The NYT Helped a Vindictive Teen Destroy a Classmate Who Uttered a Racial Slur (reason.com)

The NYTimes is going to be a case study on how long it takes a dumpster fire of a publication to burn through a long and historic reputation.

Social justice is cancer

Sometimes it's necessary to make an example of someone. Sucks for that particular teen, and it's sad to see someone's future completely ruined, but maybe they should've thought twice about throwing the n word around.

People and institutions need to become less fearful of internet mobs. No person I've talked to felt like cancelling this student was an appropriate response. No one. The punishment (or "consequences" if you want to use that word instead) is completely asymmetrical to the actual act that happened. There is nothing "just" about this whole situation. I really hope things will turn out okay for this teenager.

After threatening to unmask SlateStarCodex, I always thought HN should ban NYTimes. It's not much, but at least a start so this isn't tolerated on HN.

> The NYT Helped a Vindictive Teen Destroy a Classmate Who Uttered a Racial Slur

The NYT published its piece after the "destruction" [1] happened, so it's pretty inaccurate to say it "helped" with that. The actors in this sequence of events are the students, a social media mob, and a university not the newspaper that wrote a story about it.

What's really going with this piece is that Robby Soave of Reason magazine and some other people are mad that the story got coverage at all and/or NYT didn't vilify the person they wanted vilified when it decided to cover it. Which is a somewhat incoherent position, since even if you're opposed to "cancellation," you'd want cancellations covered in reputable media (rather than in some partisan backwater).

[1] which apparently is defined as not getting to be a cheerleader at your preferred university