Mistaken Identity and Attack on a Career
And much more...
That can’t happen! But it did…
Dr. Andrew Spector became public enemy no. 1 for some dim-witted people, becoming the target for an all-out-attack for mission: reputation-and-career ruin.
His crime against society, you inquire?
You won’t believe it. Or maybe you will.
It smacks of a dramatic movie plot.
A video went viral on TikTok. “It shows a white man in a car with Massachusetts license plates using a racist slur toward a woman behind the camera during a confrontation in a parking lot,” reports Paul Cuno-Booth at the (New Hampshire) Concord-Monitor.
The plot twist? “Spector — an ear, nose and throat specialist — was not the man in the video. But social media users had connected the license plate on screen with another, entirely different Andrew Spector in Massachusetts,” Cuno-Booth writes.
Get this for stress escalation: Spector “was in the middle of surgery when he received an urgent text from an administrator. Strangers were calling his employer, Dartmouth Health, demanding he be fired,” Cuno-Booth writes.
His boss decided to induce distraction, fear and anxiety on a doctor during surgery? I’m sure the patient and their loved ones greatly appreciated it.
While Spector was not the perpetrator, that didn’t matter to the gang of impulsive social media users looking for online clout, itching to report for duty to engage in tribal warfare to destroy a person, their career and inflict comprehensive pain on their family and employer.
Consider too, his patients who may not have wanted to walk away from him but may have felt they might have to do so out of fear or a false narrative, with which they did not feel they could be associated.
Guess what happened next? You likely already know but here goes anyway:
“The video blew up, getting hundreds of thousands of views. People posted links to Spector’s Facebook and Instagram profiles, claiming the video showed him or one of his relatives. They bombarded medical websites with negative reviews. They sent threatening and harassing messages to Spector and his wife,” Cuno-Booth reports.
Jumping to conclusions were the “warriors” as judge, jury and reputation-and-career executioners: the public “social justice” mob.
“It is really easy to have keyboard courage,” Spector lamented. “And people started saying, ‘Hey, we know where you work. We are coming for you. We are coming for your wife, we’re coming for your family. We’re going to hunt you down.’”
Good thing that the mobsters are such moral people standing up for what is right.
“Spector said it’s been scary, especially the targeting of his family. While none of the threats seemed credible, he said, ‘all it takes is one person,’” he accurately told the newspaper.
To his credit, Spector, despite his trauma, honorably, compassionately “said his thoughts are with the woman subjected to racist verbal abuse, whom he called the ‘real victim’ in this incident. (Representatives from Dartmouth Health tried to reach out to her through social media but were unable to contact her, according to Cassidy Smith, a spokesperson for the health system.)”
The facts and moral crime committed against him inspired Spector to speak objectively and accurately about his experience.
“Even though it’s going to be a forgotten news story very quickly, I think it’s going to take a lot of time to repair any damage that’s been done to my reputation,” he said.
“It absolutely breaks my heart and devastates me that at some point, somebody is going to need an ear, nose and throat doctor and my name is going to come up,” he said. “And they’re going to Google it, and this negative association will be made and people will make a conscious decision not to see me.”
That’s a crime that has been committed, one that should bring with it legal misery, a large judgment against the worst perpetrators, with heavy punitive damages. It won’t, most likely, but there are now more attorneys and law firms hunting bad actors like this these days.
The encouraging news? Media reports of the contrary facts, evidence and truth will help tremendously. Whatever additional reputation injury that must be addressed (including emotional and psychological) can be treated effectively and successfully in this particular situation.
Mr. Spector was violated and the woman in the video who was verbally, emotionally and psychologically assaulted by a different Mr. Spector, had her experience minimized because of the mob who recklessly focused on the wrong person as the perpetrator of a social offense.
She too could be very angry for that fact.
Next Topic! Did You Know…
"After exerting self-control in one task, you do not feel like making an effort in another, although you could do it if you really wanted."
Daniel Kahneman
Book: Thinking Fast and Slow
P. 42
RepIntel: This is an interesting finding in how the brain works because it indicates, at its most perceived stress in the moment, that there is immediate, heightened risk of poor decision making and subsequent consequences.
When our brain believes it is tired of controlling our personal, natural impulses we are likely to choose to be less committed to acting wisely.
What a wild ride of insight and how very important this information is to know:
“Imagine your brain is a newsroom that’s constantly receiving information and determining what’s factual and newsworthy. Ideally, your emotional brain would gather questionable information and send it upstairs to the thinking brain for processing. The thinking brain would then logically analyze it, consider the source of the information, and determine how and when the information should be reported.
“Now imagine that the reporters working in the emotional brain department go rogue and refuse to send any information upstairs to the thinking brain. Instead, they hoard all the information, processing it themselves based on past emotional experiences instead of logic, and without verifying whether sources of the information are credible. The emotional brain reporters filter information through a muddied lens of past traumatic news, causing them to sense danger at every turn.
“These reporters then write a news story, the undercurrent of which is doom and gloom. The article is anything but objective. Instead, it reeks of subjectivity. I mean, it’s literally fake news. In a state of panic, they ascertain that the only way to ensure safety is a complete emotional lockdown.
“Without fact-checking the story, the reporters signal the rest of the workers (the nervous system) to go on high alert. The workers flood the network (your body) with breaking news alerts of the story, blaring an annoying, high-pitched beep and issuing warnings on all fronts. Danger! Danger! The fight, flight, or freeze response is engaged.
“Overly stimulated by the alarms, the emotional brain begins to believe its own fake news and eases into the perceived security of its chaotic, closed-off existence, making way for a dysregulated nervous system.
“By now, the emotional brain has completely disengaged from the smart guys upstairs in the thinking brain. Believing that it knows how to protect you and keep you safe, the emotional brain will isolate you from your true self.
“To do this effectively, it will use its best weapons: fear, doubt, shame, and uncertainty. It will run discouraging messages that prevent you from following your dreams, finding peace, and being vulnerable.”
Did you know all that and conduct your life to prevent, mitigate or overcome it?
Thank you to Karena Kilcoyne, Fast Company and Kilcoyne’s recently published book, “Rise Above the Story: Free Yourself from Past Trauma and Create the Life You Want.”
Bonus
“I feel like I’m hated here.” That is not a feeling most people want to experience and be convinced about, but context matters. If you feel hated for unsavory actions (objectively speaking), then you have a big mountain of a problem ahead of you to solve. Accept that responsibility. If however you are hated for ethically-productive success, then being “hated” can be your badge of honor.
Madonna, apparently, is “not the queen of England.” She saw a fan sitting down at her concert, was surprised by it and that’s when the moment went off the rails.
Per The U.S. Sun Madonna pointed to an audience member and said, “What are you doing sitting down over there?” Problem? The person was disabled and in a wheelchair and Madonna didn’t initially notice. The entertainer’s reaction: "Oh okay, politically incorrect, sorry about that. I'm glad you're here.”
Weak apology or not, online, you knew Madonna was going to see some arrows shot at her. One fan tweeted, “Ok you shouldn’t be calling people out for sitting down anyways. She’s not the queen of England. Some people are tired or have conditions where they need to sit.”
Jumping to conclusions is dangerous business and some people never forget or forgive your errors. Be cautious.This might be controversial or offensive to some people yet it doesn’t make it less true: You don’t get to label your own reputation. Other people determine it. People lauding their reputation in an act of defensiveness is next-level obnoxiousness and immediately, deeply cuts at one’s credibility. This, by the way is not opinion. It’s factual reality. Evidence will prove it. Advisory: Don’t do it.
"One day you're going to pick a fight you can't win." This is the critical warning that some people just will not accept as fact and truth. They often have to learn in the most painful way possible. The so-called reckoning day often catches them by complete surprise. They ignored warning signs and well-intentioned people who tried to save them from themselves.
Michael Toebe is a reputation consultant, advisor and communications specialist at Reputation Intelligence: Reputation Quality, assisting individuals and organizations with further building reputation as an asset or ethically protecting, restoring or reconstructing it.
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