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Comment by crhulls | Hacker News Reader

I find myself looking at the guy's picture and telling myself "of course that is what he looks like!"

But on the flip side, we all know it is a bad idea to judge a book by its cover. How many times can we all recall doing this and feeling bad when our snap judgement was incorrect?

But look at the guy! What is it we are all picking up on in these comments. I am not the only one. Is there something about how he is positioning himself that warrants this? Or do we need to be more aware of our own biases?

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I think judging based on the cover is fine when we're judging what the cover is clearly and intentionally trying to communicate to us about the book within.

The pose, the unbuttoned shirt, the hair, those are all conscious choices to communicate a sleazeball personality that probably plays great with his friend/colleague network.

If we were judging someone from a cultural context that's unfamiliar to us or based on irrelevant characteristics like race or gender that would be incorrect and likely biased. But in this case we're just clearly receiving the message he's trying to communicate with intentionality

There's a difference between physical characteristics and fashion. You should not judge someone by their physical characteristics - by and large that's out of their control. Their fashion, on the other hand, is how they've decided to present themselves, and is absolutely fair game for judgement, especially for things like corporate headshots in which one is very intentionally choosing how they would like to be viewed by the world.

This fellow decided to present himself as something like a cross between a pickup artist and a street magician, which seems like it was pretty on the money.

I suspect it's less his physical characteristics, or even his clothing and jewelry, but almost exclusively his body language that is producing this reaction.

No, it's definitely the accoutrements he decides to wrap himself in.

Normal people don't dress or look like that. It's a choice, and he's using it to communicate and signal non-verbally who he is and what he values.

His clothing, accessory, and hair style choices make him appear like he's about to sell me a used car, or muscle me out of my own company.

He's almost like the caricature image of a techbro douchebag scammer CEO, but then all kinds of people can look like all sorts of things and be far from them. SBF, the biggest techbro douchebag scammer CEO of them all, doesn't really look at all like what he is. He perhaps should have looked more like this guy and a few less people would have been fooled (maybe).

If he was instead featured in a haircut magazine on a table in a SuperClips, it’d be less jarring.

The part I struggle with is what exactly he's trying to say with his dress. Like if it was classically formal, I could see that he's trying to convey maybe a trusted solid businessman. But this is more like.... street magician? I'm all for people doing interesting things with their personal style, but man his style sends a very weird message.

I would wager some of it is from unconscious bias since he is already positioned as a criminal before you even even see the photograph. Your brain wants to tell itself that it can identify such criminals so it picks up on what it can.

The rest is very much "oh, this person is now known as a criminal, let me find the most sinister looking photo of them possible."

There is a reason that photo was selected for the article. It definitely amplifies a message.

The photo gives off RapGenius founder vibes (google their photos for anyone not around for the time when the tech media proclaimed that site was going to be the next big thing).

This thread is an almost perfect example of confirmation bias.

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