TED演讲:网络暴力的失控(4)
What had happened is that one of her 170 followers had sent the Tweet to a Gawker journalist,
发生了啥事呢，就是她的那170个粉丝当中有一人将这条推文转发给了Gawker网的一个记者，
and he retweeted it to his 15,000 followers:
后者又转发给自己的15000名粉丝：
And then it was like a bolt of lightning.
接下来就一发不可收拾了。
A few weeks later, I talked to the Gawker journalist.
几周之后我联系过那个Gawker网的记者。
I emailed him and asked him how it felt, and he said, “It felt delicious.”
我电邮给他，问他当时感觉如何，他说：“真是痛快之极啊。”
And then he said, “But I’m sure she’s fine.”
接着他说：“我敢保证她没事。”
But she wasn’t fine, because while she slept, Twitter took control of her life and dismantled it piece by piece.
但她怎么可能没事，在她睡着的时候，推特掌控了她的生活，并让其分崩离析。
First there were the philanthropists:
首先下手的是那些慈善家：
Then came the beyond horrified:
继而是更可怕的：
Was anybody on Twitter that night? A few of you.
在座的有那天晚上上推特的吗？好几位。
Did Justine’s joke overwhelm your Twitter feed the way it did mine?
你们的推特也像我的那样被贾丝婷的段子刷屏了吗？
It did mine, and I thought what everybody thought that night,
我是被刷屏了，当时就和大家想的一样，
which was, “Wow, somebody’s screwed! Somebody’s life is about to get terrible!”
就是：“哇塞，有人捅了马蜂窝啦！有人要倒大霉了！”
And I sat up in my bed, and I put the pillow behind my head, and then I thought,
然后我在床上坐起来，抓起枕头搁脑袋后面，然后琢磨，
I’m not entirely sure that joke was intended to be racist.
我真不确定这段子真的有种族主义倾向。
Maybe instead of gleefully flaunting her privilege, she was mocking the gleeful flaunting of privilege.
也许她并不是在洋洋得意地显摆自己，只是在嘲讽这种显摆而已。
There’s a comedy tradition of this, like South Park or Colbert or Randy Newman.
喜剧里都有这样的传统，如《南方公园》或科尔伯特或兰迪·纽曼。
Maybe Justine Sacco’s crime was not being as good at it as Randy Newman.
也许贾丝婷·萨科之罪在于嘲讽得不如兰迪·纽曼高明吧。
In fact, when I met Justine a couple of weeks later in a bar,
事实呢，两周后我和贾丝婷在一酒吧碰了头，
she was just crushed, and I asked her to explain the joke,
她人已完全崩溃，我让她对那个段子做个解释，
and she said, “Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the Third World
她说：“生活在美国就像生活在一个气泡里似的，不知道第三世界到底发生了什么。
I was making of fun of that bubble.”
我是在嘲笑那个气泡。”
Jon Ronson通过贾斯汀·萨科在推特上发布的一条被认为带有种族歧视主义的玩笑而掀起的轩然大波的事件，阐述了当今网络上网路暴力现象的严重性，以及对人造成的伤害。“滥用权力”这个词不应是我们在网络上肆无忌惮谴责别人时用来挡身的防具，我们也不应该成反过来为“滥用权力”的人。