The Power of Sunlight, On Management #56

I usually do some kind of year-end wrap up. For 2024, I was thinking about a “story of the year.” (I know, we're already one year into 2025.)

In late December, a story broke about a woman dealing with unsafe conditions and sexual harassment in the workplace.

The woman was actress Blake Lively. The harassment sounded awful enough. When Blake pushed back, her harassers allegedly undertook a multi-channel social media campaign to “bury” her: consultants and contractors were hired to create posts across multiple social media channels, and amplify negative posts and stories about her.

Then, Blake filed a lawsuit, which supported her allegations with a cache of text messages by the (alleged) harassers. It’s really stunning. If you missed this story, NY Times reporter Meghan Twohey’s 4 minute video is a good intro. (See below.)

However.

The story rang another bell for me. Partly, I thought about Audrey Gelman, a founder of the now defunct co-working space, The Wing. As The Wing struggled, Gelman was taken down, hard, in online discourse, and in the media.

I mean, maybe she was/is awful. (Stares in Uber.)

The Wing was apparently a lousy workplace, particularly for women of color who worked there. This is my unsurprised face: startups are notorious grounds for crappy workplace experiences, worse for people who are not white men. And often not great for white men. Many of you know this firsthand.

What happens when investors give a tremendous amount of money to a very young person with no experience managing rapidly a growing enterprise? Well, when you don’t know what you don’t know, success of any kind will be random. Good people management is low-probability event.

I've been a reasonably online person. Watching The Wing's fall, I remember feeling that the vitriol against Gelman was a bit extra. I also remember a plaintive tweet from a male Wing investor, asking, in effect, why all of the hate for Audrey?

In 2022, two years after Gelman stepped down from The Wing, she opened a retail store in Brooklyn. Of course I saw it online; Gelman is very good at PR. Once again, lots of snarky, mean stuff. I mean the store is whatever, definitely not for me — but why so much hate for a shoppy shop in Brooklyn?

Blake Lively put a spotlight on how paid social media strategists can manufacture online hatred to “bury” someone. They can also weaponize hate that’s already floating around out there; organic hate meets artisanal hate.

A text from one of Lively’s harassers said,“It’s actually sad because it just shows you have people (sic) really want to hate on women.”

Of course, when Lively put a spot of sunlight on her harassers, they struck back with a lawsuit of their own. And so it goes.

In 2014, Gamergate showed how the internet could be leveraged to endanger women’s lives and careers. It hasn’t gone away. Hashtag "not an expert," and yet to me, Lively and Gelman’s experiences feel Gamergate 2.0-adjacent.

It looks to be coming for all of us in here the US: Gamergate 3.0 has been installed at our White House.

Hammers and bells

I recently learned that a family member wakes up every morning with a song playing, not on the radio/streaming, but in their mind. We're a musical family, so I guess it tracks, though it's not my own thing. Usually.

Then, one morning during week 1 of Trump 2.0, I woke up like this, too.

The song, Pete Seeger's "If I had a Hammer." Where did this come from? My mom reminds me that we often listened to a Peter, Paul and Mary record when I was small. Chances are we could have sung this at school, too.

"I'd hammer out danger/I'd hammer out warning/I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters/All over this land"

Pete Seeger was a genius, and an American treasure. I am neither, and my interpretation may lack panache: we all have hammers to hammer, bells to ring. We do our work, with the tools we have. When there's danger, we can hammer out warning.

If you're in a tenuous work situation, keep notes, off site, preferably in writing. In fact, I'd urge everyone in the US, citizens and residents, to keep notes about what's happening now. The situation is dangerous, it's unpredictable, and it's clear that the current administration has a target on transgender people, disabled people, gay people, people of color, non-(so-called)-Christians, and all women. And government workers, service members, law enforcement, I mean, it's hard to keep track of everyone who has been brutally disparaged and/or threatened in the last 10 days.

Sometimes you have to make the next, least-worst, choice. In my opinion, when we problem-solve with our most vulnerable team members in mind, we'll have better possibilities for everyone.

Though the date on this is February 2 – the last time I substantially worked on this post – I'm actually pressing "publish" on February 24. It did not go out by email because I missed the moment, given the maelstrom we're in here in the US.

I wanted to say more about people who shed sunlight on toxic workplaces and situations in 2024, because imo it is one of the stories of 2024. And these stories are fueling the backlash of 2025. I guess I'll come back to that, soon.

This space is my hammer. Caring for family, friends, and neighbors is my hammer. Supporting my local library is my hammer. Calling my elected officials, incessantly and showing up when I can...hammer.

Where's your hammer?

Links

• ‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine, By Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire, and Julie Tate, New York Times, published Dec. 21, 2024, Updated Dec. 22, 2024 (gift link)
• Read the complaint, December 21, 2024 (gift link): if you have the time, and the stomach.

• A Wing And A Prayer: Girlbossing Too Close To The Sun, RIP Corp, E17, January 15, 2025, Ingrid Burrington's podcast dropped as I was writing this piece. RIP Corp is about companies that die; this episode about Audrey Gelman and The Wing covers some ground I hadn't considered.
• The games industry is in the middle of Gamergate 2.0. Experts explain why harassment and vitriol hurt everyone who loves games, Cody Mello-Klein, Northeastern Global News, November 25, 2024
• On NPR in 2012, the late Pete Seeger remembered Woody Guthrie."'He went through WWII with a piece of cardboard pasted to the top of his guitar: 'This machine kills fascists,' Seeger says on the recording. 'He really wanted his guitar to help win the war against Hitler. When Woody went into a hospital in 1952 ... I put something similar on my banjo: 'This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.'" At 93, Pete Seeger Keeps The Fire Burning Low, Karen Michel, Weekend Edition Saturday, October 27, 2012.