*WARNING: This is not a call out, so don’t flame me thinking it is one.*
I came across something on Danny Brown’s Posterous last week which stunned me. Especially, in this time with the holidays around the corner and a recession on our hands.
Danny shared the link(s), in a post called “Pot, Kettle, Black,” in which a man got another man fired from his job for commenting on his blog.
What?
Basically the story goes like this, allegedly vulgar comments were posted in response to a blog post written by Mr. Kurt Greenbaum. Mr. Greenbaum found the person behind these comments and contacted their employers. The said commenter then resigned from his job.
The post in question, with closed comments, can be found here. It’s called “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten and why?”
Now considering that the allegedly vulgar comments, had to do with female genetalia, you can probably guess what the commenter said. And on that note, if it’s what we can assume it was, it probably wasn’t meant maliciously but rather as an obscene joke. No, that doesn’t make either party right.
In a followup post on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mr. Greenbaum wrote about it in “The Case of the Vulgar Comment and School.”
As you can imagine, we’ve watched the uproar closely in the wake of my blog post on Monday. I recounted the case of a person who lost his job at a local school after twice posting a vulgar comment on the Talk of the Day blog on Friday.
We don’t condone vulgarity or obscenity on our site. We won’t tolerate it. Increasingly, we are concerned about the tone of the conversation on STLtoday. When we can, we ban people without apology for bad behavior. We have taken steps to beef up our review process and we’ll continue to enhance those measures to address bad language and intolerant speech.
Someone needs to explain this to me because I’m confused about a number of things:-
- How does vulgarity on one site, give that site the right to fire someone from their job, who doesn’t work for them in the first place?
- Is it okay to abuse the abuser? Doesn’t that make you just as bad as the person who you have the issue with? Isn’t there a difference between abusing the abuser and standing up for yourself?
- Shouldn’t someone in charge of social media, not only understand, but expect things like this to come from the Internet?
Mr. Greenbaum is the newspaper’s Director of Social Media, by the way.
As the article continues there are two things, that stood out to me more than anything else, and really reminded me of {Rules of PR no.29} Do Yourself a Favor and Shut Up (aka stop embarrassing yourself and causing self-destruction):-
On Friday, I saw the reader’s comments, I noticed the comments came from a school and I made the decision to call. The school used its server logs to track the comments, based on the time they were made, to a single work station. After confronting the employee, he resigned. Since then, I’ve heard the criticism, loud and clear.
The criticism of me falls largely in four categories. First, that I overreacted, using an atomic fly-swatter to address the issue. Second, that I somehow violated our privacy policy. Third, that I’ve set some sort of precedent for how we deal with readers who make obscene comments. And fourth, that I was gleeful or boastful in blogging about the incident in the first place.
First and foremost, I don’t like the use of the word “somehow.” I don’t know the privacy policies of the St.Louis Post-Dispatch, but if it is the same as any other newspaper or organization, Mr. Greenbaun did not, in fact, “somehow” violate their privacy policy, he violated it. Period.
I just don’t understand when it became okay and perfectly acceptable to abuse the abuser — to a degree far above what the original abuser committed.
Someone resigning after a few words in a comment on a blog post about food?
There is more:-
Did I overreact? Maybe I did. I am constantly frustrated by the difficulty of dealing with this kind of language. And in this case, I was motivated by three things.
First, this came from a school. I didn’t know if it came from an employee, a guest or a student. But I viewed it as a “teachable moment” and a chance, perhaps, to nip something in the bud, to engage the community to help me. I didn’t anticipate that the reader would resign.
Second, the comment was posted, deleted and intentionally posted a second time by the same person. Too much time had elapsed between posts for it to be a mistake or an accident. The reader was determined to post it.
Third, it was easy. As I said, I didn’t have to dig for the school’s information. It was readily available on the e-mail alert. Had it not been there, I may have deleted the comment and moved on.
Again, I’m stunned by the some of the statements here:-
- The “teachable moment” — who/what gives Mr. Greenbaum the right to have moments like this?
- “…Didn’t anticipate that the reader would resign” — maybe the reader would have gotten fired instead? In complete seriousness, what motivates someone to do this?
- “…it was easy” — just because information is easily accessible doesn’t mean it should be abused. Period.
Now to Mr. Greenbaum’s credit, he did in fact say that he could have overreacted. Looking back at things in retrospect can do that to you.
Something else that concerns me about this entire situation, is that while, Mr. Greenbaum, said he didn’t mean to come across as gloating, he did. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt because this entire situation looks like egos got involved and it turned into one gigantic mess. But here’s the thing, on November 16, 2009 Mr. Greenbaum wrote a post for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that was titled, “Post a vulgar comment while you’re at work, lose your job.” Those words speak clearly enough; all 11 of them.
- The bad use of social media (see Mr. Greenbaum’s tweet above.)
- Hypocrisy.
So I’m going to ask the original question, posed by Danny Brown, “Hmm… pot, kettle, black, anyone? Or is it okay to be abusive yourself about an “abuser” whose job you played a part in taking away..?”
In my personal opinion, no, this is not okay. Not okay by a long shot. Mr. Greenbaum became more out of line than the original commenter himself/herself.
Little Pink Book’s Rule of PR #30:
Sometimes “do unto others” isn’t the
motto you should be following.
Don’t be that guy/girl,
pot calling the kettle black.
It’s not classy or professional.
It’s trashy and rude.
No words speak louder
than themselves.
–
Sasha Muradali runs the ‘Little Pink Book’ . She holds a B.S. in Public Relations from the University of Florida (’07) and an M.A. in International Administration from the University of Miami(’08). She loves Twitter and all things social media, so you should find her @SashaHalima or get a copy of the ‘Little Pink Book’ delivered to your Kindle.
Copyright © 2009 Sasha H. Muradali. All Rights Reserved.
© 2010 - Little Pink Book PR is proudly powered by WordPress 
*WARNING: This is not a call out, so don’t flame me thinking it is one.*
I came across something on Danny Brown’s Posterous last week which stunned me. Especially, in this time with the holidays around the corner and a recession on our hands.
Danny shared the link(s), in a post called “Pot, Kettle, Black,” in which a man got another man fired from his job for commenting on his blog.
What?
Basically the story goes like this, allegedly vulgar comments were posted in response to a blog post written by Mr. Kurt Greenbaum. Mr. Greenbaum found the person behind these comments and contacted their employers. The said commenter then resigned from his job.
The post in question, with closed comments, can be found here. It’s called “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten and why?”
Now considering that the allegedly vulgar comments, had to do with female genetalia, you can probably guess what the commenter said. And on that note, if it’s what we can assume it was, it probably wasn’t meant maliciously but rather as an obscene joke. No, that doesn’t make either party right.
In a followup post on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mr. Greenbaum wrote about it in “The Case of the Vulgar Comment and School.”
Someone needs to explain this to me because I’m confused about a number of things:-
Mr. Greenbaum is the newspaper’s Director of Social Media, by the way.
As the article continues there are two things, that stood out to me more than anything else, and really reminded me of {Rules of PR no.29} Do Yourself a Favor and Shut Up (aka stop embarrassing yourself and causing self-destruction):-
First and foremost, I don’t like the use of the word “somehow.” I don’t know the privacy policies of the St.Louis Post-Dispatch, but if it is the same as any other newspaper or organization, Mr. Greenbaun did not, in fact, “somehow” violate their privacy policy, he violated it. Period.
I just don’t understand when it became okay and perfectly acceptable to abuse the abuser — to a degree far above what the original abuser committed.
Someone resigning after a few words in a comment on a blog post about food?
There is more:-
Again, I’m stunned by the some of the statements here:-
Now to Mr. Greenbaum’s credit, he did in fact say that he could have overreacted. Looking back at things in retrospect can do that to you.
Something else that concerns me about this entire situation, is that while, Mr. Greenbaum, said he didn’t mean to come across as gloating, he did. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt because this entire situation looks like egos got involved and it turned into one gigantic mess. But here’s the thing, on November 16, 2009 Mr. Greenbaum wrote a post for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that was titled, “Post a vulgar comment while you’re at work, lose your job.” Those words speak clearly enough; all 11 of them.
So I’m going to ask the original question, posed by Danny Brown, “Hmm… pot, kettle, black, anyone? Or is it okay to be abusive yourself about an “abuser” whose job you played a part in taking away..?”
In my personal opinion, no, this is not okay. Not okay by a long shot. Mr. Greenbaum became more out of line than the original commenter himself/herself.
Little Pink Book’s Rule of PR #30:
Sometimes “do unto others” isn’t the
motto you should be following.
Don’t be that guy/girl,
pot calling the kettle black.
It’s not classy or professional.
It’s trashy and rude.
No words speak louder
than themselves.
–
Sasha Muradali runs the ‘Little Pink Book’ . She holds a B.S. in Public Relations from the University of Florida (’07) and an M.A. in International Administration from the University of Miami(’08). She loves Twitter and all things social media, so you should find her @SashaHalima or get a copy of the ‘Little Pink Book’ delivered to your Kindle.
Copyright © 2009 Sasha H. Muradali. All Rights Reserved.