Twitter's Jack Dorsey gets roasted for his ignorant tweets about Myanmar

Do better, Jack.
By Kellen Beck  on 
Twitter's Jack Dorsey gets roasted for his ignorant tweets about Myanmar
More than 600,000 Rohingya refugees have flooded into Bangladesh to flee an offensive by Myanmar’s military that the United Nations has called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing." Credit: Kevin Frayer / Getty Images

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey shared with the world what he did on his most recent birthday: travel to Myanmar and do a 10-day silent meditation.

Dorsey made a thread on Twitter explaining the experience, and hundreds of people chimed in to remind Jack of the genocide happening in Myanmar that's been perpetuated by social media, how funny it is that he paid money to get bit by mosquitos, and his general rich white guy privilege.

Of course, Jack took the idea of Vipassanā and translated it into terms that tech people are familiar with, using words like "hack" and "reprogram."

Some people on Twitter compared Dorsey's experience of embracing pain to their experience on Twitter, where harassment continues to run rampant and negativity permeates every aspect of the platform.

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Another person pointed out how some people really don't have the option to meditate on their pain, and instead are forced to live and work with it because they can't afford healthcare.

One Twitter user compared Dorsey to Gavin Belson, the villainous businessman from the show Silicon Valley who literally goes on a trip to meditate in Asia only to return to his normal capitalistic ways when he returns to Silicon Valley. Classic rich white tech guys stuff.

One of Dorsey's more universally funny tweets in his thread was one where he shared that he'd been bitten over 100 times by mosquitos, and that's pretty hard not to laugh at. People love schadenfreude.

The most egregious part about Dorsey's Twitter thread is his willingness to ignore the genocide happening in Myanmar, which either he somehow wasn't aware of or just decided not to mention.

You gotta be aware of this stuff, especially when you're tweeting it out to hundreds of thousands of people on your own information-sharing platform.

Topics Twitter

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Kellen Beck

Kellen is a science reporter at Mashable, covering space, environmentalism, sustainability, and future tech. Previously, Kellen has covered entertainment, gaming, esports, and consumer tech at Mashable. Follow him on Twitter @Kellenbeck


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