Helen Rosner

That unfortunately, tragically, heartbreakingly, the comment section on any of these Instagram posts, I saw this in the comments on my own article that I wrote about this for The New Yorker, are overrun with people who are defending

Wow.

I think it's impossible to overestimate people's capacity for cognitive dissonance.

I think that there are lots of people who...

think that this kind of accountability culture has gone too far, right?

Like, you know, what accountability culture, honestly?

Like, I don't actually see meaningful consequences for virtually anybody who gets in the crossfires of this sort of thing.

But like, you know, you brought up Mario Batali.

When he stepped away from his restaurant's

in, what was it, 2018, for a lot of people, several of those restaurants remained open even though Batali wasn't involved in them anymore.

For a lot of people, those restaurants became toxic.

I didn't go back to Babo, which was his flagship.

But there also is a not insignificant portion of people who went to those restaurants even harder just to stick it to the folks who had the audacity to speak up, who had the audacity to complain.

And I think that that's a remnant of an earlier culture that has not died yet.

I don't think that being an asshole to your employees makes the food taste better.

You don't need to be an art monster to make art, right?

Like, I think you don't need to be a jerk in order to be successful.

You don't need to have people fear you in order to have them follow you.

I do think it's an easy way to get them to follow you.

I think it's a cheat sheet.