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Notes -
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j1ye6n30no
(Non pay wall link)
Tragic end.
I feel bad for the dude - honestly a hearty laugh is all I want when people violate social norms like this and show us how frankly evil our institutions can be.
Sure I can blame the dude for every lie told but it only permeates my life several levels deep … the association of someone like Arday and my life only really touches when the walks start crumbling down.
What gets me mad is the institutions.
It’s their fault! Every step of the way someone, anyone, could have stepped in and stopped folly.
But things snowball and here we are.
I don’t even know what I’m supposed to learn from this, and I don’t know how I can help make the world a better place than I left it. People used to change the world I feel like, and I’m only changing the people around me … which is something!
I’m 100% reading the biography about this.
At the end of the day the only person who can kill themselves is obviously, themselves. We can talk about how hard it is to weather harassment and controversies and whatever, and how much anyone in particular "deserves" to have mean stuff said to them, but I have always been against the idea of blaming others for someone else's choice, regardless of how grim it is. Just turn off the computer/leave the room/whatever if people are being mean and you don't like it, they have free speech to say awful stuff and tough shit deal with it. Tons of other people live with seeing awful stuff about them all day, just check the comments of any controversial minority group content creator like outspoken jews or trans people to see evidence of that. There is no shortage of meanness on the internet and if that existing means no one else can speak then why even have the internet to begin with?
The only place I can think of at the top of my head where there is a meaningful exception is with school bullies, and that's only because the government mandates attendence for anyone who isn't being home schooled (which isn't possible for many families) thus making "just leave" not an option.
It sucks that Arday died, but no one is at fault for a suicide except for himself. We can't give up our freedoms to criticize and mock just because someone else might do something bad (whether that be suicide or murder or whatever).
It speaks to the inordinate amount of social and political capital that black people have today. There wouldn't be a shred of sympathy from either aisle if Arday was Israeli or Indian. I don't have a strong opinion on whether the dogpiling was deserved or not (okay, maybe I'm leaning towards not).
Academic misconduct is a serious issue, and this was a grown man who knew what he was doing, mental illness or not. His fate was sealed by his own choices, his widow and children will bear the brunt of his actions now.
Yeah. Not to 'imagine if this situation was reversed' this but if this entire arc was playing out along the lines of 'Conservative Professor gets #metooed on soft allegations, University publicly supports him for a week then concedes under weight of obviousness and then professor self-terminates a week later' then there'd be zero of this sympathy
In fact, we don’t even have to imagine: this exact situation happened in 2020 (Mike Adams, see links downthread)
Yeah and Mike Adams didn't violate any particular codes of conduct besides being a social media chud, from what I can see?
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