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By Scott Tibbs, June 18, 2018
I've often been critical of anonymity, but the vicious deranged vendetta by the Huffington Post against Twitter user @AmyMek is disturbing. (I say "semi-anonymous" because her username is includes part of her name, and she posted a photo of herself.) The collateral damage HuffPo inflicted is inexcusable. This is not "journalism." This is an open attempt to destroy someone's life, and the life of her family. If Fox News did this to a prominent semi-anonymous Leftist on Twitter, everyone on the Left would be shrieking bloody murder. (Note: This isn't an endorsement of Mek's tweets. I don't follow her and I haven't combed through her feed.)
First, HuffPo outed Mek's real name, but that was not enough. They ambushed a deli owned by Mek's relatives, who barely have any contact with her and do not agree with her Twitter posts. The deli has been flooded with harassment and fraudulent negative "reviews" on Yelp by people who have never stepped foot in the place. An innocent person's livelihood has been irreparably damaged because of a psychotic so-called "journalist" acting more like a Mafia enforcer than a reporter.
That was not enough. HuffPo went after Mek's husband, who works for World Wrestling Entertainment. A company with a long history of racist and misogynistic characters and storylines immediately fired Mek's husband without so much as asking if he even agreed with her tweets. Mek claims on Twitter that many of his views are actually different from hers, so was he fired because his wife said something that he does not agree with. This is corporate cowardice and hypocrisy in the extreme.
This is wrong. Worse, it has set off a round of retaliation. I have no sympathy for the so-called "journalist" at HuffPo who is now being doxxed and threatened, but the ones doxxing him are themselves being doxxed. And around and around we go, with a needless escalation of the culture war and a vendetta over - let's be brutally honest - something that does not matter. Who cares what a semi-anonymous Twitter user is posting? So she may have said some offensive things. Lots of people say offensive things - On Twitter, on Facebook, and in private conversation. Do her posts really merit an all-out effort to ruin her life and the lives of her family members who rarely see her and disagree with her?
The Huffington Post, if it had any integrity or basic human decency, would terminate the employment of the so-called "reporter" who doxxed AmyMek and will apologize to her. The damage is already done, so the only thing left to do is learn a simple lesson: Stop being a vindictive, hate-filled troll and stop trying to ruin people's lives over stupid, meaningless Twitter flame wars. Grow up and get a life.
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