The style of the writing was okay, nothing tremendous. The organization and the "zingers" that Chen used to drive home his whole point about VA being a seedy dude were just awful though.

It was just a poorly written article. I wish I had the link on me at the time, but a good contrast of style was in the Journal of American History a while back. The author was writing about the "Origins of the South" and gender roles. Her ending sentence for the paragraph in which she described her motivation? A quote from her colleagues: "You're writing about gender in the New South? That'll be short."

Just to talk about writing for a moment, that ending line, the one with a quote, is just an excellent transition in to almost any subject you want to talk about. You can talk about the way history has been written about for ages, talk about continuing issues with gender roles in history, the lack of records or publications at the time, or innumerable other possibilities. Its an effective line because not only does it illustrate to the reader just how deep the problem goes, but leaves room for discussion.

Contrast this: "They were mad that their buddy was going to be outed for simply, in their mind, exercising his free speech—his unalienable right to anonymously post stalker shots of women."

Its similar - while not exactly a direct quote, it is quoting the general mindset - enough to the other line. Its just not a well written line. Whereas the JAH line is opening up a discussion, even if the general conclusion of the author is obvious (that gender roles were a big deal), this shuts it down. Boom. Dead. Nothing. And yes, in this situation, regardless of how much you disagree with what VA did, there is discussion warranted.

Freedom of Speech actually does cover everything he did; he posted pictures that were legal, if dubious. Whether or not this should be consequence free, whether or not shaming is going to be effective in doing anything but compound problems society already faces with exploitation. You can talk about the consequences of taking an approach to public pictures, you can justify your position, talk about how a person posting pictures that were predatory should be ousted because it'll keep it from happening. Something other than just going "here is this ridiculous statement that is clearly ridiculous."

Its a method of ending discussion that is very poor form for something that is supposed to be investigative. It contributes very little aside from making people who already agree with Chen or already hate VA feel good about themselves, and detracts from a very important discussion about how society is going to have to handle people who post predatory but legal shots of teenagers, and if change is it all feasible.

Chen also writes way too much. Holy god.