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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

#571

Post by naikrovek »

rectang wrote: post #397
DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single message is not harassment though.

You can't make that blanket statement. A single punch is battery. A single genital grab is sexual assault. A single demand for quid pro quo sexual favors in exchange for professional rewards is sexual harassment. A single message asserting that an individual is not right for their job because of their gender creates a hostile work environment, and that's also sexual harassment. Just because there can be cases where a…

A single event can be illegal, immoral, wrong, or any one of a bunch of other words, and a single event is never harassment because harassment requires multiple events.

A single demand for quid pro quo sexual favors in exchange for professional rewards is a sexual offence, a bad one, and alone it is not harassment. IANAL, though the dictionary definition sticks with me, especially the key words: "multiple", "unwanted", and "intentional".

That's why "harassment" as a word exists, it is to indicate that multiple unwanted events have happened intentionally.

Maybe the legal definition of "harassment" differs from the dictionary definition. If so, a new word for single event harassment needs to be chosen.

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

#572

Post by DoreenMichele »

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…

The problem runs deeper than that. I'm a woman and have participated on HN for about 8.5 years. HN is one of the most civilized environments I have participated in. I still have men politely email me to essentially chat me up and otherwise don't want to engage me at all.

I recently offered to let someone email me to discuss their issue. They were all enthused. We never discussed their issue. They basically wanted to know when I might come visit their country. I cut them off and let them know they could write back if they had any actual questions about [issue]. I never heard back.

There is a very short list of men who will talk to me like a human being. But about 99% of men have only one reason they would ever talk to me and that reason is to treat me like a talking fleshlight.

It's very frustrating and I'm getting to the point of starting to be pretty mad about the whole thing. Then when I comment on my gender being a factor contributing to my intractable poverty, inevitably someone is a jerk about that and acts like I am crazy.

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

#573

Post by alkonaut »

matt4077 wrote: post #501
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…

It’s sad to see that the top-voted comment is one of those bemoaning general uncivilized behavior, when the story convincingly shows that we’ve created a world where women’s lives are made impossibly difficult, and men are treated with respect.

That wasn’t my intention, I think most of the asshattery I refer to definitely end up as sexism, and is directed towards women. And I have no idea why that is so. But it’s a problem, most definitely.

My point is merely that anonymity simply magnifies the same things we would see in non-anonymous settings.

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

#574

Post by brobert »

philipodonnell wrote: post #352
woodrowbarlow wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have a non-twitter link? thank you.

Wow, twitter is a really inferior way of telling a story like that.

threadreaderapp dot com is a great way to "collect"/"rollup" tweets into a single page/long form for reading.

Unfortunately, it doesn't support twitter moments yet (you have to copy the original tweet url) and, really, REALLY unfortunately, doesn't support this particular "old" tweet because the twitter API doesn't allow fetching tweets more than a few months old. :/

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

#575

Post by joemi »

scott_s wrote: post #334
contravariant wrote: post #304

It 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…

Given that the title says "Rude or trolling messages (per week) and Heckling or sexual messages (per week)", I think that clearly means the left (orange bars) are rude or trolling, and right (blue bars) are heckling or sexual harassment. In other words, the title are the labels.

The titles are the labels, yes, but that's not exactly clear (and definitely not explicit), as shown by the fact that people were confused about it.

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

#576

Post by bandrami »

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.

> Stock photos of good looking women are routinely used in marketing to attract users

They're photos, though. They're real. Not "fake"

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

#577

Post by tomxor »

staticelf wrote: post #307
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…

When I play online games, in this example PUBG, I think a part of the fun is to be rude and aggressive before the match starts. You're about to virtually shoot them in the head so saying something rude to random online gamers doesn't feel at all bad. Other people often respond back, just as rudely and I think it's hilarious. It can't be just me who thinks and acts like this? Context matters a lot in my opinion. Altho…

I know what you mean, it's that dark kind of humor when you know the person you are directing it to thinks it's funny (because it's so obviously wrong). However I don't think that applies to these messages which just look like plain trolling to me.

Although this thread is so loaded it seems that any suggestion of the possibility of a benign explanation is met with being downvoted into oblivion like you... so let me finish with "this is terrible and all men are bad", there I think I've covered myself.

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

#578

Post by jenthoven »

A few thoughts from Julia (the OC) 24 hours after this post caught on: 1. Thank you all for the kind words and thoughts - The Kapwing chat box has been full of supportive and kind messages this morning. 2. I didn’t intend to solicit pity; annoying users are just one small challenge on the way to growing an Internet company and are easy to avoid, thanks to the Drift messaging platform and pseudonyms. But it is one example of a small thing that steepens the path to success for women founders. 3. The discussions in these comments are, for the most part, insightful and interesting. Even though my users and my experience are not representative of everyone’s, I appreciate the conversations this post has started around user behavior on the internet.

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

#579

Post by alkonaut »

Jean-Philipe wrote: post #521
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…

The female identity has been harassed while the male identity was treated with respect. I don't see how anonymity has anything to do with it, the visitors were equally anonymous in both cases.

I was more trying to make a general remark around e.g what kids do in social media when anonymous.

The reason only the female is harassed I think has a very simple explanation, only men behave this way.

Why the same men don’t behave e.g racist or otherwise harassing the male identity can’t say. Best guess there is that these men are simply threatened by women, especially those that are attractive or successful. But I’m way out of my comfort zone of even man-guessing now.

I didn’t intend to detract from the fact that these men are assholes or say sexism isn’t the issue here.

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

#580

Post by stordoff »

DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #354
ashelmire wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can believe sexual harassment is everywhere and also believe chat widgets are annoying. Sadly, women getting harassed on the internet by anonymous strangers, while unfortunate, is not a novel revelation. Anyone who says it isn’t common has their head in the sand. You can’t help people like that.

A single message is not harassment though.

Somewhat depends on your point of view. A single message sent may not be intended as harassment, but receiving a single message from multiple people can certainly feel like harassment. An individual act might not be harassment, but it can definitely contribute to it.
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