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Comment by Thoreandan | Hacker News Reader

Seriously? "Ha ha ha fat chicks! Ha ha, theorem proved, bitches!" [image of him doggy-style dry-humping a woman he assures you in the comments 'he has no idea who that girl is'] ...The subject is honestly interesting, I'd like to see the game-dev work he did, but this guy has a huge problem throwing sex into it. Way to make women hackers feel welcome there, "bro".

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To be fair, this makes male hackers feel unwelcome too. I opened the page, thought "I'm not being caught with this open at work", and came here to deride the author. That's nice work, Lou...

I felt uncomfortable with it as a male hacker as well, though the story is actually interesting.

Either he's actually naïve enough not to know that he's being offensive or he's devious enough to be using it as troll bait.

What's the advantage of trolling in this form? All he's achieved are a few one-liner comments saying he's an idiot.

Victory?

"all publicity is good publicity".

Piss people off == more visits == more sales?

piss people off == less links == less visits == less sales. clearly their is a fine line, but I think the best link baiters lead with a premise that is outrageous, and content that is pretty agreeable.

i don't see what the problem is, to be honest

I think you misread that. The girl in the first picture is his girlfriend but he is referring to the second picture of the girl in the red dress when he says, "has no idea who it is."

THank you for stating this. I skimmed through after the first picture, decided this wasn't worth my time.

It's not even just the sexism. It's a problem of needless distraction over what needs to be readable material.

Yes, seriously. Not everyone has a problem with sex, either in earnest or in banter. If you're too uptight for reading creative people's blogs, maybe you should abandon link aggregators and go for something squeaky-clean and PC like CNN or WSJ. The level of PC groupthink on this thread is downright depressing.

The author was both skilled and entertaining. If you don't like his dev blog, then don't read it! Move on to the next link.

I'm offended by your insinuation that only hacker women would be offended. My guess is someone's girlfriend or wife or little sister might be in the kitchen reading her iPad and stumble onto this thread by mistake, and be offended that you're not considering that she's offended.

Honest question: are you serious? What point are you trying to make?

Please don't troll here. Take the time to make an argument.

I have no argument. I just think it's kind of ridiculous how huge of a reaction there was to what is probably the mildest example of sexism i've ever seen. There's only one actual reference which could be interpreted as sexist (because apparently a stereotype about the mongul empire immediately defers to rape?) in the whole post and the rest of it is just tacky/creepy look-here-are-some-pictures-of-me-with-women.

Just as some people need to be told to reign in the sexualization of their posts, some people need to reign in the outrage.

Also I was really annoyed by the pointless use of the word 'hacker'. Seriously, people, just stop using the damn word. It's meaningless.

To speculate a bit, it seems like many people in the tech industry feel like women have been historically alienated in the industry, feel that this is unjust, and as a result are willing to err on the side of being oversensitive in this issue (perfection of course being impossible in this sort of fuzzy cultural area).

A similar thing applies to talking about women on the site. You can see the difference between referring to an example woman reading hacker news as a fellow hacker vs "someone's girlfriend or wife or little sister might be in the kitchen reading her iPad", right? The latter reinforces sexist stereotypes of women only being related to technology through men in their life rather than engaging with it themselves (plus, if someone's on hacker news, it's fair shorthand to assume that they're a hacker rather than a relation of one, whatever you want "hacker" to mean).

(Also you obviously do have an argument. The discussion is better when you state it outright rather than lashing out with vague sarcasm.)

I don't have an argument. I have a complaint, and I lodge it with sarcasm and parody because I don't think it's worth discussing. If somebody had something meaningful to say other than "I am disgusted by these pictures and a vague reference to a guy ravaging his girlfriend like a 14th century asian warrior!" maybe we would have something to talk about.

I think there is a bit of cultural relativism going on here. As someone who goes to UCSB, that's simply the culture here. We have a lot of very smart "bro"s and while it might offend you, that's just the way we roll. It's about being chill. partying hard on weekends, getting drunk, having fun, having sex and then working hard during the week (some people are partying all the time, but as the uni has been getting higher and higher caliber students every year this has become rarer.. well except for the SBCC kids.).

While maybe a bit crude, for the average women at UCSB this wouldn't be "unwelcoming".

Maybe he should have targeted the website more to the average American and mentioned Jesus a few times (I'm being facetious to make a point)

I went to UCSB as an undergrad for 2 years. I can guarantee if you ask -- and really listen! -- to women at UCSB, every single one would find this unwelcoming. Sexism isn't a 'culture' it is disgusting. Way to go 'bro'.

Now hang on, pretty much a lot of people have sex just like being depicted here. Pretty much, a lot. Sexism < Sex.

Wait what.. The problem is that women hackers might not feel welcome, because 'sex has been thrown into it'. Seriously? The author obviously intended it to be funny in a way, so if you don't like it (which of course is subjective), don't come up with over-emancipated crap like this :).

I for one think that people ought to take stuff less seriously, and this writing style seems befitting. Way to go!

I didn't notice at first, but there is a problem. Not sex specifically, but the asymmetry. In the photo as well as in the text, the all too familiar "male over female" pattern showed all over.

Now if it were a female hacker talking the same talk and showing the same photo, only with her banging her boyfriend from behind, then it would be different, because this situation definitely isn't the default. It could still be offensive, but I would find it funnier.

I would go so far as to say it is pornographic. I don't have a personal problem with the style, but degradation as humor has never been a good enough excuse, in my household, anyway. I just sort of pity the kind of thinking that begets such accoutrements.

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Umm, it's a real thing that really happens.

PS: http://xkcd.com/386/ Duty Calls, but I am at work and can't post specifics... argh first world problems indeed.

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Explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegging_(sexual_practice)

This is one of the worst trolls i've seen on HN. Obvious ignorance of pegging, flame-baiting the downvoters and trying to link the possibility of alternative sex acts with physics.

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She could bang him with her fist too. That would be from behind, and completely feasible with human anatomy. Clearly you haven't been on the internet very long. I can probably find you video evidence in about 20 minutes...

I think "throwing in sex" and "throwing in derogatory content" are a little different. I didn't mind his writing style but the pictures (sans the monkey shot) and captions took away from the article. He's free to do as he pleases, but I respect him a lot less for choosing to use such content. I don't really want fat chick jokes while reading a game development article.

EDIT: Whoops, spelling.

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