Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Josh Bornstein

In November 1997, Bryce Rose was travelling for work in northern New South Wales. Rose was a technical officer with Telstra, and his help was needed in the Armidale area to address a surge in reported faults. Required to spend a few nights away from home, he arranged to share a hotel room with a colleague. On the third night, the pair went for dinner and then on to a nightclub. Much alcohol was consumed, and there was an altercation between them. Around 3 am, Rose returned to the hotel room, only to find the other man waiting for him. The furniture had been rearranged to create a space in the middle of the room. ‘Well, that’s your boxing ring if that’s what you want, mate,’ Rose’s colleague told him. There was a scuffle, and Rose began bleeding. He ultimately needed twelve stitches at the local hospital. Rose appears to have been the more innocent of the parties; his colleague was later convicted over the altercation.

... (read more)

Would it all have turned out differently had InterActiveCorp stared down the online mob? In December 2013, a public relations executive with the company, Justine Sacco, posted a joke on social media, satirising American insularity and racism. Sacco was about to board a flight to South Africa, from where her anti-apartheid family had emigrated, when she tweeted: ‘Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get Aids. Just kidding, I’m white.’ While Sacco was in the air and offline, her tweet went viral. A social media mob condemned her as a racist, established that she worked at InterActiveCorp, and pressured the company to sack her. ‘We are about to watch this @JustineSacco bitch get fired. In REAL time,’ posted one of her critics. The company duly sacked her.

... (read more)