I think this case is fairly different to what you describe. The community organised for this to potentially happen and Chris publicised this fact to his friends. The community decided that it was worth the risk so the damage could be assumed not to be large and having the frontpage going down for 24 hours really isn’t a huge deal.
The actual damage is realisitically the fact that the experiment (and associated metaphor) didn’t work but I feel like the lessons learnt should more than make up for that.
I think this case is fairly different to what you describe. The community organised for this to potentially happen and Chris publicised this fact to his friends. The community decided that it was worth the risk so the damage could be assumed not to be large and having the frontpage going down for 24 hours really isn’t a huge deal.
The actual damage is realisitically the fact that the experiment (and associated metaphor) didn’t work but I feel like the lessons learnt should more than make up for that.
You’re being very kind in far-mode consequentialism here, but come on now.
Making your friend look foolish in front of thousands of people is bad etiquette in most social circles.
I’d kinda assumed that one wouldn’t do this unless they were confident their friend would be ok with it, as indeed seems to be the case.