And, as it turned out, Justine Sacco is not a racist monster. She is a kind and canny woman who threw back cocktails, ate delicately, and spoke expertly about software. She was friendly, very funny, instantly relatable, and very plainly not a cruel sicko. We talked about college, jobs, home, family, and work—she’d recently landed on her feet as the communications boss for a small New York startup, and seemed to be happily rebuilding her career.
Have you ever hated someone on the Internet? Have you ever talked badly about someone because you disagree with them? Now go have lunch with them. It’s really easy to completely destroy someone with just a few key-strokes only to realize they’re not that bad of a person. Good on Sam for writing this follow-up post but that was his job and look at Gawker (most importantly Valleywag) and you’ll see these posts almost every single hour potentially career damning posts that should never be published.