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Comment by vessenes | Hacker News Reader

This is a seriously damning essay from someone who's clearly working through PTSD issues (or is an amazing liar).

Part of the issue is that young fast-growth CEOs don't major on empathy, typically. It's somewhat contrary to the necessities of the job. These co-founders have absolutely no concept of how this woman feels, or if they do, they have determined that they won't let her know about it. The best thing say Paul Graham could do would be to hire them a crisis management coach, stat.

While the co-founders are reportedly worrying a bit about valuation right now, they could (and should) be turning this into an amazing PR story; massively over-compensating her, setting up a Lloyds-based insurance coverage program, appearing on something like Oprah to talk over how it felt, and what we can all do as we're moving into this awesome social-based home sharing..

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>>or is an amazing liar

I know that people were doubting the veracity of the story in the first place, but I think the initial AirBnB PR statement laid that to rest. At this point, what would EJ gain by lying? Anything that's a blatant lie could just be replied with by "Nope" by AirBnB, and she could only hurt her case by lying about anything right now.

Honestly, after what appears to be a month with no help, no reply, no customer service, veiled threats, and an offer to "get a cup of coffee"...I'm honestly surprised this essay isn't more vitriolic.

(Disclaimer: I'm not saying that she's lying, and I see no element that makes me believe that she lies. I don't even see any concrete element pointing to a conspiracy, I'm merely pondering how credible it might be).

> what would EJ gain by lying?

AirBnB has the potential to become very disruptive for the whole hostel industry. This means that there are people, some of them with deep pockets, some of them less than honest, and some of them both, who really want them to fail.

What's AirBnB's main challenge? It needs people to trust each other, in a society which promotes mistrust. The easiest way to destroy them is to prevent this trust from being created and maintained. If you wanted to destroy them in a shady way, your best bet would be to create a smear campaign based on a traumatizing violation, exactly such as what allegedly happened to this woman.

Moreover, if you were to create such a smear campaign, your best bet wouldn't be to have an accomplice playing the victim: it would be to choose a perfect genuine victim (likable, vocal, blogging, emotionally sensitive, and with good writing skills), and send real thugs actually destroy her home in the most traumatizing way, including psychopathic "nice" e-mails sent while wrecking the place havoc.

There's only one problem with your thought process: even if the "thugs" were sent by the big bad hotel industry, they have no influence over the way that AirBnB responds to the incident. If they would have handled it in a responsible, savvy way this would be a non-story, or maybe even a big PR win. The "devious" plan only works if AirBnB bungles the ball, which they have done. They have no one to blame for that but themselves.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter who caused what to happen to this woman, does it? AirBnB have obviously given credence to the basic tenants of her story (she is a person, she used AirBnB, she was ransacked), that is enough. The only thing that matters after that is the way they handled the situation.

I never discussed the appropriateness of AirBnB's response, neither to defend nor to accuse them.

I only said that if one wants to destroy them in possibly illegal ways, making such an event occur looks like an excellent move.

Bonus point, from the attacker's point of view, if AirBnB reacts inappropriately of course. But even if they had been faultless, people would still have remembered this story every time they considered renting their home. Notice that the focus is on the emotional harm rather than the financial one, i.e. the one AirBnB cannot fix even if they want to.

Way to go with the empathy. You'd make a great AirBnb spokesman. :)

I don't think EJ gives a flying monkey's back side about how "disruptive" AirBnb is, or has spent any time thinking about how her story would impact their financing and business model. Because, really, who thinks like that?

> This is a seriously damning essay from someone who's clearly working through PTSD issues (or is an amazing liar).

I'm not going to defend AirBNB but I do have to say that I have an incredibly hard time identifying with this woman's writing.

Ultimately, some tweakers trashed her apartment and stole her stuff. Is that a bummer? Of course. If that happened to me, would I be angry, furious? Absolutely. Would I change the locks, clean up, and lawyer up on AirBNB? I guarantee it.

But the sheer levels of emotion she's experiencing over an event where, basically, her stuff got trashed, suggests to me that she probably had so many emotional stability issues to begin with that she shouldn't have been participating in something where "strangers trash your apartment" is obviously at risk of happening.

"But the sheer levels of emotion she's experiencing over an event where, basically, her stuff got trashed, suggests to me that she probably had so many emotional stability issues to begin with that..."

Being traumatized by someone violating your home, privacy, and personal life is not evidence of "emotional stability issues", it's a perfectly natural and common reaction.

I think you're seriously overestimating the extent to which everyone else in the world's mind works just like yours. You may be too cool and rational to get upset at this experience (or think you are, at least), but that doesn't mean everyone else is--or should be.

I'm not arguing that it's not uncommon to be upset after a break-in. I'm saying that the levels of emotional response she's describing are so over-the-top that I find it incredibly difficult to identify with them.

An inability to return to the place due to panic (five weeks after the incident, no less)... lying in a fetal position outside the door.. these are not the actions of a well-balanced person who is in a difficult emotional state due to circumstances. These are the actions of someone who really needs some serious help.

> I'm saying that the levels of emotional response she's describing are so over-the-top that I find it incredibly difficult to identify with them. [...] These are not the actions of a well-balanced person who is in a difficult emotional state due to circumstances. These are the actions of someone who really needs some serious help.

What's not the action of a well-balanced person is telling her or anyone else how they should feel in response to traumatic events. There are many, many people--men as well as women, so you can't write this off as some kind of weak-minded feminine hysteria--who are mugged, for example, and consequently develop serious neuroses that take them years to overcome. A former school mate of mine, an ex-special-forces martial arts bad-ass who you'd think would be fearless, had that happen to him and could barely get himself to leave his apartment for an entire year. That kind of response isn't based on a calm and rational risk assessment, but that doesn't make it any less genuine and deeply felt. Sufferers are often aware on a conscious rational level that they're overreacting, but that doesn't make the problem magically vanish.

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