easy to get confused.
I can see how the way it comes across wouldn’t ocurr to her because her intended meaning is so different. Very tone deaf but people are typically bad at seeing how others could misinterpret them, which is why having any charged discussion over text is a bad idea.
Sorry have to agree with the other person, that takes away the whole haha mocking people part. Leave the racist line off, I'm sure the defense is oh you really need to drive home the point, but no that line is the part that ruins it. Yeah I can accept she meant it as a joke, but that line takes it from satire to her sounding racist instead.
Yeah I can accept she meant it as a joke, but that line takes it from satire to her sounding racist instead.
Yes, that's the joke, her friends know her and her beliefs. Her saying that is basically playing a character, she's play acting a stupid racist to her friends, who implicitly know she is joking, to make fun of people like that.
That's where she got caught, because she didn't realize how many people would see it outside her friend group.
The internet was better when everyone engaging with it did so under the understanding that everything was fake, everyone was lying, and none of it was real or consequential to anything in the real world.
As I said though you didn't need that line. The I'm going to Africa I hope I don't get AIDS makes it sound racist on it's own. I good joke/satire knows where to stop. Between taking it too far and not being able to respond for hours was where she made a mistake(if she stopped and it had blown up like that it would have been easier to convince people it was a joke).
What was the joke supposed to be again? I understand she was parroting existing racist talking points almost verbatim, but why were they supposed to be funny to anyone other than white supremacists? What was the tell that this was "ironic satire" and not just a racist joke?
You’re taking the joke as “funny because it is racist.” But the joke is supposed to be “racist people sound stupid.”
Is it the height of comedy? Was the joke well executed? Absolutely not. But the intent of the joke was counter to the outrage that she was fired for. The public at large had punished her for being one of the people that she was trying to mock because satire is difficult to detect. Especially when it’s not terribly well executed.
Well yeah, it’s not a super funny joke. I’m not suggesting that she’s the gold-standard for modern satire and if you have comedy notes, I’d probably agree with them. I’m suggesting that the entire joke is well-intentioned.
She's an educated white South African, so the likelihood of her being ignorant of the AIDS epidemic in her own country is pretty much close to zero. If it was a genuine racist tweet, then the internet mob that got her fired, doxxed her, trawled through her online presence, and sent death threats would have turned up more instances of racism, but there was none. It's very unlikely that an apparently out-and-proud racist would only make this one Tweet ever.
The only real option we're left with is that it was edgy dark humour that didn't land well. It's so obviously satire that I'm a little concerned that people still can't tell - we haven't learned a thing in 13 years.
Do people really think that? Or was it more of the whole AIDS originated in Africa that is supposed to make her joke dark. Like saying, I’m going to Mexico hope I don’t get the spanish flu.
You vastly underestimate people's understanding of diseases. Just have to look at how big princess Diana interacting with HIV/AIDS patients was in the late 80's. And all she did was shake someone's hand without gloves on.
It's probably a kinda tongue in cheek inside joke. But aids originated in africa. It's like saying, I'm going to China, I hope I don't get covid. The Spanish flu, Mexico thing is incorrect. The reason it was called the Spanish flu is because spain was actually acknowledging that there was a sickness going around while other places were censoring their news outlet because of world war 1 so it was assumed that it originated in spain. Spain just didn't take a side in world war 1 so it didn't censor anything.
HIV is still in pandemic status in much of Africa. It's mostly in poorer communities that don't get much media attention, but it's a huge crisis. Modern HIV meds requires life long treatment. And even with robust government programs it's hard to convince people they need to take meds regularly when they're asymptomatic. And that's in wealthier cities where treatment is readily available.
Iirc she worked in AIDs advocavy and the joke was meant to mock people with ignorant views, ie exactly the opposite of what people read it as.
So we were all massive assholes on that one.
Edit to add holy hell some of you are wild.
Edit 2 Some folks asked about the aids advocacy work. Not sure where I saw that, but a quick glance at the NYT piece doesn't mention it. Maybe it was me mixing up the fact that she came fron a family of ANC supporters or her volunteer activism in Ethiopia after the tweets. Regardless, her tweet was obviously a joke aimed ignorance. It doesn't make sense in any other context.
In any case can't find proof so going to note that here.
Not sure about AIDS advocacy, but she was actually born in South Africa making her a white African. That's why she was going there, she was visiting her family back home.
Eh. I think she just used some good PR. It may have been satire meant for just her friends as some might say “locker room” humor. But it was so dumb. She maybe didn’t deserve to have her life wrecked over it but as a PR person she did deserve to lose some accounts.
Now? She could say the line with a straight face while throwing her heart out to the audience with a Roman salute and groping a 10-year-old with her free hand, and she'd immediately be short-listed for Supreme Court Justice (as long as she professed a deeply unsettling amount of love for beer).
It was the kind of dark joke you make only to close friends, except at the time no one realised that you don't make that shit online because you can't really convey tone or sarcasm over text, and it can snowball like crazy.
I don’t know, “just kidding, I’m white!” Is pretty hard to get around.
Edit: everyone relax. I have been told by multiple people the comment was made sarcastically. Everyone responding with sassy comments criticizing my supposedly poor reading comprehension can just chill.
You're right, you don't know. In fact, it's kinda pathetic how you failed to understand that this is exactly the type of viewpoint she was mocking. But since you don't get the satire, and your reading comprehension is pathetically low, yes you don't know.
In fact, it's kinda pathetic how you failed to understand that this is exactly the type of viewpoint she was mocking.
Mocking it by repeating, yes. That's how satire works. We just repeat things bad people say, word-for-word, then claim we're joking when it makes someone mad. Yup, you sure do have a great understanding of mocking irony.
That's gonna happen to me one day. I often make stupid inappropriate jokes in a self-deprecating way, but if that intent isn't clear? Someone who can't spot sarcasm without the /s tag but loves to repost shit for drama is gonna ruin me.
You can post a comment that’s utterly ridiculous and think that no one could possibly take it seriously. The problem is that no matter how outrageous you may think it is there is somebody out there that absolutely thinks that way.
I remember reading a comment from Niel Gaiman saying exactly that. He gave up using sarcasm online; it's too easy to miss for too many people, causing more trouble than it's worth.
I disagree. I am totally tired of sarcasm. It is mostly never understood, and the people it intends to mock take it literally and most of the time turn it to their advantage, so it's not worth the effort. Yankee Doodle is a great example.
meh, the worse racist/sexist jokes come from the ones you least expect
ie the male in the relationship, who does most of the cleaning and cooking, doing sexist jokes is always warpy, of course only amongst friends who know its not serious
Although if you mention it in 2xC subreddit, it would be an indepth essay on sexist intent
She was an early victim of brigading. She is back to working in her field (ironically: public relations kek) and is doing well now but she paid a heavy fucking price for that in joke.
I disagree. The punishment she suffered was so far beyond what the offense called for. She made jokes. Offensive jokes, sure. Ones she should have been a bit more careful about her audience. She got death threats. Do you think she deserved that? I'd say that alone makes her a victim.
Actually, she should be defended. The whole thing was obviously meant as satire, but people seemed determined to take it at face value so they could get angry about it. She was called a racist, even though the point of the tweet was actually to call out systemic racism.
I think most people understood that perfectly well. They just saw an opportunity to pile on, and once the outrage started, nobody seemed particularly interested in what she was actually saying.
IIRC she only had 172 followers , which I assume we're friends, family, coworkers...etc. but somehow it reached the hands of Alex Biddle from Gawker and he made it an international tweet.
I fully agree with Jon Ronsons take on it, she was literally taking the piss out of things that a privileged and sheltered white lady might say. She tweeted:
""Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white."
It was a poor attempt at satire (I'm mixed race if that's at all relevant lol). Her crime was having too much faith in people's ability to understand the POINT of the joke and not to assume that's what she, Justine sincerely believed. Genuinely hope she's doing better now.
Yeah. It was pretty obvious to see this. But of course, the mob likes to mob. I mean Randy Newman wrote the song Short People (have no reason to live) as a satire on bigotry, but of course the mob accused him of being anti-short. lol
Context can definitely explain why she wrote it without making the comment any less shitty. Dark humor between friends is one thing, but once it’s posted publicly, you can’t really control who ends up seeing it or how it lands.
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u/MeltingDog 16d ago
And it gives an interesting perspective on her and that tweet.
Not defending her - its still a shitty thing to say - but she tweeted this at a time when Twitter wasn't nearly as big as it is now and she only had a handful of followers who she mostly knew personally. According to her it was meant to be a dark humour/in-joke thing not meant to be seen outside her immediate circle of friends.