Furcasque Coclearia

I am pretty sure that everyone knows about the latest how topic of internet news: the Adria Richards v the world case. In case you have not heard about it, here is the abstract: on a programming conference, two programmers make stupid jokes. One of these jokes is overheard by a woman who finds it personally offensive, so instead of shrugging or just calling the guys retarded, she posts a photo of them on twitter calling them sexist. Soon enough the two guys are barred from the conference for 'not acting professionally' and later one of the men is fired from his job.

But as the classic saying goes, karma is a bitch. The story goes to internet and due to public pressure (including verbal threats and DDoS attacks) the wannabe whistle blower lady, namely Adria Richards gets sacked as well.

All this because someone is eavesdropping and finds a private conversation offensive. It is really tempting to go on bashing Adria Richards or how everyone makes dumb, childish jokes at work, and this whole 'acting professional and serious' thing is just plain bullshit, but there is something else instead.

As somebody growing up in a communist country, could not not remember this:

What happened? Somebody tells a joke and loses his job because of it? What about free speech? Freedom to express opinions? Why do I have the feeling that we are living in this false, 'you-have-to-accept-everything' style, hypocrite soon-to-be dictatorship 'democracy'?

I wonder what you call a situation when you have to be careful about your private conversations and jokes not to be overheard. Today you 'just' lose your job. But what happens tomorrow?

And more importantly, how did we get to this, where some people can do anything to anyone using some buzzwords, wielding the weapon of so called 'politically correctness'?

There are a few differences though when it comes to the video above: the young guy in the film did not lose his job, just got demoted, and during communism everyone had a job.

Not that I would want communism back though. But more of this later maybe.

Further reading:
Article in Independent
Article in Business Insider
An actually accurate article on Encyclopedia Dramatica
Totally unbiased (oh lol) article in the Guardian