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

kapwing.com

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

#371

Post by Wehrdo »

TomMarius wrote: post #233
acranox wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but do you think those 12 year olds are going to all grow up to be well behaving adults? Or maybe the problems with this kind of sexism are starting very young. If you are right then the solutions still need to be addressed, but we need to start earlier.

Do you remember how sexist were the 70's and the 80's? People who were 12 back then turned out just fine, considering that we're even discussing this, didn't they?

What makes you think they turned out fine? Considering all the high-profile sexual harassment issues over the past few weeks, I get the feeling that many of them did not "grow out of it".

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

#373

Post by te_chris »

jaaames wrote: post #349
jenthoven wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey this is Julia, the post’s author. Sorry there’s no legend; I kind of included it in the title of the graph but orange was “Rude or trolling messages” and blue was “Sexual harassment or heckling”

Did you consider that this maybe not be representative of a systemic bias against women across all demographics, rather, the demographic that searches for video meme makers on the internet is skewed towards horny rude teenage boys that bask in anonymity?

It's funny, I searched her article for 'systemic bias against women' and couldn't find the phrase...

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

#374

Post by soundwave106 »

Belphemur wrote: post #308
eitland wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree strongly. And HN is proof that this isn't (entirely) true. In fact HN is a lot nicer than a number of verified name forums.

We need also to compare the user base ... The user's age on HN is in the ballpark of 25-40 years old, as it's a tech website. The website in OP is a meme generator, and I'm sure the ballpack would be 12-18 years. Now considering this, I agree with alkonaut.

To some degree I think it's more the nature of Internet style communication (text / typing oriented with no face to face interaction) in itself. Facebook after all is not anonymous and is not 100% free of this sort of thing.

Honestly, though, there are some corners of real life (especially in those early teen years as you allude to, but even among full grown adults that should know better) where you will find people with this sort of personality. These type of reactions are not surprising in that context. Social media does seem to do something to amplify raw vulgarity and classless behavior though.

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

#375

Post by scott_s »

geezerjay wrote: post #258
dsr_ wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, society tolerating those vocal trolls does mean that society is sexist. "The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept" - Lt. Gen. David Morrison

> No, society tolerating those vocal trolls does mean that society is sexist. Actually that just means society tolerates trolls. You're showing your bias by jumping to the conclusion that everything is sexism or that somehow antisocial and immature people only target women. Furthermore, western society actually holds in high regard concepts such as frer speech, which covers idiots being able to say idiotic things.

These vocal trolls are being sexist. A society that tolerates sexist trolls tolerates sexism. A society that tolerates sexism is a sexist society.

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

#376

Post by kalleboo »

moomin wrote: post #331
kohanz wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partly agree, but it's also a bit of a cop out, to be honest. Anyone who has been in such an anonymous chat environment (game or otherwise) and has dished out such abuse has undoubtedly received it too and know how it feels. They do it because it illicits a reaction on the other end and they too have felt that reaction and decided they would rather be on the other end of it.

They eliminated anonymity in large chunks of South Korea’s social media. People didn’t behave better. (With that said, there are certain behaviours e.g. support for fascism that seem to be associated with having large numbers of anon accounts.)

I also see some pretty terrible behavior in Facebook comments on news sites/blogs right next to people's names, employer and a photo of them with their kid.

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

#377

Post by mikulas_florek »

notriddle wrote: post #323
mikulas_florek wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's better to present yourself as an anonymous avatar than a real person. Only if you want to avoid rude/sexist messages. You can get more normal messages with good looking girl, and that's what matters for business.

> Only if you want to avoid rude/sexist messages. Who wouldn't?!

It's not just black and white. You will get less rude messages, but you will also get less normal messages. It means you will have smaller conversion ratio and earn less money.

So to answer your question, I would not want to avoid sexist message if it means less money for my business. It's extremely simple to ignore bad people on the Internet. It's hard to earn money.

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

#378

Post by aninhumer »

mikulas_florek wrote: post #273
aninhumer wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perception that female photos look fake is still sexism. It suggests people believe it less likely that a woman would be on the other end of the conversation. And you suggesting that perception as an explanation without challenging it kind of demonstrates how this is a pervasive problem. Now I agree that the model photo looks a little more artificial for reasons beyond gender, and they should probably have compar…

>The perception that female photos look fake is still sexism Except it's not. Stock photos of good looking women are routinely used in marketing to attract users. It's proven by stats from A/B testing.

So the gendered assumption is the result of a gendered marketing practice which is based on gender differentiated responses to images (which are proven by stats)? But there's no sexism involved here?

Okay, I'm being glib, but this idea that thinking of a plausible causation with no further critical analysis means it's "not sexism" is kind of exasperating.

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

#379

Post by jopsen »

I wouldn't be surprised if choice of avaatar also affects the likelihood that people will contact you..

This would be an interesting thing for someone to study. Did anyone look for published studies?

Regardless, I'm sure simple things like wording of the text and picture affects how people precieve the product, and behave when replying. Obviously, such effects can also be exploited for the better - one should hope :)

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

#380

Post by piracykills »

randomsearch wrote: post #357
jakobegger wrote: post #101

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…

Also, HN story about general experience that isn’t about sexism: “Oh, that’s interesting, I wonder if that’s because of X or Y?”, “gee that most have been awful”, “hey that makes me re-examine a way I behaved once”, “I’ve seen similar behaviour here at Q and Z” When about sexism: “unless this is a triple-blind study that has been repeated across every continent, let’s not jump to the conclusion that there is a lot of…

I don't think people are doing that so much as there's just not much to discuss there - sure, you can yell at people to parent better til the cows come home or talk about how our society is somehow collapsing because of this but no one will care. There's no proven fix, so not much to say on the matter.

Instead, people here are looking for realistic fixes - like making the chat box not automatically open so only those who need support will go out of their way to get it. I think the author would have been much less likely to receive abuse if people were actually there to ask her questions about her service than because they had just searched for a way to to generate a shitty meme. I could be wrong about that, but it'd be an interesting thing to do an A/B test with I think.

Perhaps it makes more sense to put it into security terms - In the same way that it doesn't make sense to don't go around talking about how we could live in a dream world where bots don't scan the internet for weak SSH credentials all day, it doesn't make sense for us to go around talking about a dream world where sexism simply doesn't exist. The author found a good compromise to defend herself against that threat - many people on HN are just suggesting other possible defenses.

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