Hacker News Reader

Comment by danilocampos | Hacker News Reader

Couple pieces to this.

First – the fact that this guy's employer made a kneejerk reaction is no one's fault but the employer.

Next – let's talk about this red herring of "sexism." Making a phallus joke might be sexist depending on context. Or it might not be. Sexism is not at issue here.

The individual in question concedes that they did, in fact, make the joke.

From PyCon's code of conduct:

"All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks."

A joke about dicks? That seems to run afoul of the code of conduct the attendees agreed to. Sexist or not.

There's a discussion to be had around the best way to confront these behaviors. But regardless of your position on that, it remains the employer's decision, and therefore their mistake, to fire this person.

(Disclosure: I am acquainted with Adria and we've appeared together on a panel.)

View on HN

Are you seriously suggesting the code of conduct applies to PRIVATE conversations between TWO people who obviously know each other? It is not like they meant to offend somebody. I am assuming they weren't talking loudly but rather meant to converse between each other. How I talk to my buddy is no ones fucking business.

How about you tell your friend of of those an American, a Russian and a German walk into a bar jokes, someone overhears it, snaps a picture and announces to his twitter following what a xenophobic asshole you are?

If it were private, it wouldn't have happened with people nearby to hear it and the photo wouldn't have depicted dozens of people surrounding.

So you're saying "private" is not in fact, well, "private". I grew up as a kid on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, in Eastern Europe, where as it happens walls had ears and "private" was not in fact "private". To see this stuff repeating 25 years later in the free world is scary.

How on earth can you expect privacy in a conversation that people literally cannot help but overhear? This was a crowd of people in an audience either waiting for or listening to a presentation.

Yes, that's right. A privately run conference asking attendees to behave professionally around other attendees is exactly like the KGB, and is a sure sign that we are sliding downward into totalitarianism.

Thank you -- all of these hate-laden comments are making me lose my mind.

This is going already too far, but anyway, here it goes. First of all, during the '80s (the time when I grew up) the KGB or the Securitate (the institution that was operating in my country) had already left their "harsh" methods behind, for the most part anyway, but they were instead operating through the peer pressure of those around you (friends, neighbors, strangers on the street, even close relatives).

More exactly, had you by chance happened to listen to Radio Free Europe or made negative comments about the fact that there was no meat for sale in the stores, some of those mentioned above might have just "snitched" you to the powers that be (the Securitate in my country's case). You weren't risking that much, "just" your day job (like one of the guys in this story) and probably also the roof above your kids' heads (now if you don't have a job and you can't pay mortgage/rent you're in the same situation). Like I said, maybe it didn't seem much from the outside, but it was enough.

All this because someone might have overheard you say something that wasn't abiding to the rules of the time. Yes, I do find the power to speak freely a little bit scary.

Obviously I'm not arguing that Richards behaved appropriately in publicly shaming them. I'm saying that they behaved inappropriately in making the joke in the first place, and that there's nothing scary or totalitarian about a privately run conference having a code of conduct asking people to act professionally.

Of course, the proper way to handle this would have been for Richards to talk to someone running the conference. They would have then gone to the people who were making the inappropriate jokes and asked them to remember that this was a professional environment, upon which apologies would have been given, and that would have been the end of it.

Of course it is! Either you're free to say anything or you're not free at all. There's no relativism here.

You are free to say anything, and the people who run the conference are free to ask you to leave.

If you're at my private property, am I free to kill you? It's the same thing, it just falls under another paragraph of the constitution (in most countries; America has exceptions where you are indeed free to do this, but this is another topic). Let's forget the law for a second; by group opinion, do they have the moral right to do this?

I'm squeamish about this "moral rights" concept which seems at odds with my general view of morality, but I'll run with it assuming a sort of vague "is this fair?" definition.

>If you're at my private property, am I free to kill you? It's the same thing

No, it's not even close to the same thing. I have the right to ask you to leave, regardless of whether you're on my private property. The difference is that if you're on my property, my request actually carries weight. Your being on my private property is a privilege that I can extend to you and later revoke. I cannot control what you say, but I can make your welcome at my property conditional upon what you say. And in general, you do not have a "moral right" to trespass[1].

I do not have the right to kill you, regardless of whether you're on my private property. They are not comparable ideas.

And yes, I think that in terms of fairness, a property owner generally has the right to ask anyone on her property to leave for just about any reason or no reason[2]. If you come to my house and start making dick jokes that I find distasteful, there is absolutely nothing wrong with me asking you to cut it out or leave. But I don't have the right to kill you.

[1] There are exceptions, of course, which is why I dislike talking about general moral rights. I'm sure you can craft some clever thought experiment that will trip up this general rule, which is one of the reasons I consider myself a utilitarian.

[2] see above

Actually, I agree that killing someone is not the same thing as asking someone to leave, I was just alluding to "freedom of speech" and the constitution.

If we're at your house, sure, of course morally I'd have to leave if you ask me to. But this isn't your house anymore when there is an entire group involved, as anyone that has ever thrown a party can confirm. Group morality is (sometimes unfortunately) the average of what the group believes it to be.

I think it's clear what this group thinks about who's wrong and who's right.

Anyways, thanks for the detailed reply :)

P.S. Yes, I do believe that morality can be made absolute and quantifiable - you have different characteristics (types of behavior) and different levels of agreement with them (say, from 0 for "YOU'RE GONNA BURN IN HELL", through 5 for "I don't care", to 10 for "I do this all the time!").

Exactly. If you're sitting in a restaurant eating with some acquaintances/friends, you shouldn't expect privacy there either. The table next to you can get offended with some random inside joke that includes the words "penis", "boob", or maybe even "yoga pants."

No jokes allowed unless you're wrapped in a Faraday cage filled in with sound proof material. None whatsoever.

That analogy is completely ridiculous. Restaurants are not venues that require customers to agree to a code of conduct barring inappropriate jokes. They're also not the kind of places where people are sitting quietly and near enough each other to hear jokes told quietly.

Python conventions are places where people can overhear my conversation, take pictures of me, and publicize them as personal accusations with impunity?

I've been to plenty of conferences and I haven't heard of this happening, except to politicians when they forget there are microphones and news reporters around.

This is why our society does, in fact, have a separate set of privacy rules for people classified as "public figures". So the rest of us can hang out and chat in comfort by assuming in all probability the absence of a news reporter or papparazi trying to play "gotcha" with a camera and microphone.

Let's keep the threads of argument separate here. On the one hand, we have the question of whether or not that joke was acceptable in that situation, and in the ancestor comment, danilocampos was arguing that it was not. I tend to agree.

Then there is the separate question of whether publicly shaming the person as Richards did was an acceptable response. I certainly do not think it was. But it's a separate issue.

You don't believe in "proportionate response"?

The degree of the reaction is completely separate from the degree of the offense?

Consider Oritz vs. Swartz.

I don't understand why you think I don't believe in proportionate response, based on my previous comment. The reaction by Richards was not an official reaction by the organizers of PyCon.

If a teenager shoplifts a stereo from a store, and a vigilante witnesses it and shoots him in the head, I think we can all still agree that the teenager was in the wrong. The fact that the vigilante was even more in the wrong doesn't change that.

Apologies to all teenagers, I know you're tired of being used to epitomize offenders all the time. I told you you'd regret that whole lawn incident.

Because the two offenses aren't separate in the other direction.

    Teenager [commits offense], vigilante witness shoots offender in the head.

Where [offense] is

    A. shoplifts stereo, vs

    B. shooting store employees and preparing to shoot innocent bystanders.

If (A) the vigilante is a murderer, if (B) he's a hero.

So the ethics of the teenager's action (A or B) can be evaluated on its own, but the REaction of the vigilante can only be judged in the context of the teenager's action. The two actions are not mutually independent. One action is independent, but the other is dependent.

If PyCon is one of these "venues that require customers to agree to a code of conduct barring inappropriate jokes", many people will consider whether it's a venue in which they feel safe.

Safe? Why would that make anyone feel unsafe?

Conventions--and especially "hallway conversations" at conventions--tend to be one of the places people traditionally have a social more for being "private even when it's not private" (think Las Vegas.) It is a social more of such places for people to treat any conversation happening around them which is not intended for their ears, as if it wasn't happening. Restaurants are another good example of such a place.

There are many things I can say to people, which they will themselves appreciate hearing, but which I would feel unsafe saying, say, on the record on a public message board. Usually, if one wants to say these things "in confidence", one doesn't find a truly private space (a closed and sealed room)--one just relies on the social-etiquette confidence of a place like a restaurant.

What's private about a conversation being held in a crowd?

Whether they meant to offend people is irrelevant — its pretty clear that jokes w/ sexual innuendo in a public context isn't okay. Period.

Also, as others have said, this clearly wasn't a private situation. The whole problem with these jokes, even if not told directly to someone's face, is that they create a poisonous atmosphere.

>poisonous atmosphere

as opposed to publicly shaming someone without prior warning?

That's bad too, but I think the original point still stands.

I'm sorry, it's not clear to me. I do not think that there's something inherently sexist in sexual innuendo, or that it somehow isn't OK when among adults (and even if there's kids, they likely won't understand it - that's the beauty of innuendo).

You're doing a bit of mental gymnastics here, especially with your last example. Obviously, you're concerned with your security and comfortability, but you're taking it out of context.

Indeed, if I tell a hilarious racist joke as you've mentioned around the wrong people, it is very likely there will be a commotion that will get me removed from the setting. Even more so, the same wrong people might post it to their personal feed, announcing that you are, as you portrayed yourself, a xenophobic asshole. Now, if your boss happens to read that stream and hear that codesuela is a xenophobic asshole, they might decide to terminate you.

Your argument is that it wasn't meant to offend anybody. But it did, so that's out of play. You also seem to assume that they weren't talking loudly and somehow Adria was simply eavesdropping on them, which is just speculation on your part. While I agree that how you talk to your buddy is no one's business, that doesn't mean you're now exempt from being called out because it was meant to be private.

They were sitting in an audience with over ten people inside of ten feet. It doesn't matter how private you want your conversation to be, in that kind of setting you will be overheard and should act accordingly.

> Are you seriously suggesting the code of conduct applies to PRIVATE conversations between TWO people who obviously know each other?

She was speaking to one of the two people. Further, judging by the description which has only been supported, it was not a "private" conversation between two people.

In my workplace, we migh say that someone has a tiny dick and its a very light joke that every laughs about.

Their code of conduct also states that you may not take pictures of people without their express consent. I don't know why people concentrate on the issue of "who said what", that is such an extremely slippery slope I wouldn't dare going into it as a conference organizer.

But taking pictures (and then spreading them to your followers) is a very, very clear no go.

I think this point is key. There's plenty of blame on both sides here.

Yes, these kinds of jokes are immature and this conduct was ill advised.

That said, taking ambush pictures of nonconsenting parties and very publicly shaming them shouldn't be your go-to response. I'd say that response was completely disproportionate to the initial crime.

Far better to throw an (in person) "come on guys, be professional" their way and escalate from there. If that's too confrontational for your tastes, go talk to one of the PyCon volunteers and ask them to step in. I think it's kind of ridiculous that they (PyCon staff) didn't get a chance to resolve this issue discretely and had to hear about it alongside however many thousand other people.

It appears that PyCon staff did handle the incident, and did so sensibly and discretely:

http://pycon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappr...

It's not clear whether that happened before or after the photo was posted.

Edit: the code of conduct also says "Public shaming can be counter-productive to building a strong community. PyCon does not condone nor participate in such actions out of respect."

She took the picture before she got the pycon people involved. You can tell because of the times on her tweets. The picture was tweeted at 10:32, and she started calling for the pycon staff at 10:34.

that doesn't really make any difference, she still took the pictures and publicly shamed them and even now after everything leaves the photo up.

I'm not saying it does, just pointing out the order. I agree, no matter which way it happened, it was bad.

> Their code of conduct also states that you may not take pictures of people without their express consent.

Where is that? The only code of conduct I have found is here:

https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/

The only mention I see of photography is in this sentence.

> Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.

I think you could make a reasonable that this is "harrassing photography." (I disagree, but I think it's a matter of opinion.) I don't see anything about photography requiring consent, although the code of conduct is shorter than I expected (the "Longer Version" on that page is not much longer than the "Short Version"). Is this just a summary of a longer document somewhere?

I don't think anyone takes issue with talking to the PyCon organizers and even having them removed from the conference.

The employer made a mistake for sure, but so did your friend. Skewering someone in public on the Internet like that is immature and irresponsible. There are a million better ways she could have dealt with this.

> I don't think anyone takes issue with talking to the PyCon organizers and even having them removed from the conference.

They were not removed from the conference.

Oops! My point was that had stayed within PyCon it would not have been an issue (or at least not as big of one).

> Skewering someone in public on the Internet like that is immature and irresponsible. There are a million better ways she could have dealt with this.

I'm pretty sure relating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability shouldn't be something we call irresponsible. In fact, women who do otherwise are often asked to disclose in exactly the manner she did.

No matter how a woman chooses to address something like this, there's always someone who wants to talk about how she should have addressed it differently.

This is not about her being a woman. This is about responsibly dealing with a situation.

"Exactly the manner she did?" No one has ever been asked to disclose a photo with faces on Twitter to 9k followers.

The right thing to do is either deal with the person directly or escalate above them, whether you're a woman or not. Going straight to the mob is never the right answer.

> The right thing to do is either deal with the person directly or escalate above them, whether you're a woman or not. Going straight to the mob is never the right answer.

Isn't this exactly what happened though? She posted on her feed and asked if someone could speak to them and the Pycon officials saw her post and did exactly that. You're treating this as if she posted on her feed something like, "Can the people who employed these guys please fire them? Also, I want each of my followers to retweet this and make sure they get fired."

I think that the PyCon staff would have been a better group to escalate to, not a 9000 person mob (one of whom presumably did the intelligent thing and notified the staff)

I said this in another post and I'm going to repeat myself here. Social media is powerful (look at the recent Steubenville fiasco) and if you are going to put somebody out to hang you better be right. Considering she is part of the pr group for her company (developer evangelist?) I believe she has an understanding of what a twitter account with 9000 followers can do.

>Isn't this exactly what happened though?

Also, don't try to play with words, she did that and more. The sensible response would have been to tell them to stop and then if they didn't, contact one of the staff. A post on twitter saying "Conference etiquette: Sexual innuendos about forking and dongles are not cool" without a picture would have been much MUCH more tasteful.

She had many options. She could have gotten out of her seat and found a staff member to talk to. She could have sent an email. She could have called one of the numbers listed in the pycon code of conduct.

Instead, she posted a photo of some men on the Internet in order to publicly humiliate them. Are you advocating that people act this way whenever they get offended at a conference?

> This is not about her being a woman.

Of course it isn't, but the dynamics at play that happen in these cases are relevant and erasing them as if they don't exist is some kind of "well those don't make my argument stronger so I'm going to ignore them" nonsense.

"I'm pretty sure relating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability shouldn't be something we call irresponsible. In fact, women who do otherwise are often asked to disclose in exactly the manner she did."

That doesn't follow -- you're begging the question. Why is disclosing something public, if well detailed, not irresponsible when it can cause harm (as this situation did)? And why should people being previously asked to disclose such information make it a responsible action? Furthermore, do you have an example of such disclosures -- you speak as though you do?

I don't think it's fair to hold witnesses and reporters responsible for the consequences of telling the truth. The only person responsible for the speech that was reported are the people speaking.

I can't quite understand your last sentence, but if you are looking for people telling women that they are irresponsible for not speaking up, just read the comments on this recent discussion of the Steubenville rape:

http://www.underthegunreview.net/2013/03/18/henry-rollins-co...

There are quite a number of people there telling women that they are morally obligated to speak up when something bad happens.

Of course it's fair to hold "witnesses" and "reporters" responsible for the consequence of what they say.

The person responsible for the speech that was reported are the people speaking; the person responsible for the reportage of the speech is the person who did the reporting. The former resulted in a woman being uncomfortable while the latter lost a father of three his livelihood.

You've got a problem with apposite context and proportionality. A techie at a conference making a dongle joke is not a gay biker in a bar telling anal virginity jokes, is not the frat-boy gang rape of an unconscious teen girl.

True, they are all "bad things happening" - but that is such a large category that to act as if or argue any specific response is justified due to it belonging in that category is likely to lead to damaging over-reactions.

In the context of corporate public relations and harassment lawsuits in the workplace, which became relevant the second the tweet was sent, what she did was an extremely damaging over-reaction - which given the woman's background and role we can conclude was committed with malice aforethought. Your entire argument is based upon wildly inappropriate contextualisation.

I see. So in your view, she should have inquired how many children he had?

Is she also obligated to consider that in reporting the incident to conference staff? Or mentioning it to a friend? After all, either one of those could also conceivably result in the guy losing his job.

For the record, I should say that I agree that dongle jokes are not rape, and have never said otherwise.

i) The children don't come into it because she should have known that her actions were wildly disproportionate even if there were no dependents involved. Do you agree or disagree that her response lacked proportionality?

ii) Again, I'll point out that she did not in fact just report the incident to the conference staff. Any hypothetical scenario in which her response was not to publicise her grievance misses the main reason she deserves the harsh judgement she is receiving.

iii) You're presenting completely irrelevent scenarios as if they're relevant. Is the standard for responsible behaviour in the case of the gang rape of an unconscious teen different from the standard for responsible behaviour in the case of hearing a mildly risque joke by a guy in the row behind you at a tech conference? Is it very different? Is is very very very different? Is is perhaps so very different as to be utterly irrelevant?

Like I said, you have a problem with presenting apposite context and addressing proportionality. Try talking about what actually happened.

> elating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability

If the _best_ of her ability is to take a picture, put it on a public forum then tag it with an insult "ass clown" I don't know what to say. Maybe she should lose her job a "developers' advocate"

I would take issue with it, I think the sane course of action would be to either ignore it, or to ask the people in question to refrain from further innuendo. If they continue to make the jokes then more drastic action like removing them from the event might be appropriate.

Not being able to make sexually explicit jokes in private at a public conference is absolute ludicrous. No question that the offender here is the person posting this out of context and seemingly out of spite.

If you don't understand that there's no expectation of privacy when sitting in a crowded audience at a conference ... then you probably shouldn't be trusted to represent a company at a conference.

This was not in private. Their mouths were, what, two feet from the ears in front of them?

Do try and see past the simple physics of the situation--it's clear that they expected any leakage in their message passing to be ignored.

I agree they had that expectation. But that's the problem.

There are situations where they'd know it's not ok to make sexual jokes. They would not be making these jokes at a funeral, or at a niece's dance recital, or over dinner with their grandmothers.

Note also that they were in conversation with Adira seconds before they made the joke, so it's not entirely clear to me that they could even reasonably expect that they be ignored.

For a diverse, pluralistic civil society to work people need to have thick skins. Especially at remarks not directed at them.

Otherwise we have an overclass who has the power to police the conduct of an underclass.

Remember, they were literally in a crowded auditorium with hundreds of people around them. It's just not private.

If you happen to work in California, you should know that this kind of remark, if repeated and unwelcome, would constitute harassment. If the person concerned was in management at a company, that's a problem.

As for her reporting method, the conference organizers specifically say they want information in writing, and they want to be the ones handling it, not individual attendees.

https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/harassment-i...

I think the use of twitter could use some help, however.

> If you happen to work in California, you should know that this kind of remark, if repeated and unwelcome, would constitute harassment.

True, but unwelcome is key. How do you know if a remark is unwelcome? Someone tells you so -- either the offended or HR (whom the offended told). They don't post it on Twitter or blog about it, they talk about it with people in a position to correct the problem.

I know plenty of women who wouldn't feel the least bit offended by a dongle joke -- point being, you can't say "well there's a woman in earshot, better turn on the woman filter."

Personally I believe you should make an honest effort to behave professionally, especially in the presence of folks you don't know, but different folks have different yardsticks for this. That's why you communicate.

I think you had to be there. This year (and last year as well), there was a ton of messaging from the organizers/presenters/leaders regarding the past/future efforts to bring more women into the python community.

They were really proud that 20% of attendees were female (that was on a keynote slide), Guido wore a "python is for girls" shirt (as he did last year), the Pyladies organization sponsored a ton of events (pycon after party, a mani-pedi get-together, auction [1]), there were at least 4 groups with a booth in the vendors section with the goal to include more women (pyladies, ladycoders, ada initiative, some other one I forget).

I mean, it's not a black and white issue and I concede that those remarks will be taken different depending on the situation. However, in this situation where everyone is celebrating the progress that's been made (and knows how much more still needs to be done), such remarks are IMO totally inappropriate.

1: Technically, the auction was supporting the pyladies group, I don't know if they ran/sponsored it, but it was all for their benefit.

I think I see where you're coming from, but "totally inappropriate" seems excessive to me.

Maybe that's just semantics with my choice of words. To clarify, I disagree with anyone that says they were entirely in the right to be making whatever jokes they made during that time and place, and I believe the gal was right to be offended and to bring it up with the pycon staff (but that doesn't apply to how she did it and her subsequent activity).

That said, I don't understand how this snowballed into people getting fired from their jobs. What they did was wrong, but things really got blown out of proportion, and we the internet haven't been helping. The story should have ended with the stern talking to by the pycon staff.

> Not being able to make sexually explicit jokes in private at a public conference is absolute ludicrous.

In this case, the conference had an explicit policy prohibiting sexually explicit jokes. You can read the policy here: https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/

Note specifically the wording "Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue" and "Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for PyCon."

Expecting attendees of the conference to obey the conference rules in the crowded auditorium during a presentation seems quite reasonable to me. I am not sure violating it is a firing offense, but I cannot blame the person posting it for writing honestly about their own experience.

"Sexism is not at issue here."

I got the impression reading Adria's blog post that she thought she was responding to sexism. Sexism is what most everyone is responding to in this event -- real or imagined.

The problem is that the way Adria responded, in part, harmed people that didn't deserve harm (and if they did deserve it, it shouldn't be up to her to mete it out -- which by taking it public she is effectively doing). She should have kept their identities anonymous unless it was necessary to do otherwise.

In a culture that strives to be politically correct (no negative connotation intended), any egalitarian issue can be wielded like a weapon. I think Adria was aware of that, and so I think she deserves a fair amount of blame for the events that followed her actions.

So you'd agree that Adria shouldn't be allowed to PyCon next year since she posted face pictures of attendees (and sponsors) and then called them 'ass clowns'?

This is not just about PyCon that is for the whole world to see. Future employees, these guys' kids, family, friends. Is that acceptable you think?

I also think there is space here for PSF to also issue an explicit statement regarding public humiliation and posting face pictures of attendees with slanderous and insulting captions. It is about free speech and all, and maybe if she caught them in lobby without their badges on it might have been OK.

If anything this damaged PyCon's reputation. I don't want to go anymore as much. I keep my mouth shut anyway, but what if I say something wrong, or look at someone the wrong way -- now my picture with my badge and an insult is plastered over twitter. That is the definition of a hostile environment, no matter what gender, color, sexual orientation.

"the fact that this guy's employer made a kneejerk reaction is no one's fault but the employer."

Exactly. Let's direct our questions first at the employer. What she did wasn't exactly the coolest thing in the world, but she wasn't the one who fired the guy -- his employer did. I also dont get the sense that she wanted to really punish the guy; rather, she wanted to call out the practice.

Exactly. We need to be able to call out bad practices. People deny doing this stuff, they say we should report it, they say we should report it non-anonymously. Sadly every time we do... the same thing happens as a result.

This is argument ad vacua (I made that up). That is, if the employer fired the guy was living in vacuum where public relations, sexual harassment suits or the feminist movement's message entire had had no impact whatsoever on their decision, and further posited that employers in general care more about treating their employees with objective fairness than any potential threat to their reputation.... then perhaps you could isolate the fault to the employer. But that's simply not the world we operate in and even then you are discounting the ramifications of being publicly denouncement for anybody else the guy knows or will know in the future. There's plenty of blame to go around.

"From PyCon's code of conduct:"

Wait a minute. We're talking common sense here. Simply turning your head saying "You two mind?" Probably would've settled the affair right there.

They weren't insulting her personally. Just two guys exchanging stupid childish jokes. Where they in bad taste? Certainly. And Adria obviously considered them offensive. But did they (the guys) deserve the drama that's unfolded? Certainly not.

And frankly, I find it offensive that she's pulling out all the stops in justifying her actions. She quite proud of herself, isn't she?

You are "acquainted" with Adria and appeared "together" on a "panel"?! I'm offended and do not appreciate jokes of that nature.

> First – the fact that this guy's employer made a kneejerk reaction is no one's fault but the employer.

This. Why isn't the employer in question's name front and center here? Aside from any attempt to punish them, people should just know that they're not a safe place to work, that they'll sacrifice one of their own out of fear.

Every closed society needs its secret police. In the PC world, you stay in line or you are fired, shunned, silenced and ostracized.

The fact that someone post photos of others to her twitter's followers is also no one's fault but your friend, this along with the dick joke triggered everything, it was a poor decision making just like telling dick jokes in the middle of the crowd, I do give her the benefit of doubt believing she intended no harm, but something happened and now a guy have no job, I think at least should acknowledge that.

Yes his employer did make a bad decision, but it was prompted by Adria's bad decision. They both need to apologize.

Part of being an adult is not flipping out every time you overhear someone else say something you don't like. And yes I would qualify snapping someone's picture and posting it on Twitter to launch a smear campaign against them as "flipping out".

Wasnt it a private conversation? The code of conduct covered talks and other public communication. This was a gross invasion of privacy and damaging slander.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com