When Crowdsourcing Reveals You’re an Idiot
May 31, 2012 9:37 by Pesach BensonBusiness Insider’s chief editor and CEO, Henry Blodget tried to crowdsource an answer to the question, Why Do People Hate Jews?
Bad move. In the context of Blodget’s column, the question gave legitimacy to anti-Semitism. And a stereotypical photo of Chassidic Jews added to the incongruity.
When the wisdom of the crowd rightly concluded this was idiocy, Blodget backtracked by tweaking the headline a few times and posting updates on the page. Demonstrating how seriously he views anti-Semtism, Blodget ditched the original photo for Natalie Portman (!?).
In the end, Blodget apologized at the top of his post. It strikes me as sincere and Blodget, I think, gets it now — though Portman still graces the top of the page. That’s ill-advised.
Anti-Semitism’s an important discussion to have, but there’s a time and a place for everything. Blodget’s intentions aside, discussing anti-Semitism at Business Insider under Portman’s smile is like discussing the Tokyo stock exchange at Yad Vashem’s web site illustrated with a stereotypical image of Godzilla.
Backstory with more links and screengrabs at The Daily Dot/Storify.
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5:46 pm
May 31, 2012
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BUTSeriously
3:19 am
Jun 01, 2012
‘You shall not follow a corrupted multitude.’ Now that is real democracy. Arafat got just 96% of the votes, but Sadaam Hussein & Hitler got a resounding 100%. Hello Jimmy carter.
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amos
8:04 am
Jun 04, 2012
The Bloget headline “Why do people Hate Jews” reminds me of when my daughter started school in Spain. One day her class was asked “Who do you hate in class?” and “Who do you like in class?” The whole class searched around and in answer to the first question put down my daughter’s name – the only foreigner and the only new student. The question already assumed that they hated someone in the class and encouraging negative feelings – just as “Why do people Hate Jews?” assumes the respondent also hates Jews. It’s a snide way of inciting Anti-Semitism.
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