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Comment by slickdork | Hacker News Reader

Qualification: - Swashbuckling attitude, crafty humor, and general aura of badassery

I dont want to be the director of rat extermination, but i wouldn't mind working for whoever writes copy on the nyc gov job postings.

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I actually find it pretty cringe - trying to insert movie/cartoon tropes into real life. Definitely written by someone raised on too much TV and internet.

Jobs probably not a good fit for you, then

Agreed. Really feeling like an old man dinosaur reading a job listing written by a memelord.

What’s wrong with having a little fun. Life is just life then you die. No harm in some memes.

Because it’s annoying

Not so long ago, phrases like “rockstar” and “ninja” were pretty pervasive in software job listings.

Which were also cringe

We're looking for a 10x rockstar who thrives in cringey environments

Must be self-sufficient, able to work alone, and a team player.

I wouldn't say cringe, it's just a form of content marketing. If it were a standard dry job post would we even be talking about it? It drummed up interest for the position while simultaneously showing a humanized NYC government who takes the rat problem seriously.

More clever than cringe in my opinion.

I would generally agree but this position seems unique enough to warrant some latitude.

Lighten up Francis.

I don't know. This entire job listing smells of a PR role created to communicate how the New York government is getting the job done rather than actually getting the job done.

Thanks for making my day! You described exactly the picture i had in my mind...well plus he was from London and looked a bit like Sherlock Holmes (just for the interview of course).

>>New York’s Citywide Director of Rodent Mitigation.

That could be also the Director for IT security ;)

Being from Europe, is that whole thing New York City humor? It's incredible funny:

>>New York City’s rats are legendary for their survival skills, but they don’t run this city – we do.

I'm picturing Quint from Jaws.

Y'all know me. Know how I earn a livin'. I'll catch this furball for you, but it ain't gonna be easy. Bad rodent. Not like going down to the sewer and chasing mice and raccoons. This rat, swallow your whole pizza slice. No shakin', no tenderizin', down it goes. And we gotta do it quick, that'll bring back your stock traders, put all your businesses on a payin' basis. But it's not gonna be pleasant. I value my neck a lot more than three thousand bucks, chief. I'll find him for three, but I'll catch him, and kill him, for ten. But you've gotta make up your minds. If you want to stay alive, then ante up. If you want to play it cheap, be on welfare the whole winter. I don't want no volunteers, I don't want no deputies, there's too many CEOs on this island. Ten thousand dollars for me by myself. For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.

(I like that "island" still works because Manhattan)

I read the headline and pictured a mobster from Goodfellas.

I mean, how could it not be?

They’re looking for Charlie

I don't know how good Charlie is at his job, though. He has a manual process involving rusty nails on a bat.

HN post right above this "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2022)". NYC is!

He has actually started to drown them lately. You can do a lot at once, and there is little cleanup necessary. Most importantly, you won't hear their screams.

Good luck getting him to leave Philly, though.

Wow, this person sounds totally inhumane.

HR tells me this type of language biases your applicant pool toward men. “Swashbuckling, badassery”. Who are you imagining from that statement?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Marley

A feminine fictional (animated) character that was created by a man? Is this supposed to be a counter example or supporting evidence?

Why does it matter what gender the creator is?

here you go

https://old.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/

A subreddit full of literally cherrypicked examples of men badly writing women characters doesn't say anything about the general case, never mind any particular case.

Well I was *hoping* you'd pick up on many of the tropes of male-written femme characters brought out in that sub were applicable to the character mentioned above.

But here's an article to list some of the tropes out more explicitly:

https://baos.pub/what-happens-when-men-write-women-b89bf325c...

I admit I'm not very familiar with the Monkey Island series but literally the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article for it points out that the primary purpose of this character is to be the primary love interest of the (male) protagonist

Bonus, here's some really fun visualizations that I think you'd enjoy regardless of whether you agree with me or not :)

https://pudding.cool/2020/07/gendered-descriptions/

https://pudding.cool/2017/08/screen-direction/

https://pudding.cool/2017/03/film-dialogue/

Thanks for the last three links; it's interesting to see data analysis like that, even if I disagree on some of the presentation and the claim in the first link that even women readers dislike the presentation of women characters in books. Straight romance books saturated with tropes, in many cases far more explicitly than even porn, are massively popular among adult women.

My point is that if you comment "A female character written by a man" as an inherent mark against something, that's still a fallacy no matter what statistics say. If you had comments about Monkey Island in particular, then it would have been best to just say that, rather than directly say that no man could ever write a good woman character.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Bonny

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/textio-unitive-bias-software_...

Isn't it kind of sexist to assume that women can't be or strive for those things?

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