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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

> You say this like it's a fact. Did I miss some detail of this incident that came out later?

Yes, the part from the Esquire article revealed a few more things that was disappointing to hear, such as that she notified Hank's (not his real name I understand) employer wanting them to force Hank to remove the part of the HN comment where he said he lost his job. That is significant because it reveals her intentions of turning this into a PR campaign presenting herself as a victim. (Nevermind other references to herself of Joan of Arc). She shouldn't have cared about that part of the comment, but she zoomed in on it, because she realized her game was up -- she wasn't the public victim anymore, people will start sympathizing with Hank from that point on.

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Wow, I hadn't seen this, so thanks for the pointer. From the Esquire article[0]:

> “The next day,” Hank said, “Adria Richards called my company asking them to ask me to remove the portion of my apology that stated I lost my job as a result of her tweet."

Has Richards commented on this claim?

[0] http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/books/7933/exclusive-extrac...

I don't really see how this is a big revelation. If somebody publicly apologized to me for, say, driving drunk and hitting my car, but then went on to play up how they'd lost their job because of it I would call that a bad-faith apology.

While I don't personally read "Hank"'s apology as "bad-faith", I can easily see how she might see it that way.

Your analogy doesn't include contacting the drunk driver's former employer and asking them to ask him to change his apology.

She can feel whatever she wants to about whether it was in good faith. But it feels a little underhanded to allegedly try to secretly get him to modify specific statements she doesn't like (possibly with intentional extra leverage by including the former employer.)

I say secretly, because another option would be including the request to modify his comment in her own comment[0], and removing it from her own if he did. Yes, that would look silly and be easily discovered, which is probably why she allegedly tried to do it non-publicly. (To her credit, contacting the employer may have been just because it was the only means she had to privately contact him.)

I wonder if she immediately saw the tidal wave coming for her when he posted he'd lost his job. If so, it's hard to blame her for trying almost anything to avoid it. Still, it fits into the original comment above, that this was a person deliberately trying to control a narrative to suit her agenda, that being transparent was less important.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667

> Your analogy doesn't include contacting the drunk driver's former employer and asking them to ask him to change his apology.

Sorry, I thought it was implied by the context that I believe that would be an appropriate way of responding to a "bad faith" public apology.

> Still, it fits into the original comment above

Sure, it fits. But there are plenty of other interpretations that fit the information. I'd propose that the reason this narrative is winning is that it's the one that challenges people the least, not because it's the one that fits the facts the best.

Fair enough. I guess for me, reacting that way (trying to modify the apology) to a "bad faith" public apology wouldn't occur to me as an option, so I didn't realize they were directly connected for you.

I agree there are multiple interpretations, mitigating factors, biased accounts, etc. I've already "picked sides" and I doubt much would change that. I don't know that there really is a way to "fit the facts", because all the "facts" we have are colored by two emotionally invested adversaries, probably both speaking from a calculated PR mindset. At this point they're both also speaking through journalists, who may be adding their own spin.

All I was objecting to was OP presenting the opinion that she was only concerned with "PR and a personal agenda" as a fact and not an opinion.

From everything I've read, now including the Esquire article, I disagree with your interpretation. But if you believe that her actions were about "PR and a personal agenda" then I think you'd also have to agree that "Hank"'s apology was just as much about "PR and a personal agenda".

Esquire article: http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/books/7933/exclusive-extrac...

I don't understand how it can't be for personal agenda and PR when her response to two adults making juvenile jokes to themselves is to publicly shame them.

Since kindergarten children are taught to politely ask somebody to stop as their first step, and escalate from there -- not go nuclear right from the get-go.

Or maybe I'm out of the loop on this -- I could be. I really only read about this the other night -- I get a healthy enough dose of drama just in my own life without having to read about somebody else's :-)

We don't really need to speculate why she did it. She details it quite articulately on her blog http://butyoureagirl.com/2013/03/18/forking-and-dongle-jokes...

> I decided to do things differently this time and didn’t say anything to them directly. I was a guest in the Python community and as such, I wanted to give PyCon the opportunity to address this.

So if "personal agenda" includes being fed up with tech industry sexism, then yeah it was very obviously because of a personal agenda. PR? Sure, she was trying to manage how her story was received by the public. Wouldn't you?

The line is crossed when she wants to obscure the truth in her image's favor.

Like how you're using a throwaway to obscure the truth in your image's favor?

...I really don't know what you even intend to mean with this. The truth is that this is a forum that allows anonymous discourse, and I'm not pretending my participation is anything more than that.

I hope you explain yourself, because from what I can tell, you're attempting something ugly.

People try to control how their stories are told, how their stories are received. You are doing so by using a throwaway.

As I said in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9164064, I don't think Adria Richards did anything out of line in asking for an apology to be modified. You're allowed to be anonymous in this context, you are allowed to try to control how your story is told.

That is a fatuous, petty equivalence. I am not a subject of a story being told in the public eye. I am not being asked by anyone to modify the telling of my story to please their agenda.

Asking someone to bear false witness is not comparable to posting as a throwaway.

And in any case, your logic of narrative control is contradictory: Adria was trying to override Hank's control over how his story was told. She didn't ask him publicly, she went through back channels to his previous employer for social leverage.

Hank is allowed to try to control how his story was told. Adria tried to interfere with that right.

Not contradictory. Everyone's allowed to TRY to control how their story is told. She tried to get him to modify his apology to be less muddy. He tried to mitigate the damage of being called out by playing for sympathy. I see no contradiction, and I see no foul play in either of those actions.

> She didn't ask him publicly, she went through back channels to his previous employer for social leverage.

I'm sure going public would have resulted in people accusing her of "going nuclear", or adding insult to injury, etc. Considering this guy was recently fired, I wouldn't want to speak directly to him if I were her. That leaves going via his former employer. You can choose to see that as using "social leverage" but there's no real way to know. If that was the point, it wasn't enough leverage, because he didn't change it.

Facing down this king of online scrutiny and doubt of your motives is exactly why women tend to keep quite about this kind of stuff, and then things don't change because nobody's talking about the problems.

I suppose you're correct that Adria's actions are within the rules of the game ('anything goes!'), but what I'm saying is she played the game poorly by trying to prevent people from knowing she got someone fired.

>Considering this guy was recently fired, I wouldn't want to speak directly to him if I were her.

Did you know that she responded directly to his comment on HN? (See here)[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047].

Adria portrays herself as a fearless crusader against injustice. She has failed in this portrayal in several ways and appeared opportunistic and hypocritical.

Would you be willing to admit there's 'no foul play' in that failure? I don't know if I'd go that far, because my point is more about the nature of the court of public opinion than it is trying to assign blame.

>Facing down this king of online scrutiny and doubt of your motives is exactly why women tend to keep quite about this kind of stuff

It's a problem, sure, but the court of public opinion is extremely volatile and doesn't like being misled, which is part of why it's considered a 'nuclear option'. Adria deliberately used that option and it backfired. This is not doubt of her motives, it's a plain reading of her account of events.

How can you protect someone that chooses to engage in a game of social russian roulette? How can you protect someone that then pulls the trigger six times? You can't, and now Adria is jobless while Hank has a new job. And it's sad and really unfortunate that things have worked out that way for her.

I haven't been trying to make a point like "Adria deserved it" though you probably heard that, and there's an "unfair" amount of that going around (though it's not foul by the rules of the story-telling game you're describing, right?).

There simply isn't anything to be done about mob justice except be aware that it will betray you for the slightest infraction.

...I've been tracing back through the beginning of this conversation, because I was focusing on where exactly I think Adria made a significant mistake "in the eyes of the court" and I wanted to make sure we were still topical.

>>But if you believe that her actions were about "PR and a personal agenda" then I think you'd also have to agree that "Hank"'s apology was just as much about "PR and a personal agenda".

I don't disagree actually with that statement in isolation, but I think you're missing the point here. When they say things are about "PR and a personal agenda," what they mean is there's a sense of dishonesty detected. You can shape the narrative, but get caught distorting it and the mob pounces.

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