Is there a solution, though? How do we work around this?
I think most of us would like to reach a point where none of this is a concern, and we can just get on with working—yet the prospect of a future without sexism almost seems hopelessly optimistic.
Is this just one of those problems that cannot be solved in a single lifetime? Humanity seems perfectly capable of acknowledging its faults, yet it seems entirely incapable of fixing them. Our status page is always set to “Under Maintenance.”
When we encounter technical barriers, we’re good at overcoming them. Recent events have shown that we’re able to overcome medical hurdles in a manner that our ancestors would have deemed impossible. When will we be able to do the same for social issues?
Furthermore, beyond the media (whether social media or traditional media - print, TV, etc) industry profiting off it, some people's careers are entirely based on this problem persisting. Dedicated "diversity & inclusion" roles have appeared, even though addressing any issues should be the job of any competent HR department - but now these specific roles would obviously become irrelevant if this problem is solved.
Racism, sexism and general "being an asshole" were always a problem (though the latter is now often - maliciously or otherwise - mistaken as the former) but back in the day humans successfully dealt with that in private, and the police and the law dealt with anything serious enough to warrant its efforts. Nowadays however, it's commonplace to turn it into dirty laundry and air it on social media and wait for the mob to jump in, which also allows false accusations and witch hunts to emerge.
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I think this problem is mostly specific to the tech/media industry. There are plenty of other industries where racism & sexism are no doubt present, but overall people in these industries seem to be busy working and making money (which is the end-game of work at the end of the day) instead of constantly being offended.
I see the latter as a mere symptom of the former—that is, the angry mob is a side effect of the rampant discrimination. It’s certainly not limited to tech, although I’m sure each industry experiences it differently.
> Nowadays however, it's commonplace to turn it into dirty laundry and air it on social media and wait for the mob to jump in, which also allows false accusations and witch hunts to emerge.
Perhaps, but that all goes away if discrimination is eliminated from our culture. And make no mistake—it’s rampant. It’s not specific to any single industry or country.
What’s curious is that although the specifics of any given case of discrimination are often disputed, there does seem to be a general consensus that it’s an issue. We might not all agree on what constitutes discrimination, but most of us acknowledge that it’s a major social issue for the entirety of humanity. Yet, despite this acknowledgement, we’ve never really found a solution other than, “educate people and wait a few generations.”
We’ve found ways to combat pandemics in ways our ancestors thought impossible. We’ve found ways to travel to the moon. We’ve found ways to communicate instantaneously across the world. Yet imagining such a casual solution to social issues seems to be naïvely optimistic at best, delusional at worst.
Who will be the Gutenberg or Pasteur of our social revolution? I’ve come to expect amazing things from humanity; I’m sure we can pull it off again.
The mob mentality itself supports this theory; a genuine effort to solve discrimination would involve respectful communication in an attempt to understand the problem, iron out any misunderstandings and change minds; but this is not what we see - instead we have witch-hunts, partly because the mere appearance of being human towards the "enemy" would cause the rest of the mob to turn on you, but maybe also because there isn't much willingness to actually solve the problem, or maybe even because there wasn't actually a problem if you drill down into the details?
This reminds me of Daryl Davis, a black man who attended KKK rallies in an effort to understand their racist opinions and change their minds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis - that is a genuine effort to solve a problem, which unfortunately wouldn't be possible today because you'd be attacked by the mob for attempting something like this.
> Perhaps, but that all goes away if discrimination is eliminated from our culture.
I'm not sure this will go away; if certain people (or even entire industries) benefit from outrage they will happily find something else to be outraged about.
> We’ve found ways to combat pandemics in ways our ancestors thought impossible. We’ve found ways to travel to the moon. We’ve found ways to communicate instantaneously across the world. Yet imagining such a casual solution to social issues seems to be naïvely optimistic at best, delusional at worst.
The difference is that there is a major upside for solving these problems and little to no downside. I'm not sure whether mob/outrage/SJW culture will ever disappear instead of just digging even deeper for things to be offended about especially when money or virtue is at stake.