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This comment made me realize that we really are moving to a world where, in order to decide whether some action is bad or not, you have to first figure out whether the victim is "good" or "bad". I noticed this a while back in prominent hacking cases. If the victim was sympathetic to the current political fashions, it's a horrible crime. If the victim, for any reason at all, might not be the most shining example of idealism, at best indifference, at worst "fuck 'em". For example, the discussion around the Ashley Madison hack wasn't, "Hacking is bad, end of story." It was, "Ha! Fuckin' cheaters get hacked. Plus, some of them were government employees, so extra fuck 'em!" "...Uh, hello! Some good, brave, possible minorities, might have good reasons to use a site like Ashley Madison. Maybe hacking is not so good." And so on.
There is likely some amount of pre-judging the alleged perpetrator, too, but I first noticed it in hacking crimes with mostly faceless/unknown perpetrators.
I guess, weirdly, I had previously thought, "Hacking/digital stuff is still a new area; we don't have developed norms yet; given that, there's going to be more 'who, whom' than normal, but once we flesh out some norms, we should head toward more consistency." And now, I, uh, probably think that less. Not sure it makes me more conflict theory-y, but at the very least, I feel more inclined to think that many other people are, in a deeply rooted way, more conflict theory-y than I had previously hoped.
Again, re: Ashley Madison, I'm both "hacking personal and private details is bad" and "wanting to play away if you're married/partnered, serves you right slimeball". If you want to be young, free and single and ready to mingle, get divorced or work it out with your spouse that you're opening your marriage. Trying to eat your cake and have it is the worst of both worlds. It's going to come out eventually, or your mistress/sugar baby will want to take things official and you'll either have a messy divorce or dump the side-piece and then she'll go to some social media site to cry over how she wasted years on your dumb ass.
Everyone is missing the best part of the Ashley Madison hack. There is effectively 0 chance of a married man initiating an affair with a woman on Ashley Madison as there are effectively 0 actual women on the site.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ashley-madison-almost-no-women-2015-8
The article links to two Gizmodo articles that go into more detail. The short version is there is a 333-1 male/female ratio of the accounts, and the majority of the female accounts are bots or are controlled by Ashley Madison staff.
"Ashley Madison is a site where tens of millions of men write mail, chat, and spend money for women who aren't there."
That's what makes the Schadenfreude even tastier. They're well-off enough to spend money looking to cheat with 'high class' young women, and they're being swindled. But they have no moral leg to stand on: wannabe cheaters being cheated by cheaters is poetic justice.
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Same with most of online dating. Completely cancerous gender ratio and thats before the well is poisoned by bots and bad actors.
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The destruction of universalism by postmodernism and class warfare (and its proxies) has some pretty huge downsides for society.
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