It could be that I am misreading or misunderstanding these screenshots, but having read through them a couple of times trying to parse what happened, here’s what I came away with:
On December 15, Alice states that she’d had very little to eat all day, that she’d repeatedly tried and failed to find a way to order takeout to their location, and tries to ask that people go to Burger King and get her an Impossible Burger which in the linked screenshots they decline to do because they don’t want to get fast food. She asks again about Burger King and is told it’s inconvenient to get there. Instead, they go to a different restaurant and offer to get her something from the restaurant they went to. Alice looks at the menu online and sees that there are no vegan options. Drew confirms that ‘they have some salads’ but nothing else for her. She assures him that it’s fine to not get her anything.
It seems completely reasonable that Alice remembers this as ‘she was barely eating, and no one in the house was willing to go out and get her nonvegan foods’ - after all, the end result of all of those message exchanges was no food being obtained for Alice and her requests for Burger King being repeatedly deflected with ‘we are down to get anything that isn’t fast food’ and ‘we are down to go anywhere within a 12 min drive’ and ‘our only criteria is decent vibe + not fast food’, after which she fails to find a restaurant meeting those (I note, kind of restrictive if not in a highly dense area) criteria and they go somewhere without vegan options and don’t get her anything to eat.
It also seems totally reasonable that no one at Nonlinear understood there was a problem. Alice’s language throughout emphasizes how she’ll be fine, it’s no big deal, she’s so grateful that they tried (even though they failed and she didn’t get any food out of the 12⁄15 trip, if I understand correctly). I do not think that these exchanges depict the people at Nonlinear as being cruel, insane, or unusual as people. But it doesn’t seem to me that Alice is lying to have experienced this as ‘she had covid, was barely eating, told people she was barely eating, and they declined to pick up Burger King for her because they didn’t want to go to a fast food restaurant, and instead gave her very limiting criteria and went somewhere that didn’t have any options she could eat’.
On December 16th it does look like they successfully purchased food for her.
My big takeaway from these exchanges is not that the Nonlinear team are heartless or insane people, but that this degree of professional and personal entanglement and dependence, in a foreign country, with a young person, is simply a recipe for disaster. Alice’s needs in the 12⁄15 chat logs are acutely not being met. She’s hungry, she’s sick, she conveys that she has barely eaten, she evidently really wants someone to go to BK and get an impossible burger for her, but (speculatively) because of this professional/personal entanglement, she lobbies for this only by asking a few times why they ruled out Burger King, and ultimately doesn’t protest when they instead go somewhere without food she can eat, assuring them it’s completely fine. This is also how I relate to my coworkers, tbh—but luckily, I don’t live with them and exclusively socialize with them and depend on them completely when sick!!
Given my experience with talking with people about strongly emotional events, I am inclined towards the interpretation where Alice remembers the 15th with acute distress and remembers it as ‘not getting her needs met despite trying quite hard to do so’, and the Nonlinear team remembers that they went out of their way that week to get Alice food—which is based on the logs from the 16th clearly true! But I don’t think I’d call Alice a liar based on reading this, because she did express that she’d barely eaten and request apologetically for them to go somewhere she could get vegan food (with BK the only option she’d been able to find) only for them to refuse BK because of the vibes/inconvenience.
These texts have weird vibes from both sides. Something is off all around.
That said, what I’m seeing: A person failed to uphold their own boundaries or make clear their own needs. Instead of taking responsibility for that, they blame the other person for some sort of abuse.
This is called playing the victim. I don’t buy it.
I think it would generally be helpful if people were informed by the Drama Triangle when judging cases like these.
Alternative theory: Alice felt on thin ice socially + professionally. When she was sick she finally felt she had a bit of leeway and therefore felt even a little willing to make requests of these people who were otherwise very “elitist” wrt everyone, somewhat including her. She tries to not overstep. She does this by stating what she needs, but also in the same breath excusing her needs as unimportant, so that the people with more power can preserve the appearance of not being cruel while denying her requests. She does this because she doesn’t know how much leeway she actually has.
Unfortunately this is a hard to falsify theory. But at a glance it seems consistent, and I think it’s also totally a thing that happens.
+1 I think it’s important to keep in context the other claims about employees being treated poorly/low status. Abuse can be hard to judge from the outside because it can revolve around each individual incident being basically okay in isolation. A difficult and unfortunately common case is where both experiences are basically true. A person genuinely had an experience of abuse while the purported abuser genuinely had an experience of things seeming okay/copacetic in day to day interactions. Eg “we’ll destroy our enemies haha” can unfortunately be in a grey zone between lightheartedness, abuse, or the latter masked as the former.
After reading more of the article, I have a better sense of this context that you mention. It would be interesting to see Nonlinear’s response to the accusations because they seem pretty shameful, as is.
I would actively advise against anyone working with Kat / Emerson, not without serious demonstration of reformation and, like, values-level shifts.
If Alice is willing to stretch the truth about her situation (for any reason) or outright lie in order to enact harsher punishment on others, even as a victim of abuse, I would be mistrustful of her story. And so far I am somewhat mistrustful of Alice and very mistrustful of Kat / Emerson.
Also, even if TekhneMakre’s take is what in fact happened, it doesn’t give Alice a total pass in that particular situation, to me. I get that it’s hard to be clear-headed and brave when faced with potentially hostile or adversarial people, but I think it’s still worth trying to be. I don’t expect anyone to be brave, but I also don’t treat anyone as totally helpless, even if the cards are stacked against them.
I am sympathetic to “getting cancelled.” I often feel like people are cancelled in some false way (or a way that leaves people with a false model), and it’s not very fair. Mobs don’t make good judges. Even well-meaning, rationalist ones. I feel this way about basically everyone who’s been ‘cancelled’ by this community. Truth and compassion were never fully upheld as the highest virtue, in the end. Justice was never, imo, served, but often used as an excuse for victims to evade taking personal responsibility for something and for rescuers to have something to do. But I still see the value in going through a ‘cancelling’ process, for everyone involved, and so I’m not saying to avoid it either. It just sucks, and I get it.
That said, the people who are ‘cancelled’ tend to be stubborn hard-heads about it, and their own obstinacy tends to lead further to an even more extreme downfall. It’s like some suicidal part of them kicks in, and drives the knife in deeper without anyone’s particular help.
I agree it’s good to never just give into mob justice, but for your own souls to not take damage, try not to clench. It’s not worth protecting it, whatever it happens to be.
We definitely did not fail to get her food, so I think there has been a misunderstanding—it says in the texts below that Alice told Drew not to worry about getting food because I went and got her mashed potatoes. Ben mentioned the mashed potatoes in the main post, but we forgot to mention it again in our comment—which has been updated
The texts involved on 12/15/21:
I also offered to cook the vegan food we had in the house for her.
I think that there’s a big difference between telling everyone “I didn’t get the food I wanted, but they did get/offer to cook me vegan food, and I told them it was ok!” and “they refused to get me vegan food and I barely ate for 2 days”.
Also, re: “because of this professional/personal entanglement”—at this point, Alice was just a friend traveling with us. There were no professional entanglements.
I think that there’s a big difference between telling everyone “I didn’t get the food I wanted, but they did get/offer to cook me vegan food, and I told them it was ok!” and “they refused to get me vegan food and I barely ate for 2 days”.
This also updates me about Kat’s take (as summarized by Ben Pace in the OP):
Kat doesn’t trust Alice to tell the truth, and that Alice has a history of “catastrophic misunderstandings”.
When I read the post, I didn’t see any particular reason for Kat to think this, and I worried it might be just be an attempt to dismiss a critic, given the aggressive way Nonlinear otherwise seems to have responded to criticisms.
With this new info, it now seems plausible to me that Kat was correct (even though I don’t think this justifies threatening Alice or Ben in the way Kat and Emerson did). And if Kat’s not correct, I still update that Kat was probably accurately stating her epistemic state, and that a lot of reasonable people might have reached the same epistemic state.
It also seems totally reasonable that no one at Nonlinear understood there was a problem. Alice’s language throughout emphasizes how she’ll be fine, it’s no big deal [...] I do not think that these exchanges depict the people at Nonlinear as being cruel, insane, or unusual as people.
100% agreed with this. The chat log paints a wildly different picture than what was included in Ben’s original post.
Given my experience with talking with people about strongly emotional events, I am inclined towards the interpretation where Alice remembers the 15th with acute distress and remembers it as ‘not getting her needs met despite trying quite hard to do so’, and the Nonlinear team remembers that they went out of their way that week to get Alice food—which is based on the logs from the 16th clearly true! But I don’t think I’d call Alice a liar based on reading this
Agreed. I did update toward “there’s likely a nontrivial amount of distortion in Alice’s retelling of other things”, and toward “normal human error and miscommunication played a larger role in some of the Bad Stuff that happened than I previously expected”. (Ben’s post was still a giant negative update for me about Nonlinear, but Kat’s comment is a smaller update in the opposite direction.)
Cross posting from the EA Forum:
It could be that I am misreading or misunderstanding these screenshots, but having read through them a couple of times trying to parse what happened, here’s what I came away with:
On December 15, Alice states that she’d had very little to eat all day, that she’d repeatedly tried and failed to find a way to order takeout to their location, and tries to ask that people go to Burger King and get her an Impossible Burger which in the linked screenshots they decline to do because they don’t want to get fast food. She asks again about Burger King and is told it’s inconvenient to get there. Instead, they go to a different restaurant and offer to get her something from the restaurant they went to. Alice looks at the menu online and sees that there are no vegan options. Drew confirms that ‘they have some salads’ but nothing else for her. She assures him that it’s fine to not get her anything.
It seems completely reasonable that Alice remembers this as ‘she was barely eating, and no one in the house was willing to go out and get her nonvegan foods’ - after all, the end result of all of those message exchanges was no food being obtained for Alice and her requests for Burger King being repeatedly deflected with ‘we are down to get anything that isn’t fast food’ and ‘we are down to go anywhere within a 12 min drive’ and ‘our only criteria is decent vibe + not fast food’, after which she fails to find a restaurant meeting those (I note, kind of restrictive if not in a highly dense area) criteria and they go somewhere without vegan options and don’t get her anything to eat.
It also seems totally reasonable that no one at Nonlinear understood there was a problem. Alice’s language throughout emphasizes how she’ll be fine, it’s no big deal, she’s so grateful that they tried (even though they failed and she didn’t get any food out of the 12⁄15 trip, if I understand correctly). I do not think that these exchanges depict the people at Nonlinear as being cruel, insane, or unusual as people. But it doesn’t seem to me that Alice is lying to have experienced this as ‘she had covid, was barely eating, told people she was barely eating, and they declined to pick up Burger King for her because they didn’t want to go to a fast food restaurant, and instead gave her very limiting criteria and went somewhere that didn’t have any options she could eat’.
On December 16th it does look like they successfully purchased food for her.
My big takeaway from these exchanges is not that the Nonlinear team are heartless or insane people, but that this degree of professional and personal entanglement and dependence, in a foreign country, with a young person, is simply a recipe for disaster. Alice’s needs in the 12⁄15 chat logs are acutely not being met. She’s hungry, she’s sick, she conveys that she has barely eaten, she evidently really wants someone to go to BK and get an impossible burger for her, but (speculatively) because of this professional/personal entanglement, she lobbies for this only by asking a few times why they ruled out Burger King, and ultimately doesn’t protest when they instead go somewhere without food she can eat, assuring them it’s completely fine. This is also how I relate to my coworkers, tbh—but luckily, I don’t live with them and exclusively socialize with them and depend on them completely when sick!!
Given my experience with talking with people about strongly emotional events, I am inclined towards the interpretation where Alice remembers the 15th with acute distress and remembers it as ‘not getting her needs met despite trying quite hard to do so’, and the Nonlinear team remembers that they went out of their way that week to get Alice food—which is based on the logs from the 16th clearly true! But I don’t think I’d call Alice a liar based on reading this, because she did express that she’d barely eaten and request apologetically for them to go somewhere she could get vegan food (with BK the only option she’d been able to find) only for them to refuse BK because of the vibes/inconvenience.
These texts have weird vibes from both sides. Something is off all around.
That said, what I’m seeing: A person failed to uphold their own boundaries or make clear their own needs. Instead of taking responsibility for that, they blame the other person for some sort of abuse.
This is called playing the victim. I don’t buy it.
I think it would generally be helpful if people were informed by the Drama Triangle when judging cases like these.
Alternative theory: Alice felt on thin ice socially + professionally. When she was sick she finally felt she had a bit of leeway and therefore felt even a little willing to make requests of these people who were otherwise very “elitist” wrt everyone, somewhat including her. She tries to not overstep. She does this by stating what she needs, but also in the same breath excusing her needs as unimportant, so that the people with more power can preserve the appearance of not being cruel while denying her requests. She does this because she doesn’t know how much leeway she actually has.
Unfortunately this is a hard to falsify theory. But at a glance it seems consistent, and I think it’s also totally a thing that happens.
+1 I think it’s important to keep in context the other claims about employees being treated poorly/low status. Abuse can be hard to judge from the outside because it can revolve around each individual incident being basically okay in isolation. A difficult and unfortunately common case is where both experiences are basically true. A person genuinely had an experience of abuse while the purported abuser genuinely had an experience of things seeming okay/copacetic in day to day interactions. Eg “we’ll destroy our enemies haha” can unfortunately be in a grey zone between lightheartedness, abuse, or the latter masked as the former.
After reading more of the article, I have a better sense of this context that you mention. It would be interesting to see Nonlinear’s response to the accusations because they seem pretty shameful, as is.
I would actively advise against anyone working with Kat / Emerson, not without serious demonstration of reformation and, like, values-level shifts.
If Alice is willing to stretch the truth about her situation (for any reason) or outright lie in order to enact harsher punishment on others, even as a victim of abuse, I would be mistrustful of her story. And so far I am somewhat mistrustful of Alice and very mistrustful of Kat / Emerson.
Also, even if TekhneMakre’s take is what in fact happened, it doesn’t give Alice a total pass in that particular situation, to me. I get that it’s hard to be clear-headed and brave when faced with potentially hostile or adversarial people, but I think it’s still worth trying to be. I don’t expect anyone to be brave, but I also don’t treat anyone as totally helpless, even if the cards are stacked against them.
Neither here nor there:
I am sympathetic to “getting cancelled.” I often feel like people are cancelled in some false way (or a way that leaves people with a false model), and it’s not very fair. Mobs don’t make good judges. Even well-meaning, rationalist ones. I feel this way about basically everyone who’s been ‘cancelled’ by this community. Truth and compassion were never fully upheld as the highest virtue, in the end. Justice was never, imo, served, but often used as an excuse for victims to evade taking personal responsibility for something and for rescuers to have something to do. But I still see the value in going through a ‘cancelling’ process, for everyone involved, and so I’m not saying to avoid it either. It just sucks, and I get it.
That said, the people who are ‘cancelled’ tend to be stubborn hard-heads about it, and their own obstinacy tends to lead further to an even more extreme downfall. It’s like some suicidal part of them kicks in, and drives the knife in deeper without anyone’s particular help.
I agree it’s good to never just give into mob justice, but for your own souls to not take damage, try not to clench. It’s not worth protecting it, whatever it happens to be.
Save your souls. Not your reputation.
Crossposted from the EA Forum:
We definitely did not fail to get her food, so I think there has been a misunderstanding—it says in the texts below that Alice told Drew not to worry about getting food because I went and got her mashed potatoes. Ben mentioned the mashed potatoes in the main post, but we forgot to mention it again in our comment—which has been updated
The texts involved on 12/15/21:
I also offered to cook the vegan food we had in the house for her.
I think that there’s a big difference between telling everyone “I didn’t get the food I wanted, but they did get/offer to cook me vegan food, and I told them it was ok!” and “they refused to get me vegan food and I barely ate for 2 days”.
Also, re: “because of this professional/personal entanglement”—at this point, Alice was just a friend traveling with us. There were no professional entanglements.
Agreed.
This also updates me about Kat’s take (as summarized by Ben Pace in the OP):
When I read the post, I didn’t see any particular reason for Kat to think this, and I worried it might be just be an attempt to dismiss a critic, given the aggressive way Nonlinear otherwise seems to have responded to criticisms.
With this new info, it now seems plausible to me that Kat was correct (even though I don’t think this justifies threatening Alice or Ben in the way Kat and Emerson did). And if Kat’s not correct, I still update that Kat was probably accurately stating her epistemic state, and that a lot of reasonable people might have reached the same epistemic state.
(Crossposted)
100% agreed with this. The chat log paints a wildly different picture than what was included in Ben’s original post.
Agreed. I did update toward “there’s likely a nontrivial amount of distortion in Alice’s retelling of other things”, and toward “normal human error and miscommunication played a larger role in some of the Bad Stuff that happened than I previously expected”. (Ben’s post was still a giant negative update for me about Nonlinear, but Kat’s comment is a smaller update in the opposite direction.)