My experience with Sarah Jeong, Jason Koebler, and Vice Magazine

418 点作者 fred256将近 7 年前

14 条评论

Animats将近 7 年前

Few people from mainland China have high visibility on English-language social media. Wu does. This carries risks in China, which tightly controls public speech. She's mentioned obliquely that she's been told what she can and can't talk about. That's probably why her article is somewhat vague.She really does make stuff. After the publisher of Make magazine claimed she was a fake, she started posting long, detailed videos of her builds. He backed down.Her writing and videos about Shenzhen are valuable. She's a native of the city, which is rare; Shenzhen has grown rapidly to 18 million in three decades, mostly people from elsewhere in China. There are thousands of English-language videos about what Tokyo is like at ground level. Not many from Shenzhen, which is a larger city than Tokyo. She sounds proud of her city, and likes how easy it is to get parts to make things. She's probably Shenzhen's most visible booster to the outside world.Some people are really upset by her.

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dwohnitmok将近 7 年前

As far as I can tell from reading her Medium article as well as Vice's article and some miscellaneous Reddit threads (a.k.a. take this with the appropriate grain of salt) the timeline goes something like this:1. Koebler begins a correspondence with Wu and interviews her in person for an article he's writing. Wu makes it clear that one condition for her cooperation is not to talk about her relationship status or sexual orientation.2. After interviewing her, but before publishing the article, Koebler sends Wu an email asking whether she'd like to comment on a a very public and ugly Reddit/4chan conspiracy theory that she was getting help from her husband? and that not all of her work was her own. Wu becomes fearful that this means the article will touch on the restricted topics that she specifically requested that Vice would not report on. Wu and Koebler have a back and forth where Wu tries to impress upon Vice just how damaging these topics can be to her in the PRC, especially given that Vice articles are often translated, where the government could severely damage her, causing both physical and non-physical harm. Wu asks to see the article before it is published. Koebler refuses, stating it is SOP not to share articles before publication.3. Wu threatens to use her Twitter followers to cause Vice reputational harm and force Koebler out of his job. Koebler stops responding to Wu's emails.4. Before the article is published, Wu decides to take action. She takes to Twitter to call out Vice and Koebler. Separately she doxes Koebler in a video shared with her Patreon followers. Vice's lawyers have YouTube remove the video and Patreon close Wu's account. Patreon is a large source of revenue for Wu which forces Wu to search for alternative sources of income within China, which force her into additional compromises without fully recovering her previous already modest level of income.5. The Vice article is published. Although most of it focuses on Wu as a Maker, Koebler includes a couple of paragraphs outlining his interpretation of what happened with the post-interview situation. This presumably touches on the things Wu did not want talked about in the article. This is the only mention in a fairly long article about anything to do with Wu's relationship status. It is unclear whether the original draft of the article was like this or whether the scope of how much mention of relationship stuff was changed in as a result of the back and forth.6. Wu responds with this Medium article, which she feels only reveals a fraction of what has happened because she cannot talk about the rest due to the PRC government.

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zawerf将近 7 年前

She tweeted about her motivation:> Yeah but if you look at my track record, no one that did it to me is going to dare do it to the next girl...that's what counts. That's why you do it, I "lose" every time- reputation takes a real hit. Important to be likable and sweet as a vlogger. But they think twice next time<a href="https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1026223322831314944" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/102622332283131494...</a>She knows she's not going to come out of this ahead. She's doing this on principle to protect the next person they try to bully. Respect.

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danso将近 7 年前

I liked Jackie Luo's take at the time -- linked in the OP [0] -- which posits that there is not "a clear-cut, unambiguous victim and perpetrator in this narrative".I didn't catch any of this controversy as it was apparently happening back in April. Reading this article and VICE's, and the scattered tweets at the time, I'm still a little confused about the timeline. But in any case, it seems like there are 2 discrete conflicts: VICE vs. Wu, and Wu vs. Jeong. And the former conflict seems to be what caused Wu material injury (such as the Patreon ban), whereas Jeong's part feels more tangential, e.g. the insult on top of injury.That is not to say I think Wu is right or wrong to be angry at Jeong and angry at the NYT for hiring her. But some people tweeting on this seem to believe Jeong had a much more direct role in the troubles Wu had after the VICE story, other than being someone who -- as Wu sees it -- piled on Wu in a misguided defense of VICE.[0] <a href="https://twitter.com/jackiehluo/status/982087205907607552" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/jackiehluo/status/982087205907607552</a>

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forkLding将近 7 年前

I think Naomi Wu is trying to protect herself from being attacked by conservative Chinese trolls on the internet who can draw the attention of Chinese companies who will censor her to appease the Chinese govt. which doesn't like scandalous content related to sexuality, etc to be broadcast on public media or likely the Chinese govt. will call for her content to be censored or shut down for sexual or illegal content (Remember technically using/blogging on Twitter and Youtube in China is a grey zone, as firstly its banned in China but you can do it quietly but if you get found out you're saying stuff the Chinese govt. doesn't like, you can be shut down. Its a grey zone because I think the rules depend on what you're saying and I think you are evaluated by individual groups of monitors or something because even Chinese state television has an official youtube channel they update).Seen it happen before with a popular web series depicting gay love:<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addicted_(web_series)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addicted_(web_series)</a><a href="http://time.com/4236864/china-gay-drama-homosexuality/" rel="nofollow">http://time.com/4236864/china-gay-drama-homosexuality/</a>that got two actors banned from appearing on screen.Scandalous Chinese rappers have also been censored in media and caused a varying degree of hip hop culture to be banned on Chinese media (although still alive and well on the web):<a href="https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2142444/chinas-hip-hop-culture-ban-authorities-send-mixed-messages" rel="nofollow">https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2142444/chinas-hi...</a>Basically if Naomi Wu is seen depicting values that the Chinese govt. doesn't like (like criminality, sexuality, traitorous behaviour, drugs, discrimination, democratic/human rights, etc.), they will censor her and tell the web to shut her down. And then companies won't work with her and every message she posted will be taken down in seconds and she will stay home all day scared and frustrated.

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ggm将近 7 年前

I think vice has questions to answer about editorial policy and contracts.I think many people who enjoy reading vice would be very upset that they both ignored an agreed no go area, and albiet marginally, put a PRC contributor into moral hazard.Sorry vice, but I think you let yourself down here.

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mlang23将近 7 年前

Never talk to the press, under no circumstances. They either get ir blatantly wrong, or outright spread lies to meet their deadlines. Just show em the door. I have been interviewed a number of times, and never has the reporter ever written what we talked about. They either simplified matters to a point where you wouldn't be able to identify the original intent, or made up things I never said. Experience has taught me to not repeat that error.

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ALittleLight将近 7 年前

I'm not sure I really understood this - a mixture of skimming and the author implying things without stating then directly.The author suggests that Vice misled her in early talks, gathered information about her that should've been off limits for the story but shared it anyway despite her pleas for them not to. My first read of this was that she's gay and was concerned how that would look to a Chinese audience and Vice exploited that for attention.I skimmed the Vice article too - <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kjqdb/naomi-wu-sexy-cyborg-profile-shenzhen-maker-scene" rel="nofollow">https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kjqdb/naomi-wu-s...</a> and that didn't really seem to be it. I have to confess I couldn't understand what she objected to in the Vice article. However, as the author writes about the Vice editors, I'm not in any position to understand what is or isn't concerning to share for a Chinese woman with a large social media following living in China.Without really understanding what the disagreement is I have to withhold my judgment. However, if I'm ever in a position where Vice would want to interview me I'd probably turn them down after reading this purely out of caution.The complaint about Sarah Jeong seems a bit more clear - Jeong dismissed the author's concerns claiming to be able to evaluate them fairly because they were both Asian women. Jeong's perspective though is as an ethnic Korean who has lived in the US pretty much her entire life (moved to the US at age 3) which is clearly a very different perspective than the author who is a Chinese citizen.Given what else we know about Jeong I don't think it's that surprising that she's insensitive about race.

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Accacin将近 7 年前

I understand a free and open media, but this is what annoys me about it.. A single woman, the media won't listen to her at all and they'll print what they want. A powerful company asks them not to print something and they'll remove the offending article in a heartbeat.

vmlinuz将近 7 年前

There's a couple of interesting things here...Firstly, Naomi is a person with a certain style - in both a personal and physical sense. She is not one to back down from a fight, but she clearly lost this one and still feels the loss pretty strongly.Secondly, it's interesting because, when you strip it down a bit, it does appear to be a case of an Asian-American woman coming to the defence of an American company and white male writer/editor, unsolicited, in a dispute with a Chinese woman. It doesn't seem to mesh all that well with the other narrative of Sarah as an anti-white racist...

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choonway将近 7 年前

Remind me not to talk to any journalist before they sign a strict disclosure agreement.

sgentle将近 7 年前

> I hear “but you fought back wrong” while no one was there to help when I begged for weeks for help fighting back “right”. No one can seem to say in my shoes what would have been “right” is other than lie down and let them do what they want. I am no one’s victim.I've been thinking a lot about this point lately. This argument and its variations are ones I've heard a lot from activists and other Angry Internet People, but it's taken a long time to really understand where they're coming from. Actually, the main help was a Slate Star Codex article called Conflict vs Mistake[0].In that article, Scott Alexander argues for two modes of thinking about disagreement: mistake theory says that people disagree because they misunderstand, and conflict theory says that people disagree because they want to win. Mistake theorists, such as Scott, myself, and most people who consider themselves rationalists, occasionally find themselves in totally baffling conversations with marxists, social justice diablo_class_name_here, and other genres of conflict theorist. Not feigned-ignorant "please explain your curious argument" baffling, but genuine I-feel-like-one-of-us-is-speaking-Norse all-consuming confusion.An example that is so hot right now: content providers censoring bad speech on their platforms. Cloudflare terminated the account of the Daily Stormer[1], a toxic white nationalist forum; Reddit continues to host /r/The_Donald, a toxic white nationalist subreddit[2][3]. In both cases, the argument for mistake theorists comes down to this: the problem with white nationalists is that they're wrong. If the positions were reversed, and I was wrong about something, the right approach wouldn't be to censor or punish me, but to educate me.The conflict-theorist counterargument is simple: the positions wouldn't be reversed, and that symmetry is a disingenuous illusion. These people are not suffering from a lack of knowledge, but engaging in a deliberate and malicious course of action that your both-sides symmetrical systematising does nothing to prevent. They want to win and they want you to lose, don't you get it? Are you trying to lose?Consider this (admittedly cheap, but I'm going for pathos here) analogy: in World War 2, our ancestors killed Nazis by the (literal) millions. How could they do this, when killing people is bad - or, worse, rude? Haven't they heard of Rawls' veil of ignorance? If you had to decide whether killing Nazis is okay before you get to find out whether you're a Nazi, surely you would suggest a more moderate response. This is what a mistake theorist sounds like to a conflict theorist.If someone wants to win, systematic rulemaking will not help. If you say white supremacy is banned, they will become white nationalists. If you say white nationalism is banned, they will become independent researchers of human biodiversity. No complex formal system, however sophisticated, can fully define statements about itself[4]. You cannot build a system that determines when people are using the system in bad faith.And so this, finally, is the reason for the epistemic gulf between conflict and mistake theorists: one saying "your individual behaviour is wrong because it does not generalise into a coherent universal system of behaviour", and the other saying "your universal system of behaviour is wrong because it does not recognise the wrongness in this individual situation".Mistake theorists on conflict theorists: "No bad tactics, only bad targets"Conflict theorists on mistake theorists: "Would you mind showing me evidence of any negative thing any sea lion has ever done to you?"[5]The issue with mistake vs conflict theory is that it is a prisoner's dilemma. If everyone acts in good faith, everyone comes away more enlightened and understanding. If one party is acting in bad faith, you better hope it's you. This is why conflict theorists are so baffled that mistake theorists keep offering new sets of good-faith rules to people who have no intention of playing by them[6]. Don't worry, Charlie Brown, I'm sure she'll let you kick the football this time.Lest this comes off as a diatribe against mistake theorists, I should clarify that, being one, I have absolutely no idea how else you can build a stable society, and I stopped following Naomi Wu after she posted Jason Koebler's address on the internet. That's doxxing, and doxxing is wrong.But there is this slow, creeping dissonance I have begun to feel. Is justice the guiding light of objective morality shining down from the platonic realm of universal rationality? Or is it the olive branch we extend to the Martin Luther Kings of this world so they can hold back the Malcom X right behind them[7], and to the Naomi Wus so they don't dox us? No justice, no peace, as they say.Returning to the quote from the article, you at least have to observe that she has a solid strategic argument. Within her situation, with her resources, what recourse did she have for her grievances? If the best advice you have is "you lost and you have no power in this situation, so lose quietly and be a good sport about it", it's no surprise she didn't listen. Would you, if you genuinely believed you were wronged?So she broke the rules, did wrong, and now pays the price. But she also threw an elbow, and the elbow caught some attention, without which her fight with Vice would be over. My inner mistake theorist asks: what kind of world do we have if everyone starts throwing elbows? My inner conflict theorist asks: who should win here? Are they?Deep down, I really just wish all the conflict theorists would go jump in a lake so we could get back to building our positive-sum utopia. But life's not that easy. I bet they wish we'd all jump in a lake so they could just win without all this concern over whether they're winning the right way.[0] <a href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/" rel="nofollow">http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/</a>[1] <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/</a>[2] <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dissecting-trumps-most-rabid-online-following/" rel="nofollow">https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dissecting-trumps-most-...</a>[3] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/851018/fifty_of_the_worst_examples_from_rthe_donald/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/851018/fif...</a>[4] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theorem" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theo...</a>[5] <a href="http://wondermark.com/1k62/" rel="nofollow">http://wondermark.com/1k62/</a>[6] <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre#Anti-Semite_and_Jew_.281945.29" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre#Anti-Semite_a...</a>[7] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballot_or_the_Bullet" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballot_or_the_Bullet</a>

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doombolt将近 7 年前

A minute ago this article was on the first page and suddently it dropped to second.I'm sorry what? What is happening here?

jack_quack将近 7 年前

Can someone tl;dr?

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