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Comment by luigi | Hacker News Reader

It's telling that we only know him as "the guy from PlayHaven" while we all know Adria Richards by name. In that picture Adria took at PyCon, I'm not even sure which guy got fired.

Okay, so the PlayHaven guy got fired. Adria had death threats made against her, was the subject of a beheading picture, had her home address and phone number publicized, her employer was DDOSed, and she was ultimately fired, like the PlayHaven guy.

That's misogyny in action. That's what needs to end.

On one side, it's a few people using their real names and identities to be harshly and specifically critical on Twitter. On the other side, it's an avalanche of anonymous death threats. I know which one bothers me more.

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Neither one is acceptable. The mob action is obviously worse, but both punishments were wrong.

What should have happened (wishful thinking I know) is that AR could have told the guys to knock it off, or gone to staff without tweeting a picture to make a complaint if she was not comfortable with a one-on-one disagreement.

In that case the very competent PyCon staff would have mediated the complaint, and no one would have heard about it beyond a small circle of a few dozen people.

This kind of thinking is anathema to SJW ideology. Example: https://twitter.com/eassumption/status/416999484581625856

Interesting.

Jumping to the worst possible conclusion / interpretation of someone's words seems to be a hallmark of this style of 'activism'. Which leads to especially aggressive debates and misunderstandings, especially when people are on Twitter and constrained to <140 characters.

The one tweet in there about private conversations enabling power dynamics is interesting. jdunck told me via email that he refuses to even discuss this stuff privately because I have to own up to my comment publicly, which really confused the hell out of me. But now it makes more sense.

I was also ready to just accept it as SJWs wanting help in a group from someone who calls them on their bullshit. Probably a little of column A, little of column B.

private conversations enabling power dynamics

Public conversations also enable power dynamics.

They just enable power dynamics of a different sort - mobbing, pile-ons, and other forms of collective shaming.

I think both sides are assholes, and should collectively shut up and let calm, reasonable people handle these problems like adults.

This is my feeling as well. I get that anonymous death threats are an issue, but the counterweight is not made any more palatable by that fact. I also agree with grandparent about anonymous misogyny, but not that one group is less troubling than the other.

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