King of Creampies
Hop in. You coming too!
On Tuesday, tech journalist Quinn Norton was named to the New York Times’ editorial board as its new lead opinion writer covering tech. However, it didn’t take long for Twitter users to point out a series of tweets from Norton in which she used racist and homophobic slurs, prompting the print publication to let her go hours later.
Norton has had an immense influence on tech journalism, serving both as a writer for Wired as well as Gizmodo and the Atlantic. But shortly after the Times announced her hire on Tuesday, her friendship with American neo-Nazi Andrew “weev” Auernheimer came to light. She previously called him “an old friend of mine,” defending her connection with him while admitting he is “terrible.”
This already didn’t sit well with the internet, especially in light of a column she wrote on the moral complexity of John Rabe, a Nazi Party member who helped Chinese citizens escape Japanese war atrocities. Then people unearthed tweets in which Norton used homophobic and racist slurs. Particularly, she openly used the N-word during an analogy on terrorism, retweeted a joke with the N-word about President Obama, and repeatedly used the words “faq” and “fakkit” in conversation with others during 2013 and 2014.
“Here’s the deal, fakkit,” Norton wrote in one tweet from 2013. “Free speech comes with responsibility. not legal, but human. grown up. you can do this.”
Norton has since changed her Twitter display name to “Well that was fun,” defending her tweets and saying there is “no harm no foul” toward the Times for dropping her.
“I’m sorry I can’t do the work I wanted to do with them,” she tweeted last night. “I wish there had been a way, but ultimately, they need to feel safe with how the net will react to their opinion writers.”
that terrorist tweet.