Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
esquire.co.uk
esquire.co.uk
If there's anyone worse than Adria in this story, it's both Hank's and Adria's former employers. You don't destroy a person's life over a comment or a blackmail threat. But as they say, if corporations are people, then they are clearly sociopaths.
That said, there was this excerpt: "I know you didn’t call for him to be fired. But you must have felt pretty bad." "Not too bad, he's a white male. I'm a black Jewish female."
Followed by this later on, in the same interview: SendGrid, her employer, was told the attacks would stop if Adria was fired. Hours later, she was publicly let go. "I cried a lot, journaled and escaped by watching movies,"
Her lack of empathy is absolutely staggering. And, "if I had kids, I wouldn't tell jokes"? Seriously?
I had many of the same reactions as you when I read her words. But I've been trying very hard to imagine what it's like to go to PyCon as a minority, and to have someone sitting in earshot comfortably make jokes that make me feel threatened all while watching a talk on inclusiveness. While the emotional image of a little girl wanting to get into your field is up on screen.
And then to have everyone defend that person and behave like you're the one that fired him just because you voiced your discomfort publicly.
I don't agree with Adria's public tweet, and Hank got way more than he deserved (as did Adria) over it. But I can totally see how she could have been driven to do it, and I can even see how she would feel now — after all she's gone through — that she should not have to apologise for it.
From that article it sounds like she came out of this worse than Hank, who got another job almost immediately. And you have to wonder — did Hank get another job so fast because our field is dominated by men, and they are likely to feel for him and have the same initial reactions as we do when reading this article? Unfortunately there are not many people who will feel for Adria. I'm sure she knows it.
She used her status and influence in an irresponsible way, and she consistently avoids any responsibility into what happens, while blaming her victim for what happened to her. I don't see the empathy here. I can understand why she would end up like that, and she sounds like she has a lot of issues to work with. But she comes out as an extremely unpleasant person.
> From that article it sounds like she came out of this worse than Hank, who got another job almost immediately. And you have to wonder — did Hank get another job so fast because our field is dominated by men, and they are likely to feel for him and have the same initial reactions as we do when reading this article? Unfortunately there are not many people who will feel for Adria. I'm sure she knows it.
I feel for her. She shouldn't have been put through this crap when she was a kid, and she deserved none of the abuse, death threats, etc, that got poured on her. At the same time, I do think she needs to behave like an adult and realize that she has a responsibility in what happened.
Presumably you mean the tweet, not her childhood abuse, just for people who might misinterpret the somewhat ambiguous reference.
I really don't see how hearing two guys in a crowd of 800+ people talk about big dongles would make one feel threatened enough for a comment like, "Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?" She feared for her life over tasteless toilet humor in a crowded conference? Bullshit. Her Victorian sensibilities were offended over a crass joke. And now she's engaging in histrionics after the fact to justify her response.
Frankly, I'm really sick and tired of the pervasive image in America that all men are rapists and child molesters. You talk to a woman on an elevator, or you accidentally make eye contact with a child that isn't yours for a brief second, and everyone assumes you're a sexual predator because penis. Sure, I'll accept that men are more likely to be. But we're talking about 0.000011% of women versus 0.000018% of men here.
> Hank got way more than he deserved (as did Adria) over it
That we can both agree on. If anyone needs to be shamed here, it's these companies that we allow to put expediency over human lives. It's not okay to fire a father of three because someone managed to generate five minutes of buzz about them on Twitter. As consumers, this is partly our responsibility. And I for one will recommend strongly against ever using SendGrid to anyone who asks. It's too bad Hank didn't name his employer as well.
> Unfortunately there are not many people who will feel for Adria
Still, the complete and utter lack of empathy, along with playing the race card (way out of context I might add), is clearly doing her no good here. If I read her comments, I wouldn't hire her either.
And again, this is where it's good to separate your real name from your online identity. No, we shouldn't have to, but when employers behave like this, it's just proper diligence. We don't know Hank's real name here; his current employer may not even know about this incident. If Adria had done the same, maybe she'd be employed now too.
To her it's not 800+ people, it's 800+ men where you are one of the few women. That's not something I can say I've ever experienced. Personally I can't see how the joke is threatening, but I can't dismiss her feelings over this just because I find it tough — or even impossible — to imagine.
I've tried to read this article as Hank and Adria explaining their honest feelings. If Adria is being honest about her feelings, then I can see how her reaction came about. Even if I don't agree with it.
Like I said, I don't think the joke itself — or Hank himself — was the target of her anger. It was the environment, the culture, and the system which allowed Hank to make such a joke in earshot, comfortably, making her feel utterly excluded and even threatened.
You claim it's histrionics, but it might be real things she is feeling. What if she really felt this way? Shouldn't we try to understand Adria as well as we understand Hank? By dismissing her so easily we make our field more exclusive. We say, "I can't imagine that so you mustn't have experienced it. It's not a problem because I can't see it."
> Still, the complete and utter lack of empathy
Perhaps you are right in perceiving a lack of empathy. I don't think it's because she hates Hank and wishes bad things on him. I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage.
A woman's fear of unwanted sexual advances, assault, or rape from an unknown male when she's in a vulnerable position is entirely reasonable. Many women receive unwelcome sexual advances on a regular basis. Most men have basically no point of personal reference for this fear, but we should try to be aware of how the woman might perceive us rather than whining about being unfairly slighted.
According to the CDC, 18% of women report being raped at some point in their lives, versus 1.7% of men.[1] Given that, I think it's reasonable for women to feel a need for caution when dealing with strange men talking to them in elevators.
[1] http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/sv-datasheet-a.pdf
What is the reason for that. Seems just like such an irrational move.
Except it isn't.
It isn't because she recognized Hank was using (perhaps inadvertently) her tactics. In her eyes he was telling the world he was a victim. There is nothing more frustrating than having her own methods turning against her.
If anything, that cuts directly to her motivation and is a window into her character.
Yes. In my "other life" I work in fire and EMS, and in uniform regularly have parents stop us and point us out to their kids - "If you're ever hurt or in trouble, you can ALWAYS go to these people, they're safe.", or the look of absolute trust when someone thrusts their sick child at you, hoping for you to make it better. And that, somewhat unsurprisingly, sometimes include seeing that child in undress.
Take off my uniform.
My partner spent several years in childcare, both at centers and as a nanny. We're out in public and she sees a crying child? She goes to it, talks to it, hugs it perhaps, reassures.
Me? Not a chance. For better or worse, societal conditioning is that that is something I as a male /do/ /not/ /do/. Because it's nefarious that I'd even want to.
Here is a great thread on the parenting Stack Exchange that explains the issue: https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/18782/what-sho...
Viewing it from this perspective outlines how easily one could be hypersensitive to comments, looks, smiles because you’re already going into it with that perspective. Now add in a childhood that consisted of abuse by a father to a mother and the shame she felt in attending school, we can now begin to understand her reality.
Adria has blockages in her life that are keeping her from living a life free from the burden she is carrying around. The very same blockages that may be contributing to what seems like a lack of empathy on her part. My only hope is that she seek out the right healer.
You can understand, yes, but that hatred-- and allow me to say that again-- hatred is not something that we can excuse on the basis of race alone. Adria really hates Hank; hated him so much that when she called down the twitter brigades, she happily tweeted something along the lines of "I feel like Joan Of Arc."
Hank found a new job because, fundamentally, he was innocent. Because he did not intend for anyone to get hurt, and did not join in the bandwagon that later attacked Adria. He even apologized to Adria, who still blames him for everything and showed absolutely no remorse.
Some believe that systems of oppression don't exist and pin everything on the individual, e.g., racists. And then there are people who believe those systems are all that exist and that any action undertaken by a member of that system is the fault of the system, e.g. other kinds of racists.
Regardless of where you stand on the spectrum, there are certain actions that are inexcusable.
The intent and desire to destroy an innocent's life is one of them.
I think her view of Hank is to disregard him — kind of "Oh he'll be okay, the system's on his side." She doesn't really acknowledge him because it's not about him. We've made it about him because it's so easy for us to empathise with Hank but not with her, which is exactly part of the bias she's upset about.
> But I've been trying very hard to imagine what it's like to go to PyCon as a minority
No. It is a programming conference. It is not a forced place to be, it is not torture, it a programming conference. Framing this as some kind of a jungle full of dangers, rapists and murders lurking behind their little laptops, wearing geeky t-shirts is a bit crazy.
There are real inappropriate comments, sexual innuendos, harassment, both in the workplace and during conferences but this wasn't it.
By blowing this up she is fighting against her own cause because it diminishes the importance and impact of those things. It brings them down to the level of "oh crazy irrationality, and overreacting" which is the typical excuse for dismissing them. Next time someone is really harassed, the offender can just say "Oh she is pulling an Aria on me" or something to that effect.
> — that she should not have to apologise for it.
Yes she should have. Everyone expected Hank to apologize And he did. Not expecting her to apologies further excusing her lack of empathy is discriminatory and sexist.
> And you have to wonder — did Hank get another job so fast because our field is dominated by men, and they are likely to feel for him and have the same initial reactions as we do when reading this article?
I don't wonder. I am quite sure he got a job because others realized he was a decent person, who said a stupid thing, made a mistake, apologized for it. A person you want working for you. It wasn't because he had a penis or because he was white.
Adria on the other hand showed her character and her character is not one I would want on my team. She is manipulative, lacks empathy, likes controversy, and promotes discrimination and sexism.
It's not my intention to frame it this way. Sorry for giving you that impression. My intention is to frame this as an invisible problem to us as men.
My intention is to try to help people reflect on why they are so quick to anger about Adria, but realise they are perhaps not seeing a bigger problem.
I say this as someone who initially had similar angry reactions and then took a step back and tried to place myself in her shoes.
> No. It is a programming conference. It is not a forced place to be, it is not torture, it a programming conference. Framing this as some kind of a jungle full of dangers, rapists and murders lurking behind their little laptops, wearing geeky t-shirts is a bit crazy.
I'm not framing it like that. That may not stop PyCon from feeling like that for women.
Let's say there are women who feel unsafe at PyCon. Shouldn't we be concerned about this? Shouldn't we communicate them and try to figure out how we can include them?
Most of what I see in this thread moves to dismiss such women as delusional, because obviously PyCon is not full of rapists, it doesn't matter what women feel, they should get over it.
> Yes she should have.
I think you are taking my quote out of context. I'm not saying she should or shouldn't apologise. I was trying to explain how I could understand, after all that's happened, why she wouldn't feel the need to.
We have made this all about Hank. Probably because it's easy for us to get in his head. But I don't think she sees Hank as a very important figure in her experience of this situation so far. Hank was an oblivious and unfortunate side effect of the exclusion she felt at the conference.
> It wasn't because he had a penis or because he was white.
Software is a male dominated field right now. It is so easy for men who read this article to be angry at Adria and feel sorry for Hank. Just look at the reactions in this thread. That alone gives him a great chance of regaining employment. I'm sure the original HN thread had some guys saying "get in touch, we'll give you a job!"
> Adria on the other hand showed her character and her character is not one I would want on my team. She is manipulative, lacks empathy, likes controversy, and promotes discrimination and sexism.
You've twisted her into a monster in your own head. I wish I could convince you to step back from your feelings for a while, try not to let anger cloud your judgment. I think she was a pretty reasonable person who did something a bit thoughtless out of emotion. It blew up, the employers made terrible decisions, and everyone blamed her.
My entire point in this thread has been that we should examine what makes our field so threatening to women. It's the death by a thousand paper cuts thing — women face so many tiny challenges that seem innocuous on their own, and we are oblivious to all of them.
And instead of deciding to show understanding when situations like this arise, we show blame and demonise the real people involved.
I could understand if she tweeted about 'two men' making those jokes/whatnot and complain about it, BUT without a picture. With it, I honestly believe she got off easy... If it was me (regarding of it being a joke that was taken out of context or not), posting my picture like that would make me try and do everything to get damages from her, and her employer if she was there in any official capacity.
I believe we should be inclusive of women in tech in all capabilities, and even admit it was an unfortunate joke, which I probably wouldn't make in that scenario, but what she did was actually a set back to the 'women in tech' movement. She was selfish and after the whole mess, still unapologetic. I'm sorry to say, but I'm pretty sure this brought even more doubts to folks wanting to hire women in their companies, let they now get another Adria.
From the article:
> Someone sent Adria a photograph of a beheaded woman with tape over her mouth. Adria’s face was superimposed onto the bodies of porn actors. Websites were created to teach people how to make the superimposing look seamless — by matching skin-tones. On Facebook someone wrote, “I hope I can find Adria, kidnap her, put a torture bag over her head, and shoot a .22 subsonic round right into her fucking skull. Fuck that bitch, make her pay, make her obey.
See my previous post about proportionate response; this ain't it. Even if Adria is not making herself a likable person, by shaming Hank in public and failing to accept any blame for the backlash, this is not something that she deserved because of that.
Instead, she chose to deny them the right of any defense, and publicly shamed them on the Internet, including their picture. And somehow, this is supposed to be OK? Why? Because she's part of certain minorities, as she's so keen to point out (jewish, black)? Because of her gender?
If a "white male" had done anything like this, how do you think the world would have reacted? He would have been labeled as a "hacker", "doxing" an innocent and defenseless minority member and as opening the flood gates for anonymous online assault and abuse.
Obviously, what happened in retaliation by the anonymous legions of idiots on the Internet is terrible and even worse than what happened to Hank, and she certainly didn't deserve anything like this.
I realize this is a publication targeted towards a male audience, and it is clearly coloured to favour Hank's side in this. But if the depiction of Adria in this article is even close to genuine, I have a very hard time feeling bad for her. Some of her quotes are just out of this world, and often based on nothing but conjecture:
- Quote: "Maybe it was [Hank] who started all of this. No one would have known he got fired until he complained. Maybe he’s to blame for complaining that he got fired. Maybe he secretly seeded the hate groups." - Without giving any kind of tentative evidence, she's accusing him of funding hate groups, and downplaying her fault in his bad fortunes.
- She claims she feared for her life after hearing Hank make a silly forking joke. In a crowded audience, she thought he was going to kill her, right there. What the hell is that about?
- Quote: "Hank’s actions resulted in him getting fired, yet he framed it in a way to blame me. If I had two kids, I wouldn’t tell ‘jokes’" - Seriously, if every father who ever told a mate a poor joke with some sexual innuendo were to get fired, we'd all be out of a job. Let him who is without sin throw the first stone.
- She snarkily claims that Hank is devoid of sympathy or empathy towards other human beings, while ironically being incapable herself of empathizing with his plight. She just goes on to repeat that all of this is his fault, including both of them losing their job, and all the threats she has received.
- It also sounds (especially at the end) like she blames him personally for being born into an unfair world, where he was born with more privilege and opportunity than her, but that's bringing us a bit to far off topic.
Anyone have her Github? Is she even any good? I would expect with the size of the chip on her shoulder it would be difficult to work.
I don't know her but her issues seem to be deeply psychological. I would be afraid to work anywhere near her brand of hatred. Ironically, according to the article, she posted a penis joke. The gent in the store merely used a puerile entendre and she flips out? I suggest that she seek professional help.
But look at how Adria describes her feelings in the article:
“Have you ever had an altercation at school and you could feel the hairs rise up on your back?” she asked me.
“You felt fear?” I asked.
“Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’”
I believe she actually felt like this. And that it is possible for women to feel this way at a conference heavily dominated by men. But we are oblivious to it, we can't even imagine how it feels.
There are tons of cases where people have been made to feel uncomfortable by their peers in the software industry because of their race and/or sex. Racism and sexism are definitely problems in the software industry.
But this specific case is just ridiculous. Look at the actual jokes involved. "That hardware has a really big dongle"? "I would fork that guy's repo"? The butts of these jokes were a fictional piece of hardware and a (probably white) male, respectively. There's nothing in those jokes that could logically lead a woman to believe that the jokers would cause her harm. Just because a joke is sexual doesn't mean it's sexist. This wasn't even an overreaction: it was a reaction to something that wasn't sexist.
Internet feminism is a particularly poor representation of modern feminist thought. Most modern feminists say that women are just as sexual as men, and that women don't express their sexuality because of social pressure--an assertion which is gaining some scientific evidence. Ironically, Adria is enforcing a stereotype that anything sexual is anti-female. From that perspective, Adria's actions are the sexist ones, not Hank's.
I agree that both Adria and Hank got worse than they deserved in this situation. Certainly losing their jobs is too much, and nobody should ever have to experience death threats. But I find it a lot harder to be sympathetic to Adria in this case. If I were her employer I'd definitely be having doubts. If my engineers are making sexist comments I will fire them, but someone who accuses people of making sexist comments when they aren't making sexist comments is a liability.
Of course, there may be more to this story we don't know. Maybe Hank made some other jokes that were actually sexist.
Turning around and asking them to stop would have been enough. If they didn't (by shrugging her off, or laughing at her request, or whatever) that would have been grounds to publicly shame them.
It doesn't matter who got off easier or worse. There could be a million reasons why Adria didn't get another job: the male-dominated industry is one. Here's a personal challenge, which of these would you hire:
* A female registered sex offender.
* A male who avoids tackling problems head-on and instead appeals to authority in order to get those problems removed.
I don't see a gender issue here, I do however see excuse and justification issues. Things still work out the same way in the end if you switch the genders around.
I can understand angry, but not threatened. None of the comments I heard come close to a threat and everyone involved admits they weren't directed at her.
* Hank did a private joke while Adria took the issue to the public (tweeted to her 10,000 followers) * Hank was a developer while Adria was a developer evangelist, so she officially represents the company publicly. It's important to note that a lof of her Twitter followers probably followed her because of her position at Sendgrid.
Which is why I can understand Sendgrid's decision, but less Hank's employer's decision. Not based on the blackmail, but because it became hard for such a dividing personality to assume a position that involves public communication with a developer community that may or may not agree with everything you think.
This. Young netizens need to learn the meaning of "proportionate response". There were two adequate courses of action given the offence:
- Confront the guys, and shame them face to face for their behavior.
- If the goal was to change such misogynistic behavior of men at that kind of events (which is a reasonable and even courageous thing to do), the proper action should have been to describe the incident withholding the identities of the guys, precisely to not get them in such trouble. “Love the sinner, hate the sin”, as they say.
Doing the later would have achieved the desired goal while avoiding the whole nightmare to all involved. But linking their names to the notice of wrong behavior was an irresponsible thing to do; in particular, performing such public shaming on the internet, which never forgets and where things can go viral and turn against the one doing the shaming, as it happened.
Edit: Not to mention the disproportionate reaction of the employer, and of everyone that started bombing a company over this. Seriously guys, what's wrong with people when they're online?
Many women in the tech industry have stated a legitimate concern that, being in a minority, they feel very disturbing a "bro culture" in professional settings where sexual innuendo is unabashed, even when those are not directed at women - if not for other things, because that culture encourages some black sheeps to perform regrettable actions which are misogynistic, like unwanted sexual advances while discussing a business deal.
After being made aware of such frequent and repeated complaints, the responsible way to behave in such contexts, when there are women present, is to restrain yourself and avoid such comments even if you don't agree that they are misogynistic, unless you're 100% sure that all the women present are OK with them.
Making a sexual innuendo about dicks or whatever isn't misogyny. Please, tell me how talking about dicks is an exhibit of contempt for women. The "joke" doesn't even have to do with women.
This makes her racist and sexist at the same time.
/s
I'd still be a jerk if I insulted a straight guy for being straight, and I wouldn't use "it's not bigoted because of a power imbalance" as a shield when someone calls me out on it. The power imbalance doesn't excuse it, and no amount of mincing words will make my words/actions look better even if I might be right if we keep it to a society-level discussion without considering individuals.
Hank's joke was perhaps inappropriate (it's impossible for those of us that were not there to even apply our own personal standards, volume, tone, etc. all factor into such things, and they are impossible to describe objectively).
Adria's response is similarly hard to judge. I don't think the incident as she described it deserved much remediation. Certainly not beyond the resolution internal to the conference where he apologized. But I also think that there needs to be room to make mistakes. Sometimes people really are jerks, and they should be called on it, even if sometimes there is not wide agreement that they were jerks.
But somehow, instead of focusing on the bile and rage that many internet participants see as part an parcel of participation, which are clearly inappropriate and not in any way useful, here we have dozens of comments picking at the details of what happened at the conference.
Sure, any rational examination of the situation would suggest that Adria's "offense" (saying something she didn't like was "not cool" on her personal Twitter account) was just about the most minor thing a human could possibly do, but the more important thing to HN is that she was a black woman challenging a white man, and that simply cannot be allowed to stand.
> The many people who called for Hank to be fired
Did anyone, at all, call for "Hank" to be fired? His name isn't even publicly known.
Oh get off the racism/sexism card already.
If Hank were the black woman and Adria were the white male, then I swear on my honor I would feel exactly the same way toward both parties here.
I must say I'm more concerned about the combination of her father beating her mother to pieces with a hammer, and her writing an upbeat and loving letter to him some 20 years later... To me that's the heartbreaking story here.
UPDATE: Edited to clarify that I think there's room to empathize with Adria.
Nice quote here. As you say, it really does make Richards look empathetic. /s
But seriously, this is not good for her image.
He lost his job and got a new one "right away" (according to the article). She also lost her job, was bombarded with all kinds of threats (death, rape, etc.), had to go into hiding and still doesn't have a new job (at least as of her interview for the piece).
I'm sure she could improve her image if she were better at faking some empathy, but I understand why she wouldn't feel much.
She lost her job for tattling on a private joke shared with a friend that she overheard. She then tried to get the claim that she cost someone a job taken down, blamed the victim for his own problems, and blamed the victim for her problems. She is also quoted being quite racist and sexist. She may also have used her PR position to cause much of this (I've heard but have not seen conclusion evidence that the account she used was officially associated with her company.) Her line of work is, at the core, PR.
That one was hired and the other wasn't should not be a surprise.
Lots. The "broader context" is that people who aren't Hank harassed her. As a result, she suggests that Hank organized that harassment.
i.e. she isn't sympathetic to Hank because of a ridiculous excuse she invented.
I understand you want to have sympathy for a victim. Fine. Sympathize with Adria for the abuse she got. But also point out that her lack of empathy for Hank is itself a red flag.
While I agree with most of your post I don't agree with this statement. In my opinion hiding behind a username not tied to your real identity is nothing more than a stopgap, eventually someone will link "byuu" with who you really are or more likely you will make a slip up and expose yourself. DPR did everything he could to conceal his identity while running SR and he still screwed up. Even if you don't make a mistake I believe that we aren't too far off from computers being able to analyse written comments/posts/tweets/etc and then link identities together based on writing style, posting time, and other metadata. It is because of this and the following two reasons that I nearly always post under "joshstrange".
1) I stand by what I have said and when I find out I'm wrong I like to publicly admit that. I'm not going to pretend I'm perfect, none of us are.
2) By posting under my real name I am less likely to say something that I will have to backtrack on, it would be a lot easier to spew off the cuff responses (which I'm still not perfect from doing) thinking that I was hiding behind some username that would never be linked to me.
Pretty much I think that one day all my other identities will be easily linked back to me so why try and hide?
being liberal in a conservative community, for example.
There is a great deal of self-censorship that I do because I expect every comment I make to come back later be it positive or negative. It's less of "Oh I won't post that comment" and more of "I won't go near that forum/board/community in case I were to get doxxed". It's just that trying to be anonymous is so hard and even people that think they are doing a good job slip up all the time and get doxxed. If people trying their best fail what hope do I have?
DPR screwed up by running the largest drug trafficking system in the world. I make software to play old video games. While I'd love to flatter myself into thinking I were that important, I doubt I'm going to get the force of the entire US government trying to link my identity over my perfectly legal online actions.
But yes, anyone can eventually screw up. The nice part is that my real name is also really common. I can just make a new pseudonym if I have to. Changing your real name, still doable, but not quite as easy.
Agreed and I understand that it was the government that linked his identities I think that while they may currently be the only one's able to do that today I don't trust that they anyone won't be able to do that in a few years time. Look at how old/bad/cracked encryption can be decrypted in hours on even your parent's desktop computer and how things thought secure just years ago can be cracked with supercomputers or cloud computing today.
Did you read to the end, about her childhood?
She quite obviously has mental issues.
The guy simply shouldn't have gotten fired over a such a childish remark. His former employer is the one who made the real mistake here and who should be at the center of any public shaming.
Worse? One (presumably) could've had a ruined business due to DDoS which could've led to much more layoffs than just one-I'm-very-sorry-for Adria. Hanks' employer could've had much more troubles than simply loosing money - by having a "black-jewish-feminist-hater" in his staff.
I believe exactly the opposite. People say horrible things hiding behind anonymity. Those of us who freely identify ourselves actually attempt (albeit sometimes feebly) to talk to others as if we were in person. If we just treated each other on-line like we did in person, most of this shit would never happen.
- Proud self-identified member of Hacker News for 8 years. (see profile)
EDIT 1: I love engaging others on-line when I know who they are (the way HN was for a long time) much more than anonymous strangers. I would be phony if I felt this way and remained anonymous
EDIT 2: Why would anyone want to work for someone who would fire them for gossip, on-line or otherwise? Firing is almost always an extreme overreaction and a clear demonstration of one's inability to run their business. Fuck 'em. Find another job with someone a little more righteous. (FWIW, things I say in person in the workplace are probably much more offensive to those who don't get it than anything I'd ever say on-line.)
Exposing that you are a woman via your name over the internet results in harassment. Same with being black, Arab, or Asian. Same with Gay, TG, etc.
If you'd like to experience this effect, create a fictional profile which publicly advertises you as a "furry", and try and interact with the internet. You'll be amazed (and repulsed) by the responses.
Unless you're totally, totally vanilla, and can guarantee that you will never express a controversial thought or opinion, there is little reason to take the risk of attaching your Real World identity to your comments and leaving an opening for the online mobs.
If you get into an argument with someone, they can read through your history to determine eho you are, where you work, what your family life is like etc and then use this against you regardless of whether what you did was wrong or not. So whilst I agree in principle in reality it is unworkable.
Using your real name doesn't win you any points. I could easily lie and say my real name was John Thomas. It sounds real enough. I could lie in real life with a fake name, too. Conversely, I have 18+ years of history using my pseudonym. It may not be a name chosen for me when I was born, but it has a very real reputation attached to it.
The lack of empathy you speak of is a consequence of hiding behind text over great distances, not of hiding behind fake names. People act more respectable when there's even the slimmest of chances the other person could physically harm them for their words; and/or when they can actually see the harm their words cause to another.
If you really have a pressing need to let your interviewer or employer know of your online achievements, speak to them in person about it with no audit trail.
The people who use anonymity to say horrible things are going to do so anyway. Go and search Google for "byuu 4chan". Now replace byuu with my real name. Why would I want my employer to be able to find those things?
But really this isn't even relevant in this case. They guy got fired because he was on the photo, and the girl was a developer evangelist, which by the very job description requires you to tie your face to your on-line presence and company. If either of them was otherwise anonymous on-line, it wouldn't help them anyway.
1. it makes me remember that behind all comments there's a real person just like me
2. i cant behave like a shithead. everything i say i say with my name attached to it, so whatever i say i have to own it -- just like 'in real life'.
I would like to think that if I ever become an employer I could allow the Adrias and trolls of the world keep on doing what they do in the off hours, so long as they don't implicate the company. And when people want to complain and boycott I could have the courage to tell them to fuck off because I have no input an an employees private life and I only care how well they do things at work.
I know this cannot work in practice, but I'd like it to be that way. People are complicated, they are not monolithic personalities, they are conflicted, I think we need to understand that. We also need to understand that people who are perfect are only so because their indiscretions have not be on public.
There's no rebuilding from the kinds of public shaming that went on through history or even right now in the rest of the world. Imagine being a pariah in the only small village you've ever known in a world where every other village won't accept you at all. Even what Adria went through was tame compared to that.
Hank's life wasn't ruined. Adria's life has been most damaged, no employment for a long time, death threats, and this article will probably cause her a lot more grief. How many people in this thread have taken it upon themselves to send more abuse her way?
Why is this article even on hacker news? To support the down-trodden software developers?
Agree on Hank. Adria's case is more complicated. With regard to Hank, I know this is going to be unpopular but if the threats of physical violence (and, even, the actual fact) were directed at those who turned their backs on Hank, I'd support it, because morality demands enforcement sometimes, and abandoning someone in his time of need is unacceptable.
Adria fucked up, but she was the wrong target. She did something bad, and stupid, and wrong, in hot blood. The people who decided to abandon Hank in cold blood are the ones who deserve to be brutalized and terrorized into future decency (or oblivion).
Adria's case is more complicated because firing her was the right decision (she was in a PR role, and a fuckup that ruins another person's reputation is unacceptable when PR is your job) but I bet it was a sleazy tech-company firing where there's no severance or contractual positive reference, and where the person is often singled out and humiliated. They also picked the wrong time to do it. They should have eased her out with a 6-month "you don't work here, but we'll support you in landing on your feet" period, and unless there's something unusual that I don't know about, they didn't. So they're almost certainly dirty as hell and I almost hope she reads this, gets treatment for her issues (described below) and also sues the hell out of them, not for firing her (they had to remove her from a PR role) but for firing her, a person with disability (I'll get to that) in a damaging way at a damaging time.
Her lack of empathy is absolutely staggering. And, "if I had kids, I wouldn't tell jokes"? Seriously?
I'm going to say this non-judgmentally. I have cyclothymia (mild bipolar) and panic disorder and... I know it when I see it. She's mentally ill, and the most dangerous kind of it, because she doesn't know that she's ill. Instead, she justifies her horrible, mistaken actions by pretending she's some kind of SJW rather than someone who panicked in a crowd and fucked up.
I didn't join the Adria-hate bandwagon, originally, because I saw her as someone who fucked up rather than someone to hate. And I found the hatred rising as I read this interview. Then I got to the part about the abuse, and stopped hating her, because it made sense: she has PTSD, doesn't know that she's ill, and has a lack of empathy because severe mental illness makes you selfish, not out of a character flaw, but by necessity. So, I found myself not hating her at the end (although she should still get the courage to apologize for fucking up).
She, almost certainly, has PTSD because she was abused. That's nothing to be ashamed of. That's how normal people react to awful experiences. She had what sounds like a (mild-to-moderate, because she was still able to type) panic attack. For evidence, this quote:
“Have you ever had an altercation at school and you could feel the hairs rise up on your back?” she asked me.
“You felt fear?” I asked.
“Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’”
(Trigger warning: this paragraph.) She was in a crowd. The people around her were annoying her. (When you have an anxiety disorder, lots of small things annoy you.) At some point, her nerves blew out. Again, nothing to be ashamed of. It happens. I've had hundreds of the fucking things. And panic can make you an asshole, like when you're in line for water (to stop the dry-throat-feels-like-it's-closing-up feeling) and you're screaming at the people in front to "stop taking so fucking long". (I screamed at someone, mid-panic, for using what I thought was a credit card for a $3 purchase and "holding up the line". EBT, or "food stamps". Huge dick move on my part; thought she was a yuppie who couldn't be bothered to carry cash, I was wrong. Had to apologize profusely after that one.) So I am generally sympathetic to people who fuck up because of mental illness, even though posting a Tweet about the guys behind me wouldn't be my strategy for dealing with a panic attack. I fail to see how it would resolve the episode.
What galls me about her is that she refuses to admit that she fucked up. I've seen enough not to demand empathy from the severely ill, but human decency is non-negotiable, and her self-righteousness is off-the-charts. Then she has to fall back on "he's a white male. I'm a black Jewish female." No, Adria, it's not about that; he was never a danger to you, and you are someone with an intensely painful, but fortunately treatable, medical condition. You freaked out and ruined someone's life in addition to your own, and that makes you hazardous. I have a lot of sympathy for people who suffer from mental illness, but not if they refuse to recognize and take responsibility for the problem.
"Just because I didn’t live at home didn’t mean I had escaped the past. I carried it with me. I realized I had to change this. It took years of work through therapy, reading, journaling and prayer. My big breakthrough year was 2006. That was the year I woke up. The year I snapped out of the fog I had been living in. I was diagnosed with ADHD and PTSD."
And this,
"Because of my experiences growing up, I have triggers. This means that I’m always scanning for danger; for situations that seem like something from the past that could hurt me. When I recognize something that matches, I can overreact and feel intense fear, anger or anxiety. This is something I’ve worked on a lot. It’s much better now than 10 years ago but there are some things that send me over the edge."
She has had a difficult life. Given her history I think her reaction understandable if not "appropriate". After all the attacks, and all she has gone through, I don't think she can step back from the situation and look at it how most outsiders would. I'm not sure it's fair to ask her too. It's a sad situation and I hope she can find a more felicitous path in the future.
What I find less understandable are commentators who choose to make Ms. Richards a symbol for woman in technology. It doesn't do Adria any good and it certainly doesn't do woman in STEM any good.
Adria is more immature than the jokes that she supposedly got offended by.
Let's ennumerate:
- She overheard a conversation that wasn't directed at her. In the middle of a conference she was hopefully not coerced at attending and should be paying attention to the speaker - She took a picture of two people, without asking for permission - She twitted said picture with negative comments - She followed up(!) the tweet with a blog post - She called one of the guy's employers (!!!)
And that interview, my god. I really have nothing good to say about it.
The reactions afterwards from supporters of both sides aren't an example of maturity either. But that's what you get when you invoke an angry mob to do a job that could be handled in a civil manner.
I don't think you're supposed to ignore what's going on around you just because it wasn't directed at you and you're at a conference. The other reasons are valid, but this one doesn't strike me as such.
That's the main thing imo. One may not expose normal persons in such a public way without asking for consent. If I attend a conference I have the right to stay anonymous.
Sadly, legally you have no such right. You are in a public space, and anyone can take your picture freely and do pretty much what they want with it. Our society doesn't even have coherent social norms about reasonable rights to privacy in public spaces, much less law.
I agree that it would be reasonable to expect some level of anonymity, though. Hopefully some day it will be.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: You have the right to free speech and your employer, peers, friends, etc have the right to react to your use of "free speech" it is not some suit of armor you can protect yourself in. I think (In terms of her losing her job NOT the backlash, death threats, etc) she got exactly what she deserved and her statement "if I had kids, I wouldn't tell jokes" (Really.... WTF) only confirms and cements my opinion. No remorse at all for her actions and "poor old me" routine stinks of BS.
None of this is meant to remove guilt from the company that fired Hank, that was a BS move on their part and they should have stood behind him or at least spent some time looking into it instead of firing him on the spot. That said, SendGrid was well within their rights, and I'd argue morally obligated, to kick her ass to curb. You can't fuck over developers (and don't think that the greater development community didn't see this as a near-personal attack on them as a whole) and expect to keep your job as developer evangelist. I know I'd never want to work with her or watch her speak at a conference.
This paragraph really gave me chills... A lot of insight about her thought process, and a bit terrifying in my opinion.
> “Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’”
> “Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?” she said.
Remind me when someone was last killed at a tech conference like she says? Very rarely, if ever.
Did she feel bad about him being fired? Nope.
> “He’s a white male. I’m a black Jewish female. He was saying things that could be inferred as offensive to me
Read that last sentence again. In poker terms, that's a "tell". She doesn't say "I was offended".
I've known people like this in real life. They are to be avoided. The "tells" above are:
* claiming people do nefarious things to get ahead (he seeded the hate groups)
* claiming they're always the victim
* lack of empathy for people who get hurt
* claimed desperate fear in every day situations
She's saying she's in fear of her life. That the guy making the joke is evil and powerful. That she's small and helpless. And thus she thinks that anything she does to protect herself is by definition OK.
Very, very, scary.
And yes, before the downvoters come in, the torrent of abuse she got was wrong. Very wrong. Those people should be punished. But make no mistake here, Adria Richards is not Hanks victim.
> I asked Hank if he found himself behaving differently since the incident. Had it altered how he lived his life?
> “I distance myself from female developers a little bit now,” he replied. “I’m not as friendly. There’s humour, but it’s very mundane. You just don’t know. I can’t afford another Donglegate.”
I don't know of any killings, but there have been a number of (high profile) sexual assaults at tech conferences - see http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents
My friends say it's a regular (and sometimes terrifying) occurrence at some conferences. And I believe them.
Eh, why can't people be nice....
People like this deserve no platforms of power whatsoever.
> “Not too bad,” she said. She thought more and shook her head decisively. “He’s a white male. I’m a black Jewish female. He was saying things that could be inferred as offensive to me, sitting in front of him. I do have empathy for him but it only goes so far. If he had Down’s Syndrome and he accidently pushed someone off a subway that would be different... I’ve seen things where people are like, ‘Adria didn’t know what she was doing by tweeting it.’ Yes, I did.”
A past of abuses does not justify Adria's reactions and lack of empathy. Moreover, the article describes her blaming Hank for the threats, despite the fact that he didn't engage in any vengeful behaviour.
If she didn't send the tweet, he wouldn't have got fired. If he didn't get fired, he wouldn't have posted on HN about being fired. If he didn't post on HN then none of this would've happened.
Basically it all stems from her original tweet..
I'm not condoning any of the behaviour but it could've quite easily been handled more maturely. If, instead of turning round, taking a photo and tweeting she'd approached him like an adult (maybe with the conference organisers if she was scared) and said "That's not cool" to him so he could actually apologised to her and none of this would've happened.
(I think talking directly to the conf organisers/staff would have been the preferred route, personally.)
She didn't. Instead of directly addressing them and giving them a chance to explain and apologize, she instead proceeded to put them in a public pillory. That's the opposite of courageous, it's malicious, sneaky, and underhanded.
The problem is that things didn't stop there.
Yeah, she did: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
"I'm sorry you're irrationally afraid of overheard immature jokes"?
But yeah, your one works too ;)
On the other hand, great and naturally flowing writing by the author, really enjoyed swimming through the story!
(I thought her reaction was wrong, pretty much from the first step, but it wasn't something uninvolved people needed to pay much attention to either.)
I think he did: there seems to be no discussion that he violated the conference's code of conduct. If we want to reduce the sexism in tech, I think reporting these instances is perfectly fine, and even commendable.
However.
She could have asked them politely to stop. If she didn't feel safe doing that, she could have talked in private to the conference's organizers. An e-mail would do. But she took it to Twitter instead, so everyone can point at them. I think she was in the wrong in doing that, and they both ended up suffering from it.
If there were a lesson to get from here, I'd say it would be "have you considered talking?". Or perhaps "do you really want to bring the Internet into our discussion?".
Their joke didn't involve women, reference women, reference men being better than women, reference superiority or inferiority of anyone, or as far as I can tell even imply any other jokes that would do those things.
Did he? It sounds like there was a report he did violate it, they investigated, but upon explanation they weren't reprimanded. I took this to be that someone falsely accused them, and under investigation it was determined that the incident was actually harmless.
Unless the code of conduct is "don't offend anybody", which of course would be impossible to adhere to.
Is it just me or are those both terrible overreactions from the companies' sides? The whole sexism discussion is perfectly valid and very important, we need to talk about what is wrong, but those layoffs were nothing but selfish pragmatic decisions. Hank's company didn't want the bad PR and Adria's didn't want the security trouble...
Rather unprofessional, yeah, maybe -- which is why it wasn't spoken aloud on stage, but whispered between two colleagues. But sexist? Can someone draw me a diagram about how that conveys any form of discrimination, prejudice, violence, dislike or oppression of women?
This sounds like completely selfish bullshit to me. It's a bloody overheard remark. And better yet, it was handled in a very childish way: there are laws against discrimination. If someone feels they were subjected to any kind of -ism, there are courts of law that decide that, you just have to go to the police. But sure, why not settle it the cutthroat way, involving employers and family on the way.
Sexualized jokes like this--and mind you, this isn't defending or excusing Richards's actions, which I find unconscionable--do enforce stereotypes around who's allowed to participate. "Overwhelmingly masculine culture," for lack of a better phrase, encapsulates that sort of behavior, and it's historically and to this day exclusive of women. You are asking for diagrams, you are asking for logic, about something that's got hundreds, if not thousands, of years of baggage. This isn't something you can feed into your Turing machine. When people say you're hurting them, you need to accept that rather than trying to reason yourself into "well, I'm really not." That's just part of being a decent human.
None of that is to say this should have been a huge thing--of course Hank shouldn't have been fired, and had his employers acted like adults I don't think this would have spiraled as it did. But Hank's still wrong. That doesn't make him a bad person, and I think, from reading this and some other stuff, that he understands his error in this thing. I'm wrong all the fucking time about this stuff. But I suck it up, I make good on my mistakes, and I do better next time.
No it's not just you, the responses from the companies were, as far as I'm concerned, illegal; the guy was fired for something he said (freedom of speech?), and she was fired through 4chan blackmailing her employer (as far as I could tell).
Of course, I don't know what kind of employee protection people have; IIRC the IT business isn't unionised yet, so there's little to fall back on. Well, besides the internets, which is what caused kind of a giant backlash.
It's the US, and it's tech. So "none whatsoever" is about right.
It's thus not totally unreasonable for her to be let go for this, even if it's not her fault.
Having said that, I find both sides really depressing. The brogrammer/franerdity approach does alienate women, which is why it should as much as possible be suppressed (although it's a culture which itself is frequently hated on, so it'd be really easily to just end up with high school again). Meanwhile public shaming is also not desirable, especially when the act can easily be argued to be the product of a culture, not of an individual.
Both were at fault, but the guy involved shouldn't have lost his job over it, and Adria probably shouldn't have lost her job over it.
One thing that people don't mention is that the employers of both might have wanted to get rid of them for other reasons.
There were a lot of things he could have said that would have been offensive, aggressive and sexist. But he didn't say any of those things. He made two very benign jokes. If that constitutes brogramming and is alienating to women, then there isn't anything to be done about it. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a juvenile sense of humor and giggling with your friends about funny words. He shouldn't have been made to apologize in the first place.
What's wrong is taking someone's picture and posting it along with vague details about an overheard conversation. I don't think that any of us would like that to be socially acceptable behavior. I don't care if two guys make stupid jokes, but I would be upset if people thought it was ok to take anything I said out of context and post it online along with my picture. Apportioning fault equally between those two behaviors isn't helping.
No, fuck that. Fuck suppressing people. Who are you to say what should and should not be suppressed? What is wrong with innuendos, one of the oldest if not the oldest kind of joke about one of the most fundamental aspects of humanity? Someone is offended by a joke (and with that I mean any joke)? They should gtfo, seriously, hacker culture is not a no-fun zone. No need to suppress innocuous jokes to accomodate for femnazi princesses, prude people and generally the easily offended. There are plenty of women who fit into this culture and have no problem with being easy-going because they know that this behaviour has nothing to do with discrimination or low opinion of women, it's simply nerdy silliness.
Many companies (possibly correctly) hire and fire based on perceived culture fit, and if your is less accepting of anyone who doesn't fit your slightly macho mold, then women will find it harder to get a job.
This means that such working environments should be thought of as unacceptable, yes.
Obviously there are different levels, but yes, a culture where it's acceptable to make crude sex jokes on the job would deter many of the women I know.
It's just a joke doesn't cut it - especially when you extend that to 'any joke'.
I am not saying that this specific case is such an example
I'm sure you'll agree that constantly making jokes about the fat kid at school, even if they're innocuous, isn't something that should be socially acceptable.
A man makes a mildly sexist unfunny joke and the result is a woman is unemployed for six months and fears for her safety. That is 'not cool', and ironically only reinforces her and other women's belief that there is a patriarchy out to get them.
> She explained the background – how she was a “developer evangelist at a successful start-up” and that while the men had been giggling about big dongles the presenter on stage was talking about initiatives to bring more women into the industry. In fact, he’d just projected onto the screen a photograph of a little girl at a tech workshop.
> “…I stood up slowly, turned around and took three, clear photos. There is something about crushing a little kid’s dream that gets me really angry. It takes three words to make a difference: “That’s not cool.” Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard.”
So "Hank" made a couple of suggestive jokes unrelated to the topic at hand, and just because the talk was about women in tech he's sexist and crushing a little kid's dream? Would that have made him a climate change denier had it been on global warming?
Maybe I'm missing something, because Adria's actions and reactions make very little sense to me.
The timeframe doesn't seem right. For one, they were talking and giggling while someone was presenting? Is this a common thing? Another is that they were speaking louder than a whisper. Really? Making sexual jokes while someone is presenting in a louder than whisper volume? I don't know. It doesn't add up. Maybe they were really being that immature or your first quote is dramatized.
What if the picture on screen was a woman saying 'I want to be judged on my merits not my gender' and the guys were saying 'Nice tits' out loud and laughing? Would that be sexism?
I'd unequivocally say yes and, while inarguably less offensive, the dongle joke was still similarly sexist.
However, she was the one who ended up with the death threats. It's hard to reassure women that they're safe at tech events if the result of them making a social faux-pas are threats to their safety.
Have any white men on this site ever been on the receiving end of a campaign of intimidation and fear? I sure haven't. We then complain that women have an irrational fear of violence and intimidation? Sounds like a lack of empathy on our part.
Yes. I find our macho, heteronormative culture very intimidating at times. Just asking someone out comes with the risk of assault (or worse). It's not a campaign, exactly, but it is something a lot of guys go through because of how they were born.
Intersectionality is a valuable concept because it handily avoids pointless discussions over who has it worse. We all find ourselves in situations where whatever privileges we have because of how we were born are meaningless.
..
"Have any white men on this site ever been on the receiving end of a campaign of intimidation and fear?"
Did you hear what happened to this "Hank" guy when he made a joke once, a "social faux-pas"? I heard there was an article about him on HN recently.
No, the reason for her unemployment and harassment was not the private joke between two friends, but her handling of the situation (i.e., the public shaming via Twitter).
Deleted comment
She's a minority surrounded by men who are happy to make these sorts of jokes within earshot. It sounds harmless to us, but I can't even imagine what it's like to have been at PyCon as a black Jewish woman.
It must be very difficult to attend such a conference and then hear a joke like that — made with all the ease and comfort of someone who has no trouble fitting in. It could push you to do something rash like tweet a photo stating how upset it makes you.
Hank did something stupid and insensitive. His actions made a woman feel excluded, even during a talk about being more inclusive to women. But Hank also seems like a good guy who made a mistake that anyone could make.
The overreactions here seem to be on the part of their employers. It fuelled the fire that hurt them both and made the public angry.
Reporting a bad behavior to the conference organizer is ok. But, I don't see how -in the reality we live in- making a blog post about it will make the world a better place.
Is this a joke?
Okay, being a female involved in what seems to be a male-dominated event might be a bit uncomfortable but how does being a black jewish relate?
More precisely what does being Jewish have to do with anything?!
Feeling out of place as a black woman I can understand, but how does her religion segregate her from the rest of the audience? Is this difference visible from outside?
Firing someone in Europe for some minor issue like that would probably be a major legal issue here.
Most of the US is at-will, employees can be fired for no reason or any reason as long as there's no breach of relevant federal statutes (Equal Pay Act, Civil Rights Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Americans with Disability Act, …) — the latter being why employees are generally fired with absolutely no reason provided just to avoid any possibility of status breach.
That means for most firings there is no legal recourse, because there is no legal labour protection.
Most of Europe is very different on that point, you can't fire somebody just because you feel like it, and there are a number of labour-focused courts which tend to have a very bad view of companies trying to break or skirt labour laws.
It's not a question of money, it's a question of laws, or the lack thereof.
Europeans take employee protection very seriously.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...
In a legal sense, private more or less goes out the window when you share something with a third party, a court would be unlikely to step in and protect the privacy of a conversation held in a shared space.
The internet conversation certainly doesn't have to use the legal definition, but "private" does sort of invoke the idea that the communication is intentionally being held close, and if you are talking in a room with other people, you aren't working very hard at that.
In my view no one should have been fired here and that’s that.
We are facing a huge problem. Abuse and harassment run rampant and I bet that’s one of the reasons why some women are very, very sensitive to some things. That’s the problem to solve here.
Anyway, the scope of the backlash was not the same as it would be these days (because of the availability of Internet access for one) but my entire life was turned upside down for several years. I had to go into virtual hiding for a while. I'm 29 and I still feel shame thinking about it, even though I'm not entirely sure what it was I did "wrong".
So, I think that I have a tiny smidgen of an idea of what it's like (maybe?) and I still don't get Adria's anger.
I totally agree with you otherwise.
Example: The current way we deal with respect for women in IT is to raise those problems, get people fired, give women the promotion preference, and shame reluctant minds. If those actions leave scars in the sentiments of males, we won't be any closer to peace, confidence and safety between the two genders.
After WWII, the German people started to learn French and the French people started to learn German, among a lot of similar things. We need to find what will lead us to work together and acknowledge each other's qualities, more than attacking each other on legal grounds.
No sympathy for her.
Also, both companies' responses to these events are overreactions.
She's gone through hell. Why wouldn't you feel sympathy for her, even if you don't like what she did?
Others in this thread have also commented on her interview, and not in a positive light. Her line of thought is indicative of a twisted, insidious person that you want to keep out of your life.
Had she not lived through hell this time, she might have done it (runining another person's life) again.
Also, she's done a disservice to women in tech.
So, no sympathy for her.
Also, if I were Hank, I'd consult with an attorney to see whether she overstepped some privacy laws and pressed charges if tha lawsuit were viable.
I'm guessing he's not the only one. If she wanted to make tech more welcoming for women, it looks like her plan backfired.
Everyone lost. Nothing was gained.
As a white male I was implicitly guilty, but wasn't sure how to stop being so.
The sock / penis joke (broadcast to 9000+ people) was hard to get past, given the 1/9000th sized unintentional audience of the repo / dongle joke. Neither was especially funny, and it's hard to remember a time in my distant past that I may have found either particularly droll. Maybe the low bar for contemporary comedy is what I find most disappointing.
Is this a joke?
Specifically the bit several other people have been drawn to and quoted in other threads here.
When asked how she felt about the impact on the guys involved:
"Not too bad, he's a white male. I'm a black Jewish female."
I suspect it's meant to be more nuanced than this, however I conclude that either her thinking is fuddled, or she can't properly express the sentiment - neither is ideal if the goal is to have a sensible conversation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw...
The things is that we often forget that there are actual human beings behind the tweets - sometimes with poor judgment skills, but often more misguided than malevolent.
I feel very bad for Hank in this and also don't think that she should be hounded by 4chan et al. I will also avoid using SendGrid - her company in my life. Who is Hank's previous employer? I intend to boycott that completely spineless company too (name and shame!).
Also I really fucking dislike the pop psychology about her Dad in the article. No. I believe your past is not your future and you are responsible for your choices.
Finally, it's ironic that Adria implies she thinks hank deserves what he got. If Adria were being judged by her own standards about public discourse...
Allegedly Adria felt threatened, fearful for her life. Her reaction to this fear was to turn around, take a photo, post it on the internet and presumably stay where she was. Hank expressed confusion over how the organisers found out about it - if she'd left her seat that confusion wouldn't exist.
So we have a woman fearing for her life, sitting in a seat mere centimetres away from the threat, tapping out an accusatory tweet on her smartphone.
It might just be me, but in that circumstance with an obvious breach of conference protocol my first reaction would be to leave the immediate vicinity of the threat and find a conference organiser to raise the issue with.
Posting it online does nothing to defend against the immediate perceived threat - it just doesn't add up.
I'm not saying that Adria shouldn't have felt threatened, but her behaviour does not fit the profile of someone in that mental state. Beyond that, public naming and shaming is not the way to deal with this kind of a problem. Talk to an organiser, get the breach of conference policy dealt with in private and if you feel it's warranted, post about the experience and how it negatively affected you in a constructive way that doesn't cause a witch hunt.
All that this stunt has achieved is further marginalisation of female developers; the risk of having an offhand joke resulting in being publicly drawn and quartered just isn't worth socialising around them. If this case were handled properly - by talking to the conference organisers and dealing with the breach of policy - this wouldn't have become such a huge issue.
I don't understand why it had to be dealt with in public like this.
If the guy had been overheard quietly telling his friend a joke like, say, The Aristocrats, then I could understand someone getting seriously offended. You don't tell a joke like that where there is even a small chance unintended people will here it.
But a lame joke based on "dongle" sounding like a dirty word? That's a joke that could be told on a children't show on TV and not even draw complaints from parents in the Bible Belt.
This kind of humor is acceptable for a general family audience on prime time television. For instance, in The Simpsons episode "Bart, the Mother", Bart raises a pair of lizards that are an illegal invasive species, and Skinner is explaining why they must be killed.
Skinnner: It's already wiped out the Dodo, the Cuckoo, and the Ne-Ne, and it has nasty plans for the Booby, the Titmouse, the Woodcock, and the Titpecker.
Similarly, in the episode "You Kent Always Say What You Want", where Kent Brockman says a very nasty swear word on live TV, and apparently has gotten away with it.
Grampa Simpson: I can't believe Kent Brockman got away with it. Back in my day TV stars couldn't say boobie, tushie, burp, fanny burp, water closet, underpants, dingle dangle, Boston marriage, LBJ, Titicaca, hot dog or front lumps!
Heck, I could easily see a "big dongle" joke being told on NPR on a Saturday morning by Garrison Keillor during the annual "Prairie Home Companion" joke show (which is hilarious, BTW).
If your reaction to overhearing such a joke is anything more than rolling your eyes at the childish humor, your offensiveness sensor needs recalibration. I've heard that getting a pet can bring calmness and help you recalibrate. A bird could be a good low maintenance pet for this. I recommend a Titpecker.
Why on earth would someone get offended over an animated kids film about cats?
Tech reporting in a sentence.
If you get the chance to see his documentaries or listen to his radio shows you should - they're good.
https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/
I want to be charitable to her but these statements are just bad.
http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the-falsest-of-false-equi...
TL;DR; Yeah he got fired, but he didn't get fired because of an internet backlash.
To me it seems that she was expecting that her minority status would protect her, she goes to lengths to point out she is black, female and jewish. who cares? And then the article has a huge backstory on why her life was so tough. you know what so were many peoples, the only reason to make an issue of how hard you had it as a kid is to try and engineer some sympathy. either what she did was right or it was wrong but her upbringing has nothing to do with that.
If her backstory was a backstory full of mental illness, would you respond differently to what had happened?
Now, I'm not trying to say that racism or stereotypes are good, because they aren't. However, people's past are what shape people and can help others understand people's viewpoints.
Even because of her backstory, however, I find that pretty much everybody (except the reporter, who didn't participate too much) overreacted. In general, though, I find that many of Adria's thought processes were flawed, but that's not relevant to this reply (at least, I don't think so).
I agree, it's all about her minority status and backstory, I'd argue that because of that she wasn't able to handle the matter in a smarter way. It was dangerous to make a public example out of this guy and escalate things, which thanks to the internet is way easier than ever. If she'd felt stronger, had more middle class problem solving skills, she might have taken a smarter approach, one where she didn't expose herself to attacks.
There is one thing I learned, just because someone is poor, had it hard, doesn't mean she's right or a nice person and is equipped to handle situations appropriately.
> A man was fired for violating the conduct rules in a professional space.
Which is naked supposition on her part.
I would.
There are a couple of counter-arguments. One, claiming that there is a "patriarchy" sounds a whole lot like a conspiracy theory. Replace "patriarchy" with "zionism" in typical statements to see what I mean. This makes me very wary of any hand-waving claims of "patriarchy".
The second is this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15491274
Women have in-group preference. Men don't. The assumption that there's a "patriarchal" preference by white men for other white men is projection. What do I mean by this?
Most people believe that other people think like them. "I'm a reasonable person. So if I did X, it would be for reason Y. Therefore if other people are doing X, it's for reason Y."
i.e. Rich white men prefer to support other rich white men.
That just isn't true. There is no evidence for "in-group" preference of men. There is plenty of evidence that no such preference exists.
There is evidence for preference of power. If you can make Bill Gates money, he'll help you so long as it's in his favor. The second you can't help him, he'll cut your throat (metaphorically speaking), and leave you for dead.
The men who have such behavior tend to get ahead of people who aren't that ruthless. This isn't "in-group men" preference. It's cut-throat back-stabbing competition.
> Making her displeasure known to conference organisers was absolutely within her remit but turning herself into some sort of 'crusader' for a vague idea of 'rights and justice' in a public forum is problematic for me.
I agree. That's the crux of the matter. I suspect if she had only complained to the conference organizers, none of the rest would have happened. But she was clearly operating outside of the bounds of the conference herself.
And from the other links posted here, that wasn't the first time she did something like this.
In the linked article, I got curious about this paragraph:
"Everything was seemingly resolved, and there was no public reaction on Twitter. It was only once the man "posted about losing his job on Hacker News" that the pushback started, and then escalated exponentially, with even ostensible allies abetting the abuse by tone and choice policing."
If I recall, and I might well be wrong, the discussion was already underway when that guy posted. I'm also having trouble with identifying anything in the content of his post that would put him at fault for what happened afterwards (which was deplorable).
Can anyone with a better recollection than me weigh in on this? The article doesn't sound particularly unbiased, and neither does it have to be, but are the facts right here or not?
> I did not get the guy fired; his own behaviour, which his employer considered another strike on his already written-up employee file, caused his employer to make the decision to fire him.
I'd like to quote Wikipedia when I say "citation needed". Even though it's an interesting post and raises good questions, I don't think it backs your TL;DR.
There's plenty of inaccuracies in your link, for example: I'm not sure how forking a guys repo is sexist, that seems to be (an understandable) context based misunderstanding rather than a fact.
Nevertheless if got into something like that, I would have sued her.
Lot of hypocrisy here! Neither person deserved to lose their job, the whole situation seems to have gotten completely out of hand. Funny how even the smallest hint of acknowledgement or response can keep the snowball rolling.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085680
It will certainly be interesting to watch the mechanics of internet mobs evolve as people get a better idea of the potential consequences of them.
I don't think there's an easy solution to the downsides of viral publishing.
About Jon Ronson's writing, I pretty much detested "Them" because of how he ridicules the conspiracy theorists at the start of the book. He goes on to spy on the Bilderburg group and the Bohemian Grove and comes away with a "so what" conclusion. At the start of the book his attitude was ridicule, that no such meetings take place.
Maybe I'm just mentally unflexible, but maybe if he stayed around for a bit longer for meat and bones discussion instead of engaging in idle chit chat he'd have a different opinion.
Also similar to "so what" attitude in Four Lions the film, he badly underestimates the Finsbury Park mosque crowd.
- Hank makes a crude joke. This is a stupid, immature action. But harmless. And, imo, he has all the right to make the jokes he wants.
- Adria feels offended. I thinks it's stupid, but she has all the right to feel that way.
- Adria takes picture and publicly shames A in the internet. This is a stupid and dickish action. But, imo, she has all the right to do so.
- Adria calls Hank's job about the joke. Stupid and dickish action, but she's free to do so.
- Hank is fired because of joke. Stupid and dickish action.
- etc...
There is one principle I follow that could've prevented all this:
STOP TAKING SERIOUSLY WHAT OTHER PEOPLE SAY!
I mean it. Simply ignore it. Unless someone acts upon you, nothing happens. In the long run words mean nothing.
This would make Hank's employer ignore the phonecall, the internet ignore the public shaming, and Adria ignore the stupid joke. And ignore the harassment.
For people in IT, used to work with logic and reason, we should show more maturity and stop believing and caring about these "he-said/she-said" internet dramas.
For better or worse, 4chan is a supernode in Internet culture, and there's certainly some association between it and many other tech and hacker communities. Just look at how many conference presentations these days contain memes that originate on 4chan.
The end of the article talks about how Hank no longer trusts himself to talk to women in the workplace, but what about Adria? Regardless of whether her fears were founded, she must now feel totally vindicated and more fearful than ever before.
The guys should perhaps have been more aware that they could cause offence. She should have perhaps been more aware that photographing and publicly shaming those individuals would have public repercussions she could not anticipate.
However it's the people taking sides that caused the problem here. It's the employers, the haters, the people sending death threats and photoshopping pictures and DDoS'ing sites and all of that.
There's no need. Somebody breached a conference code of conduct. Somebody else was offended by that. It should have been an issue between the person who made the joke, the person who complained and the conference organiser.
The fact it spilled out into the public domain could be handled if people were not going to take sides and just realised that this was absolutely 100% none of their business, and to reflect that keeping within codes of conduct is a good thing for everybody.
But the Real World isn't like that. The juvenile idiots on 4chan are more than happy to take a side based on prejudice, cognitive bias and the protection of pseudonymity and behave in an absolutely disgusting way.
If you're about to do something publicly, be prepared to explain yourself to everybody you know, including your mother.
If you're about to do something in a semi-public space, same thing applies, and semi-public means using a pseudonym.
Everybody involved in this story got it wrong, but the very worst people around this were the people who decided to take it a level of hatred it did not deserve.
Also related: http://www.torontosun.com/2015/03/03/phaneuf-lupul-hire-law-...
Basically, someone tweeted a joke about one well-known NHL player banging the wife of his team mate. It appeared on the Twitter ticker on the bottom of a TSN broadcast, whose filters didn't catch it. Of course, someone else took a pic of it, posted it online and from there, even more people saw it. Now both the NHL players are suing TSN AND they want to go after the original tweeter. Who definitely had no clue his/her tweet would end up on national TV.
In both cases, a media outlet shared the original tweet to their massive audiences. Where these tweets would have faded into obscurity, instead they were exposed to the sensibilities of a much larger audience.
I try to be supportive of anybody, and generally go out of my way to be inclusive. I also make really stupid, juvenile jokes, although I am audience-aware.
In this case, his audience was the guy he was sitting next to, and there was nothing overtly threatening in the joke. In fact, if anything, it'd indicate he was gay and not at all interested in the woman in front of him who overheard him.
Ultimately, and this will likely get me in trouble, but I think she handled this in the absolute wrongest way possible.
(Reading the old https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/ response post largely sums up why I think it was wrong, but I wasn't aware of the other times she didn't bother trying to resolve things in a way that might actually produce positive results.)
The threats made toward her are obviously reprehensible; I don't understand that reaction either.
I think she handled it wrong, in the same way she's apparently handled similar situations wrong. Lashing out is almost never the best response, a simple "wtf" would almost certainly have ended there on the spot, and a constructive public discussion could have ensued.
Meh. It's awful. He shouldn't have been fired and vilified. She shouldn't have received rape and death threats (wth?!). Two lives in (at least temporary) upheaval when simple communication could have sufficed.
It used to be:
"Don't write anything you would not want the world to see."
For many years this has expanded to:
"Don't write, say or do anything you would not want the world to see."
The side of the argument is inconsequential. Both parties chose to ignore the potential consequences of the Internet as an amplifier. We are not talking about grandma and grandpa here. We are talking about two Internet pro's.
Were the consequences fair?
Who knows? That is the nature of a positive feedback amplifier: It might not stop until something is destroyed. Ignoring it's existence could have one suffer disproportionate consequences. Don't ignore it.
But then I read on, and I found myself having a lot of empathy for her, and for Hank (although what happened to him, as bad as it was was way less intense and scary than what happened to her). I thought they both made (forgivable) mistakes. Their respective employers meted out not very compassionate punishments, those companies come off badly in the article. The public statements by one of the CEO's sounds particularly lame and insincere. More human error. The cascade of errors continues into an avalanche. "The Mob"(i.e. the public) really comes off bad in this story.
I don't think human error leading to more human errors and bad outcomes itself is groundbreaking news. It's more the runaway (not so) positive feedback loop that amplifies errors of (bad) judgement and gut level emotions. We evolved in a context where we only had to contend with unintentionally pissing off maybe a few dozens or hundreds of people with our mistakes. Now millions of people can be infuriated/whipped up into a cyber lynch mob overnight, and even then it's still only a tiny fraction of humanity's collective attention.
Maybe sites like Twitter and Facebook should think about whether or not they have a responsibility to the victims of Mob crucifixion. Even (especially?) the unsympathetic ones, who arguably may have made their own bed and set fire to it. Some kind of circuit breaker when burning crosses start popping up. Cyber public defenders. "Chill out" buttons.
The story made me really feel for Adria. It didn't hide the fact that she saw things in a very harsh, b&w way. Her letter to her father may have been a blatant attempt to emotionally manipulate the writer and the audience. But it works, even if so. What kind of hurt would make it necessary to resort to that? I feel her humanity. She deserves a shot of redemption.
Great article. The other stories are terrific as well, but maybe this one is more of a Puzzlebox.
But the way she acted, taking a photo and publicly tweeting it? That's an attack, I'm not judging, maybe it was right to take direct action. I'm just saying if you escalate things you got to be ready for the retaliation. Especially if you are not in a position of power. And let's be honest, against culture, against public opinion and the internet hate machine, most of us lose.
She's clearly a hateful person without any kind of empathy stretching beyond that of her womens' struggle in tech. There should be no place in tech for people who just can't relent. I don't know if the comments in this article are cherry picked wildly, but even so, even suggesting that this Hank guy is to blame for her getting fired, when clearly it was her own behaviour.
Personally, I have trouble seeing how a lewd joke about one man forking another man's repo (and following up with dongle jokes) involves or threatens women in any way, but I wasn't there.
I almost had sympathy for her, but she blamed the guy for the harassment he faced. That's bordering on unforgivable.
(Actually, "Hank" didn't face any harassment. We don't even know his name.)
This is really nothing more than bullying, self-righteous bullying. Just because you overheard something give you no fucking right to shame someone in public.
Maybe their jokes were immature. Maybe humanity should cease thinking about sex. Either way she's the one guilty of bullying and should be shamed for the horrible person that she is. Fucking move if you don't like what a couple guys are inappropriately joking about.
The two people that were affected barely knew each other and seemingly had no way of absolving themelves.
He tweeted congrats to his daughter for going to college. Predictably some of the replies were nasty.
He went after two and doxxed them. Now these two will bear the result of what went down.
https://38pitches.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/is-it-twitters-fa...
I suspect this will happen more and more.
This wasn't the first incident of questionable behaviour in conferences. There had been sexist comments, talks and general lude behaviour prior to this.
I think she saw the opportunity and forced the situation to fit the narrative (it wasn't even a sexist comment) but it quickly got out of hand and resulted in them both suffering severely.
Shame PyCon and the respective weren't able to deal with this in a better way.
Where do you see that in any of this? It seems to me to be a classic example of what happens when you don't think things through.
IMHO geeks (including me) are terrible at dealing with social situations and even worse at accepting when we are wrong when the only thing pointing to our "wrongness" is what other people think.
Of course you could also be 100% spot-on and I'm being overly sympathetic to someone who doesn't deserve it. I hope I'm not.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039274
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw...
It should be about everybody just brain farting directly to the internet without realizing there's no delete button...
Some people just don't feel fulfilled unless they can log at least 5 micro-agressions against them a day (whatever the fuck they are).
It's an incredibly toxic blend of misogyny, racism, and entitlement, and doesn't even have the self-awareness to understand that about itself.
Congratulations to user interpol_p who is valiantly trying to educate people, but it's far too much of an uphill battle.
If any of you ever decide to do something about it, you have a leading example to follow in the sci-fi/fantasy fandom world, which has had the exact same problems as the tech industry and for the same reasons, but which in recent years has made great strides (not without some reactionary pushback). If you ever want to grow up, just check out what the fantasy geeks have done and are doing.
There is an entire subculture on the Internet entirely devoted to disproving, with a vengeance, the phrase "sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me". They are trolls, pursuing the idea that a carefully selected assemblage of words can reduce a person to a quivering wreck of human jelly.
Then there are the dirt-diggers and the doxers, who will scrutinize your life more carefully than a political party looking for a presidential candidate, and circle with a highlighter every embarrassing thing you have ever done.
There are the holy warriors, who will tolerate no heresies against their chosen cause, especially those done unwittingly, in apparent ignorance that a controversy even exists--for the holy warriors on the other side have, of course, already chosen their path to damnation.
And there are the cruel pranksters, who will summon a SWAT team to your house, looking for your cash, heroin, and slaves. They'll DDoS your employer until you are fired. They'll crack your passwords and post dick pics using your account.
But there's a delicate sort of detente with all these groups. They have, however twisted, a sense of justice. The very worst of them will leave the truly innocent untouched, as though it were all a game, the only legitimate targets are the other players, and cheaters must be punished. The trolls attack pompous, self-righteous windbags. The doxers expose those who abuse their anonymity (such as the trolls and the other doxers). The holy warriors mock those with unfounded or irrational beliefs. And the cruel pranksters follow Machiavelli's blueprint to make the Internet respected, through terrorism.
These are people who have probably never felt any sort of power before, in any other aspect of their lives. Doing one of those things may be the only time they have ever felt like they ever made a difference in the world, even if it was a difference with dubious worth. Before the Internet, those types of personalities would have to be board members for homeowners' associations or local government officials or on the council for their churches or civic groups in order to feel more powerful. That limited the scope of the damage they could potentially do.
All of this misbehavior that we see on the Internet is a symptom. The cause is (in part) the systematic disenfranchisement of the poor and middle class, around the world. And we turn upon each other, as though to prove that we still matter, somehow.
The lede that was buried in the article is this: BOTH OF THE PEOPLE CENTRAL TO THE STORY WERE FIRED FOR BEING VICTIMS.
That makes the spineless, sleazy companies that took the easy way out the real bad guys. They were the only ones in the entire situation with any real power, and they opted to stab their own employees in the back and leave them in the gutter for the rats. They opted to eject someone from a presentation over a single complaint from someone who was likely also violating the conference code of conduct.
There was no due process. There was no respect for the rights of those affected. There was only corporate expedience, and a complete lack of regard for those negatively affected by it. And they are getting away with it, because we continue to blame the victims.
The golden rule is that, if you disagree with someone, speak to them face-to-face, privately first, then in front of others if that doesn't work.
Public tweeting is the absolute last recourse. She's as susceptible to individuation (behind her keyboard) as he was.
A lot of people seem to just be accepting that at face value and I'm having issues understanding why that joke in particular would make her feel unsafe or uncomfortable. It just doesn't strike me as anything that could come across as such.
When the large majority of your experiences with sexual topics in life are related to people sexually harassing you, you might become sensitive to any topics of sexuality that you aren't personally consenting to be a part of.
This has little to do with feminism and much to do with one person who could easily score a narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis. The inability to separate this individual with feminism is the fault of the interpreter.
Regardless, I think that you are unfortunately correct that this event reinforced preexisting, incorrect notions of feminism in the aforementioned interpreter.
I wish I finally meet some easy-to-communicate feminist girl, who is actually trying to change things in this world for women for better. I really wish so... but right now they are just a joke, to me & to my girlfriend.
Maybe best feminist women are those who don't run around shouting how much feminist they are, but instead they let results of their efforts speak for themselves. Did I tell you I really wish to meet such a person?
Men are afraid that a woman will change/ruin their whole lives with just their words.
Well, at least that is how "Hank" feels now.
I personally remember for example the case of a woman stabbing the belly of her partner (a men) with scissors. A very small and deep cut. You don't really need to be much strong to be able to kill another human.
In a country when everybody can carry a firearm with them legally, why women should be specially concerned by assaulting men, or more afraid to be killed by men than to be killed by another women?. In a lot of cases when a men kills someone the victim is another men.
VS.
“Not too bad,” she said. She thought more and shook her head decisively. “He’s a white male. I’m a black Jewish female."
...
At what point will we stop tip-toeing around the fact that "social justice" is a curable and preventable mental disorder masking itself as valid criticism?
I don't like feeling like this, but with what little I know of the public female sentiment on these types of issues, fear and avoidance is the wisest stance.
Hopefully situations like this are vast statistical anomalies.