CNN: How an internet mob falsely painted a Chipotle employee as racist

[Deleted member 23212]

If your immediate and/or continued response to black people who had an understandable emotional reaction to an incident that appeared racist is to finger-wag at them about neutrality and objectivity, then you're really only giving cover to the "real" grifters who would indeed take this incident as a feather in their cap.

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I never said to be neutral or objective, but as more information comes along that new information needs to be taken into account. Especially considering this was being used to protect a corporation against a member of the working class, whereas people praised a faceless corporation for firing a worker. The true winners here were Chipotle who were able to fire an employee and also avoid taking the blame, because in the end they made the final decision and they have the power. Of course, the right wingers are going to blame minorities and SJWs for this though.

 

[Cup O' Tea?]

Yep to all of this. People also try to categorize those who don't join their judgement as horrible people off rip even if people wanna wait for more confirmation. Even if they have legit reasons too. Its sad.

That's the main reason I mostly stay on the gaming side. Its silly.

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It's not much better on the gaming side tbh.

 

[OtherWorldly]

If your immediate and/or continued response to black people who had an understandable emotional reaction to an incident that appeared racist is to finger-wag at them about neutrality and objectivity, then you're really only giving cover to the "real" grifters who would indeed take this incident as a feather in their cap.

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That's not what he asked though. There are legit folks who have acknowledge
racism is the major issue and at the same time point out issues with the story that they felt was there

 

[OtherWorldly]

Outrage here is also not equal to outrage on Twitter.

People putting their foot in their mouth here aren't really doing any harm against these people.

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Twitter is worse , even more so than Facebook I think

 

[Novel]

Yep to all of this. People also try to categorize those who don't join their judgement as horrible people off rip even if people wanna wait for more confirmation. Even if they have legit reasons too. Its sad.

That's the main reason I mostly stay on the gaming side. Its silly.

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I mean. If you want to make it about forum sides, a portion of gaming side has a long history of excusing verified absolute bigots, misygonists, gamergaters, etc. Etc.
"Stop putting politics in my games" dogwhistles, so on and so forth.

 

[Nepenthe]

I never said to be neutral or objective, but as more information comes along that new information needs to be taken into account.

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Which is what people have done and continue to do. And yet this topic has unsurprisingly been full of complaints that people merely had the initial reaction of "Man, she's racist and should be fired," which- despite the popular opinion in this thread- is actually a perfectly reasonable reaction to incidents that appear racist.

That's not what he asked though. There are legit folks who have acknowledge
racism is the major issue and at the same time point out issues with the story that they felt was there

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We're not actually talking about people who acknowledge racism as a thing and had initial misgivings with the story before it broke in the woman's favor.

We're talking about how- right now- people are trying desperately to untangle criticism of "the mob mentality™" in this specific instance with an inadvertent dismissal of black people's initial skepticism towards perceived perpetrators of racism (hint: you actually can't because that was the basis upon which "the riotous mob who just wants to outrage for outrage's sake" was formed- a reaction to an incident that appeared racist). That is the disingenuous attitude that DigitalOps was sarcastically replying to.

 

[TheCrackedJack]

Healthy skepticism is always a good thing. The fact that the men were already recognized and the woman pointed out already that they never had any money in the past should have been a tip that things may not have been what they seemed.

I mean if this were a different situation and a black man was accused of something heinous, who is adamant he is innocent, I'd like to think people would take him seriously and look into the situation is he had some legit points on proving his innocence. Just dogpiling on the accused without really thinking critically about what you just read or saw is ignorant as fuck.

 

[Royalan]

I mean if this were a different situation and a black man was accused of something heinous, who is adamant he is innocent, I'd like to think people would take him seriously and look into the situation is he had some legit points on proving his innocence.

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[Deleted member 23212]

I think a bigger takeaway should be the fact that people are so desperate for food that they're willing to risk committing a crime to do so, and that the employee was so afraid of being reprimanded that she took the initiative to refuse service to them, yet it's being portrayed that either the black people or the employee were in the wrong instead of questioning why it even has to come to this in the first place.

 

[Vilix]

If the employee recognized these guys as running out of the restaurant without paying their bill why weren't the cops called?

 

[Deleted member 6582]

If a story is blowing up, I try to avoid it for at least 24 hours. I frequently feel vidicated when the first 5 pages are hot-taking idiots who got it wrong. People should concentrate more on reenforcing positive stories anyway, but even I'm not the best at avoiding "fuck X" posts even though I know they are a net negative. Emotions are hard to tame.

 

[Necromanti]

I think a bigger takeaway should be the fact that people are so desperate for food that they're willing to risk committing a crime to do so, and that the employee was so afraid of being reprimanded that she took the initiative to refuse service to them, yet it's being portrayed that either the black people or the employee were in the wrong instead of questioning why it even has to come to this in the first place.

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I don't think that's the case here.

 

[Kreed]

"Outrage culture is getting out of hand" threads turning into backdoor discussion about the forum and bans are getting so old. But anyway...

The incident was framed as a white person's humiliation of black men, but Moran is Mexican-American. Still, many people kept identifying her as white as her story spread.

Why didn't someone notice she wasn't white as the video rocketed around social media?

For the same reason so many people were quick to believe Jussie Smollett when the actor reported being attacked by two white men wearing Make American Great Again hats, said Joel Mathis, a columnist for The Week magazine.

It's called "confirmation bias" -- people are predisposed to uncritically accept stories that line up with preexisting beliefs, he says.

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This isn't an example of confirmation bias. The cell phone video that was shared online appeared to show the manager as being discriminatory to customers, vs what really happened after additional information was shared. Believing the information as presented in the video with no additional information is not an example of bias towards the information vs responding to the information as given. An example of confirmation bias would be people still saying the manager was discriminatory with the video and additional information that has been shared to this date, with these individuals coming to their own bias conclusion despite additional and more credible information being shared/the biased individuals choosing to ignore the additional and more credible information that goes against their bias.

While there is a good example here of social media users needing to have some skepticism towards unverified shared information, the actual issue in this story is Chipotle responded directly to the shared social media video and failed to do any form of internal investigation first to verify what actually happened, resulting in their company having to apologize after the fact. In addition to news media sites that also shared the video as is without any form of genuine news reporting and investigation to verify the video, only doing real reporting and investigation after others on social media discovered more information.

 

[Deleted member 19003]

Oh yeah, I remember that thread. It never did feel quite fair. Glad the truth came out for her. There were some really harsh responses against the manager.

 

[Deleted member 19003]

If the employee recognized these guys as running out of the restaurant without paying their bill why weren't the cops called?

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They were. It's in the article.

"She called the police twice to defuse the situation, but it seemed like forever before they arrived.
Plus, there was something she says she didn't want the men to see. When she handed her business card to one of them after police arrived, she said, he laughed and taunted her when he saw her hand."

 

[Deleted member 19066]

Which is what people have done and continue to do. And yet this topic has unsurprisingly been full of complaints that people merely had the initial reaction of "Man, she's racist and should be fired," which- despite the popular opinion in this thread- is actually a perfectly reasonable reaction to incidents that appear racist.


We're not actually talking about people who acknowledge racism as a thing and had initial misgivings with the story before it broke in the woman's favor.

We're talking about how- right now- people are trying desperately to untangle criticism of "the mob mentality™" in this specific instance with an inadvertent dismissal of black people's initial skepticism towards perceived perpetrators of racism (hint: you actually can't because that was the basis upon which "the riotous mob who just wants to outrage for outrage's sake" was formed- a reaction to an incident that appeared racist). That is the disingenuous attitude that DigitalOps was sarcastically replying to.

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Is that even really what the article is about? To my knowledge no one in the Era thread tracked down her social media and called her a bitch and a whore, or put out an APB on Twitter. Anyone here contact her place of work and demand her be fired? Show of hands. Era users yelling at Era users for being skeptical about racism or jumping on hate mobs is ultimately just forum drama.

 

[Deleted member 19218]

People need to be careful about snap judgements.

I remember saying something totally innocent on this forum and just getting quoted and told to "**** off". When I tried to justify myself I was just accused of straight up trolling.

I think people here can be just as volatile as the comment section of a YouTube video, the only difference is people here have better spelling and are less likely to be vulgar.

 

[DOT_mjo]

If your first reaction to these types of situations is to be skeptical, I do not want to be around you.

 

[MisterR]

The original details were that they were denied service for no reason

But let's expect people to know the past, present, and future of every reported instance.

People found out the kids were being fughazi and rightly called em out.

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Maybe just wait and find out some details before you grab your pitchfork.

 

[Deleted member 42]

oh I remember this lol

 

[Powdered Egg]

The perpetrators who filmed that video and framed it like they were being profiled are fucking scum.

Not only because that woman has been through such debilitating trauma, but because this is one of those few instances actual hateful racists now have in their arsenal to paint real instances in false light

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Some of them gleefully posting in this thread too smh.

 

[travisbickle]

This isn't an example of confirmation bias. The cell phone video that was shared online appeared to show the manager as being discriminatory to customers, vs what really happened after additional information was shared. Believing the information as presented in the video with no additional information is not an example of bias towards the information vs responding to the information as given.

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It's a textbook example. Confirmation bias literally means you use bias to confirm your belief. The video is inconclusive, the only way you could come to any conclusion is by guessing, if you reason based on previous experience or generally-held beliefs it's bias.

 

[Powdered Egg]

By proxy it really was. The company has to make a choice of effectively firing her/putting her on leave (the slightly better option). Or risking serious financial damages from online/media. It's obvious why they chose to go the route they did (it's obviously not right). But you're underplaying the role of the mob/people, especially in today's climate and the culpability of people online in this.

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The mob has nothing to do with it. Chipotle is a multimillion dollar operation with deep resources, they should have done the due diligence first before firing her. It's not even a now thing, Obama did similar to Shirley Sherrod.

 

[TheCthultist]

I think a bigger takeaway should be the fact that people are so desperate for food that they're willing to risk committing a crime to do so, and that the employee was so afraid of being reprimanded that she took the initiative to refuse service to them, yet it's being portrayed that either the black people or the employee were in the wrong instead of questioning why it even has to come to this in the first place.

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Except that that's not at all what happened here... They were very much in the wrong.

 

[Deleted member 23212]

Except that that's not at all what happened here... They were very much in the wrong.

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For what, stealing from Chipotle's? I don't have any sympathy for Chipotle's.

 

[Powdered Egg]

in cases like this i am alway amazed at how easy it is to fire people in america. is there no concept of written warnings before being possible to get fired?

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The Republican Party were able to chip away at workers rights while they were in power during the Reagan Era I think. White Americans would rather feel good for being White than have human rights. The Republican Party grants their wish.

 

[TheCthultist]

For what, stealing from Chipotle's? I don't have any sympathy for Chipotle's.

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So by that logic there's no reason to not just steal shit as long as its from a company you don't like? Classy...

 

[Deleted member 23212]

So by that logic there's no reason to not just steal shit as long as its from a company you don't like? Classy...

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I am anti-capitalist, yes. A company steals the surplus value of its employees labour all the time, so I don't see why I'd have sympathy when the tables are turned.

 

[Deleted member 7572]

For what, stealing from Chipotle's? I don't have any sympathy for Chipotle's.

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Antagonizing a poorly-paid restaurant worker is an awesome way to stick it to the man.

These dudes are pieces of shit.

 

[Horp]

Reading this thread, I see a couple of things worth talking about.

First, the firing by chipotle was bad but let's not completely shift the blame to them. Even if they had not fired her, she would have suffered tremendous trauma from the mob itself. Infact, if she hadn't got fired, it's likely she would have been further harassed.

Second, this is not an isolated incident and should not be discussed like it is. Callout culture and internet mobs is a thing, and it has victims. It is also nothing new (it is perhaps the first kind of justice that we had as humans). The thing is, it is quite terrible, but it is also likely necessary and unavoidable. What we hopefully can be much better at is waiting just a bit more for evidence; steering clear of insults unrelated to the matter and also making sure we handle things better when we are wrong.

Listen to "The Callout" by NPR. It's a great episode that highlights both the benefits and the problems of callout culture.

 

[McScroggz]

It seems there is a bit of an argument here on whether or not we should treat instances where racism is claimed as credible until we have evidence to suggest otherwise. Respectfully I think that's missing the point entirely.

In 2019, there is a genuine, almost palpable thirst for "the internet" to grab their pitchforks. Not just about racism, it could be sexual misconduct, it could be homophobia, all kinds of things. To me, it's the desire to cast judgement immediately and harshly, and how it spirals out of control so quickly.

It's easy to justify it as "well racism hasn't been taken seriously" or "sexual abuse hasn't been taken seriously" because unfortunately those are true statements in America, but there's a wrong assumption that the mob mentality is only being applied for perceived transgressions that we collectively understand to be a societal blindspot. Truthfully, it's not.

People, for whatever reason, find joy or catharsis or belonging in castigating others for what seems like a good reason. I'm sure I've been guilty of it in the past, but then I also try not to invest myself into the conversation very often if I'm unsure about the facts or to make it clear that I'm not fully apprised of the situation - and even then people will snipe at you despite being forthright and trying to engage in a respectful and productive manner.

Like, I hate to be so blunt but people are kind of just jerks. Even good people.

To me that's the point of all of this. Try not to be apart of an internet mob unless you are really sure about what's reported. And don't be a crazy asshole and take it upon yourself to try to ruin somebody else's life. We should all try to be a little more positive (though the state of American politics makes that......difficult).

 

[Deleted member 6582]

This isn't an example of confirmation bias. The cell phone video that was shared online appeared to show the manager as being discriminatory to customers, vs what really happened after additional information was shared. Believing the information as presented in the video with no additional information is not an example of bias towards the information vs responding to the information as given. An example of confirmation bias would be people still saying the manager was discriminatory with the video and additional information that has been shared to this date, with these individuals coming to their own bias conclusion despite additional and more credible information being shared/the biased individuals choosing to ignore the additional and more credible information that goes against their bias.

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Confirmation bias doesn't mean you have to explicitly reject information, it just means that you go looking for information that aligns with your viewpoint without scrutinizing it. You can choose to completely ignore information or hand-wave anything that can't definitively disprove your viewpoint. There also doesn't have to be counter-evidence at all. It's simply a violation of reasonable process.

While there is a good example here of social media users needing to have some skepticism towards unverified shared information, the actual issue in this story is Chipotle responded directly to the shared social media video and failed to do any form of internal investigation first to verify what actually happened, resulting in their company having to apologize after the fact.

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The problem is companies are often compelled to react quickly because of the mob-effect (and the 24-hour news cycle means later updates are forgotten) and because work is at-will it's cheaper to drop the employee than spend time and effort doing extra verification, especially at the grunt level. In fact, social media mobs (and mobs in general) are notorious for being critical of due process. Imagine if Chipotle employees had a union and this employee was placed on administrative leave pending investigation, the comments would be about how Chipotle gives "paid vacation" to racists.

It really is all about people's inability to pump the brakes.

 

[Aurica]

The blacks pulled a fast one here, guess we now know racism is a facade and over-exaggerated.

Treat every occurance with complete skepticism moving forward

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That's obviously disingenuous. I don't think anyone is saying that. Yes, absolutely support marginalized groups in accusations of mistreatment. That doesn't also mean attack the person over the internet instantly.

 

[ebs]

That allows racism to have room to propagate.

We've been through far too much to be skeptical about claims of racism.

Take every false report of racism ever made and it's absolutely dwarfed by valid credible accounts.

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Good god exercising critical thought does not allow racism to propagate.

You're acting as if people are saying we should be skeptical of every claimed instance of racism that occurs, which is absolutely not the case. The point is that we actually stop and think objectively about the mountains of unverified information that comes through the internet, especially so when it confirms our biases.

 

[Hero]

I ate at Chipotle for the first time in ages today and actually wondered what happened since this story broke. Embarrassing as hell for a lot of people back then.

 

[Kreed]

It's a textbook example. Confirmation bias literally means you use bias to confirm your belief. The video is inconclusive, the only way you could come to any conclusion is by guessing, if you reason based on previous experience or generally-held beliefs it's bias.

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The men filming the video and the tweets about the video are presented in a way to show the Chipotle manager as discriminating against them as customers in regards to them having to pay first, including the men describing what's happening in the video in regards to them vs other customers and in the tweets. No "guessing" is required with this video and tweets because the creators created a false narrative in the video without viewers/Chipotle getting the other side that was unknown at the time of the tweets. The response to the tweets and video from social media and Chipotle was as intented from the one sided false information presented. No one "selectively searched for/information bubbled/filtered" the information from this video/tweets to fit their biases towards these men vs Chipotle/the manager, as additional information/the other side of the story did not exist until other internet users dug further into the twitter user's history.

Confirmation bias doesn't mean you have to explicitly reject information, it just means that you go looking for information that aligns with your viewpoint without scrutinizing it. You can choose to completely ignore information or hand-wave anything that can't definitively disprove your viewpoint. There also doesn't have to be counter-evidence at all. It's simply a violation of reasonable process.

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That wasn't what I was suggesting with the example I made in my post, but either way how people responded to the original video/tweet isn't an example of this.

The problem is companies are often compelled to react quickly because of the mob-effect (and the 24-hour news cycle means later updates are forgotten) and because work is at-will it's cheaper to drop the employee than spend time and effort doing extra verification, especially at the grunt level. In fact, social media mobs (and mobs in general) are notorious for being critical of due process. Imagine if Chipotle employees had a union and this employee was placed on administrative leave pending investigation, the comments would be about how Chipotle gives "paid vacation" to racists.

It really is all about people's inability to pump the brakes.

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In the case of this Chipotle story, it didn't even take more a day or two before Chipotle offered the manager her job back, so the negative opinions towards a "suspension pending an investigation" wouldn't have gotten very far. But you're right about the bottom line for these companies and how employees are looked at vs social media/main stream news coverage, but more companies need to rethink this and the amount of weight they give social media, if only to avoid potential "backfires" like this situation.

 

[Hesemonni]

I think a bigger takeaway should be the fact that people are so desperate for food that they're willing to risk committing a crime to do so, and that the employee was so afraid of being reprimanded that she took the initiative to refuse service to them, yet it's being portrayed that either the black people or the employee were in the wrong instead of questioning why it even has to come to this in the first place.

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ERA being ERA.

 

[Powdered Egg]

I stand by it still.

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It's dismissive and you deserved the ban. No one is fucking outraged just to be outraged, this shit is serious b.

 

[mbpm]

Goes to show that a mob on the internet is not the ideal arbiter for situations.

But the system itself in matters of race, poverty, and gender is also imperfect.

It's not great either way.

 

[FaceHugger]

Sounds about right.

Moderation around here encourages and fosters hive mind internet mobbing.

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I don't know about that, there's a lot of lively discourse from various angles on serious topics that aren't graveyards, but that particular thread was disappointing.

 

[ebs]

You can blame right-wing cretins and even the left's insistence that debate always magically exposes the truth, for the "demonization of critical thinking" by allowing bad-faith actors to use plausible deniability as a cover to gaslight minority issues, social justice topics, and outright science. Compound this on top of the fact that America refuses to seriously address systemic grievances- and thus the collective populace indoctrinated in its ideals deserves no benefit of the doubt- and eventually the unheard are going to shake and maneuver within their means.

So yeah, sorry. If I see something that- to me as a black person- looks racist-y, and your reaction directly to me is to immediately go "Now hold on, let's think about this," you're not really endearing yourself to me. Of course this doesn't mean I can't be wrong. But me being wrong subsequently doesn't preclude you from taking away the wrong lesson, which is that the lack of skepticism in these issues is not born from some bloodthirsty desire to see random blue collar folks ruined. If that's the way you look at black folks who inevitably by statistical chance will get it wrong every once in awhile, well then, are you really helping anything up there on your high horse?

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You're just projecting everything that happened into the framework of your own biases again.

There's some very simple shit that was wrong in the original thread. The 6th post in the thread is you asking why the entire staff wasn't fired instead of just the manager.Then there's the exchange where someone mentioned there clearly seemed to be history between the customers and the employee based on how they were talking (100% right btw), to which you responded "The investigation revealed that it wasn't them". Purely false information, which you thought you read in this article http://www.startribune.com/chipotle...r-retrains-staff-after-viral-video/500733081/ even though it says nothing of the sort.

If the moderators are the ones picking up their pitchforks first and spreading bad information then you can't expect much more from the average poster.

 

[Interested Observer]

I think a bigger takeaway should be the fact that people are so desperate for food that they're willing to risk committing a crime to do so, and that the employee was so afraid of being reprimanded that she took the initiative to refuse service to them, yet it's being portrayed that either the black people or the employee were in the wrong instead of questioning why it even has to come to this in the first place.

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There is zero evidence they were desperate for food and had to resort to stealing. Where the hell did you get this from?

 

[Deleted member 224]

I am anti-capitalist, yes. A company steals the surplus value of its employees labour all the time, so I don't see why I'd have sympathy when the tables are turned.

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Do you realize how stupid this is?

Do you think the company is punished by theft? Or do you think they push the blame/responsibility onto the employee? Use your brain.

 

[MIMIC]

Why is the OP lacking any and all reasons as to why it was justified.
You make it seems like "she is mexican-american, so she can't be racist" is the only point.
Only after some digging, it turns out the guys are known dashers.

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Heh, this was my take away. Me: "She wasn't white. OK?" I assume the dining and dashing was mentioned in the article, but I only read the excerpts the OP provided.

 

[ProfessorLobo]

ERA being ERA.

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Lol

 

[Deleted member 23212]

Do you realize how stupid this is?

Do you think the company is punished by theft? Or do you think they push the blame/responsibility onto the employee? Use your brain.

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When I worked at retail I sure as shit didn't stop people from stealing things, I wasn't going to risk getting hurt or worse for store products.

 

[Syriel]

This isn't an example of confirmation bias.

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How is it not? She made the claim that these specific guys never have money.

Confirmation bias allows the viewer to discount whatever she says because you're inclined to believe the word of the thieves since they posted first and racism is not an extremely rare thing.

That's why this whole scam worked in the first place.

 

[nekkid]

When I worked at retail I sure as shit didn't stop people from stealing things, I wasn't going to risk getting hurt or worse for store products.

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Were you a manager?

 

[Deleted member 23212]

Were you a manager?

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No, I was not.

 

[Deleted member 224]

When I worked at retail I sure as shit didn't stop people from stealing things, I wasn't going to risk getting hurt or worse for store products.

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That's not what you said at all though. No one is saying the employee has an obligation to prevent theft, just that you shouldn't steal from places of business.