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I worked for Bill for about a year at GV. He was one of the friendliest managers I've ever met at Google. I randomly met Dave Drummond once at a coffee shop in

I worked for Bill for about a year at GV. He was one of the friendliest managers I've ever met at Google. I randomly met Dave Drummond once at a coffee shop in Sausalito (I didn't know who he was at the time... he just commented on my Google shirt), and he gave me an inexplicably uncomfortable feeling.

aluminussoma 7y ago
I think it is a bad idea to say this about him without providing a concrete example on how he made you uncomfortable. I'm sure I have accidentally made someone uncomfortable before. Does that make me a bad person? I hope not.
- lostcolony 7y ago
  Of course it doesn't make you a bad person. In fact, there's a good chance you're a good person, and if you have accidentally made someone uncomfortable, it was through something they could easily put their finger on; you said something, you reminded them of something, etc. This doesn't sound like it's that. He does, after all, call it 'inexplicable'; literally unable to be interpreted or expanded upon. It was a 'gut' feeling, a combination of all the things you pick up quickly and instinctively, the summation of which is discomfort. That _also_ doesn't mean the guy is bad, or that it's necessarily fairly representative of him. Just that he gave the OP a feeling of discomfort.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    It is totally unreasonable to go around commenting on third parties giving off creepy vibes of no consequence based on no evidence. Not to be too personal because a comment isn't the measure of a commentator but kcanini is basically saying nothing with as much negative allusion as can be put into a comment. It is a comment with no consequences, no relevant context, no observations and no argument. Gut feelings are often surprisingly accurate, sometimes we all pick things up a lot earlier than our consciousness cottons on. But that is no standard to hold in public discourse. There are a bunch of people who give off creepy vibes who are great and a bunch of people who give off positive vibes who are creepy. Binning people like that should ideally be done with evidence or at the very least an argument to give the comment some substance. We've figured out that good looking people are not more upstanding than ugly people. Truly the next step is to avoid comments like that. Truth is no defence for a comment like that; a comment that says nothing is automatically truthful but also meaningless.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      > Gut feelings are often surprisingly accurate, sometimes we all pick things up a lot earlier than our consciousness cottons on. ... We've figured out that good looking people are not more upstanding than ugly people. There, see the difference? You said it yourself - as it turns out, being good looking vs. ugly is not meaningful evidence as to whether you're going to treat others fairly. Being actively disdainful of others to the extent that you're giving off huge "creeper" vibes (perhaps unwittingly, perhaps intentionally!) can be evidence of sorts - at least in a very loose, "more likely than not" sense. Of course, this is not to say that it should be considered anywhere close to OK to spread wild rumors about "the creeper vibes that this creepy guy gave me once", or anything like that - just think about how open this would be to abuse! But OP wasn't doing that, at all. He/she was seeking to confirm the assessment that others had already, independently come up with, and that can be a very good thing.
      - roenxi 7y ago
        Drummond is black. I'm not one for political correctness, but there is pretty conclusive evidence that a lot of non-blacks people think black people give off creepy vibes. The in-group favoritism bias is a very real thing and it is very reasonable that it manifests as a vague unsubstantiated feeling. Somebody saying they ran into him at a coffee shop and got what amounts to a feeling of bad vibes is literally not evidence or conformation of anything about the man's character. It is quite likely to be run of the mill background racism. We know nothing about the commentator, nothing about the situation. And it looks like the standard outcome of racism. Even if it isn't the commentator can do a lot better than that with minimal effort. Now if there were any evidence of any kind proffered that would be a different story. You are fabricating some notion of some sort of 'active ... disdain' here that isn't mentioned in the objectionable comment. If they don't mean unsubstantiated they shouldn't be saying unsubstantiated. They should be substantiating their claim. The standard should be higher than that comment.
        zozbot234 7y ago
        > but there is pretty conclusive evidence that a lot of non-blacks people think black people give off creepy vibes. There's pretty conclusive evidence that a lot of people think 'people outside their in-group' give off creepy vibes, yes. It's not a black vs. non-black thing, it's literally that being together with 'familiar' groups of people makes you feel more comfortable than otherwise. And while this can be a source of unwanted 'noise', it can also be quite separate from the more specific feeling about a particular person's attitude. I'm pretty sure that if we asked OP about black males other than this guy, he/she would tell us that no, as a rule, they did not make him/her feel uncomfortable the way he did. (After all, working at a firm like Google, in this day and age, involves being exposed to people of many diverse backgrounds and being willing to engage with them as peers regardless of how one might initially feel about their group identity. That's a pretty good antidote to ingroup biases!) I did mention disdain as a possibility because that's perhaps the most common source of those "inexplicable" creeper vibes, and also because OP themselves seems to be drawing a contrast between these and the "friendly" attitude of the person they worked with.
  - aluminussoma 7y ago
    The danger with such unqualified sentiments is that there are many things that can make someone uncomfortable. Let me be more plain: David Drummond is (was) the most famous black male executive in tech. I have heard black men voicing frustrations at people being uncomfortable at them for no good reason. I am not saying that the OP or anyone here is being racist. We need to provide more context to these statements if we are going to say these in public. Otherwise, some groups of people will be at the receiving end of these kind of statements more often than the rest of us.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- meesterdude 7y ago
  > I think it is a bad idea to say this about him without providing a concrete example on how he made you uncomfortable. They don't have to justify themselves to you. He saw what he saw, and felt what he felt. if you have any problem with that, that's on you.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    I read a comment made by meesterdude once, and he gave me an inexplicably uncomfortable feeling.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    the need for offense is strong with this one, yes?
    - meesterdude 7y ago
      not here to people please, just being authentic.
      - celticmusic 7y ago
        keepin' it real! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfz0tDQZhqs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfz0tDQZhqs
wmeredith 7y ago
So what? This comment is nonsense.
- Supermancho 7y ago
  The majority of human communication is nonverbal. I saw this same kind of commentary about Epstein's "assistants". Humans can read humans to an extent that should impact behavior (but rarely does). Get over it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

aluminussoma 7y ago

I think it is a bad idea to say this about him without providing a concrete example on how he made you uncomfortable. I'm sure I have accidentally made someone uncomfortable before. Does that make me a bad person? I hope not.

lostcolony 7y ago
Of course it doesn't make you a bad person. In fact, there's a good chance you're a good person, and if you have accidentally made someone uncomfortable, it was through something they could easily put their finger on; you said something, you reminded them of something, etc. This doesn't sound like it's that. He does, after all, call it 'inexplicable'; literally unable to be interpreted or expanded upon. It was a 'gut' feeling, a combination of all the things you pick up quickly and instinctively, the summation of which is discomfort. That _also_ doesn't mean the guy is bad, or that it's necessarily fairly representative of him. Just that he gave the OP a feeling of discomfort.
- roenxi 7y ago
  It is totally unreasonable to go around commenting on third parties giving off creepy vibes of no consequence based on no evidence. Not to be too personal because a comment isn't the measure of a commentator but kcanini is basically saying nothing with as much negative allusion as can be put into a comment. It is a comment with no consequences, no relevant context, no observations and no argument. Gut feelings are often surprisingly accurate, sometimes we all pick things up a lot earlier than our consciousness cottons on. But that is no standard to hold in public discourse. There are a bunch of people who give off creepy vibes who are great and a bunch of people who give off positive vibes who are creepy. Binning people like that should ideally be done with evidence or at the very least an argument to give the comment some substance. We've figured out that good looking people are not more upstanding than ugly people. Truly the next step is to avoid comments like that. Truth is no defence for a comment like that; a comment that says nothing is automatically truthful but also meaningless.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    > Gut feelings are often surprisingly accurate, sometimes we all pick things up a lot earlier than our consciousness cottons on. ... We've figured out that good looking people are not more upstanding than ugly people. There, see the difference? You said it yourself - as it turns out, being good looking vs. ugly is not meaningful evidence as to whether you're going to treat others fairly. Being actively disdainful of others to the extent that you're giving off huge "creeper" vibes (perhaps unwittingly, perhaps intentionally!) can be evidence of sorts - at least in a very loose, "more likely than not" sense. Of course, this is not to say that it should be considered anywhere close to OK to spread wild rumors about "the creeper vibes that this creepy guy gave me once", or anything like that - just think about how open this would be to abuse! But OP wasn't doing that, at all. He/she was seeking to confirm the assessment that others had already, independently come up with, and that can be a very good thing.
    - roenxi 7y ago
      Drummond is black. I'm not one for political correctness, but there is pretty conclusive evidence that a lot of non-blacks people think black people give off creepy vibes. The in-group favoritism bias is a very real thing and it is very reasonable that it manifests as a vague unsubstantiated feeling. Somebody saying they ran into him at a coffee shop and got what amounts to a feeling of bad vibes is literally not evidence or conformation of anything about the man's character. It is quite likely to be run of the mill background racism. We know nothing about the commentator, nothing about the situation. And it looks like the standard outcome of racism. Even if it isn't the commentator can do a lot better than that with minimal effort. Now if there were any evidence of any kind proffered that would be a different story. You are fabricating some notion of some sort of 'active ... disdain' here that isn't mentioned in the objectionable comment. If they don't mean unsubstantiated they shouldn't be saying unsubstantiated. They should be substantiating their claim. The standard should be higher than that comment.
      - zozbot234 7y ago
        > but there is pretty conclusive evidence that a lot of non-blacks people think black people give off creepy vibes. There's pretty conclusive evidence that a lot of people think 'people outside their in-group' give off creepy vibes, yes. It's not a black vs. non-black thing, it's literally that being together with 'familiar' groups of people makes you feel more comfortable than otherwise. And while this can be a source of unwanted 'noise', it can also be quite separate from the more specific feeling about a particular person's attitude. I'm pretty sure that if we asked OP about black males other than this guy, he/she would tell us that no, as a rule, they did not make him/her feel uncomfortable the way he did. (After all, working at a firm like Google, in this day and age, involves being exposed to people of many diverse backgrounds and being willing to engage with them as peers regardless of how one might initially feel about their group identity. That's a pretty good antidote to ingroup biases!) I did mention disdain as a possibility because that's perhaps the most common source of those "inexplicable" creeper vibes, and also because OP themselves seems to be drawing a contrast between these and the "friendly" attitude of the person they worked with.
- aluminussoma 7y ago
  The danger with such unqualified sentiments is that there are many things that can make someone uncomfortable. Let me be more plain: David Drummond is (was) the most famous black male executive in tech. I have heard black men voicing frustrations at people being uncomfortable at them for no good reason. I am not saying that the OP or anyone here is being racist. We need to provide more context to these statements if we are going to say these in public. Otherwise, some groups of people will be at the receiving end of these kind of statements more often than the rest of us.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
meesterdude 7y ago
> I think it is a bad idea to say this about him without providing a concrete example on how he made you uncomfortable. They don't have to justify themselves to you. He saw what he saw, and felt what he felt. if you have any problem with that, that's on you.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  I read a comment made by meesterdude once, and he gave me an inexplicably uncomfortable feeling.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  the need for offense is strong with this one, yes?
  - meesterdude 7y ago
    not here to people please, just being authentic.
    - celticmusic 7y ago
      keepin' it real! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfz0tDQZhqs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfz0tDQZhqs

wmeredith 7y ago

So what? This comment is nonsense.

Supermancho 7y ago
The majority of human communication is nonverbal. I saw this same kind of commentary about Epstein's "assistants". Humans can read humans to an extent that should impact behavior (but rarely does). Get over it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]