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Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

• throwawayaway 12y ago
  > He noticed ruefully that a few days earlier the woman – her name was Adria Richards – had herself tweeted a stupid penis joke. She’d suggested to a friend that he put socks down his pants to bewilder TSA agents at the airport. 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.
  • maxerickson 12y ago
    This guy is doing a great job promoting his book. I guess the discussion here won't be real different than this recent one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085680 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.
    • throwawayaway 12y ago
      People who have been through the wringer on these subjects fight pretty hard in "nymwars". I personally try very hard to keep my real name off the internet. 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.
      • Torgo 12y ago
        Ronson did an interview with Alex Jones where they both talked about what they saw when they infiltrated Bohemian Grove. It was fascinating to see a complete conspiracy denialist debate with a complete conspiracy true-believer. It was a serious Rashomon moment.
    • r721 12y ago
      Even bigger discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039274
  • moomin 12y ago
    One was a professional context, one wasn't.
    • throwawayaway 12y ago
      i would wager that most people feel a private conversation at a convention is less a professional context than getting on the twitter megaphone, i certainly do.
    • TheHypnotist 12y ago
      So is her twitter not used ever in a professional context? Or does she get to pick and choose which statements are and aren't in said context?
• codecondo 12y ago
  Say what you like, but Hank didn't do anything wrong here. In fact, he only expressed everything that had happened to him, and it just so happened that many people decided to stand up for him in what seems to be a situation of very, very poor judgement. On the other hand, great and naturally flowing writing by the author, really enjoyed swimming through the story!
  • maxerickson 12y ago
    The problem was that many people went a lot further than standing up for Hank. (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.)
    • celticninja 12y ago
      But that was not Hank's fault or Hank's problem in all fairness.
      • maxerickson 12y ago
        I don't see how I've even suggested otherwise.
    • josefresco 12y ago
      4chan behavior is well documented and not surprising in this case. Easily condemned, but I don't think it helps this discussion to be emotionally swayed by the reaction of such a group.
  • probably_wrong 12y ago
    > Say what you like, but Hank didn't do anything wrong here. 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?".
• MatekCopatek 12y ago
  I remember when this story happened and after reading it all again, I still think that what makes it so terrible is the fact both sides were fired. One of them because he was behaving immaturely at a conference and another because her employer was getting ddosed. 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...
  • Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    > Is it just me or are those both terrible overreactions from the companies' sides? 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.
    • coob 12y ago
      Freedom of speech only apply to the state. The state cannot restrict your freedom of speech. Your employer can.
      • digi_owl 12y ago
        And by making more and more communication channels "corporate" the government can wash their hands...
      • iopq 12y ago
        But there are laws against unlawful termination. What his company did could be considered unlawful termination.
        • 12y ago
• arcatek 12y ago
  Another interesting article about online shaming: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html 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.
  • moomin 12y ago
    Same guy, same story, same book he's promoting.
    • celticninja 12y ago
      that doesnt mean it is not an interesting read on a similar situation.
• 300bps 12y ago
  I really have nothing nice to say about Adria Richards. Following my mother's advice, that is my only comment.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
• Red_Tarsius 12y ago
  > “Somebody getting fired is pretty bad,” I said. “I know you didn’t call for him to be fired. But you must have felt pretty bad.” > “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.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • imjoshholloway 12y ago
    What makes me laugh is where she says she's not to blame for what happened to Hank yet she then blames HIM for what happened to her. 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.
    • Jem 12y ago
      Totally agree with your first 3 sentences, can't agree with the last. Finding the courage to stand up and directly address someone who is making you feel uncomfortable - especially if you're a minority in a certain environment - takes a lot of courage and absolute certainty that you're not going to get a mouthful of abuse back. (I think talking directly to the conf organisers/staff would have been the preferred route, personally.)
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  • moomin 12y ago
    It's very hard to sympathize with anyone when you're reading someone perform a character assassination on them.
    • treerock 12y ago
      What character assassination?
      • celticninja 12y ago
        i agree, seems like the author has quoted her truthfully and she assasinates her own character. give someone enough rope...
    • jackvalentine 12y ago
      I've deleted what I wrote because of the scary number of upvotes it was gaining. I don't feel like spending the rest of the night trying to defend something about something that is so devisive even if I am on the "popular" side in this particular forum. I didn't write anything profound and it began to feel like cheap point scoring.
      • celticninja 12y ago
        that's very sad, but I understand why you are doing it.
    • easytiger 12y ago
      JR is a journalist with no agenda whatsoever. If you knew anything about him you would know he is probably the most passive voice left in modern media
  • interpol_p 12y ago
    I initially had a similar reaction but then forced myself to take a step back. I think I can sympathise with Adria regarding her initial reaction. 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.
• Jem 12y ago
  I remember when this incident happened. I can't remember what my reaction was at the time (probably a combination of "let's not alienate women in tech further" and "sexual jokes are OK in the right context, and a conf is propably not it") but reading this excerpt - particularly reading about Adria's continued anger(?) at Hank - really shocked me.
  • moomin 12y ago
    Bear in mind that Adria's _still_ getting harassed over this. For Hank it's over.
    • Jem 12y ago
      I get that, and I empathise for Adria, but Hank isn't the perpetrator of the abuse. It's the direction of Adria's anger that shocked me, not that she's angry.
  • mqzaidi 12y ago
    I remember this too. When sendgrid was ddosed, as a company that entirely depended on sendgrid to send mails (I had joined recently), we were affected too. Since then, we run postfix and use multiple email providers behind it, but ironic how a tweet affected so many people.
  • arrrg 12y ago
    She lost her job and faced the usual (sadly) torrent of internet abuse. I really dare you to be cool then … I mean, the gall of some people. That’s so fucking weird. 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.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • Jem 12y ago
      When I was ~17, I was cast out of an online community that I had been working in/with for around 3-4 years. Overnight I lost my hobby, my so-called friends, and my entire personal life was examined in detail and revealed to the public for mocking/the enjoyment of the perpetrators. 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.
• moomin 12y ago
  Let's be clear here, Jon Ronson spent a fair bit of time lying to Adria Richards to put together his book, his portrayal of the timeline is inaccurate and even if this wasn't the case it'd be a phenomenal amount of false equivalence: http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the-falsest-of-false-equivalencies.html 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.
  • adekok 12y ago
    Except nothing in that page gives any facts about why he was fired. The author claims: > A man was fired for violating the conduct rules in a professional space. Which is naked supposition on her part.
  • throwawayaway 12y ago
    That's anything but clear. Could you clarify what lies Ronson told and also point out the inaccuracies in the timeline. 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.
  • celticninja 12y ago
    can you provide any supporting facts that Jon Ronson lied? I mean you say he lied about hsi reasons for interviewing her, i.e. said it was about sexism. However he has not lied about what she said or what actually happened. You do not deny that he has quoted her faithfully. 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.
    • hnyc 12y ago
      In my opinion, her upbringing and life have everything to do with this. If it were not for how she was brought up and how she was treated during her life, she may or may not have done what she did. The only reason is not to try to engineer some sympathy, but there are other possible reasons as well. 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).
• fr0ggerrr 12y ago
  This gives feminism a bad image.
  • Hytosys 12y ago
    And "Hitler was an atheist!" 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.
    • saiya-jin 12y ago
      Judging from my personal viewpoints and experiences (aka the usual YMMV), from those few feminists I know, most fall +- into this category. Much less narcisstic/sociopatic, but same breed. What I mean by this - looking very hard for any case of man/woman disparity in our society, ignoring that some professions are just better for men (and some for women, and others are +-equal). What is interesting is their lack of objectiveness - they will discuss and shame for long time situation in their current/previous work, how horrible is the situation in their western country, yet they are almost oblivious to horrible treatment of women that happens region-wide half around the globe (ie "yeah it's horrible how women can't drive in saudi arabia, BUT! that last job i had, one guy told me I women are happier when they bring up kids back home and not doing career! How horrible is that! How did he dare!" - roughly real conversations I had :)) Or - all is bad because of men. But rather don't look at the mess in their lives. 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?
      • Hytosys 12y ago
        > ignoring that some professions are just better for men I'm not ignoring your sexism. > ...yet they are almost oblivious to horrible treatment of women that happens region-wide half around the globe... Is homelessness in the United States also not a problem because of impoverishment in African countries? Is the conversation of the drought in California dismissible because of the lack of clean water in India? You're expressing dire cultural insensitivity.
• OutrageCulture 12y ago
  Anyone who is interested in discussing this growing phenomenon may like to check out http://www.reddit.com/r/outrageculture http://www.reddit.com/r/outrageculture
• sjtrny 12y ago
  > Another word for software is “repository” Tech reporting in a sentence.
  • vegashacker 12y ago
    I wasn't bothered by this inaccuracy. It's close enough to the truth so that the joke makes sense. (Well, as much as the joke can be considered to make sense.)
• oracle2025 12y ago
  One interesting aspect that seems to be completely left out of that discussion is the issue of labour protection laws. Firing someone in Europe for some minor issue like that would probably be a major legal issue here.
  • throwawayaway 12y ago
    With enough money in the fired party's bank account, it would be. I think the only difference between Europe and the US in this regard is the amount of money required to get justice.
    • oracle2025 12y ago
      sounds like a major difference, if a labour law only protects rich people, it is not really in the spirit of an actual "labour law" https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FArbeiterbewegung https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...
      • throwawayaway 12y ago
        my point is rather badly explained, i mean to say that you need quite a lot of money on either continent to fight these type of battles.
        • celticninja 12y ago
          no you dont, in Europe there is a lot of legal aid and support available to bring these to employment tribunals. you dont have to be rich to get justice over here (but as with everywhere it does help).
          • throwawayaway 12y ago
            well free legal aid is worth what you pay for it in mine and other's experience. hopefully you won't have to rely on it someday. being rich certainly does help.
• andrea_s 12y ago
  ““Maybe it was [Hank] who started all of this,” Adria told me in the cafe at San Francisco Airport. “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. Right?” This paragraph really gave me chills... A lot of insight about her thought process, and a bit terrifying in my opinion.
  • adekok 12y ago
    It goes on: > “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.
    • Red_Tarsius 12y ago
      The irony is, such delusional behaviour does nothing but foster more doubt and double standards. If I were Hank, I would react exactly as he wrote: > 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.”
• Jedd 12y ago
  One of the saddest stories in tech in the past few years. 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.
  • lumpypua 12y ago
    > As a white male I was implicitly guilty, but wasn't sure how to stop being so. Is this a joke?
    • Jedd 12y ago
      No, I didn't intend it to be. The sentiment expressed by Adria came up at the time, and was a big part of this interview (not sure how much faith we can put in the quotes attributed, but for the moment I'll assume they are accurate). 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 find this kind of attitude / rationalisation uncomfortable because it turns out that I am, through no fault of my own, part of the demographic identified as inherently worthy of less empathy. 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.
• outworlder 12y ago
  I remember this episode well. 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.
  • StavrosK 12y ago
    > 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 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.
    • cantankerous 12y ago
      On the flip side, you're not supposed to get involved in everything that's going on around you just because it's going on. It's pretty easy to mistakenly thunder in on a half-heard conversation without any context.
      • StavrosK 12y ago
        Definitely, there's a balance there. That does mean that the GP post of "wasn't supposed to do it" isn't always right.
    • Anderkent 12y ago
      Uhm actually listening to a clearly private conversation is a breach of manners, if nothing else.
• rors 12y ago
  After reading this I don't like Adria Richards very much. She seems very self involved with a persecution context. However, she is still very much a victim of sexist online culture. Bad people can be victims too. 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.
  • bluehex 12y ago
    Was the joke even sexist at all or was it just sexual in nature? Inappropriate sure, but that's a pretty big difference in my book.
    • josefresco 12y ago
      Sexual != sexist. I feel like this concept needs more attention. Anecdotally, I hear just as many sexual jokes from females as I do males - the concept that "they feel comfortable" and happen to be surrounded by similar people (while/male) does not make it sexist, or even threatening.
      • mtrimpe 12y ago
        Involuntary sexualization is sexist though. 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.
        • bluehex 12y ago
          > ... the dongle joke was still similarly sexist. How so? As I understand it the joke wasn't directed at the picture on the screen or anybody in particular.
          • mtrimpe 12y ago
• byuu 12y ago
  The world is replete with examples of why you should never use your real name with your online identity in any way (although in this case, the guy's employer found out over a photograph; which is even more troubling.) 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?
  • theorique 12y ago
    "Not too bad, he's a white male. I'm a black Jewish female." Nice quote here. As you say, it really does make Richards look empathetic. /s But seriously, this is not good for her image.
    • fpgeek 12y ago
      No, she doesn't look empathetic, but, considering the broader context, how much empathy can you reasonably expect? 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.
      • bjornsing 12y ago
        That, and her own childhood. We tend to relativize bad things in terms of what we've experienced ourselves. If I had seen my father beat the teeth out of my mothers mouth with a hammer I'm not so sure I'd be up in arms about somebody losing their job...
• zvrba 12y ago
  So she overhears a private conversation between friends [none of the talk was directed to or being about anybody in particular], tweets a "summary" without context, adds a photo of the people involved, all in order to publicly shame them, while they did nothing wrong. No sympathy for her.
  • fsniper 12y ago
    Also, her own words are showing signs of insecurity in her side which leads to near destruction of two peoples lives. (her own included). Also, both companies' responses to these events are overreactions.
    • seunosewa 12y ago
      I don't think Adria's company really over-reacted; she achieved the opposite of what her job of 'developer evangelist' was all about.
      • fsniper 12y ago
        Well, yes you are right about that. I did not know/missed her position at the company. If you are an evangelist you are a frontend of your company, an institution's face where ever publicly speaking.
  • mcphage 12y ago
    > No sympathy for her. She's gone through hell. Why wouldn't you feel sympathy for her, even if you don't like what she did?
    • zvrba 12y ago
      I'll talk openly now. After reading what she said in the interview, my visceral reaction was "What a self-righteous bitch, she got what she deserved." Death and rape threaths were over the top though. 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.
• ekianjo 12y ago
  Wow, sounds like the good old days of Thought Police. See someone who don't respect the ideology en vogue, report them, and bam, they will be taken care of. Nice job Adria. Setting the good example for the kids.
• konstruktor 12y ago
  What angers me most about that conference incident is the indiscriminate public shaming of two people, one of whom was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Imagine being all over the internet because your company sent you to a conference with the wrong guy.
  • allendoerfer 12y ago
    I thought about that, too. The article helps to explain the behavior of everyone involved. I can see myself in everyones actions and later regretting to have done them. Nevertheless if got into something like that, I would have sued her.
• CHY872 12y ago
  One important point here is that Adria's role was that of developer evangelist - a role that requires good community engagement. It's then not such a stretch to imagine that her ability to do this job well might be compromised in the aftermath of such an event. 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.
  • karmacondon 12y ago
    "Both were at fault" is such a cop out. Hank did nothing wrong. According to his account in this article, he laughed at the phrase "large dongle" and said "I would fork that guy's repo" about a male presenter. If those are sins then hell is going to be a very crowded place. 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.
  • Kenji 12y ago
    "The brogrammer/franerdity approach does alienate women, which is why it should as much as possible be suppressed" 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.
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• jccalhoun 12y ago
  The summary of the article says his book is about "fake indignation." Who gets to decide what indignation is "fake" and what is "real?"
• MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
  A good writeup with some more background information here: https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/ I found it interesting that apparently, Adria has done similar things in the past.
  • fenomas 12y ago
    That blog post was as sensible a commentary as I've ever read on these kinds of issues, thanks for sharing.
• sudioStudio64 12y ago
  There's a real reason why society stopped doing public shaming as punishment. It brings out the worst in everyone.
• andy_ppp 12y ago
  I think the feeling of entitlement to be never offended isn't a right (mainly because anything can offend some people). Adria is seriously comparing the situation caused by people making silly jokes to feeling as if she's going to be murdered? Er? 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...
• kirualex 12y ago
  Everyone can be offended by anything. If your response involve real harmful ramifications for the other person, you're the one being a dick.
• DanBC 12y ago
  I love Jon Ronson's work. He manages to make people appear human. Here, though, Adria comes across really poorly. She blames "Hank" for the (totally unacceptable) abuse she receives, even when she's told that he was not in anyway responsible for it. If you get the chance to see his documentaries or listen to his radio shows you should - they're good.
• donkeyd 12y ago
  IMHO the discussion should not about these 3 people involved in this particular incident. It should be about everybody just brain farting directly to the internet without realizing there's no delete button...
• S_A_P 12y ago
  I really have trouble with this story. Nearly every aspect was overblown. However maybe I'm a curmudgeon but I don't have a social media profile for the very reason I don't want my business out there. I don't want to be Internet famous or even real life famous. Secondly how were they able to find someones Twitter profile without knowing her name? Search for #donglejokesarebadmmkay ? None of this makes much sense to me. The firings on both sides are crazy to me. I don't know that I have even heard anyone in my company even talk about Twitter much less check up on some scuttlebutt about a conference. It's the makings of reality tv drama. Asinine.
• tomp 12y ago
  > “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'm guessing he's not the only one. If she wanted to make tech more welcoming for women, it looks like her plan backfired.
• lurknomore 12y ago
  Terrifying. Glib Twitter scolds are the brownshirts of our era.
• Buge 12y ago
  She asked his employer to take down his hacker news post? Did she think they would have his account's password?
  • jlebrech 12y ago
    and that's why she's not a tech anymore.
  • bhayden 12y ago
    She asked his employer to ask him.
• Dewie 12y ago
  > “Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?” 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.
  • gosukiwi 12y ago
    That phrase made me realize she's really traumatized. When I read about her childhoold I confirmed it. Pretty sad for her I guess, but still she should grow up and see a doctor or something if she wants to work again... I'm surprised she got there in the first place.
  • pvaldes 12y ago
    And of course some men are also afraid to be killed or physically hurted by some women. Because, well... this happen, also. 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.
• fromtheoutside 12y ago
  So there is this internet hate machine and it's terrible. The cyber bullying crimes (ok, that's probably free speech in the US) and insults are way off, totally disproportionate. 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.
• dragon88 12y ago
  Related: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw... Also related: http://www.torontosun.com/2015/03/03/phaneuf-lupul-hire-law-firm-over-tweet-aired-on-tsn 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.
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• jacobevelyn 12y ago
  This feels like a thread in which expressing ANY opinion (except, perhaps, this one) is a potential liability. That realization saddens me.
  • bhayden 12y ago
    Your lack of support of the correct side in this argument is unsettling /s
• nly 12y ago
  The worst and most ironic part of this story is how 4chans vigilante 'justice' likely ended up reaffirming Adrias fears surrounding men in the field. 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.
• wvh 12y ago
  As someone who genuinely doesn't always know what to say out loud and what not, this story never fails to make me emotional and on a personal level – beyond any gender/political correctness/professionalism debate – I don't like people like Adria [as portrayed] very much. I'm happy people around me are a lot more reasonable.
• davelnewton 12y ago
  I'm pretty conflicted about this whole thing, and was back then, too. 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/ 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.
  • dkfmn 12y ago
    Thank you for posting this article, I was trying to track it down for the thread. This encounter was so widely reported that it's almost difficult to discuss it honestly and openly and without taking sides. I feel like that, in and of itself, is the tragedy for the community.
    • davelnewton 12y ago
      I definitely have a side. 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.
      • dkfmn 12y ago
        I completely agree.
• vermontdevil 12y ago
  Similar case is happening to the two tormentors of Curt Schilling (a former baseball player)'s daughter. 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-fault/ https://38pitches.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/is-it-twitters-fa... I suspect this will happen more and more.
  • smackfu 12y ago
    "Nasty" seems like an understatement, and it wasn't like they were hiding behind anonymity. So I have little sympathy in that case. You say terrible things on a twitter account in your name, directed at someone else, it might come back to bite you.
• kitd 12y ago
  And to think all she had to do was to turn round, frown and go "Guys, there's a time and a place ...". 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.
• mrpip 12y ago
  I think the reaction against Adria was healthy. Perhaps these sanctimonious SJWs will think twice before they go all upworthy on random people.
• blackbagboys 12y ago
  I'm curious as to whether Ronson or Esquire's fact-checkers verified the horrific details of Adria's upbringing.
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• mooredinty 12y ago
  When you see a white man standing in the room, take a moment to think about all the unjustified accusations of racism and sexism he's had to endure in his journey to get there https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/530109180460675074 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/530109180460675074
• tzs 12y ago
  What astounds me is that all this fuss was made over a silly dongle joke. 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.
  • BuildTheRobots 12y ago
    > If the guy had been overheard quietly telling his friend a joke like, say, The Aristocrats, then I could understand someone getting seriously offended. Why on earth would someone get offended over an animated kids film about cats?
• mkr-hn 12y ago
  This debacle was a helpful reminder that we all do things that, out of context, can look really awful, and should be mindful of this when calling people out publicly. Neither of them deserved to be fired or harassed over this. 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.
  • jellicle 12y ago
    But... but... you're blaming her for the harassment she's facing. (Actually, "Hank" didn't face any harassment. We don't even know his name.)
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• aeze 12y ago
  Please excuse my ignorance, but could someone explain to me how the joke about a big dongle was threatening or sexist? 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.
  • bhayden 12y ago
    Some people believe everyone should have the right to not be exposed to sexuality of any sort at any time unless they choose to be. This is a more sensitive topic for women because they are subjected to sexual harassment their entire lives. It is threatening because she is a woman, who is sensitive to the topic, and works in an industry filled with people who don't understand this issue very well. It doesn't help being in a room of 800 people when almost all of them also don't understand this issue. 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.
• mbrutsch 12y ago
  Hank, It Gets Better. Trust me on this. :)
• Vaskivo 12y ago
  sigh This situation is filled to the brim with stupid and (aparently) harmless actions that lead to stupid reactions. - 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.
• nsxwolf 12y ago
  I didn't think my opinion of Adria Richards could actually decrease further, but somehow it just did (assuming the article accurately represented her statements). I want to be charitable to her but these statements are just bad.
  • TheHypnotist 12y ago
    Read her twitter. It doesn't get much better.
• jeffbush 12y ago
  A lot of time is spent talking about Hank and Adria, but most of the damage in these sorts of cases are caused by bystanders: all of us. It feels pretty safe to be part of the crowd pillorying someone else, but I'm sure we've all said or done something thoughtless in the past that we would be embarrassed about if it were broadcast publicly. And while there is a valid discussion to be had about the environment for women in tech, I don't believe this incident has moved that discussion forward. It has put a lot of people on the defensive and made them dig into extreme positions. If there is a moral here, perhaps it is that we should try to be a little less self righteous and see things in a more nuanced way.
• PaulRobinson 12y ago
  Taking sides in this is the wrong thing to do. 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.
• wahsd 12y ago
  Seems like their mistake was admitting anything. They should have then just sued her for defamation. 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.
• rebootthesystem 12y ago
  People must be responsible for their actions. Without that society breaks down. Today the Internet is an amplifier of consequences, good or bad. A professional working in the industry isn't a professional if they are not in tune with this effect to guide their decision making. 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.
• Eye_of_Mordor 12y ago
  No one wins an argument.
• placeybordeaux 12y ago
  It seems like the take-away is that mob justice is increasingly worrying in the Internet age. The two people that were affected barely knew each other and seemingly had no way of absolving themelves.
• mistermann 12y ago
  Personally, I condemn anyone who is a vocal activist in the "gender debate" in tech who does not speak up on topics such as this. If you are female and want to genuinely be treated as an equal in tech, you don't freak out over minor jokes, and when "one of your own" does, I believe you are obligated to voice your disagreement with the behavior, assuming you even think it is wrong, which might be an incorrect assumption. If you don't think it's wrong, I never want to work with someone like you. And if this mentality is at all common (I have no idea), purely from a risk management perspective, I would only hire females when they are massively more qualified than any male counterparts. 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.
  • bjornsing 12y ago
    Fear and avoidance of half of humanity. I've never before heard that described as "the wisest stance". :D I'll have to think about it... ;)
    • mistermann 12y ago
      You'd have to be living under a rock if you think different genders have identical risk profiles in all settings.
• irishloop 12y ago
  It is utterly mind-boggling that someone can feel threatened by a comment about big dongles or forking someone's repo. I'm sorry, but at this point, you need to seek professional help, and you are trivializing the threats that many women feel every single day by creating threats and persecution where there is none.
• tr352 12y ago
  She failed to anticipate the huge backlash of her actions. Ironically, the goal of her actions was to make sure that his actions would lead to a huge unforeseeable backlash for him.
• aercolino 12y ago
  Clearly not the kind of women we need more in tech... well, we don't need fanatics anywhere really.
• logfromblammo 12y ago
  If there is a moral to the story at all, it is this: Using the Internet as a weapon is like swinging nunchucks studded with loosely-attached, razor-sharp blades. Everyone near you gets hurt, but especially you. 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.
• dfcowell 12y ago
  I feel some real cognitive dissonance when I read about how this situation unfolded. 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.
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• gadders 12y ago
  Seriously, what ever happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt? 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).
• gadders 12y ago
  Original Hacker News thread, including response from Mr Hank: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667
• jellicle 12y ago
  Threads like this are why I will discourage my daughter from working in the tech industry. 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.
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• NumberCruncher 12y ago
  When someone asks you if you have made sexual comments about "forking someone’s repo" you say "No"!
• flarg 12y ago
  FWIW I sympathise with Adria - she seems like the perfect geek (takes no bullcrap, sticks to her guns, overly logical analysis of social situations to the detriment of all); describes me some of the time, and the constant state of some of the people in the teams I have managed over the years; and yet I never once thought of firing any one of them, Shame PyCon and the respective weren't able to deal with this in a better way.
  • woodman 12y ago
    > overly logical analysis of social situations to the detriment of all 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.
    • flarg 12y ago
      Isn't that the same sort of thing? She interpreted a social situation in her own way and then seemed to think it through based on her own POV and biases to it's logical conclusion. According to the OP she doesn't feel anything but justified. Of course we might feel differently, but doesn't mean she didn't think it through in her own way. 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.
      • woodman 12y ago
        I don't think most people follow that very flexible definition of "thinking it through". With it being so relativistic, it loses any practical use.
• jfallon 12y ago
  I'm really trying, but I am having trouble feeling empathy towards her. Once I realized he was fired because of what she did and how proud of herself she was (this is the bad part), I just couldn't feel any empathy for her anymore.
• istvan__ 12y ago
  The actual title should be how stupidity can ruin your life. I do not want to live in the world where adults cannot make jokes, even sexual one. He clearly did not direct that to the woman who made a huge scene out of it. Actually, If the guy writes a mail and sends it to his buddy, and the woman reads the mail that is a felony. Why can she make this sort of things when the conversation obviously was not directed to her? This story is just so wrong on so many levels.
• DownvoteMeToWin 12y ago
  “I think that nobody deserves what she went through,” he replied. 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?
• igonvalue 12y ago
  Previous discussion on Hacker News of a similar article by the same author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039274 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw...
• hackerboos 12y ago
  I'm going to be a cynic and say that Adria took a gamble to raise her profile and it backfired big time. 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.
• 59nadir 12y ago
  This article really cemented my opinion that Adria Richards deserved to get fired and should never have a podium from which to shame someone ever again. 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.
• dougabug 12y ago
  I'd never heard of Adria Richards before, or I'd forgotten it as an absurd non-newsworthy event. On reading about the incident, I thought "What a humorless, vindictive [Beelzebub]" I was kinda glad that she got fired. 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.