I’m Sorry, Justine Sacco
Even if you were caught up in last weekend’s pre-Christmas frenzy, there’s a good chance you heard about Justine Sacco & the racist 12-word tweet that’s now a permanent part of her digital fingerprint.
Her original Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts are gone, yet press coverage, punditry & the infamous Twitter hashtag, #HasJustineLandedYet, will remain.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the incident. Regardless of what she really meant by the offending tweet, the lack of sensitivity blows me away. What fascinated me, though, was the tsunami-like reaction that took over the Internet. It’s terrifying, if you think about it.
Unbeknownst to Sacco at the time, while she was in flight from London to South Africa, her digital fingerprint was being completely overhauled & revamped by a global jury of millions of social media citizens who knew little more than 12 words of her entire life story.
When I read Justine Sacco’s aftermath: The cost of Twitter outrage earlier this week in Salon, Roxanne Gay’s words gave life to my underlying discomfort:
The online outrage and Sacco’s comeuppance seemed disproportionate. The amount of joy some people expressed as they engaged with the #HasJustineLandedYet hashtag gave me pause.
Somewhere along the line, we forgot that this drama concerned an actual human being. Justine Sacco did not express empathy for her fellow human beings with her insensitive tweet. It is something, though, that the Internet responded in kind, with an equal lack of empathy. We expressed some of the very attitude we claimed to condemn.
Of course I felt horrible. Because I, in a small way, contributed one of the ink specks that now make up the digital fingerprint of a woman I’ve never met. This is the customized meme I created on my iPhone 5:
The fact that I used my innocent, elderly cat, Allie Chandler, as the meme’s mouthpiece is another story. What’s important is what was going through my mind last Friday night during the few minutes before I created the meme & tweeted it out.
I was dumbfounded at first, and my reaction was 100 percent judgmental. “Who says things like that?” The real answer: Plenty of people (& a lot more than you would expect), regardless of race, creed, color, sexual orientation or political standing. What they genuinely mean under the surface is a bigger question.
Next, I questioned Sacco’s PR background. As a senior director at Barry Diller’s IAC, Sacco follows high-profile reporters & vice-versa. So she must have enough social media know-how to understand that at least 1,526 eyeballs might read her tweets, right?
This is part of what I teach at NYU, so I know the answer to my question is ‘No.’ Sacco’s a senior-level PR pro, and she has a questionable tweet history. Hmmm … I’m guessing she didn’t think through her personal brand strategy with the same level of precision that she might have done with her now-former employer’s PR programs.
In a knee-jerk response, my professional & personal mindsets joined in a tweet-meme starring Allie Chandler. During that brief moment, I fell victim to a social media trap that social naysayers use as the ammo for everything that’s wrong with social media: I made it all about me & my pseudo-clever snarkiness. I forgot, for that small window, that Justine Sacco was in the air & completely defenseless. I committed a major social media crime: I lacked empathy.
As far as the tweet goes, I stand by these words: Some believe the best PR pros are never seen or heard. This is sage, reasonable advice. Can you name the PR people behind the reputations of Jennifer Lawrence, Pope Francis or J.K. Rowling, for example? Probably not.
The meme, itself, is a snarky personal jab. Looking back to Friday night, the unfolding story felt like a comedy sketch. And the sassy hashtag, #HasJustineLandedYet, has the ring of something right out of SNL.
So in a moment that was likely as quick as Sacco tweeted the now-infamous 12 words, I whipped up a pop-psych diagnosis of Justine Sacco. I tapped a brand of humor that I use when I create course-related memes, like this one with Grumpy Cat promoting extra credit projects. Memes like this are meant to lift the tension in a room. Tension in a racism-fueled customized hashtag is different.
Tweets flew into the digital Peanut Gallery, #HasJustineLandedYet, at lightning speed. If you watched long enough, you also saw the other side of the situation – the stuff that’s anything but funny – like the tweets encouraging donations to AIDS research or those announcing that visitors to JustineSacco.com were being redirected to Aid for Africa.
When I learned the Justine-Allie Chandler meme was retweeted two times (confirmed real people, not bots), reaching a possible 55K Twitter users between the two, the Sacco social media comedy hour took a very different turn. How does the saying go? “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.”
The problem here is that Justine Sacco isn’t an SNL character. The idea wasn’t hatched by a team of comedy writers sitting around a table. And I’m not a psychologist, pop or otherwise, nor do I know Sacco or anything about her family or her upbringing.
Empathy returned to its rightful position in my psyche & served up a slap-in-the-face reminder of real life, which Roxanne Gay sums up perfectly:
I don’t want to feel sorry for Sacco. I don’t even know if I feel sorry for her, exactly. Instead, I recognize that I’m human and the older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am, how fallible we all are. I recognize that Justine Sacco is human. She should have known better and done better, but most of us can look at poor choices we’ve made, critical moments when we did not do better.
And there you have it. I should have known better and done better. So why didn’t I? There’s a part of me that feels like a bully – not a word I want attached to my digital fingerprint. I considered deleting the tweet, before realizing that pretending it never existed was just as offensive as creating it in the first place. Doing so also meant adding coward to my digital fingerprint. No, thank you.
Somehow, writing about the experience helps me make sense of it all. More important is apologizing to Justine Sacco.
Justine, I’m sincerely sorry. What happened to you is no laughing matter. I choose to believe that, at the most basic level, people are decent & humane, not cruel. As far as the meme goes, I know absolutely nothing about your family or your upbringing. You screwed up, and you’re paying the consequences. I’ve been there. Everyone has. And we’ll all be there again sometime.
Whatever you do, please don’t hold a grudge against the cat, Allie Chandler. She’s pushing 18, deaf, a bit senile & completely innocent here. If I were in Allie’s position, I just might sue me.