@Brian C.

Well-intentioned people sometimes do things they wouldn’t want to be associated with – often because they were simply unaware that other folks would be hurt by their actions. When they do that, calling them on it is a kindness. I think I know which incident you’re alluding to in that paragraph, and it wasn’t really the “howling mob of idiots vs. white knights of gaming” situation you appear to be describing it as.
[...]
The original point of that affair though – using victims of a violent crime as a punchline is insensitive – was and is valid. Was it *intentionally* insensitive? No, not at all. But that’s irrelevant
[..]
Mac tech does much better than a lot of other industries, but we’re by no means perfect [...] congratulating ourselves prematurely is not going to help us solve the remaining issues.

Again, on the overall point, I agree 100%; sorry to pick nits with a subtopic.
Thanks for the reasonable and carefully-worded comment. Understand that I appreciate the thought that went into it, even though I completely, vehemently disagree.

It's not nitpicking; you're absolutely right in assuming that that's what I was talking about. The reason I didn't explicitly mention "dickwolves" was because I didn't want to invite this to become more of a shitstorm than it was already turning into. But watching that travesty play out last year, and seeing people still misrepresent what happened, is a huge part of why I took the time to write this in the first place.

I won't go into the full details here, because I've already wasted too much time giving this non-issue more attention than it deserves.

But the direct parallels: When you make a completely baseless accusation against someone, it is perfectly natural for them to be strongly offended. Obviously VB's attempts are just transparently manipulative, while I'm sure a significant part of the people flinging accusations at PA sincerely believed they were helping.

Still, it's as simple as this: if you feel that you have to educate me that violence against women is not something to joke about, then you are assuming that I am a sociopath. People respond badly to being called sociopaths. The PA guys' response to it was exactly how I would've responded, essentially: "it's such absolute bullshit that you would even think that's what we were saying, that we're not even going to dignify the accusation."

They handled it badly from then on. Period. But they absolutely did not deserve to be put into that situation in the first place.

I mentioned some of this earlier, but it all hinges on the statement that intention is "irrelevant," which I think is just plain wrong. Intention is everything. You are not responsible for the things that other people accuse you of saying; you're only responsible for what you say. They weren't just accused of being insensitive, which is something that a reasonable person can respond to. They were accused of (and still are being accused of, by the sound of your post) making fun of violent crimes against women and even of being complicit in the crimes themselves.

And of course I agree when you say that the Apple community may be better than most, but it's still not perfect. But the way to make things better isn't by flinging unfounded accusations around, by adhering to double standards, by trying to catch people on individual words instead of listening to their ideas, or by treating them as if they don't know or don't care about the difference between right and wrong. You do it by giving everyone your respect by default, and then leaving it up to them to show beyond a reasonable doubt whether or not they deserve it.

Thanks for the comment, and for giving a sane counter-point to exactly the thing I find most troubling about this.