Uncaging the dragon

A social media mob cautionary tale.

On September 14th, the University of Iowa played Iowa State University in a college football game.  Both schools loom kinda/sorta large in the college football universe, and it's one of those annual in-state rivalry games that dot the college football landscape (cf Alabama/Auburn, Florida/Florida State, Michigan/Michigan State, etc. etc.), so sports broadcast giant ESPN decided to send its ESPN GameDay crew to televise several hours of Saturday morning pre-game coverage.

The network encourages students and fans to provide a visual backdrop to the telecast by gathering behind the mobile studio from which the talking heads engage in their interminable blather.  The fans take it upon themselves (and/or are encouraged by the network) to paint their faces in school colors, hold up signs, and otherwise behave as though a college football game constitutes a momentous life event.

Among the fans on camera that day in Ames was a young man with a mild sense of humor, shaky grasp of grammar and appalling taste in beer by the name of Carson King.  He managed to get a handwritten sign on camera which read, "Busch Light Supply Needs Replenished - Venmo", followed by his name.  Venmo, I've learned only recently but my wife and children have been aware for a long time now, is a cell phone app that makes it easy to transfer cash from one person to another.  My wife uses it to send cash infusions to our children at college.

Because the sign appeared in the background of a national television broadcast, some people saw it on TV, were amused, and actually sent him cash via the app, to the tune of some $600.  Let me pause momentarily to express wonder that (1) anyone can watch these awful pre-game broadcasts; and much more so that (2) complete strangers send money to other complete strangers, especially for such a trivial reason.  But such is the culture in which we live.

Mr. King, possibly as surprised as I still am to see the donations roll in, announced that the $600 would be donated to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital.  And then, as we hip young cats say, the story "went viral".  To that point, the locks had been opened just a bit, but now the torrent of cash that came rushing in burst the locks and swept them away.  Iowa businesses, Anheuser-Busch (the brewers of the canned dishwater referenced on King's sign) and Venmo, all shrewdly spotting a chance to virtue-signal, started ponying up some serious cash, and soon, King had raised $1.5 million.  The governor of Iowa decreed that September 28th would be "Carson King Day".  Anheuser-Busch decided to put King's visage on a special-edition can of their swill, and announced plans to bestow upon him a year's supply of Busch Light.  (Second prize: two years' supply of Busch Light?)  This was shaping up to be a positive social media story - our connectedness making the world a better place.

But social media, I'm becoming more convinced by the day, never makes the world a better place.

Aaron Calvin was - the past tense is important, as we'll see below - a reporter at the Des Moines Register.  He was assigned to write a feature story on King.  In whatever ways reporters learn these things, Calvin discovered that, when King was a high school student, he had tweeted a couple of racist jokes.  Calvin included that item in his story, and the Register printed it.

The dragon of social media anger was unleashed.  We all knows what follows, don't we?  The mob turned on King, people posted progressively nastier and more hateful things about him on social media, he lost his job, he received death threats, and he's been forced to go into seclusion.  We've read that story quite a few times in recent years.

But that storyline, which to the best of my knowledge didn't play out in this case, presupposes that the dragon is predictable.  And one of the lessons of this tale is that, once the dragon's cage has been opened, it's difficult to know who is going to get scorched.

King, who has shown a good deal of instinctive media savvy from first to last, was able to get out in front of this twist in the story.   Here is how the BBC describes it:

Just before the Des Moines Register story came out, Mr King, who works as a casino security guard, convened a press conference to apologise.
"I am so embarrassed and stunned to reflect on what I thought was funny when I was 16-years-old," he said of the old tweets.
He emphasised that the state's largest newspaper "has been nothing but kind in all of their coverage, and I appreciate the reporter pointing out the post to me".
"I want to sincerely apologise," Mr King said. "Thankfully, high school kids grow up and hopefully become responsible and caring adults."

It seems that King managed to hit all the right notes here.  Not that the social media dragon was placated: it's just that when King deflected it, it turned its fire on ... the Des Moines Register.  People became outraged at the newspaper for turning this initially-feel-good moment into a feel-bad moment.

For its part, the Register's leadership exhibited the same profile in courage that most business leaders show when the social media mob shows up at its front door with torches and pitchforks: it looked about for a sacrificial goat and quickly landed on Calvin:

Critics of the newspaper condemned its decision to dredge up Mr King's offensive posts, which were included near the bottom of the article.
Busch Light began distancing itself from Mr King, but said it would still honour its $350,000 commitment to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital.
The brewing giant said, however, it no longer planned to send Mr King a year's supply of beer with his face printed on the limited-edition cans.
Online backlash against the backlash built even before the Des Moines Register article was published, and Twitter sleuths began uncovering Mr Calvin's own statements that mocked same-sex marriage, domestic abuse and included a racial slur.
In a contrite tweet, he wrote: "Hey just wanted to say that I have deleted previous tweets that have been inappropriate or insensitive.
"I apologise for not holding myself to the same high standards as the Register holds others."
His apologetic tweet was deleted, too.
Late on Thursday night, the executive editor of the Register announced that Mr Calvin had been fired after his online comments were brought to the paper's attention.
Editor Carol Hunter's letter to readers says: "We hear you: You're angry, you're disappointed and you want us to understand that."   

So a working reporter who was fortunate enough to be employed in his chosen profession in this journalism business climate lost his job, essentially for the sin of doing his job.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are left to ponder how it is that the editors who assigned the story, made the decision to keep the tweets in the story and published it, apparently were let off scot-free.  And to ask why it is that the dragon deigned to forgive King's old sins but not Calvin's.

The lesson I take away from all this: I should pray a Novena that the dragon never learns of my existence.