TED演讲:网络暴力的失控(8)
Justine was fired, of course, because social media demanded it.
毫无疑问，贾丝婷把工作丢了，因为这是社交媒体上的民意。
But it was worse than that. She was losing herself.
但更糟的是，她逐渐迷失了自己。
She was waking up in the middle of the night, forgetting who she was.
有时她半夜醒来，竟然不记得自己是谁。
She was got because she was perceived to have misused her privilege.
人们把她揪出来，是因为她肆无忌惮秀优越。
And of course, that’s a much better thing to get people for than the things we used to get people for, like having children out of wedlock.
这比起其他的原因大概好很多吧。从前我们把人揪出来是因为未婚先孕。
But the phrase “misuse of privilege” is becoming a free pass to tear apart pretty much anybody we choose to.
但“秀优越”一词已经成了一张通用票，用来打压任何一个我们想打压的人。
It’s becoming a devalued term,
这词已变得毫无价值，
and it’s making us lose our capacity for empathy and for distinguishing between serious and unserious transgressions.
让我们失去同情的能力，失去区分严重过错和无心之失的能力。
Justine had 170 Twitter followers, and so to make it work, she had to be fictionalized.
贾丝婷的推特粉丝只有170名，因此，想让大家点赞，她得编个精彩的故事。
Word got around that she was the daughter the mining billionaire Desmond Sacco.
有传言说她是矿业大亨德斯蒙德·萨科的女儿。
I thought that was true about Justine, until I met her at a bar,
我也以为贾丝婷真是富家女。直到我在酒吧同她见面，
and I asked her about her billionaire father, and she said, “My father sells carpets.”
问她富翁爸爸的事儿，她说：“我爸是卖地毯的。”
And I think back on the early days of Twitter, when people would admit shameful secrets about themselves,
我回想起推特刚上线的时候，那时人们还会随意爆一些自己的丑事，
and other people would say, “Oh my God, I’m exactly the same.”
其他人就会说，“天啊，我跟你一样。”
These days, the hunt is on for people’s shameful secrets.
现在呢，人人都在抓别人的丑事。
You can lead a good, ethical life, but some bad phraseology in a Tweet can overwhelm it all,
你本来生活无忧无虑，但若在推文中说错了只言片语，一切就都完了，
become a clue to your secret inner evil.
人们恨不得将你打入十八层地狱。
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。