Beware of the perfect gentleman • Hacker News Board

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#141

Post by diego_moita » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

thephyber wrote: post #38

diego_moita wrote: post #9

For me, the most fascinating part is about women refusing to accept they've been scammed or wanting a relationship with the men whose pictures were stolen, even though some of them are gay. It is quite similar to cult followers like QAnon. They want to believe desperately on what is comforting discarding what is reasonable. My Brazilian family of Bolsonaro supporters camping in front of barracks demanding a coup-d'et…

I think you are conflating System 1 and System 2 thinking (from Kahneman's _Thinking Fast and Slow_ [1]). Frauds typically work by triggering our System 1 ("lizard brain", containing our emotions and our innate mate selection/attraction) which selectively / temporarily disables our System 2 (cognitive / rational faculties). We have words to describe the abstractions in the mind ("ego", "defense mechanism") which form…

> I think you are conflating System 1 and System 2 thinking (from Kahneman's _Thinking Fast and Slow_ [1]).

Agree. Very good point. Thanks.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#142

Post by Balgair » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

rurp wrote: post #35

timrice wrote: post #5

Upsetting that in an article all about photos being used to scam people, there's not a single sample of an offending image! I mean, I think I get why. But still, it's the first thing I want to see when I read a story like this.

Haha, yeah my thought process reading the article was basically: - Why aren't there any photo examples? - OK, I get why not - But still. Couldn't they find a way to add some photos?

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

Pick a few from there?

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#143

Post by 998244353 » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #87

stevenwoo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember filtering programmer resumes about 20 years ago and one listed modelling as a prior job and her packet included a headshot. We flew her out and interviewed her and she aced the written test and interviews; we made her an offer but she had multiple to choose from and our starting salary was not competitive.

> one listed modelling as a prior job We had the near opposite experience. We were looking to hire a "Modelling and simulation developer" for Matlab. And some ladies would somehow only see the "modelling experience desired" part and ignore the other technical requirements and flood us with their portfolios of various photo shoots. I'm sure the hiring guys hated it.

Sounds like people applying to thousands of positions based on only keywords to stay competitive.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#144

Post by walthamstow » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

danwee wrote: post #133

walthamstow wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother and his girlfriend are tech recruiters here in London. They are both very conventionally attractive people, but it's not their image that makes them good at their jobs per se, IMO it's having the confidence and charm of a person who has gone through life always being attractive. If a less attractive person had that confidence, charm, charisma, whatever you call it - and some do - they would also be success…

I wasn't talking about been successfull or not, but I agree with your statement indeed.

Ah, yes, apologies, I had merged your post with another sibling post in my head

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#145

Post by worthless-trash » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 3:14 PM UTC

vstm wrote: post #85

whatshisface wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be easier to start from scratch.

Yes making my face look good would be NP-hard

I have had to work so hard not to make a sexual innuendo with that comment.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#146

Post by edanm » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

teux wrote: post #118

markus_zhang wrote: post #7

I have been constantly harrased by accounts with pretty girl pictures on LinkedIn, wish they could do something. Why did I know they are fake? One, I'm not handsome, neither do I work in those high status companies, why did they reach out to me? Two, they look more like models than software engineers. Completely bullshit.

> Two, they look more like models than software engineers. Completely bullshit. Can I push back against this? It’s toxic as fuck. Being a woman in tech blows. You can’t be pretty or you’re considered incompetent and shallow. You can’t be ugly or you’re treated poorly for that. It’s a loose-loose. What does a software engineer look like to you, then?

Despite you getting some bad feedback on this comment, I think you're right and I bumped on that phrase too.

This reminds me of a billboard campaign to hire developers that ran a few years ago, and featured a few SEs, including one woman considered attractive. A lot of people said things along the lines of "this isn't what a real SE looks like", along with many... less nice things. Of course, she actually was a full stack engineer at that company. This prompted her to start a campaign (#ILookLikeAnEngineer). For more details read her blog: https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/you-may-have-seen-my-fa...

Note to some commenters: I'm not saying that you can't tell a fake profile from a not fake profile. I'm saying that a sentence like "they look more like models than software engineers" is implicitly hinting that software engineers are not attractive females. That's the objection that I believe teux was raising, and it's a valid one.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#147

Post by stevenwoo » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #87

stevenwoo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember filtering programmer resumes about 20 years ago and one listed modelling as a prior job and her packet included a headshot. We flew her out and interviewed her and she aced the written test and interviews; we made her an offer but she had multiple to choose from and our starting salary was not competitive.

> one listed modelling as a prior job We had the near opposite experience. We were looking to hire a "Modelling and simulation developer" for Matlab. And some ladies would somehow only see the "modelling experience desired" part and ignore the other technical requirements and flood us with their portfolios of various photo shoots. I'm sure the hiring guys hated it.

I distinctly remember thinking - this is odd, but whatever, we had to look at so many resumes we had to concentrate on looking at grades and outside projects and anything else to distinguish between candidates to get to the phone screen stage, it was just me and a senior producer (might be called product manager nowadays), I cannot remember everything but we were looking at new grads for a couple of years to expand a little.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#148

Post by filoleg » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #109

jack_pp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use them for what?

Exactly what the article is about?

Yeah, I am disheartened by some comments in this thread as well.

Sure, let's implement these laws that essentially will be used for stiffening art, at least all these scammers (who already do illegal things) will start following the law, and these romance scams will stop /s.

This is like the gun control debate, but much worse. At least with gun control, it has strong ties to geographic boundaries, given that guns are physical objects, so I can see some decent arguments for why it (at least hypothetically) could work (e.g., Australia).

But with photos posted online, the locale is global internet, where everything is instantly reachable and replicable with pretty much zero marginal cost, from anywhere in the world. These proposals are imo peak idealism without much pragmatic thought applied at all.

Mind you, I am not saying "let's do nothing, things are all good." But some of the proposed "fixes" to this I've seen here are truly useless at best and harmful at worst.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#149

Post by nonameiguess » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #73

> “‘You shouldn’t have anything on social media. People are using your pictures.’ And I’m like, ‘Excuse me. I’m not gonna move to a deserted island or live my life as a monk. That’s just not gonna happen.’” Not posting pictures of yourself online seems to be a pretty reasonable, sensible preventative measure for anyone. I don’t (to my knowledge) have pictures of myself floating around social media, and I don’t consid…

Other than for a new driver's license and a passport, I haven't even taken a picture of myself since 2014. I do some fantasy cosplay, though, so have had pictures taken of me from that, though I'm not sure many would recognize me.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#150

Post by Consultant32452 » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #54

Consultant32452 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a whore and the recruiters are my pimps. They only like me because the johns hire me. The world makes more sense through that lens.

This whole thread is shameful. Recruiters do a valuable job; I don't pity them and I do not envy them. The number of bad recruiters I've interacted with are high, but that's largely selection bias: the ones that reach me are not paying attention enough to realise that I'm not going to move. I've worked closely with recruiters and their job is tiring and thankless; in the end though they can go home peacefully and it'…

Pimps serve a purpose. Sometimes they are good and hook me up with johns so I make good money. Sometimes they protect me from bad johns. Sometimes they abuse me by sending me to johns they know will hurt me and then take all the money.