An Online Reputational Lynching

As we increasingly substitute virtual lives for real lives, we have to reassess and reevaluate how we are being changed—not just our sense of what is real and what isn’t, but also the way it exploits the dark recesses of our hearts.

As we know by now, online activity tends to bring out the worst in us. Algorithms are designed to encourage outrageous behaviour and pander to all our biases and prejudices. We can respond unthinkingly to our worst impulses, with minimal consequences.

And sometimes we find out how others pay the price for that.

I think that’s something we can learn from the tragic death of Jason Arday.

If you don’t know who he is by now, I’d be surprised. I didn’t until two days ago. Now it seems everyone wants to have a go at him, at Cambridge University, at diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and to promote their own political agenda and demonstrate their own moral superiority.

What I see is a tragic story of an online reputational lynching, in which the media and a million random commentators are only too willing to join in. Villagers with torches and pitchforks, banging on Dr. Frankenstein’s door.

If you don’t know the story, Jason Arday was a professor at Cambridge University, the youngest ever appointed in the prestigious university’s history. He was also Black. He was also severely neurodivergent and apparently didn’t speak until he was 11 years old and didn’t read or write until he was 18. His story is pretty incredible.

And it has come to light that quite a bit of it was untrue, or at least exaggerated. Not the neurodivergent stuff. But, starting a couple of years ago, the work that earned him his academic position and reputation came under scrutiny for plagiarism.

I don’t want to get into the details. You can look it up for yourself, because there’s plenty about it online. What there isn’t plenty of is compassion.

The accusations and online kerfuffle resulted in Arday resigning his Cambridge position and, a week later, apparently taking his own life.

First I felt deeply sad. Then I took some time to process the sadness. It is not the time to react, especially not to prove a point.

Upon some reflection, I came to realize that I couldn’t care less that Cambridge hired him, for whatever reason. That’s their business. If they screwed up, that’s their problem to deal with. If they fail, too bad for them. They will lose out. Let’s not exaggerate the ramifications for the rest of us.

Let’s presume Cambridge hired him because they wanted to virtue signal. They wanted to make him the poster boy for their enlightened policies.

How is the irony lost on people that the online piling-on is motivated by precisely the same virtue signalling they are accusing Cambridge of engaging in? Diminish Arday and Cambridge to elevate themselves.

I don’t want to say anything more about Arday at this juncture. Probably not ever, actually. I can imagine how devastated his wife and loved ones are and how brutalized they must feel by all the exploitation of their tragedy and vitriol.

It feels appropriate simply to say that this is a moment for reflection on how social media has scrambled our collective moral compass.