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…
Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
501–510 of 666 posts
Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
#502I 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 have seen all sorts of comments like the ones mentioned in the article, and I hate to say it, but many of them came after we got profiled in places like Hacker News (and other tech websites, too, to be fair.)
One that had a referrer as a thread on Hacker News kept insisting I couldn't be a real person, and wanting me to do basic math like 2+3 "before he would talk to me." It was gross.
I put my own face as an avatar on my current client's chat without thinking twice. Less than 24 hours later, my first interaction on the chat was harassment. Their product is an enterprise B2B SaaS.
Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a plurality of kids in middle and high school go through this phase whether they play video games or not. It's a normal part of growing up. You've got lots of new hormones and frustrations in life. It's a time of testing all sorts of social boundaries. I wonder to what extent gaming increases this phenomenon from the norm, or whether it's just a different avenue through which these things are expressed.
I have a rather vivid memory from age 15 of someone tossing off a "your mom" joke to someone whose mother had just died. It was, obviously, a terrible moment. And it was far from the only thing of that sort that happened. I remember really upsetting people on a couple of occasions because I thought about the likely, harmless consequence of what I was saying, and didn't consider whether it could cut some people much d…
Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the views. I'll never hire a bigot, and I'll fire anyone on the spot who expresses bigoted views. I don't think that is "fascism".
> I'll fire anyone on the spot who expresses bigoted views Ironically that is technically a bigoted view.
Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Please consider more deeply the meaning of the word "ratio". You have no idea what the actual number of either harassing interactions is, nor non-harassing interactions, as it isn't even possible to formulate a definition of "an interaction". But there is no scenario in which these interactions are not a vanishing, vanishing minority of interactions. It literally could not be any other way, because if it was, say, the majority of male/female interactions, that would mean literally more than half the time a man passes a woman in the street, the man harasses the woman. Absurd.
"Did you seriously just claim you're being harassed by this article??"
No, I'm claiming that what you are doing, as are many other people, are harassing people, who are on average the wrong people. And then being very, very surprised when they don't take it very well. Well, yeah. You attacked, so what do you expect? Do you seriously think you helped anyone, even if we assumed for the sake of argument you read my post correctly, which you didn't? No, you didn't help anything. You just made it worse.
"I don't understand this sentence."
Well, try reading my post again with these corrections in mind. You may not agree with what I said, but it may help you understand it. Especially if, again, you consider that I consider your post a prime example of what I am talking about.
Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
#506Amazing. 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…
Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are always so quick to jump to this line of reasoning when popular opinion agrees with them. Would you be fine with losing your job for wrongthink if - or rather, when - social opinion swings the other way? It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong - you should be punished for disagreeing with society! Societal retribution for "wrongthink" is not the right answer. It's how you end up with LGBT losing their jo…
Excellent point. The idea that someone should lose the job and livelihood because of a wrong doing is madness. The punishment should cause a behavior correction and not end of life. Such vengeful society we live in today!
Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdotal and not really a big problem, but it took me having to put my coke in a coffee cup to be taken seriously in meetings to really "get it".
Thanks for the tip about the cup in meetings. Often these implicit rules are not obvious, so making them explicit is very helpful to work around and maybe even fix them. Humans are guided by stereotypes and superstition and not scepticism and scientific reason. And if there is an individual that is sceptical and demands scientific reason, they are punished socially for it. This makes homo sapiens look a bit bad in my…
Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
#509It would be nice to have some labels on the bar graph. I assume that orange represents the rude messages and blue the heckling, but for all I know it's the other way around. It's even possible that one column is for normal messages and one for rude/heckling messages, especially since I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between between rude/trolling and sexual-harassment/heckling (I'd understand if it were ru…
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”
Re: Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
#510Kids 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 d…
Rather than addressing the real fact that women are treated as sexual objects by men generally, whether in thought or anonymous action in message chat boxes, this sort of comment turns it into an issue of "polite conversation". To me it seems as an (although it seems inadvertent) attempt to divert the attention from the real issue towards a non issue of "poor taste in jokes".
I still like particularly dark, demented, and a "punching down humor".
I've always felt a certain level of dishonesty amongst individuals who use polite discourse as a means of communication. There also seems to be a hint of classism in maintaining polite discourse.