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Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

So now posting a (to some people) offensive picture on a slide means that it is okay to physically attack (or attempt to) other people?

If I even get to make a presentation in such a place, and fill it with Nazi symbols I may be asked to go (or the attendents might leave) but I am not going to be physically attacked for it.

Yet bitch never killed anyone.

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If that was a physical attack, then all the bottles kagen threw into the audience were also physical attacks.

Frankly, it would have been a better outcome if kagen had gotten beamed in the head with the bottle. In that case, at least, innocent bystanders wouldn't have had to deal with hot sauce.

Yeah, OP, I agree with all your points, the fact that you responded violently kinda undermines the whole thing. Throwing glass around could have gone really badly as well.

You acknowledge that it would have been better to calmly walk out, but this seems in your mind to be rather a matter of style and grace, rather than the fatal loss of the moral high ground that it is. Physical violence is worse than sexist language, full stop.

But yeah, as I say, I agree with you. This kinda shit is what makes me puts me off the whole tech scene and makes me glad that I'm kind of an outsider at the moment. That and the fact that if I'd been there I'd probably have been tempted to shout "FOOD FIGHT!"

EDIT: I see that it was plastic, not glass. Still, play nice children.

It's clear from the OP that the intention was not violent, but rather, to toss the bottle back in the way that Kagan was tossing them to the audience.

In other words, the primary error in judgment was one of distance and trajectory, not malicious intent.

Yeah, but in the case where Kagan was tossing them to the audience, I'm assuming he gave them some indication that he was about to hurl something at them so they'd be ready to catch it. Did the OP give Kagan the same heads up?

The point of the hotsauce was that Noah was rewarding people who asked good questions. She didnt warn anyone that she was throwing it back, i just heard a big thud and saw hotsauce everywhere. As was said earlier, it was more an error in trajectory and force than malice.

And it seems pretty clear as well that Noah didn't mean to offend her with the slide. People are mad at him for the effect his presentation had. There's hardly enough evidence to establish malice on his part — much less than on Anne's, since at least she was admittedly angry when she threw the sauce. Both actions were ill-considered.

They didn't attack anyone. If you view it as an attack, then you must conceed that they were attacked first, since the speaker was throwing bottles to the audience.

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