I downvoted you because I am very confident you are acting in bad faith. Why is it notable? Because “Some rioters crashed a van through a gas station and I called the police” being a “view” that will “harm the business” is a novel take. I understand the logic behind it. I also know that the most fervent believers in that logic understand it is provocative and radical relative to the mainstream.

It's not a novel take at all, people have been fired for random takes that blew into shitstorms countless of times. You seem to be confused about my post, I'm not passing any judgement here in the sense of approving with the firing, I'm saying, if you make a post on some political event and you create some sort of backlash, even if you didn't do anything wrong, but you're being perceived that way, your place of work may let you go.

That's unfair but it's not a sign of hysteria, other than for the general shittiness of viral internet communication.

The person in question wasn't fired for "random takes" but rather being seen in the vicinity of services that have been seen in the vicinity of people making decidedly non-random takes on political matters. And now she, perhaps correctly, believes she is the victim of religious and political persecution.

As for not being mass hysteria, from the outside looking in it's clearly exactly that. Firing someone because of a mobile app they have installed, when that app was briefly at the top of the app store, is ludicrous and wrong.

The US left appear to be descendeding into full bore anti-conservative hysteria. This is exceptionally dangerous because when the left has taken power in the past with that kind of mentality it ended up in bloodshed on massive scales. That must not happen to America.

> The US left appear to be descendeding into full bore anti-conservative hysteria. This is exceptionally dangerous because when the left has taken power in the past with that kind of mentality it ended up in bloodshed on massive scales. That must not happen to America.

I wouldn't single out any particular faction on this to be honest. The Obama birther movement purportedly started in 2004 and Trump himself peddled the narrative that Obama wasn't a US Citizen. There was also the general narrative that Obama was the "Anti-Christ" and a secret Muslim.

Now you have a portion of the GOP who believe Democrats and "Hollywood elite" are harvesting children's adrenochromes in a massive paedophile ring.

Any argument that hysteria is the domain of one party is not based in fact.

Obama birtherism was dumb but never took over swathes of institutions like this. Even Trump abandoned it before he became President.

What we're seeing now is not merely a set of hysterical beliefs, but widespread pulling on the levers of power on the basis of them. That seems pretty new.

> The US left appear to be descendeding into full bore anti-conservative hysteria.

The corporate actors involved here are nowhere near the left, they are closer to the center-right; the problem the Trumpist faction is facing isn’t that the Left doesn’t like them, its that they’ve earned the firm enmity of the centrist factions that, even when they opposed conservatives them on certain issues, kept good relations with them because they knew the next day they might need them as allies against the Left. And, beyond that, they’ve also lost a substantial minority of the Right; the various long-time and recent Republican figures that have come out in opposition to the Trumpist faction – and not just in the usual intraparty opposition sense but to the extent of either making a dramatic exit from the Party and/or advocating for the defeat of not only its Presidential candidate but of its downballot candidates as long as the Party adheres to Trumpism is telling.

Shouting about the Left is, I’m sure, cathartic, but it is also very much irrelevant to what is going on here. That’s not where the change that is driving outcomes comes from.

That's disagreement, not enmity. Conflating the two is hysteria.

No it’s not just the “the Trumpists” versus everyone else. Almost all of these incidents involve conduct which nobody except a small fraction of the progressive left finds problematic. The mainstream left goes along because they’re afraid of being lumped in with “Trumpists.”

I expect this to change once Trump is gone and mainstream liberals aren’t so terrified of being compared to him.

As a centrist myself I disagree with the premise that centrists take issue with Trump.

I personally take issue with his heavy-handed approach to the George Floyd protests, but I consider George Bush Jr to be by far the worse president between the two. He's mostly just an arrogant asshole.

The left's response to him however... And I've spoken with many many other centrists online who agree with me so it's not clear to me why you think the centrists are anything but just silent so they don't get swept up in the hysteria (which is where I've been at for years now, which is why I've never been on Twitter, instagram, etc. Was on FB briefly and promptly left it long before it got popular to do so).

Not in countries with functioning labor law.

There is no chance they would have quit were there no hubub about it. Zero.

They quit likely because they are in a rep-based business and their boss is stained.

The 'mass outrage' is to some extent, outrage on them by virtue of trickle down or association.

The public outrage adds emotional momentum to it.

That the woman did something slightly questionable makes it one of the better examples of cancel culture, because were she to have done truly noting remotely wrong, then none of the actions would have any justification at all. Because there's a shade of possibly bad acting, we see the disproportional response.

What was the questionable decision?

Joining a website where nasty people make comments.

Imagine if every redditor was fired or or had their employees quit because of the absolutely horrific things some other users post there.

You know, there are people who think HN is one of those websites. Like, squarely in the left-wing (I'm not saying mainstream liberals think that), but it's definitely a thing.

Taking a snap of a worker on the train eating their sandwich an posting to Twitter was obviously a questionable thing to do at minimum.

> where is the hysteria

The hysteria is literally facing HARM from opinions.

Why is death threats and intolerance noteworthy? Maybe because intolerance, hate, bigotry and threats of violence should always be noteworthy? especially when concerned with those who claim to be tolerant?

There seems to be mass hysteria about the claimed "mass hysteria", at least when it relates to private business or individuals cutting ties with someone over their actions and statements as opposed to online harassment.

Over the perception of their actions, not their actual actions.

Nobody anywhere would care a single bit were there not mass hysteria.

Also it's not necessarily harassment to call out people if they are not doing their jobs. It's just very (almost pathetically) petty.

>Over the perception of their actions, not their actual actions.

Trying to discuss in good faith here so hopefully this doesn't garner venom: it doesn't feel novel to be fired or quit over public perception of actions or statements - all my corporate employers since the onset of social media have had disclaimers to not enter the public discourse in such a way that might cause negative publicity for them.

>Nobody anywhere would care a single bit were there not mass hysteria.

This is what my original comment was getting at: claims of 'mass hysteria' come off as something like a conspiracy against a specific group or unfairly targeted wrong-think, which feels like a much more exciting answer than the mundane reality. It seems hysterical in itself to not just assume we're in a politically polarized climate and certain topics of discourse easily earn you close friends and/or committed enemies - something that can make any group dynamic fall apart.

>Also it's not necessarily harassment to call out people if they are not doing their jobs. It's just very (almost pathetically) petty.

Entirely agree! I do think social media has had a tendency to allow people to indulge in their worst sides without much consequence in the case of doxxing and, well, harassment by mass-reaching out to personal lines of contact. That's really distinct in my eyes from filing a complaint to their public employer for the public perception of their public statements.

So this is a good comment - however the term 'hysteria' may not be correct, I suggest that the reaction is ultimately hysterical to the point of overreaction.

I think frankly it's driven a small group of unimportant people, causing more serious forces to act out of fear or opportunity, which snowballs into overreaction.

A 'fear' moves over a group of people causing weird effects.

Maybe we need a term for this - but how do we have 'serious consequences' out of essentially 'inconsequential acts'?

It's leveraged consistently by those that want to use 'every little interaction' as 'proof' of their particular ideology.

It's just too much, it's wearing on my otherwise sympathetic view of people.

The reason for hysteria isn't polarization alone, but also the left has a mission and is compelled to use everything to complete it, including such hysteric campaigns. Maybe it's not truly hysteria, but it looks, walk and talks like one.

Those quitting people themselves describe their quitting as punishment of bad people to make the world better, not to save business. Quit for business harm happens the other way around: when management fires an employee who started a controversy.