Good morning, wake up, pour a cup of coffee, turn on your computer and see who's getting shit all over today!
I couldn't help but bring this up for discussion as my entire Facebook feed today was top to bottom filled with putting apparent "douchebag" Andy Meyer on blast for his actions Friday night at the Cha Cha (Click here to see a very long image of all the posts/comments).
Now let me just say first, that this persons actions are totally unacceptable, Victoria has been holding down the fort at the Cha Cha forever and she is amazing, if I was there in person I would have personally had a few words to share with this person... but that raises two points. 1. I am glad the Cha Cha took a stance on this (or did they?.. I wonder who was running their page for that...) because we all know, well... it certainly hasn't been filled with the liveliest of folk lately, however, point number 2. Here we go again also raising the bar yet again on Seattle's infamous passive aggressive culture.
I agree, if a patron is not going to tip AND be a jerk, who would want him anywhere? But is throwing someone into the public pool of furious fingers really the right answer? Someone was an asshole, and called someone that is very dear to Capitol Hill overweight, and that is awful- now the entire Seattle social internet is calling him a, let me sum this up, 'retardo douchebag jerk asshole big eared crazy face ugly' bla bla it goes on. Does he deserve it? Probably. Does it show that we, as the scene that desperately holds on to Capitol Hill and all it's original glorly, are mature? Definitely not.
There is another reason I bring this up, because it seems all too familiar to the great cyber scandal of 2011, the illustrious, totally over the top public affair of Lisa Dank, the 'dog napping crazy bitch'. Obviously if you have ever looked at Nark Magazine you know that Lisa is a close friend, and I am her backup and DJ, so clearly I know what actually happened in this incident. But that doesn't/didn't matter at all, because one person publicly announced that Lisa Dank is a crazy bitch and stole some guys dog (untrue), and then like sheep everyone followed in suit, starting the biggest cyber bullying scandal I had ever seen, and maybe the first really. Nobody cared to find out what actually happened or maybe help the situation, they just slammed away, crazy bitch crazy bitch crazy bitch. In fact, the offended party here was one of the top slammers. I lost a lot of respect for some very important people that day, and honestly, haven't really gained it back.
Now when you are someone like Lisa Dank, this can (and did) work brilliantly in your favor. By no control of your own, bam, you just became famous. You found a dog, you took care of it, you gave it back, now you are even bigger news than police shooting people for whittling wood. For people like Lisa Dank, this is good. Even things like this came about, and they are, hilarious.
Dog Napper from Fredwildliferefuge on Vimeo.
Now for some random Texan nobody that it would seem to me that Andy Meyer is, this is going to be really awful, and it could get some people tied up in some nasty law suits for slander. Yes people, even though Facebook helps us hide behind screens, slander still does exist. Once again, I'm not taking sides, but I am opening up the discussion here:
Cyber-bullying: Good? Bad? Effective? Passive? Immature? Resourceful? Pointless? Useful? Does it look good for you or your business to jump on these band wagons?
Isn't not doing the research and confrontations on rumors even WORSE than this? Sometimes, in life, you don't get a tip, and someone calls you fat. It happens to the best of us, and to the worst of us.
Thoughts?
(Once again, check out the whole spread of comments here).
UPDATES: Looks like the Andy Meyer that was pointed out by Victoria Liss on Facebook was the wrong person, sending tons of people, businesses and news sources into a frantic back peddling as they scrambled out their apologies for posting 'his' name, 'his' photo, and probably meeting up with their lawyers to talk about their next step. This is just one of the points I was trying to make about jumping on a bandwagon of this caliber. Whatever happened to research being a part of journalism?
NPR at least pointed out this obvious fact when briefly citing the story-
"In Seattle, Victoria Liss was angry when a guy left no tip and wrote that she could stand to lose some weight. But her Facebook rant exposed the wrong guy. It's another lesson about when to pause before hitting send."
Also the two most apparent things that came out of this article to people were-
1. That I didn't regurgitate the same verbatim post going around Facebook so I was clearly on 'Andy's' side even though I openly and honestly expressed how situation that occured was not okay and should not be tolerated and I am glad someone stood up about it, before going into a totally different point. And in the end I had no back peddling to do, I didn't have to stress out and call people and ask them to take down that post or that mention or that photo or any physical tie in with the story, but I did receive quite a few of those calls!
2. Because I mentioned Lisa Dank, in a completely valid way, I was later referred to in press as Lisa Dank's complaining friend, but guess what- my prediction was exactly on point. Now that this story has been mentioned on Huffington Post, NY Times, Good Morning America, NPR and more, the benefiting person is now national news.
Looks like social media justice was served in many different forms here, I can't say I look forward to the next cyber scandal but I certainly hope someone thinks a little more next time. It is interesting to me that in the blink of an eye Facebook can turn into US Weekly. A lot of us hate the 'internet commentary' type but guess what, thanks to Facebook everyone is just a few keys away from being one, think about it.