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

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

#421

Post by buhris »

rkangel wrote: post #310
verroq wrote: 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…

The conclusion you can draw here is that being female will makes you the target of abuse that you wouldn't receive as another gender (or species in the case of this article). Other people have provided data that supports the case that this is a widespread problem that faces female tech-people (and even that is a subset of a larger problem). To take it to extremes, that abuse could entirely be the fault of one single…

I'm not sure that accounts on sexual harassment alone can be used to argue that being a female tech-person is a less pleasant experience than being a male tech-person. Women do experience more sexual harassment in tech industry than men but they do not experience more harassment or workplace bullying overall. The harassment that is not of sexual nature is not necessarily less upsetting than sexual harassment. In fact the opposite might be the case: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bullies-work/workplace-bu...

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

#423

Post by Slansitartop »

laci27 wrote: post #348
gambiting wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is a fantastic example that lack of anonymity does not solve anything. It takes 5 seconds to find groups where people openly say that all women are bad, immigrants should be shot, black people are responsible for all the crime etc etc......even though all of their friends and family can see those posts. It solves nothing.

China is solving this problem. Every citizen will have it's own score (by 2019 or something) and you get points taken away if any of your online friends or family say bad things about the communist party. It's a solution... but i'm not sure if it's the right one:) here's the article: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-cre...

> China is solving this problem

China is run by a authoritarian oligarchy that wants to suppress any challenge to it's power. The planned "social credit" system is part of that suppression.

FYI, this oligarchy has a list of "perils" that include:

> “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation [1]

It's not trying to solve your problem with people's online lack of manners, and any imputation to the contrary is part of a smokescreen.

> It's a solution... but i'm not sure if it's the right one

It's the wrong solution, full stop.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lead...

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

#424

Post by pm24601 »

lokopodium wrote: post #291
fsloth wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How much will it take to convince the average HN reader that sexism actually is everywhere?" I presume those that think this way either have no female friends or have not asked them about it. Men generally don't get catcalls or get their body fondled by strangers.

Men generally don't catcall or fondle strangers' bodies either. It's a general projection, "why would anyone do that?".

{ * unless the man is the US President }

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

#425

Post by muse900 »

alkonaut wrote: post #191

Kids who grew up in an environment where anonymous interaction is the norm (such as kids who have anonymous social chats at school, or do in-game chats etc) have grown so accustomed to it that I don't think they even see it as sexist, racist, bullying etc. Most would probably never say any of this to someones' face, not out of fear of consequences but simply because they know better. Yet in anonymous contact they don…

As a kid I grew up playing video games. Around the age of 13 I switched on to online video games. I spent too much time on games like w3/wow etc. As a kid being exposed to such an environment wasn't good at all.

After years, now being in my 30's I can totally understand how online gaming changed me and my interactions vs people that haven't played online games etc are completely different. I used to have a complete disregard about anything in life, I wouldn't mind saying to someone 'get cancer', which is quite awful. Only now that I grew up and reduced my online presence by a lot, also understood that life is life and games are games, I understand how awful of a thing is to wish cancer to someone or even joke about that. People losing families and friends over that thing and I used to just have it as a word.

I can't blame it on my parents either. They tried their best and they gave me everything they could. If it wasn't for them I would be a total loss I guess. Its just that they couldn't stop me from playing videogames or convert my life into videogames. That thing was like a junk during my teens.

That said online games definitely helped me mature as well, I mean its not all bad, I definitely got some good values out of interacting in online video games, and some bad.

Just wanted to bring my personal experience on the matter and what you commented.

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

#426

Post by Double_a_92 »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #138
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…

What's wrong with rationalizing things? Should we just take it for pure truth because a woman said it?

Judging by the downvotes I guess we really shouldn't think rationally about things. Ok, lesson learned. Thank you very much :)

Actually NOT. I will not yield to those virtue signaling pricks!

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

#427

Post by dahart »

jerf wrote: post #284
UncleMeat wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one thing is obviously not the smoking gun. But in context of the thousands of other similar things it becomes impossible not to see a pattern.

Thousands of similar events, in a ratio with millions upon millions of respectful interactions. It really shouldn't be surprising when the proposed solution to the former is to endlessly harass those doing the latter and accuse them of sexism day in, day out using the largest megaphones our species has ever constructed that the latter get touchy. For which the secondary solution is then to berate them for getting tou…

> Thousands of similar events, in a ratio with millions upon millions of respectful interactions.

No, the number of harassing interactions is in the millions, and the people who acknowledge it's a problem are the majority of people. You are in the minority by denying that this is a real problem.

Data:

http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/07/11/online-harassment-2017...

> It really shouldn't be surprising when the proposed solution to the former is to endlessly harass those doing the latter and accuse them of sexism day in, day out

Did you seriously just claim you're being harassed by this article??

If an article about Julia's experience and not about you or directed to you is harassing you just by existing, how exactly do you think Julia feels about the people calling her names and demanding sex? Do you have any sympathy for what she or other women are going through online?

If reading the topic of sexism bothers you, what about helping to eliminate sexism and harassment? Maybe if we get rid of the sexism, the articles will go away?

> Whatever the solution is, it isn't going to be found in an abusing broadcast media like the internet discussions.

I don't understand this sentence. Where is the solution, and why don't broadcast media help? Public awareness on many topics is going up, due to the internet and broadcast media, for example, public awareness of science. Most people consider this trend a good thing.

Were you forced to read the article? I don't understand the suggestions that the internet & broadcast media are abusing you somehow. Maybe take a break and go outside?

Here are some more stats about the state of sexism in the U.S. and abroad, to help you understand how women, not you, are the victims of this problem.

https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/earnings_2014.htm

https://mic.com/articles/168585/the-next-time-someone-tells-...

https://www.makers.com/blog/21-facts-you-never-knew-about-in...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/09/27/lean-in-stud...

Etc., etc.

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

#428

Post by coryfklein »

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.)

Yea, this is pretty useless information unless you can provide a source for these claims. I find it very hard to believe that the complete elimination of anonymity on a social media platform resulted in exactly 0 improvement in measurable behavior.

I Googled both your anonymity and your fascism claims and couldn't find anything, but I'd love to learn more.

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

#429

Post by draw_down »

cyberferret wrote: post #218

I found this post deeply upsetting and alarming. I guess I am lucky that my co-founder and I run a B2B SaaS, and not a B2C company - in over two years of running a chat agent on our website and within our app, we have never had anything even close to this. Frankly, seeing the interactions on that blog post was like opening a door into some sort of hell hole. Maybe I lead some sort of cloistered life online, but I don…

I work for a B2B saas company. All our support people use an alias when interacting with customers. Business owners are the same people in the general population and can be just as threatening and crazy. Trust me, they are not exempt from being threatening and crazy.
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