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Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

kapwing.com

171–180 of 666 posts

Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

#171
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wew lad, I can't believe I'm saying this, but you either don't understand women or don't understand love. Women dont want you to die for them. That's your own need for chivalrious purpose, you selfishly romanticizing your own (or your male friends') sacrifice. I dont know if you've ever had someone sacrificing themselves for you, but lemme tell you first hand, it's not nice, and it makes you feel like shit. Women, an…

I'm not talking about what women want, I'm saying that I know firsthand that many men I know love the women in their lives very much, much more than life itself. That's all. There certainly are men out there who hate women, but it doesn't seem to me to be very many. Try it, enumerate the men you know and ask yourself, or even ask them directly, if they love the women in their lives. What fraction of women haters do y…

Your last paragraph is totally correct, in my opinion.

(It is probably also true that many people who use "racist" insults are not really being "racist"; they are just insulting in an effective, target-specific way. If they couldn't come up with a racist insult, but the target has glasses, they'd probably resort to "four-eyes". I'm talking about the UK here, by the way.)

Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

#172
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rude people are sexist" or "Sexist people are rude" is about the only conclusion you can draw here (maybe not even that, correlation != causation etc etc) It doesn't even come close to showing how "sexism is everywhere". For all we know the sample could be entirely edgy 12 year olds. Tell me again how this self-admittedly "non-rigorous scientific study" proves "sexism is everywhere"? It could easily be that more att…

You're probably new to HN, so you might not have seen all the other stories about sexism posted in the last year or so. A single story like this doesn't prove anything, but the flood of stories just like that paint a pretty clear picture. At some point you can no longer say: "This is an isolated incident".

The daily newspaper has stories that are interesting because they aren't happening to nearly everyone. They give people a very skewed impression of how likely they are to happen to them.

The newspaper rarely bothers to write stories about things that are likely to happen to you, like dying from a hospital mistake, car crash or a drowning.

The risk of dying in a terrorist incident in the US is essentially zero, but you'd never know that from the flood of newspaper stories about it.

Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

#173
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rude people are sexist" or "Sexist people are rude" is about the only conclusion you can draw here (maybe not even that, correlation != causation etc etc) It doesn't even come close to showing how "sexism is everywhere". For all we know the sample could be entirely edgy 12 year olds. Tell me again how this self-admittedly "non-rigorous scientific study" proves "sexism is everywhere"? It could easily be that more att…

You're probably new to HN, so you might not have seen all the other stories about sexism posted in the last year or so. A single story like this doesn't prove anything, but the flood of stories just like that paint a pretty clear picture. At some point you can no longer say: "This is an isolated incident".

The flood of stories only tells me "We want the power these organizations wield" to have everyone walking on eggshells and start a rioting mob towards anyone not paying respect to the social priest caste.

Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

#174
post #105

Amazing. The author spends a lot of time to tell us a very convincing story how sexism affects people in our industry, and the Hacker News thread is full of people rationalizing it. - it's only because people think you're a bot - it's because of your target audience - it's because chat widgets are annoying - you don't really have enough data to make any conclusions How much will it take to convince the average HN rea…

"Rude people are sexist" or "Sexist people are rude" is about the only conclusion you can draw here (maybe not even that, correlation != causation etc etc) It doesn't even come close to showing how "sexism is everywhere". For all we know the sample could be entirely edgy 12 year olds. Tell me again how this self-admittedly "non-rigorous scientific study" proves "sexism is everywhere"? It could easily be that more att…

Also, rude comments aside, which avatar received the most useful comments?

Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

#175
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case they not only look, but also bother you with unneeded greetings. Like an annoying staff in a shop asking whether you need help.

> Like an annoying staff in a shop asking whether you need help. Would you call that a dark sales pattern?

Of course. They're not really asking if you need help, they're trying to interrupt your thinking and pressure you into making a buy decision on the spot.

Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

#176
post #33

I can't relate to her post. We use on purpose attractive female profiles for our support chat avatars (our product is a SaaS) and the cases where a user behaves like this are 0.5% and for us not a problem at all, we just ignore them. FYI, we tested a while different pics, female, male, average looking, good looking and we just got the best conversion rates with the above mentioned.

Just wondering, how do the support people feel about being represented by better looking avatars?

"Your real face is too ugly, sorry."

Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

#177
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like an annoying staff in a shop asking whether you need help. Would you call that a dark sales pattern?

Of course. They're not really asking if you need help, they're trying to interrupt your thinking and pressure you into making a buy decision on the spot.

Fair enough. Should sales staff never ask anyone if they need assistance?

Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

#178

I don't understand. Why would you ask a random website chat on a date? The chances that you're anywhere near her are nil. Do you intend to fly out to meet her? What is happening in your head, random visitor?

Probably thinks it's a bot, and wants to test the scripted response to an out-of-context question.

Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

#179

I think anyone remotely familiar with the internet won't be surprised by these outcomes. Of course the occasional reality check is always good. I wonder to what extent plucky startups expect abuse when they put pop-up chat dialogs in their products. I imagine it's inescapable that some percentage of your user base is going to see it as an invitation to respond poorly. Something door-to-door salespeople and telemarket…

There was almost zero abuse on the male cofounder image. So by what this story presents as long as you pretend to be guys plucky startups don't have to worry.

Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website

#180
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably new to HN, so you might not have seen all the other stories about sexism posted in the last year or so. A single story like this doesn't prove anything, but the flood of stories just like that paint a pretty clear picture. At some point you can no longer say: "This is an isolated incident".

I'm not new to HN, I've been here for far longer than you have. And yes some of those stories have merit, but this is not one of them.

(account age is not a good proxy for "time on HN")
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