It's pretty pathetic how effective of a baiting tactic it is, in terms of both title and content. This is the second time this week that I've seen a submission hit HN's frontpage that used their girlfriend to snatch votes, I seriously hope it doesn't become a trend.
But this: "The HN community has deemed this post relevant to the front page"
The HN community is only one part of something being on the front page. The other part is the admins who apparently (no transparency here btw.) can control what appears and also make it disappear as well.
Just having his girlfriend make a video explaining his startup wouldn't be an issue - but having her make that video, then submitting an article that "hey, here's my GIRLFRIEND explaining my startup" makes it off as sex appeal.
Since sexism in gaming is a hot thing topic right now, imagine if Spike TV was to advertise that a program that discussed videogames, and that they advertised as being hosted by a "woman", no names, just "hosted by a woman". That's pretty much what this submission is doing.
That being said, titles are there to tell you what something is about, and to get you interested. This does both, and part of this example is surely sex appeal. You can debate whether it was intended, but that's how genders work.
Being blunt, how many readers with a sexual preference towards females considered whether or not the girlfriend in question was attractive when they landed on her Google+ page? I suspect the answer is greater than 0.
Gender plays a role in everything, it's human nature.
Women are also conditioned to judge the competency of other women based on their appearance. This isn't relevant to the case at hand however. Personally I welcome a lot, lot more posts with women somehow in them because at the sheer mention of women in HN the thread jumps to the topic of gender and I don't see that changing until there are just a lot more women posting and being posted about.
A fair point for sure, I hadn't considered that.
It has plausible deniability and has an Oscar Wilde wit to it. Touche.