Lance Hedrick - review of the VOSTOCK

Rob1

What you said is true, not just of forums but of life in general. We need to be more mentally resilient (we also need to control our words too…) However it does not address the real issue in this little debacle - which is what sort of forum is this and what sort of forum do members here want it to be? Is it the nice and friendly and knowledgeable forum that it sets out to be - like a gathering at an acquaintance’s house to which we have been invited along with a lot of other people, some we know well and others we don’t know well, and somebody there starts casting slurs at another attendee and suggesting dishonesty on his part and they make a scene. Wouldn’t the host and other attendees there who know the abuser speak to him and tell him he’s out of line and to behave himself, and they also get the victim to calm down as well?

But if all that they do is to just suggest to the abuser that he can rephrase his words on a different way and then they tell the person being accused not to be so sensitive and if he doesn’t like it he can just stop talking to him and ignore him, will the victim not perceive that the attendees appear to be nice and friendly just to the abuser and not to the person being abused?

There is a reason when people get so angry they start posting tweets or Instagram against others. It doesn’t excuse it but there is always a cause. Is there any reason related to how he was treated here apart from the possibility somebody here raised of anyone whispering in his ear and further aggravating him?

Part of calming down a person who feels unfairly treated is to let him see that the slur against him is being publicly rejected there and then. If that is not done, he starts to wonder if the others also feel that way about him too and believe the slur though there is no evidence whatsoever presented to prove it….

If we don’t want it to happen again, it is wise to have a look under the hood when things blow up to see if there is anything that needs fixing before we sweep it under the carpet and go on business as usual…

Rob666

I’m sure he is a very generous and helpful person but that isn’t in issue though. What is was his behaviour the other day towards another member of this forum whoch goes quite a long way past the point of just being outspoken…

chlorox like a gathering at an acquaintance’s house to which we have been invited along with a lot of other people, some we know well and others we don’t know well, and somebody there starts casting slurs at another attendee and suggesting dishonesty on his part and they make a scene. Wouldn’t the host and other attendees there who know the abuser speak to him and tell him he’s out of line and to behave himself, and they also get the victim to calm down as well?

But it isn’t like that at all. It’s a forum, the only things we have is a wall of text, and people scroll past posts. I haven’t read any of the back-and-forth properly, the only thing I’ve seen is the odd line or two and the inappropriate language from Lance. We aren’t present in person and picking everything up, we can’t take social queues and see how upset or offended somebody is and if they are looking to others present to help. Most of us are just scrolling past things that don’t concern us. Two people tagging each other in short posts talking about something that isn’t on topic isn’t something I’m generally going to bother reading, and there’s no way I’m alone in that.

chlorox There is a reason when people get so angry they start posting tweets or Instagram against others. It doesn’t excuse it but there is always a cause. Is there any reason related to how he was treated here apart from the possibility somebody here raised of anyone whispering in his ear and further aggravating him?

Part of calming down a person who feels unfairly treated is to let him see that the slur against him is being publicly rejected there and then. If that is not done, he starts to wonder if the others also feel that way about him too and believe the slur though there is no evidence whatsoever presented to prove it….

The reason I want to reply is to address the instagram post properly. To be honest…I don’t think that’s a normal and healthy response. Put it this way, if somebody with almost 75,000 followers on Instagram and over 100k subscribers on youtube publicly slating a forum and calling for an individual to be banned for daring to question their integrity, isn’t a perfect example of narcissistic bullying, then I don’t know what is. I know he says that’s not the reason, but let’s be real here, if he weren’t aggrieved he wouldn’t be posting that.

From my understanding - which as I’ve said is going to be limited because I’ve barely read the posts - DFK assumed Lance had deliberately omitted a negative aspect about a product he had reviewed. He brought this up on youtube and then brought it up on the forum. Lance basically dismissed the significance of this and said he wasn’t aware something had been cut from the video. DFK doesn’t believe him and told him as much.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable for DFK to tell Lance they think they are lying about not checking the video. Lance is a content creator, making himself a public figure after all, and has opened himself up to this kind of scrutiny. If Lance has a problem with people questioning his integrity perhaps he should be more careful when he’s uploading content in the future to ensure things haven’t been omitted accidentally, especially when those things happen to be negative for the product being reviewed. As you say, there is no evidence, but this isn’t a court of law and we don’t need evidence to form opinions, we need only consider the balance of probability. It’s not unreasonable to expect a content creator to watch their videos before uploading and it’s not unreasonable to refuse to take their word for it when they tell you they don’t. That they are upset and outraged does not mean the scrutiny is unreasonable.

Personally, I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion Lance was lying but I do believe it is careless to upload content without checking it first. I don’t like that DFK was dragging something from youtube into the forum and into an unrelated (or loosely related) thread as that is harassment, or at least bordering on it. I don’t like that Lance decided to bring half a story from old conflicts on another forum (most of which weren’t public or had been deleted) that he doesn’t understand, and wasn’t part of, into the criticism of this forum.

…….Though as I said there’s a very good chance I’ve missed a whole lot and if I have then fair enough.

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…

chlorox 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..

Oooook……you don’t want to talk about psychology but are you a legal expert? For a statement to be defamatory it must be demonstrably false and have a negative impact on the claimant’s reputation, amongst other things. Even if DFK did accuse Lance of lying about deliberately omitting a detail in a review, Lance needs to prove demonstrably that the statement is false (among other things) for it to be considered defamatory. We are allowed to form and share opinions, including negative ones, which is why the burden of proof is on a claimant (or victim if you want to describe them as that). And no, we don’t need evidence to support those opinions. The fact Lance uploaded the video is enough to support the accusation. Has he issued a correction on Youtube? Has he removed the video and reuploaded it with the accidentally cut content? If he hasn’t you have to ask why, if it was a genuine mistake, it hasn’t been corrected….because if the detail wasn’t deliberately omitted before, it is now.

RE: analogies: no amount of mental gymnastics is going to make a forum similar to a real-life event. It is a completely different sensory experience. Aside from the issues of communication, which I’ve previously described, there is no urgency to respond to things as they happen. Conflicts happen in life and on forums. If you’re on a forum you have plenty of time to cool down and move on by simply getting up from your computer and walking away. Just cutting yourself off from a discussion in person generally doesn’t happen even though it’s just as possible to do it. Not saying you’re not right and online life would be better if people behaved like they do in person but it’s not going to happen for a multitude of reasons. Secondly, this is not a private forum. It is not akin to a private gathering at home where people have interconnected lives. If you want to form an analogy the forum is closer to your local pub where we’re a group of regulars. Sometimes regulars might disagree with each other but abide by pub rules because they don’t want to get barred. If you bring someone along you just met in another pub with you to this one and they come across somebody they’ve had a disagreement with in another venue you’d probably just tell them to stop fighting and ruining everyone’s good time. I personally wouldn’t start lecturing them on how to behave.

chlorox 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.

tompoland And yes, we live in a culture of free speech. But we also operate under the Westminster justice system where someone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. And we have no proof as to whether the omission of the power brick was deliberate or not. So unless we have proof, we should give him the benefit of the doubt and resist the urge to find him guilty.

You’re wrong. To put it simply. There is no “legal or ethical” requirement to accept somebody’s word as truth. DFK says he didn’t make the accusation of lying, but the fact is he has the right to form an opinion and stand by it. We are not in a court of law, the justice system isn’t relevant. We’re not talking about bringing criminal charges against Lance for omitting a detail in a video. We’re talking about one person having an opinion and sticking to it. We aren’t obligated to give people the benefit of the doubt as a group or as individuals. One person might say it’s cynical not to accept Lance’s word for it, another would say it’s naive to believe him. The most mature way of handling this would be for Lance to simply say “I understand why you’re suspicious, I get there are influencers who make money off giving positive reviews but I’m not doing that, I’ll try to make sure my reviews don’t omit negative aspects in the future and maybe you’ll change your mind…”.

Rob1

Rob, as I said previously, i am not going to comment on this incident anymore as I have already said all that I wanted to say on it.

But I do have to comment on your suggestions on defamation law because you and others here including this forum itself may be guided by that misunderstanding on how you and others conduct yourselves on the forums.

I’m afraid you are completely wrong about what English Common law says about the burden of proof in defamation law. You have got it the other way around - if a statement alleging moral turpitude is made against another person, the law assumes that statement is false and the person making it had no right to do so, and it is on that person’s shoulders to either prove it is true or to show he is entitled to any of the other defences to defamation. One doesnt have to be a legal expert but only needs to do a few minutes of searching on the Internet to find this basic fact out.

You can have any opinion you want in your head about anyone else. But the moment you utter it to others or write that opinion out for others to read, the law places an obligation under you not to defame others…

For example…

https://www.carruthers-law.co.uk/our-services/defamation/defamation-defences/

"It is presumed that the defamatory statement is false, so the burden of proof is placed on the defendant to prove it is not. The defendant will have to prove this on the balance of probabilities i.e. that the fact in issue more probably occurred than not.

A defendant who repeats a rumour cannot rely upon truth just because there was a rumour, the defendant would have to show that the rumour was true.

The defendant must be very careful relying on truth because even if the publisher knew that the allegation was true, it may find it difficult to persuade the judge with enough evidence that that is the case. It is likely that the defendant will be penalised in damages if not successful…"