Rob1
Thanks for your reply Rob. Since you have gone in some length I will need to do so at some length to do justice to your reply.
One of the beneficial things people can do after a problem arises is to do a post mortem to see where we can do better in the future. If we respond by circling our wagons and defending our friends and putting the blame on the victim and are unable to see how we can act in ways to make worse some problems that arise from time to time, we can never improve and rectify things, can we?
You said in effect that this forum isn’t analogous to a social gathering because most people don’t read every text post. That is exactly like how a crowded gathering is though. We are involved in our own little conversations and what we do perceive of others conversations is a general hubbub in the background. Until there is a scene caused by two participating. Isn’t that just like the forum ? Then we have the other people there scrabbling to find out what happened and craning their necks to look and see what’s the matter. The only people who know what’s happening to some extent are those nearest to those two and who caught at least part of their conversation and it is they who would be intervening first. Then the host wades through tbe crowd to find out what is disrupting his party and to resolve any issues and he learns what is happening from those in the crowd who caught part of the argument and from those involved. Of course in a forum, the moderators and the other members have the advantage of being able to read text posts in a chronological fashion. No analogy is totally applicable but that’s the mature eof analogies and examples…
You also said that Hedrick’s response is entirely out of proportion and ends up slating an entire forum and evidences a narcissitic egotism ao to speak. I agree that his response is disproportionate and I don’t agree it is a fair response. I never said his response was justified. Howevee I don’t propose to provide any psychological explanation for why he responded in that way - we are not qualified nor are we entitled to do so, and it is pointless to speculate as we cannot read their minds nor prove it objectively. A simpler and more obvious explanation is that Hedrick could just be angry and even enraged, and angry people can do some pretty unreasonable things, as we all know from our own pasts. But in the end hedrick’s response is not even the point of the exercise that we should engage in - which is to find out how we can help prevent this in the future and to make this forum better and be the friendly and nice and knowledgeable place we all want it to be.
Your main point was that hedrick should expect himself to have to be put on the spot wih people asking him to justify his public actions since he is a coffee internet celebrity and thus a public figure. However you did agree that dfk41 was basically harassing him on an entirely unconnected matter not what the gorilla burrs threas was on. In fact dfk41 was trying to continue an out of point discussion he has had with hedrick before on YouTube. Hedrick started out in fact being quite nice about it and trying to cool down the tenor of the conversation but when dfk41 doubled down on his accusations and refusing to be less confrontational and be more nice, hedrick started to respond in kind. It went all downhill after that…
The mere fact that someone is a public figure does not mean that he or she relinquishes their right to be a human being who deserves to be treated with dignity and respect by others and it doesn’t mean that its ok to be hounded publicly. The laws of defamation for instance protect people - even public figures - from being wrongly accused of things involving moral turpitude publicly - and they are applicable to forums as platforms that republish the defamation..
Just think about it analogously- imagine if you had a social gathering of coffee fans at yoir home and a famous blogger like hoffman attended as well and suddenly another attendee starts to accuse him of dishonest acts on the way he presents his videos. Wouldn’t you be annoyed with the questioner? It is no different here and should be no different because it is the virtual version of that situation.
He had already given dfk41 an answer to his question - which is that his editor edited it out without his knowledge. Unless dfk41 has proof that that was in fsct untrue, he has no right whether legally or ethically to question his integrity publicly. It is as clear as that.
What I find perturbing is your approach has essentially turned the victim into the villain in the narrative lens that you are seeing this incident through. You have even tried to validate or justify some of dfk41’s position here. Wouldnt aggressors end up being emboldened by this kind of attitude and this sort of thing will :)be more likely to happen again in the future?
Anyway I have said all I inten to say about this issue…