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May 20, 2019 12:24 PM   Subscribe

From Watchdog To Attack Dog: The Story Of Unsuck D.C. Metro

What Happened to Unsuck DC Metro?
The story of Unsuck DC Metro took another weird turn this past weekend, when the popular Twitter account waded into a controversy about a local author who posted about a Metro employee eating on a train. By Sunday, Unsuck DC Metro was tweeting about the “Woke fascist”s criticizing him and making liberal use of Twitter’s block function. That makes this controversy, which comes on the heels of a lawsuit Unsuck DC Metro filed against WMATA with help from the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, at once self-contained and potentially quite baffling to anyone who doesn’t spend a lot of time reading angry tweets about local transit.
previouslyish
posted by peeedro (32 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
In anticipation of his identity being revealed by the DCist story, @UnsuckDCMetro tweeted, I was told “snitches get stitches”.
posted by peeedro at 12:25 PM on May 20, 2019


Something that might be worth pointing out here, for those outside the area: for a long time, eating was not allowed on WMATA trains. It is technically still not allowed, though Metro claims that it's no longer enforced. People eat on it constantly, of course, but Metro has a history of being a hardass about it when they want to be, and do (did?) issue fines.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 1:05 PM on May 20, 2019 [2 favorites]


This is an interesting case, in that what the author did was clearly uncalled-for and truly obnoxious and and rightly drew a strong negative response on Twitter (let a working person have their damn breakfast!!!), but it's not at all obvious that the repercussions were proportionate to the offense (especially as she doesn't have a history of such behavior). Because she's a WOC using a leftist publisher and distributor, she's getting nailed in a way that infinitely worse white men working in conservative or even big slow mainstream media circles will not.

Is this actually the outcome we all want? Because I'm not sure it is.
posted by praemunire at 1:06 PM on May 20, 2019 [2 favorites]


Is this actually the outcome we all want? Because I'm not sure it is.

Given that they were willingly working with Judicial Watch, I find it hard to have sympathy (and I would imagine that fact also drove what happened.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:15 PM on May 20, 2019 [4 favorites]


Unsurprised.

This guy always struck me as the kind of libertarian douchebag who would complain about an underfunded public service while demanding that said service be dramatically improved.

I am convinced that anyone who complains about WMATA, as sucky as they often are, is drawing on pretty limited experience with BART, NYCTA, or really any other major metropolitan train system in the US.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:15 PM on May 20, 2019 [14 favorites]


Not cool to eat on the Metro in DC.* Exponentially not cooler for people with large platforms to spread pictures of identifiable people with the intent to public shame them for breaking the no food / no drink rules. I actually think we should have a cultural dialogue about taking and using pictures of people we don’t know for social media like-mining, because stuff like this feels gross even when the people are in a public place.

*The no food and drink rules aren’t perfect and aren’t always obeyed, but the DC Metro is very obviously cleaner (and food-scent-free) in my experience compared to other cities’ public transportation. It’s a great rule.
posted by sallybrown at 1:22 PM on May 20, 2019 [7 favorites]


That news outlets continue to describe Judicial Watch in terms reserved for good-faith actors continues to baffle me.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 1:24 PM on May 20, 2019 [15 favorites]


Given that they were willingly working with Judicial Watch

The Jordanian woman who posted the tweet in question is almost certainly not the person behind Unsuck DC Metro.

Exponentially not cooler for people with large platforms to spread pictures of identifiable people with the intent to public shame them for breaking the no food / no drink rules.

Not just public shaming, she tagged in WMATA with the clear intent of getting the employee disciplined.
posted by praemunire at 1:34 PM on May 20, 2019 [4 favorites]


He works for Voice of America, which at least used to be controlled by the CIA, and the privatization he now rather incoherently seems to be advocating
"I think there needs to be somebody who owns Metro, and that person is responsible for how Metro runs, and if he or she is not doing it right, they lose their job,”
is of a piece with that, and makes me wonder who owns him.

Because Trump would sell DC Metro to one of his buddies for pocket change if he thought he could get away with it.
posted by jamjam at 1:36 PM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]


"I think there needs to be somebody who owns Metro,

I believe that would be in the sense that one "owns" a project or task--i.e., you're responsible for running it and, as a consequence, much of its success or failure. It's often a PR problem for government projects/institutions that the public doesn't know who's responsible and thus there's a creeping feeling that no one really is.
posted by praemunire at 1:46 PM on May 20, 2019 [2 favorites]


The Jordanian woman who posted the tweet in question is almost certainly not the person behind Unsuck DC Metro.

Definitely not. Quick timeline:
  • Jordanian-American World Bank employee/author tweet-shames a female African-American WMATA employee who was eating on a train during her 20 minute meal break that she was using to travel between work assignments
  • Backlash ensues, the author apologizes and delete the tweet (and her account eventually); because of the controversy, the woman's publisher cancels her book
  • Unsuck DC Metro retweets the employee's picture without the surrounding context and pins it on his feed, twitter goon squad is reenergized
  • Local reporters at WAMU and DCist are fed up with Unsuck DC Metro using his anonymous platform to make racially tinged attacks against low-level employees, using publicly available sources they reveal his identity as a Voice of America reporter

  • posted by peeedro at 2:08 PM on May 20, 2019 [18 favorites]


    Christ, what an asshole.
    posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:26 PM on May 20, 2019 [8 favorites]


    who would complain about an underfunded public service while demanding that said service be dramatically improved.

    Sorry, that should have been "complain about funding a public service while demanding that said service be dramatically improved."
    posted by aspersioncast at 2:36 PM on May 20, 2019 [2 favorites]


    He works for Voice of America, which at least used to be controlled by the CIA, and the privatization he now rather incoherently seems to be advocating
    "I think there needs to be somebody who owns Metro, and that person is responsible for how Metro runs, and if he or she is not doing it right, they lose their job,”
    is of a piece with that, and makes me wonder who owns him.

    Because Trump would sell DC Metro to one of his buddies for pocket change if he thought he could get away with it.


    This has zero to do with the CIA. The twitter account in question has turned nasty. But there can be no plot to sell DC Metro because there would be zero buyers. It isn't a moneymaker in any way.
    posted by Ironmouth at 2:44 PM on May 20, 2019


    This guy always struck me as the kind of libertarian douchebag who would complain about an underfunded public service while demanding that said service be dramatically improved.

    nails it to a T
    posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 3:45 PM on May 20, 2019 [3 favorites]


    In anticipation of his identity being revealed by the DCist story, @UnsuckDCMetro tweeted, I was told “snitches get stitches”.

    Yeah, I get it, he's trying to play the irony card here but there's a fundamental difference between snitching on a WMATA employee (and woman of color) who's just trying to eat their damn breakfast before work - something that literally doesn't cause harm to anyone, I don't care what the WMATA rules are - and "snitching" on some anonymous asshole on the internet who is fanning the flames of someone else's unjustified snitching. His intention with that tweet was to cause even more harm to that WMATA employee. Fuck him.

    I've been riding the DC metro since I was a toddler. We know we're not allowed to eat while we ride. But I've watched people - WMATA employees included - sneak food here and there for decades and guess what? I don't care! I don’t snitch, I don't sneer or stare or give ‘em the side eye. We're all just trying to survive this shitty world, for chrissakes. If you aren't causing active harm to myself or others, then carry on, friend. I'm not interested in aiding and abetting the folks in this world who keep trying to make everyday life even more terrible. And I really don't get the mindset of those who take pleasure in this childish tattling on nonviolent/lifestyle "crimes". It's been bad enough in the past [articles are WaPo and may be paywalled, open with an incognito browser tab] when metro transit cops have arrested people for eating on the train. They have a not surprising habit of disproportionately targeting black and brown people, many of whom are also young and/or female.

    Conservatives like the Unsuck DC metro assclown only seem to have "values" when said values present an opportunity that they can exploit for the purpose of arguing in bad faith and owning the libs and gaining edgelord points or whatever the fuck it is they're getting themselves off to these days.

    I'm glad, though, that it seems like the metro employee won't be fired or penalized and that the snitch who originally tattle taled on her is probably losing her book deal.
    posted by nightrecordings at 3:52 PM on May 20, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Mod note: Couple comments deleted; please don't jump into this with flip jokes about the racial angle, that's really not going to help anything.
    posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 4:38 PM on May 20, 2019 [2 favorites]


    I feel like I'm missing vital context

    Publicly funded transit system is historically underfunded and mismanaged, but a group of clearly middle class people, many of whom get subsidies to ride the train, spend lots of time calling a group of mostly black working class people lazy slobs instead of addressing actual problems.

    The author-losing-her-book-deal thing is a red herring.
    posted by zennie at 4:46 PM on May 20, 2019 [17 favorites]




    I used to take the Metro every day. I now take it about once a week. Is it sometimes delayed? Yes. Does it sometimes catch on fire (or at least cars leak oil or whatever that then starts smoking)? Yes. Are these things because lawmakers in Virginia and Maryland don't think funding Metro is worth it (and DC doesn't have enough funds of their own to float it)? Yes. (Also, I'd like to see many of the people who bitch about how terrible Metro is survive commuting in by the NYC subway.)

    Everyone knows why the rules against eating on the Metro are there but I also agree with not really enforcing them. People have to eat and sometimes your commute is the only time you can do it. That's not my business and I can't fathom caring about it.

    I always felt like Unsuck DC Metro fundamentally -- and probably willfully -- misunderstood where the problems with the Metro lie (hint: Not with workers who are just trying to eat their meal while traveling between work locations) and I also find it really rich he wanted to be anonymous because people come after public figures & then pulled the whole "snitches" thing on this (woman) reporter.

    Do I think Metro is perfect? Absolutely not. Has it, in the past 16 years I've lived here and taken it with some regularity, always gotten to me where I needed to go (more or less)? Yes. Metro basically works exactly how I expect it to -- which is, you know, mostly and most of the time.

    It's a mass transit system, not a luxury cruise.
    posted by darksong at 4:53 PM on May 20, 2019 [15 favorites]


    But there can be no plot to sell DC Metro because there would be zero buyers. It isn't a moneymaker in any way.

    I was just gonna say have you met capitalists? but then jamjam came in with the receipts.
    posted by duffell at 5:22 PM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]


    darksong: "Metro basically works exactly how I expect it to -- which is, you know, mostly and most of the time.

    It's a mass transit system, not a luxury cruise.
    "

    Man, way to set low expectations.

    Personally, I don't see a problem with posting a photo of an employee breaking the company's rules, provided that it's not an identifiable photo. Block out the face, block out the ID card/badge number/other identifying information. There's a big difference between "Here's a DC Metro employee breaking the rules" and "Here's this specific DC Metro employee breaking the rules."
    posted by Bugbread at 5:44 PM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]


    This has zero to do with the CIA. The twitter account in question has turned nasty. But there can be no plot to sell DC Metro because there would be zero buyers. It isn't a moneymaker in any way.

    Look up British Rail someday.

    Or Chicago's Parking Meter Deal.

    Unprofitable services can become profitable business very quickly when privatization allows the pricing to explode.
    posted by srboisvert at 5:46 PM on May 20, 2019 [6 favorites]


    I always felt like Unsuck DC Metro fundamentally -- and probably willfully -- misunderstood where the problems with the Metro lie (hint: Not with workers who are just trying to eat their meal while traveling between work locations)
    My position is similar: the Metro worker was wrong to break the rules in public, it was several orders of magnitude worse to make it a social media dogpile in the absence of actual harm, and all of that is overshadowed by Matt Hilburn’s behavior. It’s one thing to make a regrettable choice given bad options, another to be publicly grumpy on the spur of the moment, but quite another to be consistently mean and punching down year after year.
    posted by adamsc at 6:33 PM on May 20, 2019 [9 favorites]


    People eat on it constantly, of course, but Metro has a history of being a hardass about it when they want to be, and do (did?) issue fines.

    Extremely hardass. Like handcuffing and arresting a 12-year-old girl for bringing french fries into a station. Or arresting a woman for finishing the last bite of her candy bar as she passed through the turnstile. Or arresting, handcuffing, and kicking a teenage girl for refusing to throw away a bag of chips.
    posted by candyland at 9:07 PM on May 20, 2019 [11 favorites]


    Wow. This Matt Hilburn guy seems like a real dick, demanding anonymity while also publicly bragging that he runs a popular Twitter feed about transportation in DC. That he's also a reporter is extra grossness.
    posted by mediareport at 4:17 AM on May 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Metro was very much falling apart by the mid-2000s, but in broad strokes the system has improved significantly since Wiedefeld took over.

    Also the 7000 series trains are great.
    posted by aspersioncast at 4:53 AM on May 21, 2019


    I'm so much more annoyed by people blasting their music on metro than anything else. But I don't post photos of them on social media because that's a step too far.

    Basically, if you can't deal with what's happening in your train car, just switch to the adjacent one at the next stop. If you can't because there's a huge crowd, hope that someone else will speak up and ask them to turn their music down, do it yourself, or just... cope. But harassing someone like this is just plain wrong.
    posted by numaner at 3:15 PM on May 21, 2019


    Today's happenings with the 3000 series train cars being pulled for a door malfunction shows how far Unsuck DC Metro has fallen. There are three tweets in his timeline about the 3K doors: a retweet of a complaint, a retweet of the video of the broken door, and a retweet of a conspiracy theory that the door problem doesn't exists and Metro must be covering for some other problem. The feed used to be pretty valuable for metro commuters, now it's just about owning the libs.
    posted by peeedro at 4:13 PM on May 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Oh, now he's just retweeted someone complaining about how Metro learned about the door malfunction over social media. This is extra dumb because that used to be his whole raison d'être, using social media to communicate to Metro and Metro riders.
    posted by peeedro at 4:17 PM on May 21, 2019


    I'm a middle aged white guy who's taken over 1,000 rides on DC Metro. I think it basically sucks. Anyhow, on the racial dynamic at play here... I like the idea of an institution that gives good paying middle class jobs to a group of people who have suffered hundreds of year of systemic racism. I like it a lot. I've paid lots of taxes to the Commonwealth of Virginia that I think have funded it via WMATA in some small measure and I'm happy to have done so.

    That said, I once heard someone describe WMATA as 'a jobs program with a transit system attached' and, well, yeah.
    posted by MjrMjr at 8:47 PM on May 21, 2019


    And in related news, Natasha Tynes, the author who initially took the picture of the WMATA worker eating, is suing her publisher for defamation.
    Tynes' lawsuit outlines her position: That Rare Bird, "an all-white company," inaccurately painted her, an "immigrant woman of color," as racist and benefited off the public backlash.

    Eisen says Tynes has simply suffered the consequences of her tweet: "It is ironic that, having taken advantage of her First Amendment rights with an ill-advised tweet, Ms. Tynes now seeks to stifle and punish use of those very same rights of a respected book publisher who legitimately expressed its opinions of her conduct, rather than take responsibility for her own actions."
    Yeah, I don't see her winning this at all,and playing the "I can't be racist, I'm also a minority" card isn't going to work.
    posted by NoxAeternum at 7:14 AM on June 10, 2019


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