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Comment by Joeboy | Hacker News Reader

After the Time person of the year thing there was a bit of an online spat about who did and didn't get featured on the cover and who was most deserving of the credit. To me it seems a bit unseemly and unnecessary. I don't think any of these people themselves are jostling for the position of most heroic person of 2017.

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> I don't think any of these people themselves are jostling for the position of most heroic person of 2017

I'm curious about the phenomenon. We had mass acceptance of horrifying behaviour. Switches flipped and what was dirty but tolerable became unacceptable. If we wish to replicate this process in other domains, it would be helpful to understand what happened.

This seems so odd to me. In the circles I am most familiar with, such behavior has always been seen as reprehensible. I suppose there have always been rumors that such behavior was commonly accepted in Hollywood, and as it turns out, silicon valley doesn't seem too different. Well, I think Washington DC deserves to be on that list, too. I wonder how common it is for more "powerful" people in other circles to get away with this kind of malarky?

As a non-SV insider, I was struck by something Vi Hart posted on Twitter recently[1]:

"When we were looking for funding or a home for our VR group, we were warned in private conversations against SO MANY funders and leaders within companies, by their equally powerful white dude colleagues. Often several separate warnings against the same dude. I KNOW YOU KNOW."

Sounds to me like the upper echelons know and don't care.

[1]: https://twitter.com/vihartvihart/status/938212942356537345

Most places that it's shown up are workplaces with powerful, almost untouchable figures (a TV star or a 'rockstar programmer' or a CEO or an elected representative, or, of course, a priest, going back a bit further), and defective or non-existent HR. I suspect it's less common in more normally-functioning workplaces, simply because people would feel safer in complaining to HR, and special accommodations for the predator would be less likely to be made.

Also, of course, it was not exactly advertised that this was going on.

more importantly if we wish to avoid replication in other domains it would be helpful if more people understood what happened. Our thoughts and culture are easily changed by those who know how to flip the right switches as you put it. This can work for or against any particular interest.

I think it is a combination of finally enough people starting to actively speak out against that behavior, the power these groups finally gained and amassed pieces of knowledge that those practices are really harmful. We just gained critical mass to flip the switch. To replicate it faster we should probably speed up human learning and development in some way.

I don't know which people were on the cover but I saw Fowler and many more on the "cover" [referring to the Time "Person of the Year" video on their website]. No one reads the magazine anymore, right? The real prestige is being featured in the video IMO.

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