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Comment by ojosilva | Hacker News Reader

> Hey, do you have a Grindr account?

> Lol

I can understand this is most probably a private lol by a surprised. But how about we at least stop making these are you gay? Lol! a public moment worth screenshooting?

An Ashley Madison data leak is a national embarrassment whereas a Grindr one, a "national security threat" [1]. Being on AM is just a vaudevillian indiscretion, being on Grindr is bro lol that feeds hate and wrecks lives.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/3/28/18285274/grindr...

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In places they are using Grindr and other apps to target and arrest people. [0] Worse than what the phrase 'wrecks lives' connotes.

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/egypt-l...

The photo used for the account is also kind of mildly offensive in the same vein. (To non-gay readers: this is not actually how gay men pose for their grindr pics.)

Update: I decided to make the same point in the comments on his post and he responded in about the douchiest low-key homophobic way imaginable: http://disq.us/p/2c9pnno Tech has a long way to go on homophobia :(

I am gay and don't find it offensive or homophobic* at all , just a bit cringey. To non-gay readers: yes actually some gays do pose with grimaces.

* I'm even inclined to say you are kind of abusing these Big Words, but not care to start argument.

I did say "mildly" offensive. There's lots of screenshots of the Grindr profile grid posted online. I'd be surprised if you could find one including a profile photo that looks much like this one.

But really the point isn't that no gay man has ever posed for a photo like this. (I'm sure some straight men have too.) The point is that the photo is used to make a joke about how ridiculous Scott would look if he was gay. He couldn't just have a normal dating profile photo.

That is plainly untrue, some gays do use ridiculous facial expressions.

So do some straight men. That's not the point. (I think you responded before my edit - sorry.)

If the pose is a common one, it should be easy to find a screenshot. I couldn't, personally.

And I think you actually meant "not professional" instead of "homophobic".

> The point is that the photo is used to make a joke about how ridiculous Scott would look if he was gay.

You seem to have decided that Troy is homophobic and therefore this picture is mocking gay people, and not just mocking Scott's attempts at being sexy.

> He couldn't just have a normal dating profile photo.

They both delight in getting unflattering pictures of each other into every security presentation they can. I think you're reading into this too much.

What would be the point of changing the photo if it didn't annoy Scott when he saw it?

There is clearly no technical reason for Scott's involvement in the first place, as Troy could just have created an account himself using any photo whatsoever. The whole post is structured as a joke about the idea of Scott being gay and having a Grindr account.

Do I think Troy is a raging homophobe? No. But his initial response to my comment was to claim that he chose the photo because it looked like a typical Grindr profile photo (!), rather than to just admit that it was a joke. That doesn't increase my confidence that the photo was chosen with good intentions. You apparently think that there is another explanation for the choice of photo relating to some inside baseball between Troy and Scott (which I frankly don't care about, not knowing either of these guys). If that is the real reason then Troy could just have said so himself.

In general, making in-jokes in public blog posts that anyone can read doesn't always go over so well. I'm not saying "Troy is a class A homophobe and must be deleted from the internet". I'm just registering that I'm one gay dude who is bored of this kind of gay joke.

> There is clearly no technical reason for Scott's involvement in the first place, as Troy could just have created an account himself using any photo whatsoever.

"I was able to log into my own account after resetting the password" isn't a particularly good attention grabber

> The whole post is structured as a joke about the idea of Scott being gay and having a Grindr account.

Scott is married, I'm pretty sure the joke is about him being on a dating app in the first place.

> [...]

I guess at this point, Troy assumes he's famous enough that everyone who sees his blog will know about him and Scott as well as all the shenanigans they get up to with each other.

Tech and infosec definitely have a lot of problems with inclusivity towards anyone that's not a straight white male, but I really don't think that this blog post was written from the perspective of "ha ha ha ha imagine being gay".

Still, he usually takes criticism, let's see if he does a followup.

>"I was able to log into my own account after resetting the password" isn't a particularly good attention grabber

You’d still be resetting the password in a way that doesn’t require access to the associated email account but only knowledge of the email address. It doesn’t make any difference whether you created the account yourself or got a friend to do it for you. You're still showing that anyone who knows my email address can access my Grindr account, which surely ought to grab people's attention.

From my point of view, its a precursor to a sensible discussion about this that we acknowledge that Troy had Scott make the profile purely to add a little humor to the post. There’s of course nothing wrong with adding humor to a blog post. However, subtly mocking people for being gay is a pretty ingrained part of our culture, and it’s easy for straight people to thoughtlessly slip into doing it.

I know that you have given an alternative explanation of the intention behind the photo, but unfortunately it's not the explanation that Troy himself gave in the comments.

I feel the same way about this issue (the chat and the photo) and the response by Troy just feels... abysmal.

He starts out by saying:

"The photo, however, is the one most consistent with others I saw on Grindr during this exercise." and then continues to agree with the following statement: "... you didn't choose this pose by looking at typical Grindr profile photos."

Isn't Grindr a hookup app? It's not like all gay people use it. It'd be like me asking a straight married friend if they used Tinder. Would "lol" be offensive in that context?

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